I’ll just weigh in with my own impressions.
Star Wars came out when I was ten years old. People thought the lines for Jaws had been long. The first afternoon, reporters went to interview people to find out what all the buzz was about, and instead of getting what people hoped the movie would be like, they found people lined up to see it for the third time that day.
It was far and away the best sci-fi movie in nearly a decade (and only that short a time frame if you liked 2001: A Space Oddysey). Essentially, nothing like it had ever been seen before. The special effects were so seamless with the rest of the film compared to anything that had come before that people felt transported into this new universe. (New film technology always does this. The first viewers of the Lumiere brothers first showings in 1896, when the train (in full, over-exposed grainy black and white, with no sound) came toward the camera, ran screaming from the theater.)
It played more or less continuously for three years. I saw it in the theaters three times, and each viewing was many months away from the previous one.
Toys appeared (as did books and “Life Day” Thanksgiviing specials, no videos yet) and flew off the shelves. Some time before the turn of the decade, kids first glimpsed something odd: you could buy an action figure of “Boba Fett, Star Wars’ villain”, according to the TV. Huh?
In late 1979, fans were shocked and elated when ads for a Star Wars sequel began to appear. Remember, standard numbered film sequels at this time were not common. Star Wars was a perfectly wonderful self-contained movie experience, and the idea that you could live through something that took you back into its world was icing on the cake.
Then the film appeared. The familiar receding giant letters bore the curious title: Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Innumerable articles and interviews followed, explaining Lucas’ grand vision. Star Wars was to be a trilogy of trilogies, with the current films part of the middle one. “Star Wars” was retroactively named “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope”. The third installment of the middle trilogy would follow in another three years, after which Lucas would make episodes I-III (detailing the events that lead up to Ep. IV), then episodes VII-IX, following up on what the galaxy under the victorious rebels turned out to be. Truly a fitting format for such a grand theme.
But, as thrilling as the film was, trouble was already on the horizon. Jim Henson was flexing his biggest muppet muscles around this time, and Lucas put his best puppeteer, Frank Oz, to work as the Grover-voiced Yoda, which injected an unnecessary element of “cute” into the proceedings that would metastasize in Episode VI.
We all suffered through the next three years until “Return of the Jedi” appeared, and we found our suffering magnified. Yeah, it completed the story, but did we really need the Ewoks? Sy Snoodles and his band? That weird creature with the cartoon laugh who sat on Jabba’s lap? The pandering to baser instincts and obvious toy tie-ins were insulting to many, myself included. We saw a universe that GL had made us believe was real turn into a mall. We wondered if the other two trilogies would be worth waiting for. And waiting for. And waiting for.
We watched Lucas commit the horrid missteps of Howard the Duck, Willow, and the Young Indiana Jones series while our fond memories of Star Wars, badly tarnished by “Jedi” but not destroyed, faded into the distance. Where were the other trilogies we had been promised?
Finally, Star Wars reappeared in the 1990s. We all lined up around the block again, many with young’uns in tow this time. Digitally enhanced, with mixed results (what’s with the psychedelic spreading ring of death around the space explosions, George? You DO need a “no” man), at least a lot of the more cloying parts of “Jedi” had been mitigated (although I do wish they could have done away with the entire Ewok forest battle). And great news! Lucas was FINALLY puting together Eps. I-III!
But what had taken so long? Well, he said in interviews, he was much too busy putting together new episodes of “Young Indiana Jones”, which the British apparently did not regard as quite so disastrous a shitfest as we here in America did.
Uh-oh. Where are your priorities, George? Young Indiana Jones when you could be doing Star Wars? These are the instincts that are going to bring our epic to a full circle?
Episode I appeared a couple of years later. Hoo-boy. There is no way in hell that little Brady-Bunch-Oliver-without-glasses grows up to be Darth Vader. And Jar-Jar? George, didn’t the Ewoks generate enough letter-bombs for ya? And an all-star cast? Didn’t cough “Episode IV” get by just fine with mostly relative unknowns? And what’s with everybody having prior relations to each other that blow holes in so many plot points of later films? A little restraint, maybe?
And shouldn’t a movie that supposedly starts a series stand up a little better on its own? Say what you want about exposition, but it felt more like someone had labeled the dreary, oft-skipped preface of a book “Chapter 1” in order to fool people into reading it. At least Lucas came clean and said that he had just lked the idea of a trilogy of trilogies. He didn’t really have a vision for the last one, and wasn’t going to make it. Phew.
Maybe the next outing would be better.
It was, but only by so much. It was clear at this point that Lucas makes these movies to put special effects in them (and sell toys), which is fine (it gave us Star Wars, after all), but we’ve seen so many CGI films at this point we can see the seams. It does not draw us in as well because it lacks the newness of Star Wars’ original technology, cheesy as that is by today’s standards. At least after hearing for two decades how much ass Yoda could kick, we finally saw him do it, even if it was still a little too “cute”. But Hayden Christensen didn’t seem to be able to act his way out of a paper bag (he redeemed himself, IMO, in “Shattered Glass”). This too, will be Darth Vader? Gawanwitcha.
Oh well. Just get us home George, get us home. I’ll see Episode III in the theaters because the whole thing is still a pretty cool idea for a legend. But try not to “Jedi”-fy it too badly, George, PLEASE.
Now I know what the Normans sitting around the campfire waiting for the lore-master to finally finish singing “Beowulf” must have felt like.
