The guns....they've stopped, the wussification of childhood threats, and the last post on the decay of Star Wars

The presents are opened, and the insanity at BLB01 should be down to a dull roar.

As a result, my mind has returned to think of the normal things that rattle around in my head, specifically, Star Wars.

I received a "Darth Tater" Mr. Potato Head from my former boss, and it sits next to my head in the living room (Sadimac: don't worry I have no intention of leaving it there). It's been the trigger of a train of thought I've been playing with all day: Lucas, in his finite wisdom, has made Darth Vader as wuss.

I think the wussification of Vader began before the prequels, with the Energizer Bunny commercial where Vader faced off against the EB, only to have his lightsaber fritz out due to inferior batteries.



I remember being pissed about that when it came out. Vader was supposed to be the personification of menace, evil, and (a clunky, nonsensical, & hamfisted) redemption: not a shill to sell frelling batteries.

Not so long after that, the "Special Edition" of the original trilogy came out. With new special effects, and some tweeks, most importantly Greedo shooting first. Any one who knows me, or has seen my "Han Shot First" shirt knows how I feel about that. Lucas claims that the films were never how he wanted them, and all of the changes he made were just stuff he could only do with current SFX technology. Both you and I know that he's lying, so we won't get into that. What really chaifed me was his assertation that it was his right as the creator to go back and "fix" his own work.

Now some films are ok to go back and re-cut. What Blade Runner is supposed to be has always been controversial, all the way back to it's original release, so Ridley Scott making changes to that is fine. Releasing an "extended cut" or "unrated" DVD of a recent film is fine too, as we're talking about a 6 to nine month period between theatrical and DVD release, so it's not really something that's in the cultural consciousness yet. Then, some things are specifically designed to be added to and extended (such as Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings), and that causes little or no pain, as we know it's coming.

What Lucas did could be compared to Jackson Pollack walking into a museum, pulling one of his works that had been there 20 years off the wall, and making changes (note: I am not saying that Star Wars is equal in artistic merit to a Pollack painting)


Of course then, years later, the prequels hit. They were riddled with problems. They over reached (Anakin as immaculate conception), pandered (Jar Jar Binks), and were, frankly, down right racist (Watto, the Neimoidians, and Jar-Jar again), sexist (Amadala's transformation from forceful, wise ruler to trembling waif who just couldn't go on living, only about seven or so women in the whole thing have speaking roles.

These three films, all of them bad and with few redeeming qualities, actually make the original trilogy look almost as bad. This religion and order of knights that Luke worked so hard to restore was corrupt, archaic, and badly needed to go down. Only a precious few Jedi had it right (Qui-Gon, to a certain extent Obi-Wan, Shaak-Ti, and in the comics Quinlan Vos and Tholme), and most were pretty awful (Mace Windu, Ki Adi Mundi, and the wise old one who's advice was always bad, Yoda). They, and the republic needed to go down, and be replaced: the empire was a piss poor replacement of course, but one lousy system being replaced with another is par for the course...

I've vented enough though. This was, if you will, the last great public complaint on Star Wars. I'll always have my opinions, and I'll likely mention them from time to time, but this is the clear out. There's plenty of good Sci-Fi to talk about (Doctor Who, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, etc), and I'm tired of it wasting my thoughts on this thing I can do nothing about but whine.

I hear by resolve to stop beating this dead horse. It is the Sci-Fi of childhood, and the more sophisticated things I enjoy deserve my attention, and praise, rather than my continued scorn of what was lost by the actions a sad little rich fat man with a god complex.