What I find interesting about Star Wars

Rating: 10/10 (31 December 1998)

I suppose I have taken Star Wars for granted for a long time...gimme a break, I was four years old in 1977, so for me, Star Wars is just part of me(I'm pretty sure I only know one guy my age who didn't have any Star Wars toys, lunchboxes, sheets, pajamas, Burger King collector's glasses--and I can't decide whether he's an alien or a communist). So, needless to say, it's taken quite a while for me to develop even a little bit of perspective on the actual films themselves.
As I try to look at the Star Wars movies objectively, one of the things I've begun to notice about the Star Wars trilogy is that it isn't just a "space opera," and it isn't just archetypal romance...it's a synthesis of different genres. Of course there's all the space opera/folktale/romance stuff going on with long lost evil fathers, twins separated at birth and such, but Star Wars is also steeped in film; for instance, it's a western (don't laugh--Han Solo as "Shane" or Luke Skywalker as an odd commentary on "High Noon"). Incidentally, consider the possibility that the resolution of the Han/Luke/Leia love triangle is Lucas' resolution of the love triangle in Shane. It's also a war movie(duh)--watch the Death Star sequences(think "Flying Tigers", or "Midway")or the Battle for Endor("Guns of Navarone"). And despite the criticism levelled against it by hard-core SF fans, it is a sci-fi movie--is religion better than a good blaster at your hip? What about the dangers of technology(THE DEATH STAR, Darth Vader/Luke's hand)? How about those vague references to cloning--clone wars? I guess maybe we'll find out in May...
In any case, while there may be less to them than many drooling Star Wars junkie(I should probably include myself in this category) might like to admit, there is certainly a lot to talk about in these movies, even leaving aside such age-old questions as "Millennium Falcon vs. USS Enterprise...who wins?" or the sorts of questions that keep popping up in Kevin Smith's movies("Clerks" and "Mallrats" for example).