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'Star Wars' prequel brings
fanboys out in full force
By Patti Hartigan, Globe Staff, 01/29/99
They may live in a parallel universe, but they're fun-loving sorts,
peaceful fellows. They fantasize about alien adventures, but they're really
quite down-to-earth. So one of them goes over to the Dark Side every now and
then, wearing his Vader regalia in public. What of it? So another chap wants
to play his favorite movie in the delivery room when his wife gives birth to
their first -- as yet unconceived -- child. No big deal.
We're talking about the ''fanboys,'' the closely knit group of ''Star
Wars'' fanatics who spend hours and hours scouring the globe for tidbits about
the upcoming ''prequel'' to the George Lucas adventure series, which will be
released May 21. They're obsessive, they're tenacious, they're devoted to the
cause. And, to say the least, these fanboys are wired.
They seem to soak up radiation from their computer screens the way certain
sun worshippers lap up ultraviolet rays. Consider: Late one evening, a
mainstream reporter sent e-mail to one of the most popular sites,
www.theforce.net. Within a few minutes, two Web masters called back, and
within five minutes, four messages popped in from four states. Let the
force be with you? The force is everywhere, just waiting to strike back.
Ever since the trailer for the prequel hit movie screens in November, the
''Star Wars'' Web sites have been rushed with the kind of urgent traffic you
might expect from crowds racing to catch, say, the last flight out of Saigon.
There are thousands of unofficial fan sites, and a half-dozen of them receive
more than 15,000 hits a day. Every day, these sites post new tidbits about the
prequel and the Skywalk convention in Dallas that will coincide with the
release of the film.
''It lets me nurture my obsession,'' says Brian Linder, a 23-year-old
network systems engineer and a Forcenet driving force from Columbia, S.C., who
wins the award for the fastest fanboy to respond to e-mail. Linder, like most
of the other Jedi junkies, was fascinated by the series as a child, attracted
by the ''multicultural, multinational'' cast of characters and by the Joseph
Campbell-style mythological themes. Sure, some of his friends think he's a bit
out there. He dragged his girlfriend to see the trailer four times, but she's
learned to understand. ''But my roommate likes to bust my chops,'' he says,
laughing.
Lou ''T-Bone'' Tambone, a Web master for www.starwarz.com who lives in
Watertown, has a sympathetic spouse: They got married on May 25, 1997, the
20th anniversary of the release of the first ''Star Wars'' film. Their wedding
cake was graced with Han Solo and Leia figurines, and they marched into their
reception to the adventurous strains of the John Williams theme.
Like many of these networked fans, Tambone, 28, has a sense of humor
about the current craze. ''Some guys think it's their responsibility to inform
the world about every little thing that every 'Star Wars' person does, like
'Jake Lloyd [the 8-year-old boy who plays young Darth Vader in the prequel]
scratched his head today,' '' he says. ''OK, that's obsessive.''
OK, it sure is. The Web world is populated by fanatics. A Catholic priest
in the Netherlands, one Roderick Vonhogen, has put together a detailed plot
synopsis of the prequel, his fellow fanboys say. John Benson, a Forcenet
fanboy who works for IBM in Atlanta and who can recite android trivia like a
missionary quoting scripture, spent $1,200 on a Darth Vader costume. He and
his wife, Georgie, are planning to have children and he is trying to persuade
her to let him watch the films -- ''or at least play the music'' -- in the
delivery room.
The fans are linked together electronically, but their obsession can be a
hindrance to close encounters in the flesh world. ''I'm not married, and I'm
not sure it's been helping my social life,'' says Forcenet staffer Steve Head,
a Weymouth resident who works for a South Shore real estate firm. Given the
ratio of 20 fanboys to every fangirl, it seems as if someone should come up
with a Starmate service, an electronic dating venture of the intergalactic
kind.
Unlike other Internet fan groups, these folks are not competitive or
cutthroat about their endeavors, and for the most part, Lucasfilms hasn't
struck back at the fans for posting images and inside information. (The
production company has issued a few cease-and-desist orders to sites that sell
''Star Wars'' memorabilia, but they'd be crazy to alienate their
alien-obsessed fans.) There is a peaceful, almost childlike quality about
them, which is perhaps what the whole thing is all about. It's about escape,
entering a universe where good conquers evil and the heroes get the best
costumes. ''I'm a Han Solo guy: He has that cool vest thing going,'' says
Tambone about the character immortalized by Harrison Ford.
Some of the fanboys pause and search for words when asked to define the
appeal, to explain why they spend up to 50 hours a week on line updating their
sites. But Tambone cuts to the chase. ''When I was 7, my parents were going to
get divorced,'' he recalls wistfully, sounding a bit like Princess Leia in
the 1977 classic. Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope. ''When you're little,
your parents try to keep it from you, but I needed a place to keep the pain
away. 'Star Wars' was in full force, and it became a safe place, a hideaway. I
grew attached to it. It distracted me from the real world.''
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