end of a saga...

so this is how it all ends. a collective psyche of nail bitting anticipation spanning over 28 years and 2 generations of mesmerised adolescents just ended in may 2005. the epic moment that etches anakin skywalker into movieland folklore eternity. the birth of darth vader. there can't possibly be better curtain call than this to end what's been truly a quinessential epic by every standards. and it better be. i am not exactly looking forward to an entire conveyor belt of cheesy starwars expanded universe (EU) movie franchise. that would be sacriligious. and for the followers of the force, the purists among us will deem any attempts to film the EU sequels (or worse, old republic pre-prequels) nothing less a blasphemy. it's more than a franchise, it's a religion. well ok, maybe we could compromise on the thrawn trilogy. if not, what else is there to look forward to?






the original trilogies. a sci-fi background with medival theme of the chivalry of the jedis and the struggle between good and evil. that's what makes it so amazing even 20 odd years later


it all started for me back in about sec 2. sure, i've watched the original star wars on channel 5 when i was a kid - too young to comprehend the complexities of inter-galactic politics. i do remember receiving a couple of hand-me-downs SW action figures for christmas when i was 8 (obiwan kenobi, leia in mask and a couple of ewoks). i was truly converted when i was introduced to the opiate known as star wars customizable card game, thanks to xander. yes, it's an opiate considering i blew all my ang pow stash and my allowance on the countless packs of star war cards. at $3.80 a pack for the newer expansions and a whooping $5-$6 bucks (depending on where u buy) for the black border premiere series. it was an obsession. there were 5 of us in class who were always looking score a hit afterschool at world of JJ in bishan mrt. me, xander, sow chen, kevin and alywin. man, buying ccgs is truly a good gauge of one's character. ok this is how it works: there're many expasions to the CCG and it's usually named after a location or planet in the star wars movies (like hoth, dagobah, cloud city etc) and in every pack of about 8-12 cards there's only one rare card (which can either be a character card, or most frustratingly an 'interupt' or 'effect' card) and outta these rare cards, most are crap with the exception of about 3-4 ultra rare cards (which are either character cards or spaceships cards which we collectively coin as 'mains'). legend has it that there's only one main in each carton of packs so if someone tio the main from that box, the rest is probably crap. that was the source of a lotta tension among the 5 of us. whenever someone scores a main, the rest of the five just become damn du lan. this is especially if one of us bought 10 packs for the same box and got nothing but crap cards and the next person goes on to score a main by buying only one pack. it happened a few times when shawn tio-ed his Millenium Falcon and when i tio-ed my Boba Fett. and initially the stupid auntie at JJs simply refuses reopen a new box even when a main is taken until sometime later when we bought so many packs from her that we finally have the collective leverage to get her to open new cartons. tearing up and throwing cards which we already have into dustbins, kicking the mrt pillars and bins outta sheer frustration - we've all done that at one point or another. perhaps gambling would have been a better way to describe the situation. we were spurlging on the all the crap cards and feeding our pent up frustration only to await the emotional high of tio-ing mains. at the height of SWCCG craze, it even overtook Magic: the Gathering as the most popular card game for sometime until pokemon took over. those days, a black border(limited edition) main like Darth Vader can fetch as high as 55 USD.






if you watched the prequels before the original trilogy, well...i guess you could be forgiven for thinking of star wars as a somewhat space-themed adaptation of Macbeth

beside being collectible items, the card game in itself is addictively fun as well. we get to customise our own decks of 60 cards and battle it out. there's a gaming room in serene centre back then where we always hung out. we're the absolute disgrace there. really. u see, there're actually quite a few working adults playing SWCCG there and boy do they really have an arsenal of mains that will kick our ass flat. they've like 3 obiwans, 3 lukes, 3 hans and 3 leias all in each fucking deck, and they also have another configured deck with another 3 obiwans, 3 lukes etc in it. so it was no surprise that we always get thrashed. then alywin came out with a ingenious (back then, but very sia-suay in hindsight) idea to bridge this divide. he got us to pool all our mains together and colour photostat the cards and then cut the photocopies out and paste it onto the crappy cards so we could use it like real mains. this was of course, not tournament legal. and when we actually used the cards against the older ppl we kenna suan only. it was quite embarrassing. all in all, the older guys are really quite friendly in general. they mainly guys in their 30s who were the 1st generation starwars fans who watched the initial trilogy in cinemas. there's one of them called aldrin or something who was even kind enough to swap his extra mains for a few moderately rare cards with us.



