These days, it’s easy to take the original Star Wars film for granted. Nearly 40 years after its release, it seems like it’s just always been there in the background, doesn’t it? We’ve all seen it a hundred (or more) times and we’ve all got it memorized, and there have been five other films and three animated TV spin-offs (so far), not to mention countless books, comics, videogames, toys, posters, and god only knows what else. By my count, three generations of kids have grown up with the saga of a galaxy far, far away as their personal mythology, and it’s very hard now to remember what it was like when it was all new and fresh. Hell, I’ve even heard the Damn Kids™ of today think the first film in the saga — I will not call it A New Hope, sorry — is kind of boring and slow-paced. (Terrible to be so jaded at such a young age!) But that’s not how it used to be.

Here’s a fun little reminder of what it was like when Star Wars was the most exciting, mind-blowing movie-going experience we’d ever had, courtesy of YouTube user William Forsche. It’s an audio recording he made inside a crowded theater on a summer day in 1977. It’s pretty fun to hear the audience grow quieter during Luke’s Death Star trench run… then absolutely silent when “the Death Star has cleared the planet…” and Artoo gets taken out, followed by a spontaneous eruption of joyous applause (and even some tension-relieving laughter) as Han Solo and the Falcon arrive in the nick of time, and again when the DS explodes, and again as the closing credits begin. And check out William’s “pew! pew! pew!” sounds at the very end of the recording, as he and his mom are walking to the car. We all did that, didn’t we? That’s what the experience of the original Star Wars was like. When was the last time you applauded at the end of a big summertime action movie? (I think I did at Godzilla last summer, but you take my point…)

Nice montage of vintage photos, too. As much as I still love the Star Wars franchise and all the imagery associated with it, my very favorite iconography remains the stuff that came out in those very earliest years between Star Wars and Empire, 1977-80…

I found this on Boing Boing, of course.

A week ago Thursday was a big day for me. Oh, sure, there was that whole eye-surgery thing, but there was also the little matter of the second trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. (You didn’t think I was going to let that pass without mention, did you?) Seriously, the timing couldn’t have been better, as the trailer hit the InterWebs at just about the very moment when my anxiety over having my corneas sliced open with frickin’ laserbeams was hitting its peak. But you know what? Two-and-a-half minutes in that galaxy far, far away proved to be quite a wonderful stress reliever: I laughed, I cried, I even beat my fists on my desktop in a paroxysm of sheer glee. Yes, it remains to be seen whether the actual movie will be any good, but as far as the trailer goes… let’s just say Han and Chewie weren’t the only ones who felt like they’d come home.

But that warm afterglow never lasts long here in the 21st century, does it? Especially when it comes to anything Star Wars. My vision was still hazy the day after my surgery when I ran across this sour little turd-in-the-punchbowl in an online discussion of the new trailer:

If JJ Abrams wants to give Star Wars fans a complete nerdgasm, one brief shot of a grave marked “Jar Jar Binks” would cause the theater to erupt in several minutes of applause.

Really? We’re still bitching about Jar Jar Binks? The Phantom Menace was released sixteen years ago, in 1999. Let me repeat that slowly and loudly for anyone who’s not paying attention: Six. Teen.Years. Hell, it’s been a decade since Revenge of the Sith. An entire generation of kids of has grown up with the prequels and are having kids of their own (at least here in Utah). But the disgruntled fanboys are still whinging about about the prequels in general and particularly about poor old Jar Jar Binks.

Enough already.

You know, I’d lately been thinking that all the rage and snottiness that sucked the fun out of being a Star Wars fan over the past two decades was on the wane. I was naive enough to imagine that the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney and George Lucas retiring might finally quiet the howling echoes of the Great Disappointment, and that The Force Awakens would mark the beginning of a new era. But as Jack Nicholson memorably said in the final scene of The Two Jakes, it just never goes away.

I wish the hell it would, because it’s gotten really boring, people. The Force Awakens opens in a mere eight months, and I’m sure it will be filled with all sorts of new things for fans to bitch about. (I can hardly wait. And yes, that’s sarcasm, in case you couldn’t tell.) In the meantime, though, can we please just stop talking about the prequels and frickin’ Jar Jar Binks?

