STAR WARS
Rebecca Wan
Produced by: 20th Century Fox / Lucasfilm
Written and Directed by: George Lucas
Main Cast: Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia), Harrison Ford (Hans Solo), James Earl Jones (voice of Darth Vader)
Rated: PG
Length: 125 min
SNORE WARS
I know SPACE BALLS wouldn't have been as funny as it was without its parodic model STAR WARS -- it probably wouldn't even have been made. It *was* made, though, and nowadays it's hard (for me) to even think about Darth Vader without picturing an asthmatic Rick Moranis in an oversized helmet stumbling around and walking into things.
Not for me the maudlin tropes of a generation of star-struck reviewers who wax lyrical about what they were doing when they *first* saw STAR WARS. Unlike many critics who've enthused about the nostalgic ride this film took them on (they must not have had very exciting childhoods), I didn't watch STAR WARS on the big screen. I watched it on video three or four years after it came out, and I've watched it a number of times on television, along with its two sequels THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and THE RETURN OF T HE JEDI.
You'd think I'd have *wanted* to watch it on the big screen, rushing out, like the Fox trailers have been telling me, to "see it again, for the very first time," in its glorious remastered/re-digitalized/re-morpherized/re-whatever state, but I didn't. May be it's a Singaporean thang but it makes sense to me: who wants to pay $7 for a movie she's already watched three times?
Unfortunately for those of us with boyfriends who read Star Wars novelizations (and who insist on watching at least one out of the re-released trilogy) that's exactly what STAR WARS is, minus the pseudo-mythologizing, mega-merchandizing, ooh-aah-an-extra- scene-with-a-big-computer-generated-slug hoopla. The most amazing thing about seeing the film in its original widescreen format is realizing, despite the immense desire to bow to pressure and be awed, how mediocre STAR WARS is. Taking into account the hea ps of writing on how it revolutionized film-making, the film industry and just about the whole entire decade, it still takes an effort to sit through the re-released STAR WARS and not think of how trite the script is when compared to an average episode of something like Babylon Five, or how uninspiring its ideas are (What, after all, is this Force, other than some Americanized New-Age Bull-Crap version of the Judeo-Christian Holy Spirit?).
It's also hard to detach much of the STAR WARS "legacy" from the movie itself. For example, it was difficult to watch the scene where Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) zooms, in his X-Wing, towards that one weak spot in the Empire's Death Star, without thinkin g of the ratty Star Wars computer game I used to play on my Mac. Nor was it easy to banish pictures of Rick Moranis and Bill Pullman duelling with their groin-centred light sabers in SPACE BALLS when watching Darth Vader confront the robed Alec Guiness in the first film of the trilogy. The former scene is infinitely more enlightening, as are many other parodic scenes from SPACE BALLS. In another, a rabbit-earred John Candy (Mel Brooks' inspired version of Chewbacca: "I'm a Mog. Half man, half dog. I'm my own best friend!") tells Bill Pullman (or is it the other way around?) that they will meet again, hopefully, in "Space Balls 2: The Search For More Money."
In other words, perhaps (for me) STAR WARS has been a victim of its own success, spilling over into an unbelievable amount of multimedia schlock and resurfacing, throughout the last two decades, in countless iconic cliches: Carrie Fisher in a bagel hairdo , the unforgettable (and endlessly quoted) "Force" schtick, bad novels and TV serials (Battlestar Galactica, anyone?). For someone who grew up in the post-STAR WAR decades, nurtured by the merchandizing, blockbustery clutches of a Hollywood revolutionized by STAR WARS -- or maybe just for me -- it was hard to behave as one feels one is expected to at the re-release of STAR WARS (Note to STAR WARS enthusiasts: DON'T KILL ME, I'm only a mere Slacker with too much web space on her hands). In the end, the ori ginal seems no less tacky, or less contrived, than its movie tie-in offspring.
For those of us who learned about STAR WARS (and what it was supposed to mean) from without, it must surely be easy to wonder what the big deal was (and still is), about a bunch of realistic-looking spaceships, starscapes, rubbery aliens and a louder-than -necessary soundtrack blasting a by now over-exposed theme into the ears (it's a pity to waste good THX on Mr John bloody "are 90 thousand violins *enough* for the string section" Williams, but there you have it). Don't get me wrong, I'm all for rubbery a liens and great-looking starships and space battles myself, but a good hour of Star Trek: The New Generation delivers just as well.
Still, the revised edition of STAR WARS isn't *bad*. It's a lot of fun, and, for me at least, most of the humour remains intact, despite its third or fourth watching. Whether an intergalactic smuggler pursued by a gargantum gangster mollusc or a 1930s arc heological adventurer, Harrison Ford's perpetual unwillingness to get involved and goodhearted cynisim still saves the day from the corny binary oppositions set up in the film (in general, British accents=bad/silly/Empire, American=good/rebels; White=good ; Black=bad). Skywalker's motley posse is still funny: the mindless fussing of C-3PO, the charged bickering between Leia and Solo, the childlike insistence of R2-D2.
In the end, watching STAR WARS was a little like looking at John Travolta in the disco period and wondering what people were thinking in the first place. Oh wait, but disco's in again, isn't it?
The Flying Inkpot Rating System:
* Wait for the TV2 broadcast.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha!
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
Rebecca Wan supposes that everyone is just going to hit the "comments" button now and blast her to itty bitty little critic bits. Just remember that everything she said in this article is IHHO ("in her humble op inion") only, so damnit, get a life.
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