The Survival of Star Wars
As I see it.
Star Wars has been around longer than I have, and is vastly more popular. With the release of A New Hope in 1977, Star Wars was lifted into the stratosphere of Movie history. Since the last episode came in 1983, Return of the Jedi, it’s popularity has done nothing but grown. This is not the usual case among films.
I first became a fan in 1992; I was 12, when I saw Empire Strikes Back on TV. I don’t remember being exposed to it much earlier than that, but that is where my saga began. Since then I have acquired a few Star Wars figurines, some ships, the movies and of course a base of knowledge of the Star Wars universe.
In the mid-nineties, George Lucas (Writer/Director) decided he was going to fill in the gaps of the story by providing the back story to the 4th, 5th and 6th episodes he had created. Story telling in this manner is definitely different, but prequels have been done before. However, the first Episode - The Phantom Menace - wasn’t met with much fan fair. Sure, it told a lot about some of the characters that we’ve wanted to know about since we saw the first films, but it had a few things that lacked the fans appeal. For instance, the introduction of Jar-Jar the comedy relief character seemed to get the fan base up in arms. My opinion of him was that I didn’t have an opinion. Most sci-fi movies, especially Star Wars, have characters that are there to either irritate you (Dr. Smith - Lost in Space), be the humor (C3Po or Han Solo - Star Wars), or just be filler serving almost no real purpose (The little creature in Dave’s pocket - Flight of the Navigator).
Episode II - Attack of the Clones - was arguably better than the first. Episode II started to show the true Anakin (Darth Vader) Skywalker for what he was, a menace - uncontrollable, egotistical and very talented. However, the movie ended up feeling like fluff, just filler to bring the saga closer to being joined together. However, this could end up being a mistake, since I really do feel that the 3rd Episode needs to make up some serious ground.
Can Star Wars Survive? In my opinion yes. Even if the 3rd Episode turns out to be less than desirable, I really feel that fans of the film, especially the classics, will still cling to it. Star Wars Episodes 4, 5 and 6 weren’t incredible pieces of cinema to begin with. Granted, they used some of the latest techniques in special effects, had a decent amount of ‘likeable’ characters, and had enough action to get the crowd into the movie. But yet fans still took to it like a school of fish in the open ocean, they ran with it. Newsletters, fan clubs, websites, games, comic books, novels and much more has been created just from the 3 original films.
Look for Episode I thru III to be almost as big as the classic films in 15-20 years. Whether you like them now or not, the next current generation will probably take to it similar to the way we all did when we were kids.
That’s what I see.
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