Thirty years ago yesterday, Star Wars opened in just 32 theaters across the country, and producers worried it would lose money. In Los Angeles this weekend, well over 20,000 fans are attending a five-day celebration of the anniversary, the Postal Service has issued Star Wars stamps, and George Lucas is making clips from the Star Wars movies available for "remixing" at StarWars.com.
But not all Star Wars fans are celebrating this weekend. An Aussie on his way to a 30th anniversary photo shoot made the mistake of letting his Star Wars laser pistol poke out of his backpack and alarm the hoplophobes in a Melbourne mall. Police, not knowing whether the laser blaster was fully charged, took no chances:
"It was a replica gun. We weren't sure what we were dealing with," Senior-Constable Daniel Sage told the Herald Sun newspaper. Photographs showed a gun closely resembling the weapon carried by Star Wars rogue Han Solo in the cinema classic.
The man had been on his way to pose for a community newspaper ahead of the 30th Star Wars movie anniversary when he was surrounded by armed police, forced to the ground and handcuffed.
Police said despite being a harmless replica and a close match to a weapon from a galaxy far, far away, the man would be charged with possessing an unregistered firearm.
Don't Australians realize that laser pistols don't kill people, people kill people? (Also, battle droids …)
In other movie news, today is the 100th birthday of Marion Morrison, better known as John Wayne. The Duke carried a plain old revolver, not a laser pistol, but he changed movies forever, too. Check out the fine tribute poem posted by commenter shirley at Firetop.