This week, I thought I'd try my left-brain at some literary-type analysis.
So, I reviewed a movie that has, strangely, become one of the most popular cinematic installments of the 20th century. As you read, hopefully you'll come to understand my surprise.
Where do you turn when you want to keep your kids occupied for a half hour? You put on a movie they'll enjoy, but not a movie you'll miss watching. You put on a movie that doesn't tax your imagination, keep you on the edge of your seat or make you think about deep questions. In short, you put on a crappy movie. And if you're really looking to dredge the bottom of the barrel — I'm talking "Manos," "Hands of Fate" or "Battlefield Earth"-style here, folks — you put on a movie that is full of clichés, New Age nonsense, mind-numbing dialogue and yawn-inducing action. You put on "Star Wars," which only succeeds in one thing: failing horribly.
From its beginning, with a limpid chase, unbelievable special effects and a stilted performance from a presumed protagonist, Princess Leia, Star Wars disappoints. Just before being captured by a walking villain stereotype named "Darth Vader" (Seriously, who made the names up? "Leia"? Darth "Vader"? Ooh, get it? Invader?), a tall man in black armor voiced by James Earl Jones, on the suspicion of high treason, Leia sends two robots to the surface of the planet on a "mission."
Then we meet our chief protagonist: Luke "Skywalker," a whiny teen complaining about doing his chores instead of heading out to party with some friends. From the get-go, it's not hard to predict the movie's outcome: the boy who has spent his entire life on a farm will, over the course of 90 minutes, become the most able pilot in the galaxy, outflying the elite of the elite of a civilization-wide military-industrial complex to, against all odds, destroy a monstrous machine.
Of course, to facilitate the transition, the boy needs a teacher. A contrived robot escape leads Skywalker out into the desert; enter Alec Guinness, one of the movie's two redeeming features. Stepping ably into the cliché of the warrior-monk-tutor, Guinness plays "Old Ben Kenobi," an exile from a destroyed order of "Jedi knights", who were the "guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy" before the Empire. After spouting a bunch of new-age nonsense about "The Force," a magic force field, he takes Luke under his wing. It's terribly convenient that, out of a 100 billion-star galaxy, with probably 100 million planets, on a desert planet with 200 million square miles, the single remaining Jedi knight just happens to be living within a day's drive of Skywalker's residence.
They decide to leave the planet, and, to find a pilot to take them, they enter a seedy pub filled with costumes and rubber prostheses — err, aliens. There they meet two more walking stereotypes: the roguish smuggler named Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and his loyal dog — err, sidekick hairy alien Chewbacca. The smuggler agrees to take them offworld and they escape the pursuing Imperial spaceships.
Princess Leia has been abducted to a monstrous space station, the cleverly-named "Death Star." Grand Moff Tarkin, an Imperial leader, decides to blackmail Leia into giving him information on the location of rebel bases. He decides to test the Death Star's main weapon on Leia's home planet, Alderaan. She gives him a location, and, in a casual display of clichéd villainy, he blows up her planet anyway.
When Skywalker, Kenobi and Solo arrive at Alderaan, their ship is promptly captured by the Death Star. They escape and have one of their robots hack the mainframe computer of the state-of-the-art military installation. There, they discover the power source of the tractor beam holding the starship in place. Kenobi leaves to turn it off.
The story becomes even less believable after this point, but here's where this week's review stops — we'll cover the rest next week!
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