I had a brief conversation about Star Wars with an incoming grad student, and he offered up a popular opinion: the most recent four movies (Episodes 1, 2, 3 and Star Wars: The Clone Wars 2008 CG theatrical feature film) aren't really Star Wars. Star Wars is, you know, that cherished thing we had when we were younger. And then Salon ran this amusing little Keith Knight cartoon: http://www.salon.com/comics/knig/2008/08/20/knig/index.html
According to the cartoon "Like any true fan, the new films are dead to me. Didn't exist. Never happened."
Ok fandom, I'm gonna tell you the truth now. You won't like it. You'd prefer not to believe it. It's probably striking deep at the heart of your self-image. But there have been seven Star Wars movies released in theaters, and four of them suck. Therefore, over 50% of Star Wars sucks. It just does.
I know you don't like living in this universe. This is obviously why Keith Knight would prefer to live in denial. But please, you're just embarrassing yourselves. Those movies did happen. We all watched them, we can't unwatch them (well, hopefully you won't go see Clone Wars). But they happened, and the new reality is that Star Wars mostly sucks.
Look, I'm not asking you give up your love for the original trilogy. You can even still love Star Wars itself. But for an entire generation, growing up has meant watching the beauty and joy of Star Wars die before our very eyes. That's what adulthood is like. Things, even Star Wars, start to suck. You can't make it go away.
So, Keith Knight et al, welcome to the new reality. More Star Wars movies suck than don't. You can either deal with it, or you can wait for Santa Claus and/or Jebus to make it all better. Have fun waiting.
5 comments:
Graham, I bet there are good parts of eps 1-3...I like parts of them, though not really as a whole for any of the movies. And, there are parts of the original series that are pretty boring - most of the stuff on the snow planet aren't that great. Thus, I still think you're right that 50% of Star Wars sucks, but not about which 50%. Just to argue for arguing's sake.
Yeah, I definitely thought about trying to calculate exactly how much of Star Wars sucked in terms of minutes, rather than films (100 minutes of Clone Wars, 20 minutes of New Hope, 40 minutes of Return, every second of Episode 3, etc) but that just seemed like too much work. Plus, I hate Episode 3 more than any of the rest of them, and most people would locate lots of good stuff in it. So I thought that would be much more controversial.
But my real frustration was people not acknowledging that all this crap is Star Wars. So I'm glad you agree that Star Wars mostly sucks. I hate that it has come to that, but I pride myself on being able to acknowledge it.
I will agree that Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones did indeed suck. I know you said that Revenge of the Sith was your least favorite but I tend to think it was actually good. There is no doubt that Clone Wars was not good from the traditional Star Wars standpoint. Basically, I'd argue that over half of the SW movies sucked. It's probably 60/40 in favor of non-suckage...if that makes any damn sense.
I consider myself a true star wars fans.
There are parts I like and those I don't.
I don't like:
-Lucas' terrible directing
-hayden christensen
-clone wars 2008
-ewoks
-crappy merchandise
-phantom menace
I like:
-characters
-concept of light/dark
-expanded universe
-2004 cartoon
-three classic star wars
-R.O.S and A.O.T.C.
-expanded universe.
Came across this "argument"...by that definition 33% of The Godfather sucks...how hard is it to say THAT!?
(and a small % of Lord of the Rings sucks..ie..the multiple endings)
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