Like Star Wars? I’ve probably watched these movies hundreds of times. Not that I’m that big a fan, but this is a cult movie series, and back in the 80s there wasn’t really that much that could compete. The earlier movies that came later on (yeah, it’s tricky) brought up a strong sense of nostalgia and yearning for a simpler less CGI world were good was good and bad was bad and then bad turns out to be good and related to the other goods. Anyhow…
As you well know, Star Wars 7 recently came out and it was bought by Disney which decided to leverage the brand even further than Lucas did, and so Star Wars is everywhere. Even in this forsaken small part of relatively nowhere Europe, and so – to my surprise – Liege in Belgium, a city-town I mainly visit when taking the train from Brussels to Maastricht, had an ice festival next to the train station featuring Star Wars. On the last day before it closed down, I went to have a look, and it was terrific. A hall running in freezing -6c hosted a large number of ice statues with all the good old Star Wars characters. The local I met there, to my great astonishment, was one of the very few people – if not the only person – left in this world who has/have not watched a single Star Wars movie. And so I found myself trying to explain the characters and story line and realizing how ridiculous it all sounds, “So this is Darth Vader, he’s the ultimate bad guy fighting this overly naive good-girl princess and this young man on a journey of self-discovery who initially fancies the princess but then discovers that she’s his sister and that the bad Darth is their father, to finally discover after three long movies that Darth isn’t all evil. Yeah, I’m still trying to digest that as well.”
Enough babble… let’s just see the ice thingies…
There was even a bar selling ‘frozen’ alcohol:
Isn’t this cool?
Was a fun thing to do on a quick weekend trip. I can only imagine how much fun enthusiastic Star Wars fans would enjoy it in there. I think this ice festival runs annually, but next year will probably feature another highly commercialized film theme of some sorts, and we’ll all still pay up, have fun, and really enjoy it all.