STAR WARS:
-So this was a thing that got pretty popular.
-But really, it's hard to even find a way to START with the
Star Wars franchise- it started off as just this pipe dream sci-fi movie by George Lucas (then getting a good rep for movies like the excellent
American Graffiti- one of the major instigators of the '50s nostalgia during the 1970s), was made with a bunch of actors who thought it was a bit silly, and then ended up EXPLODING, becoming one of the biggest hits of all time. And then it had two sequels, each of which did gangbusters as well, and setting off a whole new era of blockbusters. Taking a bunch of stuff from all kinds of different sources (Kurosawa Samurai movies, Korean manwha comics, etc.), Lucas ended up creating this Pop Cultural touchstone- soon everybody was obsessed with Laser Weapons, Jedi, Darth Vader and all sorts of cool new alien races. Kids bought so many of the toys that a brand-new industry was created: Merchandise-Driven Cartoons soon sprouted up all over the place to copy the success Kenner had with their
Star Wars line of figures (they remain some of the most sought-after toys ever). You can pretty much trace
Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe, Transformers, He-Man and
Thundercats all back to this, in addition to the Sci-Fi Boom of the era. Hell,
Star Wars is responsible for the continued existence of MARVEL of all things- they were ready for bankruptcy in the late 1970s, until they lucked out, got the
Star Wars license, and made a killing.
It's a bit hard to figure out just what made everyone go SO crazy over this series of films. In one way, they're a bit clunky- the dialogue could get iffy in parts ("You can WRITE this shit, George," Harrison Ford told him, "but you can't SAY it."), the moral drama simplistic (there's even a "Light Side" and a "Dark Side" of the core ethos of the universe), the acting a bit wooden and/or over-the-top, the Stormtroopers are so comically-imcompetent that thety're the iconic Useless Mooks, etc. But as a whole, the thing was EXCEPTIONALLY well-made. One thing I notice in retrospect, is that like a lot of good movies, the thing is comprised largely of big, iconic Set-Pieces and backdrops that go all over the place. Rather than just leave people sitting around in one area talking together, the movie shows you the moisture farm, the big Jawa thing, the Tusken Raiders, the famous Mos Eisley cantina, the Star Destroyers, and more. Hell, the thing STARTS with one of the most-iconic chases of all time, as a tiny vessel is hounded by this ENORMOUS Star Destroyer.
The entire world seems to function of "Rule of Cool". The bad guys want to establish dominance? They build a spaceship the size of a small moon and have it blow up planets. The villainous mooks dress up with skull motifs and wear stark black & white. Darth Vader wants to be a bad-ass? He starts slaughtering his minions for displeasing him. You throw guys with Psychic Powers into a world of science fiction laser guns. The spaceships all act like World War II fighter aircraft with hand-operated guns on platforms because it looks more cool that way. Jedi make Sword Nerds cry by adding fifteen spins per slice. The crime-boss Han Solo owes money is a literal drooling slug monster with a 50-foot-tall monster in his basement, and he executes people with either that or a carnivorous hole in the ground.
Nothing is wasted: rather than just make a standard escape and start shooting their way out, the heroes get stuck in a garbage disposal thing and fight a giant Garbage Snake. Why? Because it's just another different piece of action, that's why! And this is just the first movie! In the sequels, we get the swamps of Dagobah, the ice fields of Hoth, the forest moon of Endor, multiple space battles that are all different, etc. Other films that pull off stuff like this include
Finding Nemo (A LOT of distinctive sets here- the Turtle Vortex, the Dentist's Office, the Coral, the ship with the sharks, the Seagulls, etc.),
Toy Story (Pizza Planet, Sid's house, Andy's room, etc.), and even
Transformers: The Movie (where the big Autobot/Decepticon War and Unicron take a back seat to random events like a fight on a Planet of Junk and fighting underwater mechanical creatures, then facing off against evil Quintesson Judges and Sharkticons). I think it's a sign a film is well-made when EVERY SCENE remains distinctive for one reason or another.
The VEHICLES in the series are even kept different and distinct- the Millennium Falcon, TIE Fighters, X-Wings and more are huge stand-outs: the excellent miniature designs make this franchise have the most-iconic bunch of ships ever. I also liked how GRITTY everything looked- this wasn't any
Star Trek, full of pretty, smooth machines- these things saw use, and showed their age. No other franchise could even come CLOSE. Rather than stick a bunch of Rubber Forehead Aliens around,
Star Wars gives you giant Wookiees, tiny Ewoks, Droids all over the place, Jawas, Ithorians and all sorts of other weird stuff- again making things stand out. The Special Effects basically made this film as much as anything. Even the SOUND effects and the MUSIC are top of the line- pretty much everyone knows the sounds the lasers make, that "whirr" of flying vehicles, the "Lightsaber Effect" and more, and the soundtrack just makes the whole thing. Basically, even with a handful of flaws, the rest of the people working on the film- set designers, puppeteers, F/X guys, miniature builders and musicans, etc., were so damn good at their jobs that they made an unforgettable pieice of work.
