Students like senior Andrew Kastendick and sophomore Connor Munsch can look back on their childhoods and remember playing with toy lightsabers, putting on clone trooper helmets and quoting “may the force be with you” to their friends. To them, Star Wars has been always been a classic movie. With episode VII coming out, Star Wars does not have to be a movie from the past to these fans anymore.

Star Wars VII is the next movie in the Star Wars series, coming out 38 years after the first one in 1977. It officially comes out in theaters Dec. 18.

Kastendick is one student at BVNW who claims to be a big Star Wars fan. To show his devotion to the series, Kastendick said he spent 14 hours photoshopping a lightsaber battle scene in the cross country end-of-season video to make the lightsabers look real.

He said he got into Star Wars when he was about five or six when he watched The New Hope, the first movie in the original trilogy.

“I love Star Wars,” Kastendick said. “As I’ve grown up, it has always been there and it has kind of gone with me the whole time. It started out with movies and action figures and stuff, and then it went into video games, and now into more like books and research into more about the expanded universe. I love talking about it, me and my friends kind of spark conversations about it all the time.”

Math teacher C.J. Armenta is a Star Trek fan, with two cardboard cutouts of Spock in his room. He said he is a Star Wars fan as well, he just fell in love with Star Trek first.

“(J.J.) Abrams (director of Star Wars VII), who also directed Star Trek, did a really good job with bringing the old to the new,” Armenta said. “He did an excellent job in Star Trek…so I think he will too in the new Star Wars capitalize Star Wars…I think he understood his audience with Star Trek so he will understand his audience with Star Wars.”

Kastendick said he predicts Star Wars VII will be a great production, and he thinks it will have a lot of qualities that are lacking in the three prequels.

“I think it’s going to be a lot more action-oriented and I think the cinematography is going to be a lot better than poor old George Lucas, and the writing, I think the writing is finally going to be good,” Kastendick said.

But Kastendick also said he thinks the new Star Wars is going to be different from what has been in past movies from the franchise. He said he thinks there will be some darker themes and he thinks the movie will be more oriented toward adults. He also said he is really excited to see how the plot plays out and learn the true identity of the characters.  

“I’m also really excited to see how Luke Skywalker plays out because the trailers haven’t really shown anything.” Kastendick said. “People are like, oh he is Kylo Ren, I dont think thats true… there is no way, that doesn’t make any sense.”

Munsch, also an avid Star Wars fan, said he went so far as to memorized the entire fourth movie. Like Armenta and Kastendick, Munsch said he is excited to see how this movie plays out. He said he feels Star Wars is a timeless classic, and he thinks J.J. Abrams is going to amend what Munsch said was unsuccessful ffrom the prequels and work from the original trilogy.

“I think J.J. Abrams is definitely trying to recreate the feel that the original trilogy had.” Munsch said. “He is going with practical effects and real sets and he is hiring first time actors to take the main roles, which is what George Lucas did back in 1977… I think it is going to be really special because it is something that everyone’s parents have grown up with.”