Incidentally, you do realize there are people who actually like the prequels, right? Or at least don’t think they’re all that bad? There’s far from a mass cultural consensus on them, even though it often seems that way. And a lot of those folks I mentioned who grew up on them downright love them. Shockingly enough, they have a different perspective than their elders and they are every bit as passionate about their own opinions. And there even some elder Star Wars fans who are cool with the prequels too… our colleague Jaquandor, for example. You won’t find a more eloquent defender of them, or of the franchise in general. But no matter. I don’t want to open this can of worms again. I know I’m taking a risk of that merely by posting this plea, but I’m so damn tired of all the bile. I really want to enjoy being a fan of this thing again without all the constant bickering. Somebody, please just make it stop…

So, the writer, actor, and comedian Patton Oswalt has written a memoir called Silver Screen Fiend, in which he examines what he feels was an unhealthy relationship with movies in his younger days. Yes, he does use the word “addiction,” and he makes a pretty good case for why it applies in an interview that aired recently on NPR.

He also says he was finally able to break his compulsion, in part, because he was so disappointed with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

No doubt some of my readers probably just snickered. I, on the other hand, reacted to the interview’s title, “How ‘Star Wars’ Helped Patton Oswalt Beat His Movie Addiction,” with a disgusted roll of my eyes, and I almost didn’t bother to read the article. Seriously, I am so sick and tired of the kneejerk negativity that erupts whenever anyone mentions the Star Wars prequels, and The Phantom Menace in particular. I mean, come on, people, it’s been sixteen years since that movie came out… let it the hell go! The absolute last thing this world needs is any more prequel bashing. I certainly don’t have any interest in that conversation anymore.

Nevertheless, some kind of morbid curiosity compelled me to click through and find out what the hell Oswalt was actually saying. I don’t know, maybe I just wanted to find out how much of a dick the guy was or something. But to my surprise… it wasn’t quite what I thought, based on the headline. I mean, sure, he really didn’t like The Phantom Menace and he’s not afraid to say so… but he also said something about George Lucas that I found genuinely refreshing, considering the depressing “he’s a hack” groupthink I encounter everywhere these days:

I’ll put it this way — I was the worst kind of movie fan. I’m the kind of guy who saw 6 movies a day, didn’t write any movies, didn’t make any movies, but then could be armchair quarterbacking on a movie that I had no hand in making.

 

Yes, I thought [Phantom Menace] was a failure, but the dude took a shot at it. It hit me that I was spending days and days and nights and nights with my friends, arguing back and forth about this film but this guy made a movie. Good or bad, he made a movie. He’s on a different realm than you.

I remember saying before The Phantom Menace opened that, if nothing else, Lucas had some major cojones to even attempt to go back to Star Wars after so many years. I don’t think I would’ve had the courage to do it, myself, not after the original trilogy blew up into this enormous cultural institution that a significant number of people thought of as genuinely sacred. It seemed to me an impossible mountain to climb… there was just no way he was going to be able satisfy the incredibly overheated expectations and hopes that people attached to Episode I.

Before anyone starts ranting in the comment section, let me state for the record that I have exactly zero interest in debating yet again the merits or flaws of the prequels. But I would like to say that I have long been frustrated with the truly astounding amounts of bile directed at Lucas personally. Fanboys used to think he could do no wrong; now they think he can do no right. Both positions are equally nonsensical. Uncle George may not be a genius, but he’s also not a hack. He’s human. He got old and grew rusty in his craft. His vision drifted out of sync with the culture. He let us down. You know, it happens, guys. And it happens to a lot of creative people, unless they follow the Harper Lee route and retire after their one big hit. George Lucas didn’t do that. For whatever reason — and really, who knows what truly motivated him, but I’m pretty certain it wasn’t money, as so many sneering Comic Book Guy types claim — he decided to give writing and directing another go. And he failed, in the eyes of many — but certainly not all — Star Wars fans. But in the end, he tried. And as Oswalt points out, that’s more than the vast majority of his most vociferous critics can claim.

Give the man a break. He deserves some degree of respect simply for creating this thing that we love so much that we couldn’t handle being disappointed by it.

