Well, I'm back from the madness of Celebration 4. What an experience! I'll be blogging about that real soon.

For now, I'm off to celebrate my birthday tonight. But before I go, I wanted to share a nice present Tim "Sompeetalay" Veekhoven, founder of the Belgian Star Wars Fan Club TeeKay-421vzw, just sent me: the link for an interview we recently did together. I've previously said that an interview is certainly a kind of collaboration, and thanks to Tim's particular style, I think I ended up coming off pretty smart in this one.

Here's a sample:

TeeKay: How did you become a Star Wars Fan? What elements from Star Wars interest you the most?

Abel: It was a spontaneous reaction, really. It's hard to remember how it happened, because I was so young, but I think my parents simply rented Star Wars on video for me, maybe around 1981 or 1982, and it was basically a sensory overload. The music, the special effects, the action, the simple storyline. Honestly though, who can remember at that age? It's just beyond contemplation. What is clear to me, though, is that there was something there attractive beyond childhood. I'm not still crazy about Pete's Dragon, after all.

And let me take this chance to express an opinion. The prequels may or may not be as good as the original trilogy, but they're certainly much, much better than they're given credit for. Caca jokes aside, philosophically the prequels are infinitely richer than their predecessors. There's a great deal of moral ambiguity in the prequels, and I think that was a very bold thing to do. The ambiguity reaches a crescendo with the transformation of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader, and makes the transition into the black and white themed original trilogy perfect. I'm dumbfounded George Lucas was able to accomplish that. I'm convinced the complexity of the completed Star Wars saga will assure it stands for the ages.

On that note, I find the spiritual aspect of Star Wars to be the most important. That message of hope. Again, optimism is a rare commodity beyond childhood.

Check out the full interview for more! Be back soon! ~ Abel G. Peņa

BLOG INDEX

MYSPACE PROFILE