Star Wars letdown
January 11th, 2009 |SPIKE TV has been running the Star Wars series over the holidays. Every time I see these films I am reminded of what a disappointment they turned out to be for me.
In 1977 Star Wars episode 4 was released. I was 9 years old and I had never seen anything like it. I must have gone to that movie at least a dozen times. There were a number of films prior to the Star Wars series that did similar things with special effects, but no movie set the bar as high as Star Wars did in its time. The sand cruiser, the Millennium Falcon, the Death Star, the dog fight scenes, Han Solo, Darth Vader, light sabers, droids, it was like nothing I had ever seen before. For me, at my age, it was a draw dropping experience the first time I saw it and a treat each additional time I went to the theater.
Three years later The Empire Strikes Back episode 5 was a dark and brooding adventure that fit well with my adolescence. The ice planet Hoth, the asteroids, the Cloud City. The whole Yoda side show was not really my bag, but whatever. Darth Vader took Luke’s hand off and then told him that he was Luke’s father. Holy crap that was awesome.
Another three years and The Return of the Jedi episode 6 was released. There was some cool stuff, the new Death Star battle scene was fantastic. But the entire movie was ruined by turning the climax into a teddy bear picnic. WTF, man? I understand that the universe is full of diverse creatures and cultures. But who ever had the idea to pivot this story on the Ewoks should be drawn and quartered. I can only assume that it was George Lucas. Unfortunately, this was only a prelude to what was to come.
The next three Star Wars movies, episodes 1 through 3, were pretty much total garbage. Jar Jar Binks, the absolutely horrible acting of Hayden Christensen who was so bad that he brought down the quality of work for all the actors who shared scenes with him, the overly technically complicated battle scenes. Awful, awful, awful.
I feel the same way about the Matrix trilogy. Maybe it is inevitable that something that starts off so well can only go downhill. One would think with all the time and energy and money that goes into the production of these epic endeavors that the director would assure that his defining work is really that masterpiece it should be.
Maybe I just got older and more discriminating in my tastes. Or maybe Lucas is satisifed with a teddy bear picnic.
7 Responses to “Star Wars letdown”
“a teddy bear picnic”
I said, “WTF are the teddy bears doing fighting robots?” while sitting in a motel room with the U kids in AR. Absolutely fucking awful.
Perhaps my adolescent brooding got in the way, but I was never too interested in any of the Star Wars flicks. Now the first Matrix though was totally wicked cool awesome.
Everyone with taste pretty much categorizes the SW movies the same way. First two awesome. Third didn’t suck, next three were trash produced for god only know what reason. They were the most dreadful thing I ever got my expectations up about and they taught me to never again have expectations for movies. I still really enjoy a campy weekend with the first trilogy and I’d pay again for a big screen experience with them.
bourne is pretty good. unlike the matrix i think the franchise has improved with each installment.
i’m with you on star wars though.
We saw SW with French and spanish overdub. Funniest thing ever. Aside from Ben doing a martial arts 360 spin with his dual with Vader. Or the flower pot of red Petunias Lucas stuck behind the grumpiest man in starwars, Owen. Or the word that nobody knows is in starwars, Offgassing!!!! Best trivia…where was the word offgassing used…?
My 4 year old son is WAY into Star Wars – mainly due to the clone wars and a fresh round of associated marketing. Anyway, he came home from pre-school talking about star wars, and I thought it probably wasn’t appropriate for his age but when I saw the movies were being run on TV I figured they were edited somewhat so I set the DVR to record a movie for him.
A few weeks later he’s telling my daughter (just turned 7) about this commercial he saw with a woman wearing just jeans – no shirt and no bra. “There was a black sign, and she was doing this…” and he starts manically running in place.
Daughter: Did she have boobies?
Son: Yeah! Big ones!
Eventually we realized he’d seen an ad for girls gone wild, captured from the late night Spike screenings of Star Wars.
From that experience, we gleaned several (now obvious) parenting lessons.
I just got the best trilogy today — Paris Roubaix 85, 86 & 87 — even with the Jon Tesch it kicks ass all over Lucas. But then again what Star Wars character can stand comparison to Kelly or Moser?
As for Canuk Hayden Christensen, he isn’t even worthy to hand a muesette to Steve Bauer.