i only collected the cards from the original trilogy expansions. character-wise, the 2 biggest cards missing from my mains collecion are these two - the Millenium Falcon and Emperor Palpatine.

the beauty of the CCG is that not an frame of the entire trilogy is left unaddressed. the makers of the CCG (Decipher) took up the unenviable task of name or providing a 'lore' - an introduction brief for each character that appeared in the movie- for each card. there're so many minor minor characters that only appeared for a brief milliseconds in the movie and they all have that tiny bit of history attributed to them. did you know that the monkey-like alien that feeds on Jabba the Hutt's leftovers is called Salacious Crumbs? or that the disfigured guy in the tatooine cantina is called Dr Evazan and his fren who got his arm chopped off by Obiwan, Ponda Baba? they're all too familar to us, if only because these are the crappy cards that we'll hate to tio when we buy.

like the movie itself, the awesome CCG eventually succumbed to the empire - the tyranny of rich conglomerates like Wizards of the Coast that is. somewhere in 2000 or 2001 Wizards of the Coast (also makers of Magic: The Gathering) - the biggest rivals of Decipher bought over the rights from George Lucas to produce Star Wars themed card games. to distinguish their new asset from their more distinguished predeccessors, WOTC named it the Star Wars TCG. (although Decipher probably struck a deal by getting WOTC to lay their hands off the Lord of the Rings CCG -which they eventually acquired- in return). The TCG is absolute crap. the design of the card juvenile, and as for the gameplay...well, i've never played the TCG but judging from the fanfare, the CCG still seemd by far to be the more popular game. the greatest irony of it all, with Decipher unable to produce new cards, a group of SWCCG fanatics took it upon themselves to perpetuate the game - not unlike the rebel alliance against the empire - by dis-ambiguating the convulated CCG rules, changing the texts of the older cards and even producing new cards from what they call the virtual expansion series. they even hold annual world tournaments etc. they've become the de facto authority for the remnants of the SWCCG players. u can check the cards out at their websiteit's been a long long time since i last played a SWCCG and i've managed to convince sow chen and hopefully xander as well to play the game for old times sake when i get back.

Then there was this time in JC2, when i was representing my college for PESA and i had to come out with a short speech of any topic of my choice. i was told to speak about something that i was passionate about and it wasn't too hard to decide on star wars. the night came, and it was held in the ymca auditorium. i was one of the last few to deliver my prepared speech i think. from what i could recall, the almost all of the others participants were talking about some serious shit like philosophy of life, angsts of a teenager with a guy from TPJC being a notable exception. he delivered a really funny speech about unisex toilets or something.

in hindsight, my speech was really really cheesy. it started like this: 'From the east to the west, from Bollywood to Hollywood. There was never an epic as worthy as that of the Star Wars Trilogy'...WTF! I then went on to talk about the reasons behind star wars' popularity. in fact my entire speech was crap. first there was something i said about star wars being family entertainment

'unless you exclude the possibility of the dubious applications of yoda's gimmer stick, which i shan't elaborate'

or about how star wars is so popular in asia cos of the ostensibly heroic factors
about the jedi teachings = bushido and how dimminutive yoda, despite his shortness

'...stands as a beacon of hope to all asian men. that Size (index finger raised and slowly curling)...MATTERS NOT (looking at my own crotch) '.

i dun think many people got that joke cos' there was nothing save for a few isolated giggles in from the crowd. the toastmaster judges were certainly not laughing either. then i spoke about how Star Wars also had elements of asian colloquailisms in it:

'...in the epic duel between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in the Empire Strikes Back, those five famous words where Vader declared his fatherhood to Luke - 'I am you father' is widely perceived by asian linguists to be a allusion to a certain hokkien phrase that is commonly used within the context of a confrontation - a phrase which for propriety's sake that i shan't mention'

there was no reaction from the audience either. all in all, my speech just came across as, well...kinda random. i guess it just wasn't within my ability to do justice to such a superb subject matter. the conclusion from PESA, that i am not a master-debater, and neither am i a cunning-linguist. well at least i tried to evangelise my religion.

May the Force be with me....i need it for my exams desperately. quick quick! i need more mitochlorians!

(say, while we're on the subject of religion. apparantly anakin skywalker was 'conceived by the force' and din have a biological father. and at the same time he was prophesies as the One to bring balance to the force. could it have been george lucas' intention to allude Anakin Skywalker to the messiah, to one born of immaculate birth, to that of ...Jesus Christ?)