Hold up, don't walk away so fast. Sit down. There's more to this story.
I first saw Star Wars when I was about 22 years old. I have no idea why I hadn't seen it earlier. It could be that my parents weren't especially big fans of it. Hell, I don't even know if they've seen it, period. It could be because I just was never exposed to it, as unlikely as that is. I grew up watching cable with the movie channels, so it doesn't really add up that those channels wouldn't show one of the most popular movie franchises of all time... and yet, here I was never having seen Star Wars at age 22.
Suffice it to say, all the passionate cries about George Lucas ruining his franchise with what became of the DVD's of the original three films went over my head (let alone the prequels). I could understand it, but I couldn't really, well, give a shit... That being said, I decided to view the films as if I had never heard Star Wars, which as you could imagine was quite difficult, given the sheer amount of social cliches we've come to mimic and are now fopas to use in everyday speech.
For example, "Luke, I am your father." I knew this line more than a decade before seeing the original movies. It was like the movies were one big joke... which is probably another reason I never watched it before. Who wants to watch a movie that gets made fun of? At least that was my reasoning as a kid. Not that that would have stopped me from seeing it on HBO had it aired.
But, I finally decided it had been long enough and that it was time for me to see what all the fuss was about... It was unlikely that it would have the same impact on me that it probably did on Star Wars fans as children, but that's to be expected, given my vast experience with movie-watching in general.
Upon seeing Star Wars for the first time, it felt more than a little dated. However, I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. The acting was passable for what was required from the various roles and the scope of the story, and and I can't say they could have done a much better job, considering the source material and time in which it was made. The special effects on the copy I saw were enhanced with CGI, clearly a Lucas update for the DVD's... Yeah, yeah, Han shoots first. I know... However, this didn't really affect my play-through, whereas fans everywhere hate it... Whatever... I'm indifferent, I suppose.
All that doesn't really matter to me. What matters to me is the story, which I must say is one of the finest things about Star Wars and it's a source of continual inspiration for me as a writer. You have the traditional hero's journey here in full effect with Luke as our Hero and Obi Wan Kenobi as the Mentor. There's a love triangle between Luke, Han and Leya. You have the bad guy who is really just a pawn of an even worse villain. You have an intricate plot that gathers all these interesting characters together and links them in a lot of really cool ways. Luke is Leya's brother, Ben Kenobi is a fallen trainer of Jedi who previously lost Anakin (aka: Darth Vader) to his turning to the dark side. It's not just a plot where there's a bad guy and the good guy must fight him because he's evil. There's a deeper context to it all and it all gets revealed to the audience slowly but satisfyingly. The relationships are believable and motivations seem sincere. It's the great American adventure movie and not even the Japs can take that away from us.
As for the stuff I didn't like about the films, a lot of it can be chalked up to direction. I felt as though there wasn't a consistent rhythm from scene to scene. While some scenes were fast, others were more cerebral and slowed down to a crawl, which would have been fine, except the dialogue wasn't exactly captivating. Idealy, they should keep the action up so that the audience doesn't get bored. There should still be scenes where things slow down, but not nearly for as long as they did. There were also scenes that didn't really have any baring on the story itself and just felt unnecessary. These scenes can add a lot of character to the movie, but it does so at the price of my attention span.
All these problems can be attributed to the time it was made, again, because the great sci-fi industry as we know it today was in its infancy in the 1970's. This was probably the biggest sci-fi production of its time and for what it is, it's quite an accomplishment. This is what the Michael Bay's and James Cameron's of the 70's gained their greatest inspiration from and it's not hard to see why... It's also not hard to see why I wasn't as patient as I might have been had I seen this in the 1970's where it would have blown my mind. Nowadays, we expect vital information sooner, faster and moving right along to the next story point just as quickly as we heard the previous one.
Overall, I like the idea of Star Wars as well as the storytelling it employs. The universe is at times quirky and enthralling. The characters are archetypal, but they each have their own personalities about them to keep them interesting and their chemistry with one another is quite genuine...
That being said, nostalgia goes a long way. To many people, this movie means more than just light saber duals, aliens, space fights and Darth Vader helmets... It means a part of their childhood that will forever remain in their hearts and something they'll never get bored of.
However, I am but an adult with a cold, calculating heart. Though the movies may have had an interesting story and fun characters, they also held little entertainment value once all was said and done. Once I saw them, I never felt the need to see them again. One rule for me as far as movies go is that I must want to watch them again at some point, and unfortunately Star Wars did not evoke that from me... Therefore, I have no choice but to give Star Wars...
3 Yoda's
out of 5.
