Star Wars
“It's a trap!”
Star Wars (derived from the Latin "Star" meaning "bright", and "Wars" meaning "What are they good for?") is a mucho popular American epic space opera franchise that began in the 1970s–80s as movies and spun off into endless cheesy merchandise. Arthouse indie filmmaker George Lucas, notable for such films as THX 1138, American Graffiti, and Jar Jar's Electronic Labyrinth, took it upon himself to create six Star Wars films which would go on to become bigger than their Star Trek and Logan's Run predecessors. Later installments of the series were produced by Disney. It centers on an ordinary good vs. evil battle that supposedly took place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
The Star Wars films have grossed billions of dollars and won a total of sixty Academy Awards, the most for any series in film history. In fact, in 1983, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made the unheard-of move of bestowing its coveted Best Picture award as a tie between two movies in this series that had come out recently. Star Wars has a license with popular toy franchises such as Lego and Funko Pops, which geeks from around the world love and buy so much of; coincidentally, this led to the brand's downturn in coolness.
Premise
Setting
The incredible Star Wars storyline is set a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, and centers on the good vs. evil conflict between the "light side" (Jedi) and the "dark side" (Sith) of a magic substance called the Force. It has it all: action, adventure, romance, and explosions. Lots and lots of big explosions. All of this is set in space: the final frontier...to boldly go where no man has gone before. Confusingly, the first-made trilogy chronologically took place after the second-made trilogy, against all laws of conventional time and space.
Contrary to what the opening crawl of each film says, there is no galaxy far, far away; it is only a direction, one of seven in which you can travel. It is also a Hollywood parody/historic and majestic land in the Shrek movie series, where Shrek met Fiona's lying murderous frog king dad. In case you are wondering, you are in fact moving in a direction called far, far away once you realize that you are lost. Once you figure out you are lost, you actually start to try to go home, but can't. This is called far, far away. If one were to actually want to travel far, far away (to the galaxy, that is), you must go 53 miles west of Venus and 42 miles east of Mars. Then take a left at Dex's Diner. Then just keep heading toward the Rishi Maze, and you're set to go! If you see the Jar Jar Nebula, you've gone too far. Alternatively, you can also climb through your television set into any of the Star Wars movies. It's best to follow them in a non-linear pattern to promote faster brain-scrambling confusion, but it's up to you.
Dates
Although no Star Wars fan has ever managed to get an actual date, bored fans of the fictional universe make up keep track of the dates on their calendar with a dating system centered around the Battle of Yavin an exact moment in A New Hope when the stormtrooper entering the control room on the Death Star bangs his head on the door and yells. In this dating system, BBY stands for Before Bang/Yell, and ABY stands for After Bang/Yell, so 30 BBY would come before 5 ABY, and 4 ABY would come after 1 ABY, much as in AD and BC. Occasionally, the defeat of the Empire by teddy bears at the Battle of Endor (four years after Yavin) has been used as an alternate starting year, but has generally been phased out in favor of the current, louder, more standard system.
On Coruscant, this BBY/ABY system is used almost exclusively by the New Republic, while on Earth, it's used primarily by the Geek Empire. The earlier Galactic Republic/Empire preferred to date events from the Great ReSyncopulation to the time of Third Base. The Old Republic, for years, dated from Ruusan mail order catalogues of 1,000 Rubles each. A galactic year, based on the length of a year on Earth, can seem like days or weeks, but take place in twenty-four hours. This occurs when a prospective date promises to call back, and the recipient waits by an answering machine, seemingly forever.
Plot
Original trilogy
So, there's the original movie, simply titled Star Wars (also known as Episode IV: A New Hope, but only to those pretentious jerks who like to pretend they know about Star Wars but don't even care about the real Star Wars like I do). It is a period of civil war. Also, it is a period of galactic unrest, and um...the bad guys are fighting the good guys. There are lasers, and cool explosions and stuff, so...yeah....I forget exactly what happens next, since I went upstairs at this point to grab my popcorn. We see a dashing young man named Luke Skywalker go on a quest to become a "Jedi" or something. He saves Princess Leia, doesn't fight the villain Darth Vader (he's a Sith Lord; those are the Jedi's enemies), and makes the big bad Death Star explode.
