Yeah - that was my take. I think I even missed that it was Leia’s (adoptive) home planet. I thought it was supposedly the home of rebellion sympathy.
That pretty much sums it up for me. The 1st one was great fun. The next 2 were OK but waning extensions. But when folk got all into analyzing it and making it something more than a couple of fun movies, for me it had the opposite effect of making me like it less.
Now, viewing it many years on, I lack the novelty of just viewing it as fun, and having heard years of analysis/backstory, I think I view it more critically.
I was just about to turn 7 when the first Star Wars film came out, placing me dead in the bullseye of the target audience. And I’m grateful.
It was a wonderful part of my childhood and I had many Star Wars toys which got tremendous love and use. I’ll never forget the first time I saw a commercial for The Empire Strikes Back, having no idea a sequel was being made. The anticipation of seeing the story continue was wonderful. I hope other people have something approaching the feeling I had of growing up with Star Wars.
As an adult, I can see the flaws. But like anything special that catches lightning in a bottle, it was a combination of factors. If I had to pick one, I think I’d identify the sound effects. Imagine Star Wars exactly the same, but with different sounds. Something big would be lost. Artoo’s beeps, the hum and swish of the lightsaber, laser blasts and TIE fighter engine sounds were unique and a huge part of the Star Wars magic.
In hindsight, I think Empire is the best of the films. And I sorta wish the prequels and such never happened. Darth Vader was much more interesting when we didn’t know everything about his back story. That’s perhaps the other big lesson of Star Wars - sometimes less is more. But try telling that to people who stand to make money from enlarging the franchise.
Edit: It’s entirely possible I’m in my current career as a pilot directly as a result of Star Wars. I remember building cockpits when I was a kid, based on the Millenium Falcon and X-Wing fighters.
All of which was largely due to the imagination of one person: sound engineer Ben Burtt. I think that part of the reason why it all worked so well is that Burtt used real-world sounds, rather than purely electronic/artificial sound effects. Even R2-D2’s voice is Burtt himself, making baby-talk noises, fed through a synthesizer.
I was around for the first one too. Along with the sound, I’d say the music played a huge part of the Star Wars phenomenon. Not only would you hear that theme music on the radio all the time, they even had a disco version that probably got even more airplay.
A 45 rpm single of the Main Title (taken from the soundtrack) hit #10 on the Billboard Hot 100; Meco’s disco-fied 45 hit #1. Which is all a tribute to just how much of a cultural phenomenon Star Wars was in 1977.
As mentioned, Sci fi movies in the 70s-iah were a sad, depressing lot. All three of Charlton Heston’s dystopian futures, Rollerball. Logan’s Run, Silent Running. etc. Now mostly those are good movies, and I still like them, but Star Wars was the movie we didn’t know we needed. And boy did we need it! And it was followed up by another movie we didn’t know we needed: Raiders of the Lost Ark. Those two films touched something in people that was dormant but revitalized. Maybe it was the sense of fun, or wonder, or seeing a type of film believed to be dead, or a new hopefulness, I don’t know. But Star Wars wasn’t the most successful film at the time because we were told to like it and followed along like consumer sheep.
As for the film, I think even in 1977 I was asking “why can’t they just make copies of Princess Leia’s Stolen Deathstar Plans?” Plus Vader, the Empire and the filmmakers seem to think they are something like a roll of blueprints that you physically have to hide. We saw how small the thumbdrive actually was, and if she had copied the data to 15 droids, or 50, or space internet wifi’d them to the rebels, the middle of the film would be different.
And if the gunners had followed their simple orders and destroyed the escape pod with R2 and 3PO the rest of the universe would be different. But..what? They were saving ammo? Lazy? Stupid? I hope Vader force choked them. OK not really. But any of the escape pods with people that they did shoot could also have had the plans. Stupid move, Vader. You can’t prove they had the plans, and you can’t guarantee they were recovered, if you blow them to bits!
eta one of the implications of that is everyone on the blockade runner was killed, probably spaced, and the ship destroyed. So surrendering was stupid.
Or something like the current EU, maybe. The constituent nations are mostly independent, but there’s still an overall layer of European government over them.
It’s not the analysis that’s the problem. It’s the (often implicit) expectation that a work of art needs to support analysis. Some art is meant to be analyzed to understand the artist’s messages. There’s layers of meaning that interact with each other and you. You really have to study that art to fully get it.
Other art is meant to be experienced simply. The experience is the message; no more, no less. That doesn’t mean you cannot analyze it, but doing so is subverting the artist’s intent. There’s nothing wrong with that, but don’t be surprised when the art doesn’t really support it.
Star Wars is closer to the latter than the former.
The best part about Star Wars was how… coherent the sci fi stuff felt. R2 is an “astromech droid”, words which you probably never had heard before in your life before this movie, but it immediately tells you what his function is. Same with “protocol droid”. Just the fact that robots have specific functions and are built completely different depending on which role they perform is already more thought that most other sci fi stories put into their background lore.
I am so danged steeped in SW lore and minutiae – I’ve been writing, and gamemastering, Star Wars tabletop RPG adventures for close to 40 years, as well as watching all the movies numerous times – that I probably assume too much about what’s common knowledge.
Like Adam West’s Batman TV series, it’s skin deep. Wanting more depth is fail. Demanding more depth is epic fail. Digging to invent more depth is utter fail.
Lots of what’s wrong w modern entertainment is people demanding more narrative quality, quantity, and consistency than the medium supports.
And even if they do a good job (rare) the real problem is you end up with a 15-25 hour episode. In ye olde days, each episode was one story. Now the whole season is one story. And if you don’t like this idea, sorry. But, if you like it, don’t miss any!
Yes; it was explicitly meant as a terror weapon. “Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.” Alderaan was just a convenient target to make an example of; it being an important, high-population world just made it better to use as an example to terrify everyone else.
The Empire was in part inspired by the Nazis, and a fair amount of their behavior makes a lot more sense when you ask the question “Would the Nazis do something like that?”
I keep remembering Mark Hamill’s story where he was complaining about continuity (a scene came right after the trash compactor, and he asked “Shouldn’t my hair be wet and full of schmütz?”), and Han Solo shut him down with “Hey, kid… it ain’t that kinda movie.”
Found the clip, because his Harrisonian growl is worth experiencing.
(Go for the short, because the regular clip has multiple unskippable ads)
Are they sentient, though? Is there anything about C3PO that we couldn’t replicate today with a particularly good LLM, and a kind of shitty Boston Dynamics robot?
OK not really. But any of the escape pods with people that they did shoot could also have had the plans. Stupid move, Vader. You can’t prove they had the plans, and you can’t guarantee they were recovered, if you blow them to bits!