18 thoughts on “Star Wars”

  1. If Betsy’s not in it, I don’t see why any of us would want to go.

    Was there ever a movie where the politics worked for the people?

  2. Watching Star Wars as an adult was a great disappointment. Surely it must be possible to come up with a great space myth back story, but Star Wars fails miserably at it. It’s an utterly incompetent implementation of a potentially great idea. But who knows, maybe the next episodes will be better.

    2. Watch the original Star Wars. Then watch Damnation Alley. Then consider that Damnation Alley was supposed to be the big sci-fi blockbuster that summer.

      Then, you too may understand why people considered Star Wars such a big deal at the time.

        2. Jan-Michael Vincent as Hell Tanner? A SAC officer? The Landmaster was pretty cool, though (Popular Mechanics had a diagram of the drive system several years earlier).

  3. The first Star Wars movie had blockbuster special effects for the time. I and my buddies had long thirsted for something with as good a set of special effect as 2001, but with a story that was both comprehensible and fun. Star Wars filled those requirements quite well.

    And I was a teen at the time so not too hard to please on the story side.

    It was a new level of sci-fi/potboiler that I found very satisfactory. The second movie to come out was only so-so and the third was pretty good.

    After that, the series was completely ignorable.

    1. I’d flip the order–the second (Ep 5) I thought was the best written of the three, but not as much fun as the first. Three wrapped up the series ok, but was full of bad buys doing stupid things just so the good guys could win. It looked more designed to sells toys and video games than to be standalone entertainment.

      Kind of interesting that the outtakes from the first one talk about nationalizing commerce–Lucas had some sort of economics theme going through the franchise. Too bad he doesn’t know anything about economics (other than lots of fanboys equals ridiculous profits).

      1. Episode 6 is widely considered to be where the movies got a lot worse. It’s probably not a coincidence that’s where Lucas started having much greater say in what went on.

  4. In retrospect, you could say it died in the opening scene of “A New Hope” when the Imperial Star Destroyer captured a rebel vessel and pulled it into its hold – where it could blow itself up and take the Star Destroyer with it.

    1. I was in Navy Flight school (NFO) in Pensacola, Fl at the time the first movie came out ( Episode 4). The whole base was buzzing over the movie and lines were around the block for weeks. My wife was 8 month pregnant and she sat through it with me several times.

      Part of the deal was that it was the first movie after the Viet Nam War out of Hollywood that painted ‘us’ the good guys. It made the whole country feel good. We could actually beat the ‘bad’ guys and be allowed to feel good about it.

  6. Star Wars started going down hill when Lucas began resenting the hell out of how its success changed him. The rebel film maker became the corporate douche bag, and his antipathy towards the franchise began to show on the screen. Since he had also become too big to fail (which means he didn’t have to listen to anyone), that resentment found form by making both the Republic and the Jedi out to be total douches as well. Add to the mix Lucas’ infantile view of history, politics, and culture, and you got the prequels in all their glory.

  7. The one thing I will give Star Wars is it made an advanced civilization appear gritty, approachable and ordinary and I mean that in a good way.

    The story itself doesn’t hold up over the years, however. I think it jumped the shark when they tried to make Vader Luke’s Father. It took this gigantic, vast universe of possibilities and shrank it to the familial. In this whole, gigantic galaxy, the second most powerful man in the Galaxy, the heavy, is the farmboy hero’s Father….

    Firefly is kind of a thinking mans Star Wars IMO.

  9. When the third movie came out, it started the slide of Star Wars from “Movie” to “Live-Action Toy Commercial” that finally ended in Jar-Jar Binks and podracing.
    The first movie wasn’t bad, for what it was: we’re not talking Kramer vs. Kramer here; this is an action-adventure story based on old Kurosawa movies. Many of its imitators were goofy to the exterme, but at least Star Wars used the good tropes and got some good actors. The second movie wasn’t bad, but the moment Lucas decided to write scenes around his idea for the blockbuster toy of the year he lost his soul.
    And if anyone here still hasn’t seen the Red Letter Media takes on the Star Wars films… go hit Youtube and do so.

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