Anyway, the other original trilogy movies can be summarized rather quickly. In The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader is Luke's father. No, he wasn't dead. Yes, he's Luke's father. Yes, Obi-Wan was lying. Yes, Vader is Luke's father. Yes, Darth had sex with Luke's mommy Natalie Portman (thus becoming the luckiest man in this or any other far, far away galaxy a long, long time ago) and nine months later a baby came out that grew up on Tattoo...Tatoo....that dry planet and was named Luke. In other words, Darth Vader was Luke's goddamn father!! Really.
In Return of the Jedi, Luke goes to the "New Death Star", which I assume was like "New Coke", and vastly inferior to the original. There, Luke fights Darth Vader one last time. Did I mention that said Darth Vader is Luke's father? He is. Anyways, Luke wins, Vader dies, and so does the Emperor, because Darth throws him off a cliff into some giant pit-thing, which apparently leads to something bad, and/or something that he would not survive hitting at terminal velocity (or so we thought, until the sequels...). Luke buries Darth Vader, who I should probably mention is Luke's father. This is the end of the series. Well, not really.
Prequel trilogy
The Star Wars prequels, released much later than the original trilogy, follow the life of a young Anakin Skywalker. In the first movie, The Phantom Menace, the little planet of Naboo is being held hostage by the Trade Federation (thin-eyed, headdress-wearing, cowardly, stereotypically Asian characters), so the Republic sends two Jedi Knights (young Obi-Wan and his master, Qui-Gon Gin) to negotiate a settlement over Jawa juice and tea biscuits. In a drunken rage, the Jedi destroy many droids, some of which cost as much as 30,000 credits each, plus maintenance. Afterwards, they go down to Naboo and meet Jar Jar Binks, a lovable amphibian with a big three-chambered heart. Over the next hour and a half, Jar Jar falls over, bumps into things, makes funny faces, and runs around with zany kazoo music playing in the background.
The three rescue Queen Padmé Amidala and go to the planet Tatooine. There, they purchase a slave boy named Anakin, who possesses the skill to do long division in his head, and head to the galactic capital Coruscant. There, chaos has erupted in the Senate over the issue of redistricting. The cunning and elusive Senator Sheev Palpatine, who is totally not the Emperor we see in the original trilogy, has vetoed legislation that would allow planetary governments to determine election districts in their sectors. Queen Amidala threatens to introduce a joint resolution censuring Sheev for his actions and blah blah blah Returning to Naboo, Amidala and the Jedi defeat Trade Federation head Newt Gunray. Qui-Gon is killed when action-figure model Darth Maul repeatedly smashes him in the face with a special double-sided Sith baton. Outraged, Obi-Wan pushes Maul down a shaft and everyone celebrates with a parade. Also, Palpatine is elected Supreme Head Honcho Chancellor El Presidente of the Republic for Life and begins wearing stylish black robes.
In the second movie, Attack of the Clones, we watch as Anakin blossoms from a young child, full of hope and a sense of adventure, to a whiny teenager with a temper issue (like father, like son). Actually, we don't get to see that, because this movie is set ten years after the events of the first. At this point, the Galactic Republic faces the threat of a massive separatist movement led by former Jedi Master Count Dooku. As history has taught us before, Force must be used against those who try to leave. This ideology is put to the test when the Senate votes on the subject of an introduction to a Clone Army; these are the badasses that will eventually become the stormtroopers. Two lovable bounty hunters, Jango Fett and his gun moll Zam Westworld, team up to teach now-Senator Padmé a lesson about respecting the Separatists' property, particularly expensive battle droids (many of which the Senator had destroyed without paying reparations). After a failed attempt to assassinate Padmé with poisonous centipedes, Jango kills Zam for some reason and escapes to the ocean planet Kamino.
The next day, in his first action since the assassination attempt, Palpatine cuts funding to the Jedi Order, forcing Jedi Masters Yoda and Mace Windu to organize a bake sale fundraiser. They send Obi-Wan to pursue the assassin, Jango Fett, across the galaxy in order to find the secret of the special bounty hunter chocolate chip cookie recipe, rumored to be the best in the galaxy. Kenobi eventually stumbles across the planet Kamino, where long-necked albino aliens are building a clown clone army (in case you missed it, those are the pre-stormtroopers) in florescent-colored farm stalls. In the meantime, Anakin is assigned to protect Senator Amidala as he escorts her to her homeplanet of Naboo. The two fall in love, and Anakin takes a break from the Force to also learn about the ways of reproduction. Meanwhile, Kenobi pursues Fett from Kamino to the bug planet Geonosis, where he finds the Separatists are building their own droid army, but is captured when he attempts to relay the information to Anakin.
