The first Star Wars film was magic. I can remember watching it at the theater in the Salem Mall. Four of us went. My best friend Theresa, her boyfriend Tommy, and my boyfriend Tom.
We were all mesmerized by the movie. Taken. Knocked off our feet. Walking out of the building, the four of us were chattering non-stop about the magnitude of what we had just seen. It was a movie like none other. When we got to Tommy’s car, it occurred to me that it was an old Ford Falcon. I made the comment, “This car shall forever more be known as the Millennium Falcon.” Yeah, that’s right. Hans Solo, move over. We had our own Falcon. High school.
In the times since then, I’ve watched the movie again and again. And I realized that everything had to be perfect for that movie to come together. From the special effects to the casting. Everything fit everything else like a glove. That is what made the movie so perfect.
But it could have gone in another direction.
Not too terribly long ago, I read that Burt Reynolds was originally cast to be Han Solo in the first Star Wars film. He dropped out before filming. George Lucas had asked Reynolds first.
Reynolds was a hot name around the studios at the time Lucas was casting. He had been in “Deliverance” a few years before. But his more recent movie, “The Longest Yard,” put him back on the “heartthrob” scale.
So. He was set to play Hans Solo. But not long before filming was supposed to start, Old Burt decided he wasn’t interested in the character.
Thankfully. In my opinion.
Of course, the virtual unknown Harrison Ford went on to play the space hunk Solo.
Another not. Jodie Foster was considered for the role of Princess Leia in 1976, but she was under contract to Disney at the time. So that fell through.
In the end, Star Wars came together perfectly.
But what I’m getting at is this.
Is it in the stars?
Or just blowing in the wind?
For you and I to be here, right now, with me typing away and you reading, all of time in history had to fit together perfectly. Every single second in all of existence had to take place exactly as it did for this moment to be possible.
Everything from Julius Caesar deciding to expand the Roman Empire to George Washington crossing the Delaware to your Great Grandpa Floyd asking your Great Grandma Evelyn to dance that night at the Fourth of July party. Every single minute. Tick. Tick. Tock.
Truthfully, it kind of freaks me out to think about it.
But therein lies the profoundly deep question, that same question that has been around forever.
Is it all an ordered plan, or is it random chaos?
I know I’ve asked this before. And we’ll never know the answer so long as we are in our human bodies with our dull brains.
But my eyes are blue.
The Empire State Building was built.
Peanut butter comes in both smooth and crunchy.
Sperm whales sleep, standing straight up and down in the ocean.
And on and on it goes.
Burt Reynolds turned down the role of Hans Solo.
And I am here with you.
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“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” – Robert Frost
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“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” – Carl Sagan
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May The Force Be With You. Exactly.
