Star Wars, I'm slightly offended...

Rating: Null/10 (10 June 1999)

After watching the Star Wars TFM I left the theatre with the feeling that something was wrong. I grew up with Star Wars like most people my age, and enjoy the old movies. I liked the action and the cinematography but I am disturbed by some of the characters. First let us look at Jar-Jar and all his underwater friends. Little Black Sambo stories and early Disney portrayals of dimwitted clumsy Native Americans have been frowned on for years. It seemed to me like the film blended the two- with a tribe of people that have a difficulty with English and have not mastered the technologies that other people have. The script did call for a isolationist tribe of people, but they did not have to be portrayed as clumsy and of a lesser intelligence. Someone may bring up the point that in the end they worked together to "save to day," but our underwater friends were used as cannon fodder for the trade robots while the cleaver white humans escaped injury during their sneek attack into the palace. Speaking of the trade interest, I wondered if their accents could sound more Asian. They should been wrapped in U.S. flags and wearing cowboy hats with southern accents. That would have been funny. I think of early Star Wars and Star Trek, and these movies are absent of alien characters with accents resembling those found on our planet. Sure, the parallel between the Klingons and Russians has been drawn, but the Klingons do not speak with Russian accents and drink Vodka. I think it would have been fairly easy to have the same plot and characters without the problems I have briefly discussed above.