While Anakin and Padmé head to Geonosis to rescue Obi-Wan, Jar Jar convinces the Senate of the need to liberate the apparently sentient wisecracking battle droids of their servitude, and Sheev is granted emergency powers to organize the clone army and send them into battle. Shortly after arriving on Geonosis, Anakin and Padmé are captured, and Obi-Wan sarcastically thanks them for an excellent rescue. They manage to hold their own until Motherfucking Jedi Master Mace Windu shows up with a centuria of Jedi to defend them, and general mayhem ensues. Several thousand bugs and a few other assorted creatures are killed in the process, and Mace beheads Jango Fett in a brief confrontation. After the Senate finally pays off that huge bill for the delivery of clones crank-called in their name, Yoda arrives leading the Republic's new army of super-soldier slaves and collects the surviving Jedi. Anakin and Obi-Wan pursue Count Dooku to a hangar, where Anakin gets his arm cut off and Dooku escapes. Anakin and Amidala are then married in a private ceremony, with a robot acting as best man since Skywalker has what we call a "loser gene", which causes one to lack social skills in general.
Apparently, Padmé cheated on Anakin with Obi-Wan, because one day in Revenge of the Sith, Anakin gets really angry at both of them all of a sudden. He chokes Padmé (with the Force, because I guess he can do that now) and attacks Obi-Wan. Needless to say, this upsets Obi, who, after trying to "talk things out," chops off all of Anakin's arms and legs and pushes him into a giant lava pit, where he gets barbequed. Luckily, Anakin seems to have rolled for 17 and is impervious to blood loss, post-traumatic shock, lava melting, and immobility due to lack of bodily appendages. He slowly worms himself out of the lava in what could only be described as an amusing display of a pathetic attempt to move. The Emperor finds him, and, from what I can tell, turns him into a robot, and Darth Vader is born, completing the prequels. At the climax of his reincarnation as Vader, Anakin cries "NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" despairingly, and simultaneously creates the least intentionally humorous line in cinema history.
Oh, and I should probably say that the prequels are lame. That's what all the real Star Wars fans say, and I feel that I am finally ready to join their ranks, as I have seen (parts of) almost every Star Wars movie! So yeah, fuck the prequels! I mean, seriously George. "Jar Jar is the key to all this"? What does that even mean?
Sequel trilogy
In The Force Awakens, thirty years after the Empire was taken down by a whiny teenager and a bunch of midgets in teddy bear costumes, the dark side is still alive and kicking. Supreme Leader Snokey the Non-Teddy Bear has constructed an enormous MacGuffin capable of powering entire plotlines, and the Jedi Order has been destroyed (again) by Snokey's First Order. Luke Skywalker has gone missing in action, and despite Han and Leia's efforts — putting up "Missing Jedi" posters all over Coruscant, and buying space on the side of blue milk cartons to display Luke's face on — he has not been found. However, a young woman named Rey from the desert planet of Jakku comes across a piece of a map to Luke's location in a droid, which was a good idea, because the rebels have never made a habit of putting vital information into droids in the past.
Along for the ride is Cameron Poe (played by Nicholas Cage, who reprises his role from the 1997 action film Con Air), and Finn the Good Stormtrooper. These three heroes must find the rest of the map leading to Luke Skywalker, sold separately in select Star Wars-themed Lucky Charms cereal boxes at your local supermarket. Collect all six maps! But unfortunately for our heroes, Han and Leia's emo son Kylo Ren is after the map as well, and once he finally comes out of his bedroom, nothing will stand in his way. His dad totally, like, doesn't understand him at all, so he kills him.
