Waiting For Star Wars

IN THE ANNALS OF ""STAR WARS'' LEGEND, THE young rogue Scorpio ranks well below the likes of Yoda, Chewbacca and R2-D2. But he's earned a place in the pantheon. Scorpio is an earthling--a guy from San Francisco, actually--and it was he who embarked last fall on a vital mission in service of ""Star Wars'' fans everywhere. With his trusty Handicam, he bootlegged a copy of the limited-release trailer for George Lucas's upcoming ""Star Wars'' epic ""Episode I: The Phantom Menace.'' ""A lot of fans had no idea how they were going to hold out until the trailer got to their theaters,'' says Scorpio, who, copyright laws being what they are, is sticking to his alias.

He wasn't ready, though, for what happened once his work hit the Internet. Within hours the trailer spread to more than 60 sites, and demand for an early peek at what would be the first new ""Star Wars'' installment in 16 years crashed servers around the world. Lucasfilm's official Web site scrambled to post the trailer itself and was promptly overwhelmed, receiving some 340 hits per second. Scorpio, a married, 33-year-old professional who owns every Boba Fett action figure ever made, became a hero among his fellow fans. Unimpressed, however, was Mrs. Scorpio. ""She thinks I'm the biggest geek,'' he says.

Some people just don't get it. But for a generation of young, mostly male, fans who were introduced to Lucas's original trilogy as impressionable grade-schoolers, the return of the ""Star Wars'' franchise May 21 ranks right up there with the Second Coming of Christ. The first of three planned ""prequels'' set prior to ""Star Wars,'' ""Episode I'' has been dissected and obsessed over like no other piece of unreleased celluloid in history. To call this film ""anticipated'' is like saying oxygen is ""useful.'' Fan-run Web sites, in contrast to the typical homages slapped up by, say, your average Burt Bacharach freak, are mind-boggling operations--some offer as many as five daily updates to a vast audience hungry for even the tiniest appetizer from Saint George's jealously guarded kitchen. Sure, hundreds of thousands of the ""Star Wars'' faithful have chugged along for years without a new movie to gawk at, but now this scattered community is enjoying a glorious moment of solidarity, coalescing on the Internet and preparing to burst forth as one from their far-flung basements and rec rooms. Many are responsible people. They've got jobs. They've got families. They've got a lightsaber in the closet.

The full-on fanatics will be first in line at movie theaters, of course, but as May 21 comes and goes, it'll be a rare household indeed that fails to feel the pull of the Force. The rerelease in 1997 of the original three films lined up a new generation of clamoring kids, pushing the trilogy's total box office to $1 billion. Hollywood got an early taste of the demand last fall, when films carrying the ""Episode I'' trailer saw their box office spike by as much as 25 percent. Rival studios are busy scheduling their big summer films well away from Fox's potential steamroller. ""If "Star Wars' did $200 million, I think that would be great,'' says Fox chairman Tom Sherak, perhaps too modestly. Among fans, it's an article of faith that the film will take the all-time box-office title. As StarWarz.com Web guru Lou (T'Bone) Tambone, 28, sees it: ""At this point you could have two hours of George Lucas's hairy butt and it would beat "Titanic'.''

The broad appeal of the ""Star Wars'' franchise is no mystery. It's hard not to like a blazing action sequence or slick special effects. And indeed, Lucas is promising to set new standards with the coming film's interplay of computer-generated and live actors. But according to most fans, it's the story line that keeps them hooked, as Lucas's pastiche of time-tested mythological motifs strikes a universal chord, especially among adolescents. Watching Luke Skywalker trace a path mythologist Joseph Campbell called ""the hero's journey''--in this case, from bored teen to Jedi Knight--they see their own aspirations spectacularly realized. What youth wouldn't give his right arm to wallop the old man with a lightsaber now and then?

Fandom also brings companionship. "" "Star Wars' is more than a movie. It's a whole culture,'' says Lincoln Gasking, 21, who often stays up until sunrise tweaking his encyclopedic Countdown to Star Wars Web site from an inn his parents own outside Melbourne, Australia. Like all cultures, Lucas's fans have their own icons, ethics and language, and in the parlance, the most devoted are known as ""fanboys.'' Ernie Cline, 26, an aspiring filmmaker from Austin, Texas, hopes to raise money to shoot a movie titled just that. His story centers around four pals on a quest to see ""Episode I'' before one of them dies of a terminal illness. Ain't It Cool News Web site operator Harry Knowles, the grandfather of Internet movie-sleuthing, has a cameo, slipping the foursome blueprints of Lucas's Skywalker Ranch. ""When I wrote this, I thought everyone was going to know what a huge "Star Wars' geek I am,'' says Cline. ""Now I know I'm just a novice. It's scary out there.''