[George Lucas should pay bloggers by the word.]
I remember fondly my first trip to see Star Wars. It was 1977 and I was a precocious child (read: obnoxious) who wanted to see the Moonies "MacArthur" instead. My uncle and my grandma maintained the patience of saints and I was exposed to the Lucas marketing machine for the first time.
Let's be fair. Yes, Star Wars was a marketing machine unseen in Hollywood. But it was also a very good story at a very bad time for our country. There were two narrative streams at the time. On the one hand: superpower decline, loss of faith in government, President Carter, detente, Carter kissing Brezhnev, inflation, Carter wearing a sweater, still-fresh memories of Nixon and Watergate, Carter getting attacked by a large rabbit, oil prices, malaise, President Carter, disco.
Then there was the other side. Star Wars, Superman the Movie, Ronald Reagan preparing to run in 1980, deregulation, disco destruction night at Comiskey Park.
I'm sure I don't have all the events in the right order. Whaddya expect? I was nine or ten years old.
But the main thing was, Star Wars. It was the classic battle of good vs. evil, of the United States finally beating the bad guys. We didn't know it was secretly a movie about Vietnamese Communists defeating imperialist America and we didn't care.
Then the second movie came out and I was a little disappointed (now it's the one I go back and watch). Then the third one came and... by then it was 1983. I was 14 almost 15. It wasn't a bad movie, but what's all this talking on the Death Star? Why does Luke have to be a wuss for half a movie? Why the hokey ending of saving Darth Vader's soul? Still, any movie with Harrison Ford (I even liked Regarding Henry) isn't all bad and we hadda see how it ended, right?
Fast forward a few years. I've started my second career since college, I've met my future wife, and George Lucas is about to release the fourth movie (part 1). I actually score tickets for opening day and I thought it wasn't bad. It was, after all, a kids movie. Jar Jar was annoying but the kids liked him. The rest of us relived our childhoods.
Then came Attack of the Clones. That awful teenage angst-ridden dreck with a Dr. Who plot. If I wanted to see a talentless James Dean impersonation, I'll go to Las Vegas and have my wedding vows renewed in front of him at a downtown wedding chapel.
Could someone please get Mr. Lucas a copy of Shakespeare's Richard III to see how a villain should behave? In the first movie Vader is killing and assaulting without remorse: rebels, fellow officers, whomever. In The Empire Strikes Back, he tortures Han Solo just to cause him pain. In the third movie, he helps rebuild the Death Star. In the last movie I-was-a-teenage-Sith-Lord regrets killing a bunch of sand people and whines to his girlfriend about how nobody's giving him his Jedi creds.
Die, Anakin, die. No wonder Obi Wan whips you up in the sixth film (third episode). You're too big for a spanking and too obnoxious not to get one.
George Lucas says this is the last one and he's glad the series is ending. So are we, George, so are we.
