Am I Immune

Ten have been hounding us with adverts for the premiere airing of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones this coming Sunday night. The ad is filled with images from both Attack and the soon to be released Revenge of the Sith. I was asked, during one of the adverts, why I don't own any Star Wars on DVD. It got me thinking about my DVD collection and how I rationalise what I buy.

For starters there are a lot of impulse must-haves. Lord of the Rings and Harry Potters are unquestionable. I have a bunch of 'action blockbusters', and also a few less popular but more worthy films like Donnie Darko and Amelie. Then I came to realise that the majority of the films I own have been released the last ten years. In fact only ten films (of 123 DVDs) were released before 1995 (West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and The Neverending Story, for example). It made me wonder whether I'm a sucker for hype and look forward and not back.

I could say the same about my TV DVDs. Buffy, Angel, Firefly, The West Wing, Futurama, Cowboy Bebop, Dark Angel, Millennium and CSIare all relatively recent products. With TV it's always about the new. New series, new episode, brand new, extremely new, so new. It's all about the now. New is good, don't get me wrong, but I don't think we need to be told quite so often. Much to others chagrin I tape most of the TV shows that I enjoy. It gives me the opportunity to go back and re-watch the character development and catch clues that I'd not noticed before. So it stops being new, and moves into comfortable familiarity. So why is this something I can't carry over to films.

In no way am I not a fan of older films. I frequently sit up through the witching hour watching a black and white classic on ABC that hasn't seen the light of day since the 50s. SBS is repeating its Stanley Kubrick festival at the moment (A Clockwork Orange tonight at 10pm) and I tune in to watch, if not all, at least some of it. But movies on TV are a whole other kettle of fish.

Perhaps the reason I don't own the original Star Wars isn't because I am resisting letting into the hype of the new films. I think, in some bizarre way, they are cheapening the legacy of the original. And I'm sure I'll be slapped by any serious fan of Star Wars by saying that.

No doubt I'll watch Attack of the Clones, as I've not seen it since it's time at the cinema, and I'll likely make a trip to see the new one once it opens and the crowds dissipate.