It was great while it lasted, and wow, did it last. Waiting with my father for Mom to pick us up from Ep 4 is one of my first memories. But if A New Hope was the beginning of my fandom, then Revenge of the Sith is the end of it, and I feel no more need to be a fanboy for the series.
I suppose I could blame the meddling, monomaniacal George Lucas for this, what with his weird project to retcon of the original Triad such that it's now less coherent, but that would be a lie. Instead, I blame the fans, and the surrounding promotion. The problem is this: Lucas wanted to spice up his space opera with a big, beautiful, detailed galaxy as its backdrop. Tell the adventure story, keep the robots and aliens moving in the background, and bring them forward when you need to do a chase scene. The movies are great this way. Lots of entertainment, lots of action, very fun.
But some people would go watch a Star Wars movie, and end up getting it all backwards: They saw a movie about Space, with a silly adventure story tacked on. Who's that? What's that thing? What's that do? They wanted answers, and if the films weren't giving them, they were going to make it up themselves. Hasbro helped out by releasing a toy of just about everything, with a little backstory on the box that was supposed to justify why Walrus Man would be important to your collection. Sane kids ignored this stuff and just made up their own scenarios. But there was enough of a fanbase that found this entertaining, that it started a second-order effect. Walrus Man's from a planet called Ando? What's it like there? Is it part of the rebellion? How's it doing?
Movies don't come out often enough to answer these questions, so instead people wrote books and comics, guides, specifications, draft designs, and alternate histories. Nowadays, the body of work creating the SWU has not only dwarfed Ep IV-VI, it's humiliated it. Luke Skywalker, once a reluctant farm boy who rose to become a great hero, is now just a pissant whiner compared to Titans of the Force like Mace Windu or Kit Fisto. When did we ever see Vader act as brutal as Darth Nihilus, or as calculating as Admiral Thrawn? Yet Luke and Vader are supposed to be the epic characters of the Star Wars Universe. 30 years on, the reasons for their mythology have become almost quaint.
When I was finished with Revenge of the Sith, it was like I was freed of a burden. There was no reason to keep the story in my mind--it was all told, and I could safely assume that any loose ends that remained were not of any importance, in the big picture. I'm on to comic books now.
(is 3fingerspointback)
...was the History channel docutainment pieces. Watching them, you'd think George Lucas was the greatest thinker of our time. That makes to think we've over analyzed his movies "just a tad" -- I mean for a Star Wars fan, this is really fun to think but c'mon, it's not even the best movie of all time let alone some mega canon of enlightenment. At the same time...Lucas was able to create something that was so massively accessible as to open itself up to such overkill.
The History Channel's pieces relied heavily on the rather obvious interpretation that Lucas based his stories on Joseph Campbell's mythological archetypes. I'm really most interested in hearing what people have to say about the applicability of those archetypes to actually influence people and society...as interpreted through Star Wars, if you will. Personally, I am dedicating my life to the tearing down of that hooey.
make it rain you nappy headed ho's
Does Star Wars deserve the hoopla? I think so. I can see a number of legitimate criticisms that could be made of Star Wars. There are some elements of the series that are implausible, childish, and silly. It is certainly not the most profound examination of the human condition to appear on the silver screen. It seems to be largely cobbled together from previous science fictional cliches. Nonetheless, it is tremendously entertaining. It is in some ways very clever and innovative in the way that it adapted science fictional ideas to the movie genre, which had previously only appeared in print, or if filmed, had utterly inadequate special effects (i.e, Flash Gordon etc.). Star Wars is visually very exciting. It sustains a consistent vision across six movies; Lucas takes his own ideas seriously enough to do them justice. And most importantly, it is an immensely influential and beloved work which is embedded in the public consciousness, and which is an inextricable part of the popular culture of the late 20th and early 21st century (and perhaps will remain popular for centuries to come, although that is not something we can know for certain at this time).
Even in the form of novels, the Star Wars universe has been surprisingly productive. Timothy Zahn in particular has written a series of very impressive Star Wars novels which are both fully consistent with the movie version and fully successful as novels. Many movies and TV series have inspired novels, but none of the others (that I know of) as as good as the Zahn Star Wars novels.
Star Wars is a compelling vision of good and evil, much like Lord of the Rings. This lends dramatic depth, despite the fact that in the real world, good and evil are usually much more complex and less obvious than they are in either the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings universes. In this, Star Wars differs from another huge phenomenon of popular entertainment, the Harry Potter series. Harry Potter is much more trivial than Star Wars, and much less deserving of its massive popularity, in my own humble opinion. One wonders of Harry Potter will also become subject to the kind of scholarly examination and reverential retrospectives that we now see being applied to Star Wars. But even Harry Potter, by reason of its popularity alone, would deserve some serious attention. It is now part of our culture.
