Zeitgeist

My kids will never get to enjoy Star Wars (later renamed Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) the way I enjoyed the movie as a kid. The same could be said with regards to Star Trek: The Next Generation, Tron, Ultima 4, Bard's Tale, Dragonlance, Groo The Wanderer and everything else that I enjoyed as a kid. While it is entirely possible to watch every movie I've watched, read every book I've read, and play every game I played, the moment when it meant something during that time is way past.

Where I learnt the meaning of virtue, mantras and avatar.
Would've been easier to pick up a dictionary, but less fun.
Image Source: Wikipedia

I remember talking to friends during our lunch breaks about the Empire Strikes back, and the surprising news that (SPOILER ALERT) Darth Vader was Luke's father. We had endless discussions about the new toys released, we re-enacted lightsaber battles and generally lived the Star Wars experience. My brother, sister and I would collect a Wookie's Bandolier of Star Wars figurines, vehicles, and plush toys. I'd go over to a friend's place and admire his diecast Millennium Falcon, or spend a weekend with my brother destroying our lightsabers.

Man, those lightsabers would've been worth a mint if we hadn't destroyed them.

However, 30 years, 6 movies, endless cartoons, hundreds of books and (SPOILER ALERT) the death of Chewbacca later, Star Wars seems to have lost its appeal to me, and probably kids in general. Sure, I still sit back and watch it once in awhile, but I don't spend hours discussing it like I did when I was a kid (except to try to convince my brother that Lucas didn't have a clue about the whole Star Wars Mythology back in 1977 - *cough* Darth Vader built C3P0 *cough*), and neither will my kids. Sure, they may watch Empire one day, but when Vader tells Luke about being his father, they'll know because that came about in Revenge of the Sith. Actually, they won't know it as I'll never let my kids watch Episodes I-III.

Trade Federation, blockade, taxation, trade routes, blah blah blah...

The same thing goes for watching Tron and The Last Starfighter. Imagine watching Tron before there was CG, that was how mind blowing it was for me. Lightcycles, arcade games, frisbee battles, how awesome was that? The Last Starfighter had some of the best CG space battles ever, like the Death Blossom scene. You look back at those movies now, and it looks like they were rendered with MS Paint. The thing was, they were great movies for me at the time.

Looks like you're watching someone play a computer game on the big screen.

Once upon a time, I played Zork: The Great Underground Empire on my Apple II. I stood outside a White House, I went down dungeons with my lantern (I'm afraid of Grues), and got lost in a game that consisted of a black screen with some words and a prompt. Zork spawned multiple sequels, The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy, and many others by Infocom. The games were marketed as Interactive Fiction, claiming that no graphics processor could beat the human imagination, and comparing them to the graphical games in the 80s, that wasn't a huge claim. By today's standards, I'd think that you'd be hard pressed to convince kids to play them.

Unfortunately for them, it's hard to sell games using your imagination...

compared to a game that leaves nothing to the imagination

The thing is, games get better all the time, have huge development teams, better graphics, online forums, create 2nd lives for people, and have legions of followers. Unfortunately for me, I don't have the time nor the patience to really get stuck into a game for more than a couple of weeks, which is a sad thing.

You're probably saying to yourself now that I must be a sad bastard to lament not having enough time to play games, but you'd be wrong. I'm not lamenting the fact that I don't get to play enough games, I'm lamenting the fact that I won't get to spend as much time playing games with my kids as I would like to. This means that I won't "get" what my kids are going on about, what movies that they're all talking about at school, what's the next big thing that's coming out for Christmas. In short, I'm lamenting about the generation gap that will occur between me and my kids. They will get to experience their own zeitgeist, have their own interests, be moved by other movies, move out and have their own kids. In short, I lament not being able to grow up with them, and that isn't all of it.

The thing is, the older we get, the more we drift apart. Brothers, sisters, parents, cousins and friends, we all slowly drift further apart as our interests and social circles change through the years. Once upon a time, we'd all be watching the same cartoons, hanging out at the same pool, playing with the same toys, going to the same beaches, but now, my family is spread across 5 countries, we all work in completely different fields, we are immersed in a sea of media streams, and it isn't surprising that half the time we haven't a clue what each other's interests are, and end up moaning about work clients, as that's something we can all relate to. Of course, the odd blog helps, but at the end of the day, that lack of real social interaction like talking about any old rubbish, chatting about the inane, and just hanging out on a daily basis means that we'll inevitably drift apart. While that means my kids will never get to grow up with me, while I still can, I'll try my hardest to grow up with them, even if it means having to watch Cricket with them (and I'll be sure that they'll also watch Star Wars with me).

Hopefully by then, they'll have invented Lightsaber Cricket.