Posted by zaryzary2003 on 07/21/07 20:42

On Jul 21, 11:28 am, Alric Knebel <alric@[cableone.net]> wrote:

> I couldn't agree more. I saw all three of the earlier ones in the
> theater, because they were these BIG movies, with cutting-edge sound and
> so forth. But they're boring beyond special effects. The relationships
> are so childish, especially the one between the princess and Hans. They
> behaved like two elementary school children making faces and sticking
> their tongues out at one another.


Ok, I'll stick up for the Star Wars films. Yes, the first ones came
out when I was an impressionable kid, so I certainly can't pretend to
be objective about the whole thing. But even as an adult I've enjoyed
re-watching them for both the whiz-bang fun, and because Lucas knew
what mythic archetypes to use to draw us in. It's been said so much
as to seem cliche now, but he really did try and set up the whole
thing as a space-age myth with the associated quests, princesses,
heroes, old wizards, magic, and pirates to go along with it.

Which is part of the reason why the character relationships aren't
complex on the surface. In other words, of course you're not supposed
to evaluate Luke Skywalker and Han Solo's actions in a modern,
"realistic" way, any more then you're supposed to think about how
illogical it is for Achilles to refuse to go to war just becaues
Agamemnon stole his girlfriend, or complain about the somewhat
illogical fact that Dido threw herself on the funeral pyre when Aeneas
left. Now, I'm not trying to imply that people will be watching "Star
Wars" in several thousand years the way we still read "The Iliad" and
"The Aeneid," but it's certainly fun to watch it now - at least for a
lot of us.

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