A comment on a Ta-Nehisi post about Star Wars:
My wife once said, "What's so cool about Star Wars? Why do boys love it?"
To which I replied, "Star Wars is about kung-fu ninjas from outer space with swords made out of laser beams who fly spaceships and fight robots and aliens. Surely I need not explain myself further, as the awesomeness should be self-evident."
!!
Exactly.
My gf asks, “Hey, what about the little girls obsessed by Star Wars? I played Star Wars pretend games on a regular basis.”
Nicely put, Erik_Vanderhoff!
The odd part is how many grown-up boys found kung-fu ninjas from outer space with swords made out of laser beams flying spaceships and fighting robots and aliens so unsatisfying the second time around.
With a five-year-old around, I’ve had a lot of cause to reexamine Star Wars lately, and I’m still really unable to be objective about it. Mr. Plinkett and ChefElf have helped bolster my belief that it’s not just me, that the prequels really were objectively much poorer films than the original three. But on the other hand, I have begun to recognize that the originals were a lot more vacuous than my 7-to-12-year old mind was able to recognize.
Parallel 5ths: your girlfriend is a nerd, mazel tov
the quoted answer applies to little girls, too!
(i assume. never been one)
I think the greatness of (most) of the originals is demonstrated by how many of the changes/additions made by the “Special Editions” were just plain awful. Most egregious is the whole Han/Greedo thing, but even subtle differences are grating.
In my mind, the most subtle example of this is the scene in Empire, after Luke jumped out of Cloud City, a little later you see Vader stomping off getting ready to head back to his star destroyer, saying simply “Bring my shuttle,” clearly pissed/frustrated by Luke, as voiced by James Earl Jones. In the Special Editions, this is changed to “Alert my star destroyer to prepare for my arrival,” in a very weary and tired voice (also JEJ), which just seems lame to me and pointless.
Thus ended the geekery.
how many of the changes/additions made by the “Special Editions” were just plain awful.
yeah. like when they first get to Mos Eisley (2 clicks west of Mos Def, IIRC) and there’s a whole circus of new shiny CGI critters running around acting goofy. why did anyone need that? was there some plot element that just wasn’t working because there weren’t enough shots of skittering womp rats?