I loved Star Wars as a kid. It has everything a pre teen could ask for: space ships, robots, aliens, cool armor, glowing swords, laser blasters, and a hot chick who eventually shows up wearing a metal bikini (incidentally, if any hot nerd girls have a vague resemblance to Leia, can pull off wearing the metal bikini, and want to help someone fulfill a lifetime fantasy, send me an email. We should get to know each other). Darth Vader was the man, Yoda was cool, and even Luke stopped being such a putz by the end of the series. My favorite movies was always Empire (the scene where Han Solo gets frozen in carbonite and pushed onto his back with a huge thump still gets me), but all three of them were great.
My love of Star Wars was great enough to survive the abuse Lucas later put the whole series through with his prequel. It survived Jar Jar Binks (henceforth referred to as the J-word), the creepy romance between eight year old Anakin and 18+ year old Padme (the original space-cougar), holes in the plot you could pilot the Millennium Falcon through (how can Ben Kenobi claim to not know R2D2 and C3PO in Episode IV when he spent most of I-III saving their asses?), superball Yoda, and the major disappointment of learning that James Earl Jones was contracted to do the voice of Darth Vader only to find out that he does all of two completely out of character lines and Vader is only in the movie for 3 minutes (by the way, Obi Wan Kenobi, didn't any of your Jedi training ever touch on the concept of a mercy stroke? You left Anakin dismembered with burns on 90% of his body to twitch off and die in agony. Nice work). Yes, my love of Star Wars survived all that abuse and more. Then I made the mistake that has soured Star Wars forever for me: I watched The Star Wars Holiday Special.
This celluloid abortion has ruined Star Wars for me for life. I will not even link you any information on it, as I want no responsibility for anyone else having a cherished childhood memory destroyed. Feel free to look for it, but if you will take my advice stay the hell away from it. It doesn't even have the excuse of being 30 years later. This thing came out between episode Iv and V. Truly god awful, with horrible cameo appearances by pretty much everyone. Here is a quote from Wikipedia: "David Hofstede, author of What Were They Thinking?: The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, ranked the holiday special at number one, calling it "the worst two hours of television ever."". This may tempt you to try to watch it, but really, spare your brain.
On a more positive note, Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) is now an accomplished cartoon voice artist, doing the all time best Joker voice on the Batman animated series. If you want to see for yourself here is a link to a Joker soundboard.