The Last Jedi is set in an alternate universe from the main Star Wars series for the first four hours and 32 minutes of the movie, and returns to the standard universe for the remaining eighty-two seconds. It features Ben Swolo and Raie touching each other's souls after Lucas Skywalker tried to kill Ben. At the start of the movie, Hand Solo's death is believed to have been the catalyst for the destruction of the region of Canto Bight. The Fathier race was born from the nuclear fallout after the explosion and two factions were born from the sludge, Minecrafters and Jake Paulers. After decades of peaceful coexistence, splinter groups simultaneously formed, called the Robloxers and the Logang respectively, and started simultaneous civil wars. This bloody conflict could only be stopped by the New Jedi Order, and so it fell unto their shoulders to do so. A ceasefire was agreed upon by the Minecrafters and the Robloxers, but the expense on the New Order had been so great that there was only one left, and the Jake Paulers and Logang were still fighting.
The unnamed Jedi raised two sons, Hand Solo and Lucas Skywalker. Their father wished for them to be Jedi, but they wanted to be computer engineers, and eventually landed jobs as editors for Top15s. Hand died on the job, and this caused Lucas to spiral into a deep depression. Fueled by death sticks and green walrus titty-milk, he killed the last Jedi in a drunken frenzy. He had a child with Sy Snootles, and named it Raie. Lucas revealed on his deathbed that he really didn't know how to read, hinting at a possible crossover with Super Mario Odyssey. The film then ends on a cliffhanger after revealing that this all happened in Ben Swolo's head, and that he had his first day of space school tomorrow.
The Rise of Skywalker is final clusterkriff in the sequel trilogy and the broader Skywalker Saga. The first few minutes are dedicated to retconning The Last Jedi due to its poor reception among Redditors. Basically Kylo tries to telepathically kill Rey, and she finds out and goes to find him. HOLY KARK!!! SOMEHOW PALPATINE RETURNED. A bunch of fanservice and references appear to desprately remind you of the better movies. General Leia dies. Rey and Kylo are super pissed and try to kill each other. OMG! REY IS SHEEV'S GRANDDAUGHTER!!! Rey and Kylo settle their sexual tension and team up to defeat the Emperor. Oh no, Rey is going to die. OOPS, NEVERMIND. Kylo sacrifices himself to revive Rey, and they pwn Sheev. Obligatory kiss between them, Kylo dies. Rey steals the Skywalker name at the end because she's too ashamed to admit she's a Palpatine. Also, two lesbian rebels kiss in the background, but Disney cuts the scene out to appeal more to Chinese audiences.
Oh, and I should probably say the sequels are even lamer than the prequels. That's what all the realest Star Wars fans say, and I feel that I am finally ready to join their ranks as a member of the rebel resistance against Disney's shill media empire. You have failed me for the last time Star Wars!
Production
The Originals
In 1973, George Lucas had an idea. Not an idea as simple as one that you or I might have, of course, as the idea was not had by you or me. It was had by George Lucas. Yes, George Lucas, already the brilliant mastermind behind such works as American Graffiti, but who really cares about that, anyway? He made fucking STAR WARS!!
Well, he made six of them as to separate all this into chapters of a serial since this way, he realized he could make more money and draw a larger audience if he stretched this out. All he wanted to do was special effects, and making movies was his way of making BILLIONS for his special effects alone. This six-part saga was going to be a NINE-part series, but even Lucas himself got fed up with this damn thing.
Well, he had this idea, and he made his movie(s). A movie which took place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base have...etc., etc., DEATH STAR!!, etc., Princess Leia, etc., save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy!! But unfortunately, after losing much of his fortune in a divorce settlement, Lucas cut down the six-part saga to a single trilogy and vowed he would never make the prequels. Ever. That is, until 1993.
Prequels, Novels, Comics, Video Games, Toys, Spinoffs, Spoofs, and What Little Credibility the Franchise Has Left
In the beginning, there was only one Star Wars trilogy. Of course, after a success such as the Star Wars Trilogy, fans and the faceless Hollywood corporations are left wanting more. The fans want more movie time so that they can pretend their boring life is action-y and explosion-riddled for a couple of hours. The faceless Hollywood corporations want more so that they can leech money off of sad said fans until there is nothing left to take, and they control all the money. This is because if they control the money, they control the spice, and if they control the spice, they control the universe. Still, this left Lucas with only one option: numerous sub-par prequels!
