Enterprise vs ISD?
Ginger? Maryann? Who? I’m guessing porn stars, which I’m not sure what that has to do with SW.
My money is on Batman. Vader moved slow and wears a recycled iron lung for a suit. Of course, he has that ‘force’ stuff, which is not to trifled with. Batman would have to–
Oh. My. God
:mad:
Could the screen size also be a factor? I saw Star Wars in the theater. It doesn’t seem to adapt to the small(er) screen as well as seeing it either in a drive-in, or in the cinema. Something about the scale of the ships, and the Death Star…
I saw the original Star Wars when I was in my 20s and absolutely loved it as a spectacle and experience but not enough to see the next two when they came out. I didn’t really care about the characters or the story line.
By the time the second trio came out I had kids who wanted to go, so I have seen them too. I still have not seen V or VI.
I think there’s a lot of evidence that Lucas came up with that particular plot line during the development of “The Empire Strikes Back” and that Darth Vader did actually kill Luke’s father, Anakin Skywalker, according to the events experienced by the characters in “Star Wars”.
This helps explain the kiss between Luke and Princess Leia. At the time, the two weren’t brother and sister, but potential lovers. I have no cite for this, but I recall hearing or reading this in several places.
Yeah, and “Play it again, Sam” too.
In addition to the (then) mind-blowing technical achievement of the film, it had a wicked-ass soundtrack, which also loses its cachet if you’ve been hearing samples for decades before getting around to seeing the film.
Oh, how I wish I knew then what you know now…
I first saw Star Wars in a rerelease in '82: I wasn’t even four. I don’t think I absorbed much of the plot, but I remember sitting in that cinema like it was yesterday, and I sure did absorb the general atmosphere of the film. My early childhood was Star Wars, and no other film or film series has had as lasting an impact (with the possible exception of Tron–I’m a computer science research student).
Star Wars, at it’s core, has four essential elements:
[ol]
[li]a high-tech, futuristic backdrop to geek-out over (even if it’s more suggestive than hard SF)[/li][li]a galaxy full of endless possibilites: bizarre aliens and exotic worlds galore, in other words[/li][li]a sense of nostalgia for old fashioned pulp and comic book adventures infused with Campbellian mythic archetypes and Eastern mysticism–the original film was like a hot-rod that Lucas had kitted-out in his backyard using all the cool stuff he found lying around[/li][li]a belief in loyalty, friendship and a community spirit as being the antidotes to heartless bureaucracy[/li][/ol]
This is not to everyone’s liking, but it ticks all of my boxes. For some people, all these elements are incredibly attractive; for others, none of them are appealing. Most people are somewhere between the two extremes.
(FWIW, I’ve seen lots and lots of Star Trek and, more often than not, it’s left me cold. This is not to say that it’s bad, but rather “different strokes” and all that.)
I think Star Wars was the first sci-fi movie to portray aliens as ordinary people that earth-type humanoids interacted with on a daily basis. Not very novel now, but having a Wookie as your wing man was very refreshing in 1977.
Imperial Star Destroyer. That impossibly huge starship that fills the screen at the beginning of Star Wars.
There’s nothing, absolutely nothing scientifical about Star Wars. Lasers don’t work that way ! Lightsabers just don’t ! Hyperspace ? Mono-climatic planets ? The *Force *? Nah man, it’s straight up fantasy IN SPACE! There’s even a troll (except it’s a Rancor) and a dragon (except it’s a space slug. And while we’re on the subject, WTF is a space slug ?! What does it eat, exactly ?)
That is an impossibly narrow standard that excludes the vast majority of classic science fiction, especially anything published before about 1960.
I reject it.
You reject the standard that science fiction should have some relationship to science?
Just because it’s not serious doesn’t mean it’s not light science fiction or, like you seem to have skipped over, science fantasy or space opera.
How do you know how lightsabers and hyperspace work? :dubious:
I reject any slavish requirement to known science; yes. That would exclude any speculative technology, so Jules Verne, or H.G. Wells would no longer be science fiction.
Sometimes it’s technology which makes a work science fiction, even if rather light science fiction; SW clearly has technology of the type common in other science fiction works.
It boils down to the fact that some people like simple, cliched stories. We had this exact same debate about Avatar, complete with “it’s supposed to be a bad story,” “you had to have been there,” and “the bad acting and wooden dialog is a plus.”
I dunno… I liked Star Wars. I very much disliked Avatar.
Duh, it eats space
On the topic of the simplistic morality in Star Wars, it’s always fun to point out that one of the big heroes in the original trilogy was a drug runner trying to pay off the guy whose cargo he dumped to avoid the cops. I don’t think they ever actually said in the movies what sort of cargo Han had to dump, you just had to assume it was something expensive that he couldn’t get caught with by the authorities.
In contrast to what some others have said: If you really didn’t like the movies the first time, and we haven’t suitably convinced you that it’s a worthwhile movie that you might enjoy, by all means don’t see it again. Nothing more annoying for me than people trying to insist that I didn’t like a movie just because I didn’t watch it enough times.
Oh, and because Star Trek got mentioned, I figured out some time ago what the main difference is between Star Trek and Star Wars. Star Wars is a story of heroism and adventure set in a backdrop of political intrigue and war. Star Trek, which did occasionally feature wars, was primarily a story of exploration and discovery set in a backdrop of a universe that was doing it’s level best to kill you in horrifying and imaginative ways. Compare to Doctor Who, which is about dealing with a horrifyingly murderous Universe while being irrepressibly English.
Almost all stories are clichéd. The differences are in execution.