Rewatching Star Wars is an odd experience.
It's surprisingly dirty,
grimey and grotty.
It doesn't introduce the hero until about 15
minutes in.
Loads of the first reel is one-sided bickering, followed
by silent wandering around in the desert.
Han is really very seedy...
and a murderer.
Leia is a sarcastic, bossy, combative dominatrix; a
far cry from the sexual-harassment-victim / soppy-girlfriend she later
became.
The tone suddenly veers from deadly serious to comic/quippy as
soon as the Falcon arrives at the Death Star.
The Stormtroopers hang
around and chat.
The Rebels are an unprepossessing bunch - skinny,
scrawny, tubby, greasy-haired, snaggletoothed, etc.
The droids are
CLEARLY slaves to the humans.
The Sandpeople are CLEARLY evil Arabs.
The backstory as explained by Ben is much better than anything in the
sequels, let alone the prequels: Ben and Annakin go and become Jedis,
their protege Darth kills Annakin, Ben buggers off home. Clear, simple
and emotionally resonant.
Darth is clearly a first name and is
clearly NOT Luke's dad, no more than Leia is Luke's sister. Luke and Leia clearly fancy each other.
The funny thing is that, if
we take the prequel canon as applying to the original film (which can be
done without inflicting emotional damage upon oneself as long as its
only a temporary thought experiment) then the lovechild of Luke and Leia
would be absolutely LOADED with midichlorians... thus making it, in all
probably, the most powerful Jedi in history. The only problem is that a
lightsabre would probably be harder to wield effectively with webbed
fingers.
Darth
Vader, by the way, is a henchman to Tarkin... and god only knows how he comes out of
the whole let-Leia-escape-with-the-plans clusterfuck with a PROMOTION!
Also... isn't destroying an entire planet, just to make a point, a bit
of a fucking waste? Did Alderaan have no resources, no wealth, no
strategic value, no military, industrial or economic significance to
the Empire? None at all? It's a bit like Hitler saying: "just to
prove how powerful I am, I'm going to completely destroy Belgium".
And ponder
Luke's lack of concern over the slaughter of his adoptive parents -
"ah, fuck 'em, they made me do farm work" - not to mention Leia's
brusque dismissal of the destruction of her entire planet.
Weird.
That first reel is a western, isn't it? Should the Sandpeople be Arab-inflected American Indians?
ReplyDeleteAlso: I have never heard anyone suggest that the original "Star Wars" has a better backstory than the one put forth in "Empire."
That said, I agree with everything else. The Vader-as-henchman bit is really good. I'd never thought of that.
Hold your fire, what are we paying by the laser now?
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