When I watch the original Star Wars movies I still see them through the eyes of a child. Seriously, even though I recognize that Carrier Fisher looks damn hot in that gold bikini on an intellectual level, I’m six years old when I watch Return of the Jedi and it doesn’t interest me in the way it should. Watching the original Star Wars movies as an adult I can see that the plot is pretty thin, the dialogue is really bad, even decent actors give wooden performances, and let’s not get started on Obi-Wan lying to Luke about his father. However, as I pointed out, I am a child again when I watch those movies. It’s hard to imagine my childhood without Star Wars rearing it’s head at some point.
I imagine my father had the same reaction to Roy Rogers or Flash Gordon.
That sums it up. I’ve never seen the prequels and have no intention to do so. Once I heard that Lucas was re-releasing “new & improved” versions of Star Wars, I knew I had no interest.
I’m definitely not over the games. If they release another Knights of the Old Republic game…or heck, if they just re-release the second one with a proper ending…I’d be all over that.
Not true – he inserted that “new” title when he re-released the original film just before The Empire Strikes Back, so it was less than three years. You can read about it in the Time magazine article about Empire – they gave it a separate sidebar.
I’m not “over” Star Wars. I’m still impressed by the original trilogy, most of the changes and all (although I’m miffed by his re-shooting the Emperor for Empire and Anakin for the end of Jedi, but I do appreciate his getting rid of the damned “Yub Yub” song at the end.). I agree that it was a tribute to 1930s and 40s science fiction – not just the serials, but also comic book/comic strip sf and written sf as well. At least, it had the trappings and appearance of sf . Writers of the 1940s and 1950s were already making fun of swooping spaceships and Galactic Emperors in the 1940s and 1950s.
The later trilogy was fun, but I never found it particularly engaging. It was a showpiece for what CGI could do, and allowed the filmmakers to stretch their creative wings in depicting Lucas’ worlds onscreen, but the characters never engaged me.
Lucas “over-explained” everything with the prequels. The prequels took what had been seen as a long lost “golden age” in Star Wars and turned it into a rather poor story. Larger than life heroes and villains were turned into ordinary people with annoying habits. (Even if the acting had been top notch, it still would have been difficult to think of Vader as a Lord Of The Sith after watching Annakin be such a weenie.)
No different than today. They made a big deal about it at the time, and announced that the title had been changed to “A New Hope”. But people still called it “Star Wars”, and, to my knowledge, still do.
I’m pretty much over it. The first movie was terrific, and will stand the test of time. I’d gladly watch it again. Empire Strikes Back was also pretty good, but without the novelty of the first and with its kinda abrupt ending, it’s not as good as the first. By Return of the Jedi the franchise was creaking quite a bit; the Ewoks wiping out a legion of Stormtroopers was beyond silly. Oh, yeah, and let’s blow up the Death Star… again! The prequels steadly improved in quality, from the first to the third, but by then Lucas was just beating a dead horse. And Annakin lacked the gravitas and mythic quality to have become Darth Vader.
My interest in Star Trek, however, abides, despite Paramount’s all-too-frequent missteps in recent years.
Oh hell yeah. The four main characters of the original trilogy (even including Chewie), made those movies, beyond the dazzling special effects. In the prequel, we learn all about where Darth Vader came from, but it’s just boring. I see Yoda as an asset as far as content is concerned, but most of the other characters are either embarrassingly silly (Jar-Jar), or just boring.
The prequels were a waste of celluloid. Or electrons, or whatever.
I was crazy for the original movie when it first came out, but everything since has been a let down. There’s just not enough depth to the Star Wars universe. The original movie felt like it was a tiny part of a huge and amazing alternate reality, but every time we see a little more of that reality it becomes more mundane and boring.
The major problem, I think, is that Lucas really doesn’t understand the nature of evil. Which is a bit of a handicap if you’re making movies about Good vs. Evil … .
I am so over SW. I loved the first two and enjoyed the third, but the prequels were just awful. It was all exposotion and no story telling. A complete waste of talented actors with some of the worst dialog ever written. I fell asleep at the first prequel and just didn’t bother with the rest. I’ve see clips of them on TV and have no regrets. And the special effects just grate on me. “Banking” in the vacuum of space, the noise of explosions, etc. make me wonder why base it in space at all?
Not sure what being “over it” entails, but while I’ll still sit down and watch the original trilogy if they happen to be on the air, it’s not like I’m rushing out to fill my house with Star Wars bric-a-brac or memorize the life history of background Jedi #5,323.
Thing is, it’s impossible to overstate the impact Star Wars had on Hollywood. You can watch just about any movie and guess whether it’s pre or post Star Wars. Star Wars raised the bar on what special effects could do, what action sequences could be like, what movies should look like, what they should sound like, how they should be paced…and how much money they could make. Star Wars blew people’s minds.
Hollywood had always been a business, but Star Wars pushed the business side of Hollywood over the cliff. Star Wars showed just how much money there was to be made…toys, games, media tie-ins, fast food tie ins, fan communities…Star Wars changed everything.
So no movie could match what Star Wars did, because any movie made today is made in a post-Star Wars market. That said, Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back are much better movies than the prequels, even if they don’t have as many CGI critters wiggling in the background. But if Star Wars ANH were released today it wouldn’t be the phenomenon it was because the market is so different.
Sadly, where once the serial-number title neatly embodied the stark character of the film’s dehumanized dystopia, these days THX 1138 merely suggests a cheerful snippet of internet shorthand. “THX 1138! U r0xx0r! LOL”
With the **Star Wars ** prequels out of the way, maybe now Lucas will finally be able to finish the other two films in the 1138 trilogy: **OMG 1138 ** and ROTFL 1138.
I was 10 when the original Star Wars came out in 1977. The first time I saw it was with my family on July 4 at the Lakeside Mall Cinema here in New Orleans. The way I felt about it then and the way I feel about it now is that there will never be another “Star Wars” just as there will never be another Beatles. Since I saw Star Wars 30 years ago, I have been watching movies waiting to get that same feeling I got when I saw Star Wars the first time. There have been many movies I have enjoyed, but Star Wars had a magical quality for me. I enjoyed Empire and over the years have come to prefer it, but my love for the original has never wavered. Return of the Jedi was okay, I was 16 when I first saw it on opening day at the Downtown Joy, but it was clear that it was not as good as the first two. I guess I can compartmentalize my fondness because Eps I, II and III really don’t affect my enjoyment of the original trilogy. I’ll watch I, II and III. But watching the original is still something I will make time for every now and then. And when I say “original,” I mean the non-special edition.
And Swallowed My Cellphone, here is how I view midichlorians so that it doesn’t mess up any force ideas: I look at them as a sign you have the force, but not the cause of the force. An analogy I like to think of is this: friends don’t give you charisma, but the more charisma you have, the greater the chance of having more friends. So, if someone has a lot of friends, you can infer that they have a lot of charisma. So, if for some reason, midichlorians are drawn to people strong in the force. The more you have, the stronger you must be in the force. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
