Now… I don’t want a swarm of angry Star Wars fans attacking me after this post but I fear it may happen anyway. Prior to watching episodes 4-6, my only experience with the SW franchise was The Force Awakens (which I enjoyed) and episodes 1-3 (which I did not). Everyone that I know and the internet told me that episodes 1-3 were not great and they were not a true representation of how amazing the original series is. So when I had to watch the OG movies, I was excited for what I was about to see.
Boy, was that some misguided excitement. I’m sorry to my SW people but wow, those movies are incredibly boring. It almost offends me that they are uttered in the same breath as The Lord of the Rings series; that there are people who think Star Wars is better! How?! There was so much they could do with the story and space but they did nothing! The characters were not fleshed out, there was no sense of depth to the story… Everything felt very surface level. Oh, here’s Luke Skywalker… He’s kinda cool. Here’s this bad guy that seems mysterious (surprise he’s Luke and Leia’s dad)… And here are these lightsaber things that can cause some serious damage but we don’t actually see much of that. We get all of these interesting plot points and characters and yet nothing is done with them.
I love character development. I love feeling like I’ve connected with a character and that I actually care about their wellbeing. But the only two characters in this entire three part series that I felt connected to were droids. If C3PO or R2D2 croaked you would have seen me rioting in the streets. Leia, Luke, or Han Solo (sorry beautiful Harrison Ford)… Mmm not so much. One of the biggest reveals is that Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker and yet the only “emotional” scene we get is at the very end of the Return of the Jedi, when he saves Luke and they have a “moment.” I’m someone who will cry at anything and that scene left my eyes as dry as the desert.
There was also so much that could have been explored with different planets and races in space and yet nothing was done. Alderaan was destroyed and we didn’t even get to see anyone from the planet. How am I supposed to be upset about this when you don’t even show people from there? Everything just felt so flat and I couldn’t understand why anyone found these movies as great as they did.
I’m sad that I was disappointed in these movies but I guess that’s how it goes sometimes. I gave it a chance, I had some hope, and at the end, the movies just weren’t my cup of tea.
To all my Star Wars friends: may the force be with you.
The Film Tease 