This left Lucas with only one option: return to his franchise and finish the story. The prequels were first announced in 1993, writing of the script for the first prequel commenced in 1994, and it was completed three years later. In 1997, following the script's completion, Lucas decided to anticipate the return of Star Wars by releasing Special Edition remastered re-releases of the original trilogy, so he could raise enough money to make the new film. $100 million dollars were utilized in changes/additives/subtractions, including cartoony added CGI, altered dialogue, re-edited shots, remixed soundtracks, added scenes, Greedo shooting first, the ending Ewok song in Return of the Jedi being changed to elevator music, orangutans, breakfast cereals, fruit bats, and large chu. These changes were done to better conform to Lucas's original vision; "I always intended for Greedo to shoot first," Lucas stated in an interview, "but in the '70s, I didn't have the technology necessary to make that vision a reality. Now I do." The Special Editions were box office hits — mostly due to the fact that nobody had been able to see a Star Wars movie in a theater for nearly 15 years — but hardcore fans sneered at the changes. Lucas would later re-re-release the original trilogy about 15 more times on DVD and Blu-ray, with even more changes like Vader's saber being changed to pink and eyelids being added to the Ewoks.
This wasn't the end of the fans' disenchantment, however. Once enough funds were raised, Lucas commenced principal photography on the first prequel. All the money raised by the Special Editions was used to pay for the film's digital groundbreaking effects, including the final battle scene against the zombie gungans where Lucas spent $3,500,000 to get the color of the zombies' eye irises just right. The prequels also marked the introduction of a bigger marketing ploy than the Ewoks, Jar Jar Binks. "Why?! George has single-handedly destroyed all that was good in the world," crazed fanboys would often say. Some fans noticed that the movies implicated Jar Jar in the rise of Emperor Sheev and the creation of the clone army, and hoped Lucas would redeem himself by making their Darth Jar Jar theories become reality. Yet Lucas failed to satisfy the need for us to see Binks fall victim to Mace Windu and his purple saber. However, seeing Yoda the 3Finga Ninja turned into a CGI bouncing pinball and kicking some ass was either cool or horrifying, depending on who you ask. What could have been a great series just turned into a justification to re-re-release the altered re-releases of the films in a new altered DVD boxset and also two years later as a two-disc edition with the unaltered versions on disc 2, and then five years later as Blu-rays with even more alterations. Bank balance successfully replenished Mr. Lucas; now let's see The Real Episode VII: Return of the Phantom Vader's Ghost Strikes Back.
Due to the many contradictions and plot holes that the prequels created (i.e. Obi-Wan, Uncle Owen, and Anakin interacting with R2-D2 and C-3PO in the prequels, yet seemingly not recognizing the droids in the original trilogy), novels, comics, video games, toys, spinoffs, spoofs, etc. were created as part of the Expanded Universe to fill in the gaps that George himself either forgot to or didn't have enough running time to (i.e. the revelation that Count Dooku was the one who erased Kamino from the Jedi Archives). To the prequels' credit, their worldbuilding translated rather well into some worthwhile media that only smelly nerds read.
Sequels, Anthologies, and No Credibility the Franchise Has Left
“One of these days George will be reduced to eating at a mall food court, gobbling a Diet Coke and Chinese noodles, and he'll see some people walking into the mall theater for the showing of our far superior film The Force Awakens. Then he'll buy a ticket, go into the theater, and feel downtrodden. He'll realize he mistook the movie for another prequel-esque dense slog, but it'll be too late for him when he sees we're recapturing the snappy original trilogy movies that everyone on Earth loves but him. Just before he cries in agony that he sold out to us white slavers, he'll finally understand what our disappointment watching his infanticide known as the prequels felt like. Also Han shot first.”
After the Star Wars saga allegedly ended in 2005 with Revenge of the Sith, many fans became depressed, as they had nothing left to look forward to in life except reissues of countless Special Edition DVDs and Blu-rays with a new stupid piece of CGI put in which would add very little to the movie and only make fans roll their eyes every time. By 2012, it seemed that Lucas was also getting down on his luck; for the last thirteen years the angry villagers of the Internet rallied pitchforks and torches against him online for the Special Editions and prequels. St. George desired further riches to support his seven food court meals a day, and to sit atop his mountain of dollars bathing in his hoard of golden treasure. Then he hatched an idea — a dastardly idea! Lucas had a wonderful, dastardly idea! "I know just what to do," Lucas said slithering and flapping his wings, his tongue flicking as he ate Chinese noodles and sipped a Diet Coke. He chuckled from his oversized frog-like goiter and belched fire, "What a great bitchin' trick! If I sell Star Wars to Disney, I'll be a rich peacenik!"