There's great Character Naming here, too- you can't forget stuff like "Luke Skywalker" or "Han Solo". And despite a cast of "recognizable names" that is positively ENORMOUS (even moreso if you read the supplemental materials about the background nobodies), but there's great Economy of Character here, as well. The Main Group could almost be overwhelming, but it basically consists of The Young Hero (Luke), The Mentor (Obi-Wan), The Chick (Leia), and The Rogue (Han) as the only major characters- Chewbacca, C-3P0 & R2-D2 are distinctive and memorable characters, but two don't even really SPEAK, and they're all basically Sidekicks. So the group never gets overwhelmingly-large or feels like there's too many people sitting around (compare this to
Lord of the Rings, which really has two Hobbits too many). Of the villains, we only get two in the first movie that matter (Tarkin & Vader), a side character in the middle (Lando), and Jabba & The Emperor rounding things out.
And yet EVERY CHARACTER stands out. Lando is his own character, but he has this servant going around with him (Lobot) who remains well-known simply because he has cyborg stuff on his head. There's Jabba's Twi'lek goon, that ugly monster by his tail, that pig thing, about a half-dozen unique animals never seen before, and more. Even Princess Leia subverts your expectations- how many Rescued Princesses back then acted like total bitches to their rescuers, then grabbed a gun and started blasting away? And in Darth Vader, Lucas & Co. created one of cinema's great bad guys- a powerful, threatening, iconic figure that almost ran away with all the movie's press! Even characters who look like idiots on-screen, like the infamous Boba Fett, have an entire industry built around their exploits.
It was big enough to get major-league "Re-Releases" in the '90s that saw CGI upgrades and some new (mostly-lame) scenes, including the infamous "Greedo Shoots First" edit (that looks very weird, like it just doesn't "fit" properly with the body language. Also, how did Greedo MISS from that distance?). A few cartoon series have come out (the best one is the
Clone Wars one done by the
Samurai Jack crew, though they did a CGI one that I only saw once. It was OK). And of course the infamous "Prequels" (several years in, Lucas suddenly went "Oh the series actually started with
Part IV, not
Part I), where Lucas went Full CGI, wrote some of the worst dialogue to hit a major Hollywood production, and eventually pissed off legions of fans (some parts of the movies are awesome, but other parts include Hayden "So wooden it's an insult to puppets" Christensen, Jake Lloyd, and Jar Jar Binks). Eventually, Disney bought the whole thing for three or four times what they paid for MARVEL COMICS, and have been in the process of releasing a TON more stuff, this time without Lucas' involvement.
There's probably more "Canon" supplemental material to
Star Wars than anything else, ever. It created a virtual cottage industry of Novels, none of which I've ever read. I heard about them in Middle School, but my friends weren't nerdy enough to be into them, so I have no idea what they're like. Apparently they're rather infamous for Mary Sues and random embellishments, often going into INSANE detail about guys who show up in the movies for all of five seconds, and they've pretty much been dropped from "canon" standing EONS ago.
The Thrawn Trilogy is almost universally liked, however. Dark Horse Comics also had a pretty successful line of books based around the "Prequel" Universe (and a few set after the original Trilogy), so many that it seemed like DH's ENTIRE OUTPUT was
Star Wars, but now Marvel's got the rights back (owing to their being owned by the same parent company).
A lot of the lore kinda... falls apart a bit. Luke & Leia being siblings is CLEARLY not an idea until the third movie (sure hope they don't add in character relations in the third part of a trilogy anymore!), given their weird kiss in the second one. Obi-Wan Kenobi acts in disguise by dressing in what we later see are Jedi Robes, keeping his last name and living next to Vader's relatives with a kid with VADER's last name. He's in hiding. Palpatine showcases never-before-seen powers and has zero backstory in the entire original set. This only gets worse and worse with time, as the Prequels indicate that well-learned people think the Jedi are a myth, even though they died out only a generation ago (Luke is born and enters young adulthood in the gap between Trilogies), many of the characters turn out to have unecessary relations with each other, and more. It's better to think of everything more as a "Rule Of Fun" universe than something that's supposed to make a ton of narrative sense.
So yeah,
Star Wars is awesome. I actually didn't watch it that much as a kid- I'm not sure if my family even owned the VHS tapes. I remember watching the first bit of
Return of the Jedi as my introduction to things (I recall having some odd feeling about that Leia girl and her outfit, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was...), but I'd watch them a few times over the years. I stood in line for an hour to get into the re-release of
The Empire Strikes Back, but that was the only one of those edited movies I saw (it was great fun at first, but when I realized that ONLY the "upgraded" ones were available to buy, I thought it was lame). So I'm a fan, but not like a SUPER-fan- I don't own any of the films or toys or anything like that. I just like them for what they are- classic Hollywood-style entertainment, with some great characters, great dialogue and great effects. I think they're better than the
Lord of the Rings movies (oh, the online debates I've had over that), which are a bit too long and feature too many dull characters (Sauron is as generic a villain as their ever was, there's too many Hobbits, and the Elf & Dwarf are almost a note short of "one-note"). And really, their impact on Pop Culture cannot be denied- pretty much everyone is familiar with a good portion of the original Trilogy at least, so there's almost zero chance someone you're talking to won't get an "I am your father!" or "Lightsaber" reference.
For this set, I'm mainly doing the Film series characters, plus some from the
Star Wars Rebels show (it's okay... not as good as I was hoping, though. It does have that great scene where DARTH VADER runs in and essentially wipes out the entire team with ease). Not many novel characters, though.
Now, as it's been a little over four years since I last posted
Star Wars builds, I've got a bit MORE to go on. This will feature the first time we've seen the Sequel Trilogy detailed on here, I believe. There will also be builds focused on
Rogue One,
Solo and
The Mandalorian, though I've only seen a tiny bit of some of those, so they'll be borderline "Researched Builds" and that's it.
