An insult to everyone's intelligence

Rating: 3/10 (10 March 2005)

The best film ever made, period! Allow me to take a contrary view. Not the best film ever made (Les Enfants du Paradis, The Godfather, The Bicycle Thief). Not the best science fiction film (2001, Bladerunner, Gattaca, Code 46) Not even the best film about periods (Carrie).
Star Wars brought two things to the audience for the first time; decent sound and visual production and mass marketed toy tie-ins. The first is laudable; the second is where you suspect George Lucus' real talent lies.
Like most adults in their early thirties, I got my first taste of Star Wars when I was too young to know better. We were too poor to afford the cinema then, so I watched it on the small screen and still liked it. But now I know better. Star Wars contains some of the hammiest, crummiest dialogue ever uttered by respectable actors. "Feel the force, Luke!" Yeah, whatever. If that wasn't enough, Lucas then went back and mucked up that tiny amount character consistency which made it out of the first cut.
Star Wars, made at the height of the Cold War and the nadir of American foreign policy, is the good ole story of good ole America spreading its good ole values against a dark, satanic empire. Sound familiar? It's also the story of a poor orphan boy who runs away, rescues a beautiful princess and saves a kingdom from an oppressive tyranny. Sound familiar? Oh yes, and on the way he meets an old man with strange powers, an untrustworthy adventurer and a band of rebels hiding in a forest. Sound familiar? Of course, there is a reason for this. A simple reason. A long time ago in, well, America, Mr Lucas picked up a copy of Campbell's A Hero with a Thousand Faces. This book outlines the fact that all stories have a core of elements in common. Indeed, at a plot level, most stories are essentially the same. Excellent, thinks Lucas, that means I can legitimately rip off better films like the Hidden Fortress and the Dam Busters, better stories like Hamlet and Robin Hood and bastardise Buddhism and Confucianism into the bargain. No need for any original thought whatever, in fact.
And thus it was to prove. From the ghostly mentor to the father bearing a terrible secret, Star Wars rehearses every conceivable cinematic (and indeed sub-literary) cliché. Along the way, it inflicts upon us some truly awful dialogue and a paper-thin plot.
But these are not the biggest crimes of the film. The worst is that Lucas did not even copy effectively. He forgets, for example, that perfect characters are uninteresting. Mark Hamill may be a fine actor, but his goody-goody clean-cut character grates after just a few minutes of screen time. Harrison Ford fares rather better as Han Solo  so why does Lucas go back and make him fire second in the space bar? It's not just petty, it's puerile.
Possibly I should relax, hang loose, go with the flow and not get so uptight. But I just can't help getting irritated. Star Wars is puerile nonsense of the worst kind. The best you can say of it is that it brings the McDonalds experience into the cinema. The worst it is a borderline insult to everyone's intelligence.