So George unexpectedly sold Star Wars to the automatons over at Disney, for a heart-stopping $4.05 billion. It was with these newfound riches that George donated to charity and education, built affordable housing on his Skywalker Ranch, and financed sculptures made out of chicken fat before eating them. Producer Kathleen Kennedy then announced three new Star Wars sequel trilogy films to be produced in the future, and hired J.J. "The Jet Plane" Abrams to direct the first new sequel, Episode VII: A New Hope Redux The Force Awakens. Abrams brought to the table his usual Michael Bay-esque action and explosions combined with a touch of Spielbergian wide-eyed sentimentality.
Fan enthusiasm for The Force Awakens was high, bolstered by them knowing that Lucas wouldn't be writing or directing this installment. Unfortunately, said enthusiasm waned when the fans actually saw the movie, and realized it was nothing more than a corny, soulless clone of A New Hope, injected with $306 million dollars worth of Disney's cursed Aztec gold. Come back, George; all most some is forgiven! This was not helped by the subversive travesty that was Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, a tonal shift too far directed by Rian "Brick Looper" Johnson, or the existence of /r/prequelmemes, created by nostalgia-blind Millennials, that have made people love the prequels and turn on Disney movies. Then Disney scrambled to get J.J. back for Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, with the guy who wrote Justice League writing script, a surefire sign that the movie would be good. Spoiler alert: it wasn't.
Disney has also produced anthology films, such as Rogue One which shows the origins of the Death Star plans, and Solo which shows the origins of Han Solo and how he got his name. After the nine-part main saga wraps up, Rian Johnson will also directed his very own Star Wars trilogy, with McG and Kenny Hotz penning the scripts; McG and Hotz have promised, in unison, to make the new films "bigger, better, and sexier than the Skywalker Saga. Loyalty to Disney. Loyalty to the brand." Disney has also announced plans to produce a Star Wars squeakquel, making Star Wars Episode SQUEAK: The Squeakquel the second ever squeakquel in history, after Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. The film will star Larry the Cable Guy as Skippy the Jedi Droid, who goes on an adventure to Tosche Station to pick up those famed power converters.
In 2019, Disney produced The Mandalorian as a killer app for their Disney streaming service. The series takes place five years after the events of Return of the Jedi and follows a Mandalorian (that's Boba Fett's species, FYI) bounty hunter beyond the reaches of the New Republic. The series became popular due to Internet memes of Baby Yoda, to the point where even New Jersey adopted Baby Yoda as their Twitter profile picture.
Reception and social impact
Critical Acclaim of the Originals
As soon as the original Star Wars trilogy was released, it instantly fell under a constant waterfall of acclaim and praise. Of course, the movies came out from 1977 to 1983, so no evidence of this praise actually exists today. Still, anybody who was anybody went to see Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi, and then went home to tell everyone how awesome they were. The original trilogy is also considered one of the first "high concept" trilogies, which, despite having absolutely no idea what that means, I will mention here. Even today, they are praised as some of the best science fiction movies of all-time, by critics such as myself, as I am now an expert on the movies, having just watched them.
One of the things critics praise about the trilogy is its intricate symbolism. For example, did you know that the seemingly outdated 1970s/80s special effects are actually symbolic of the internal, emotional battles of man? They are. Not only that, note the numerous, supposedly unintentional holes in the plot, where the movies seem "inconsistent" to the untrained eye. These represent the chaos of modern society, and indeed the entire universe, as Lucas saw it in his artistic mind's eye at the time.
Still Star Wars's symbolism proved to be accessible enough for both the "Average-Joe" moviegoer and the wolf-like critics, who gaze intently at the screen, waiting...waiting for a flaw to exploit, and an excuse to destroy any chance the movie had for ever making any money and ruining a director's credibility, all in one fell swoop. Damn you, critics! Why? WHY??? Luckily, the Star Wars Trilogy was basically perfect on every cinematic level, so no critics anywhere disliked it, and Lucas's credibility remained intact. Well, until the prequels, at least...
...DUNH DUNH DUUUUUUUUUUNH!!!
Critical Disclaim of the Other Stuff
It was the first and second prequels, also known as the fourth and fifth movies made, also known as the first and second episodes, that really sucked. The third and final prequel, also known as the sixth and final movie made, also known as the third episode, was largely unnoticed. Supposedly it didn't suck; yes, Lucas only managed to redeem himself (almost) with a movie that ended with the orphaning of two newborns, the killing of almost every good guy, and the almost-complete removal of the curse that is J** J** Bi***s from the movie. Still, by the time it came out, everyone had lost all faith in the Star Wars franchise, and none of my friends ever even mentioned it at lunch.
Older fans felt that Lucas permanently tarnished the legacy of his films with a trilogy that completely misunderstood what made the first films so popular. Some expected the tightness and entertainment of the original trilogy when walking in to the prequels, and instead got lethargically-made cash grabs passion projects directed by a silly man stuck to a director's chair who lost his touch and energy for filmmaking. Almost every creative decision made was unorthodox, just look at Darth Vader's backstory: they took a dark, menacing, and mysterious character and turned him into "Annoying little kid who grows up to be a whiny teenager who turns to the dark side to save his wife...then proceeds to choke said wife to death for some reason."
Then you have Disney's first, second, and third sequels, also known as the seventh, eighth, and ninth movies made, also known as the seventh, eighth, and ninth episodes. These sequels have ultimately desecrated the corpse of this beloved franchise, and none of my friends even mention Star Wars anymore period, now they're more into Marvel movies. Well, the two anthology movies made, also known as the filler episodes, as well as the Disney anthology series, weren't really that bad, but the main Skywalker Saga is dead.
Despite being massive, epic failures (on the "entertainment" level), the Star Wars prequels and sequels made Lucas and Disney a lot of money, furthering Lucas, Disney, and their puppet-masters' plans to "control the world". Not only that, but the original trilogy movies are regarded by everyone as some of the best movies of all-time. At least, I assume so; I thought that one I saw was pretty good. Way better than Big Momma's House 2. Anyway, The Empire Strikes Back and to a lesser extent Return of the Jedi are testaments to the fact that some movie directors can make follow-ups that don't suck; they just choose not to. The newer prequels and sequel rehashes, meanwhile, show that sometimes you just can't win 'em all. More than any other symbolism in these movies, there is this: quit while you're ahead. George Lucas and Bob Iger have never said anything smarter. After all, I would know.
The Star Wars Epiphany
“Have you ever gotten laid?”
The Star Wars Epiphany is a phenomenon which manifests itself, mostly in adolescent and young adult males, as an epiphany equal to the discoveries of Newton, Einstein, and other great thinkers. It has been described by social psychologist Paul Straussenfharsenbhurgendhurgen as "a very excited exclamation to friends, relatives, et cetera, that the individual has suddenly had the idea to watch all of the Star Wars movies back-to-back. It is usually met with negative responses, but is invariably seen as a wonderful, innovative idea by the individual himself." Straussenfharsenbhurgendhurgen also posits that if one "watches all of the Star Wars movies nonstop for four days, their eyes will turn square, they will have memorized every line in the first 30 minutes of each movie, they will never watch a Star Trek movie again, and they will die of boredom."
The effect was first officially observed in teenager Steve Rogers of the United States (Straussenfharsenbhurgendhurgen et al., 1995). Rogers owned the original trilogy of Star Wars movies on VHS, and suggested to roommates David Kelly and Johan Peters that they watch all of them back-to-back, despite it already being eight o'clock in the evening. Kelly and Peters subsequently moved out of the apartment and attempted to become more mature by marrying and fathering children. Well, not both marrying and fathering children — they married women, then fathered children. Obviously.
Campaigners are currently pressuring the United States government to recognize the Star Wars Epiphany as a genuine medical condition, despite the assurance by researcher Straussenfharsenbhurgendhurgen that the phenomenon is merely a symptom and not an actual illness (he has since specified that it is a symptom of illnesses such as boredom, the human condition, and stupidity). Spokesperson Terry Wogan said that he "hope[s] that this campaign will really get all the other governments thinking and stuff, like, we really want the prime minister of Europe to really, um, think about maybe following suit when, uh, when the president gets, uh, you know, gets this done". He wasn't talking about the Star Wars Epiphany, but you could probably imagine that he was. He might as well have been. We think he was talking about abortion or something.
See also
 Featured Article (read another featured article)
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Featured version: 7 December 2007 |
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Science fiction films 