Getting back to the usual inanity, have you heard about the clever way JJ Abrams revealed the names of some of the new characters we’ll be seeing in Star Wars: The Force Awakens? He had his marketing people take screen grabs from the trailer and mock up eight virtual “trading cards” in the same style as the classic card sets manufactured by the Topps company in the late ’70s, right down to the fuzzy image reproduction, the dust speckles, and the texture of the card stock… all the flaws that lent those old cards so much of their retro charm:

There is a cynical part of me that’s concerned JJ is pressing the nostalgia button a little too hard, and that trying to pastiche the original trilogy too thoroughly is going to backfire on him. I get the motivation — one of the complaints many people had with the prequels was that the look and tone of them was too different from the originals — but it’s not 1977 or even 1999 anymore, and basing too much of his sales pitch on the notion that he’s recaptured the experience we had back then is only going to set us all up for a massive letdown. At the very least, he might be doing his film a disservice by not letting it become a Star Wars for the 20-teens… by not allowing it to find its own identity. (“He’s got to follow his own path, no one can choose it for him.”)

And then on the other hand, my inner ten-year-old is hopping up and down and squealing, “Cool! Topps cards! They look like old Topps cards!” I’ve always loved those vintage trading cards — I still have all the random ones I collected as a kid, as well as complete sets I bought years later, and of all the vast quantities of Star Wars-themed junk I’ve amassed over the last 37 years, they remain among my very favorite items. I’m actually hoping these Force Awakens mock-ups get produced as a genuine, physical card set I can add to the collection. (I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that’s already in the works.)

To see the other four mock-ups (there are eight total), go here… and may the Force be with you!

Remember what I wrote in the previous entry about seeing a TV commercial when I was a kid for a theatrical re-release of Star Wars (this was before home video, kids, so the only way we could see it again was if it returned to theaters… or turned up on “The Movie of the Week” on television!), and how it sent me running out to the Back-40 like some kind of maniac? Well, it might very well have been this commercial right here:

It amazes me what you can find out there in dark corners of the Internet… things we never imagined would ever be seen again…

(Oh, and for the record, that shot of the Falcon backing out of the landing bay and spinning around has always been one of my favorite moments in the entire saga. The rising shriek and then the boom of her engines still makes the hair on my arms stand up. I understand it was one of the most difficult visual-effects shots in the entire movie!)

If you’re one of the three people on Earth who hasn’t heard yet, the official announcement went out this morning: Principal photography on Star Wars Episode VII has wrapped and the actual title of the movie has been revealed:

Um, yeah. Okay.

I hate to be one those fans, you know, the ones who seem to derive more pleasure from bitching about the thing they supposedly love than, you know, actually enjoying it, but I have to admit I am… not impressed. It’s become somewhat axiomatic that the prequel titles — The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith —  were ridiculous and clunky (and there are even some who say the same of the original trilogy titles, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi), but I disagree. I liked them from the start, because they evoked the saga’s origins in the old Flash Gordon cliffhanger serials of the 1930s, whose episodes had titles like “The Unseen Peril” (sound familiar?), “The Prisoner of Mongo,” and “Doom of the Dictator.” They have an enthusiastically pulpy sound that I personally find appealing. The Force Awakens, on the other hand… the tone is off, to my ear. It sounds very much like the title of a fan film to me, so many of which seem to be sooooo self-consciously serious, at least in my experience of them.

I don’t know, I could be wrong. It’s just three words, after all. They might grow on me after I’ve lived with them a while, and it could be they perfectly reflect the story, which will only become evident after we see the finished picture. I recently encountered a rumored plot line — which I won’t repeat here, for those readers who are trying to remain unspoiled — that this title would actually be quite appropriate for, as it supposes that certain characters have been, shall we say, dormant since we last encountered Our Heroes. But I don’t know that I believe that premise is for real, for a number of reasons. JJ Abrams played a lot of games in the run-up to Star Trek into Darkness, trying to fool everyone into believing that his film actually wasn’t a remake of The Wrath of Khan, when of course that’s precisely what it was. (Or so I’ve been told, as I still haven’t seen it. Trusted sources warned me to stay away if I wanted to maintain a healthy blood pressure.) There have been a lot of supposed leaks from the set of Episode VII, everything from pre-production art to that plot line to behind-the-scenes photos. Call me a cynic, but I wouldn’t put it past Abrams to be deliberately planting red herrings to get the fanboys talking, and also to keep them distracted from discovering what the movie is really about.

Or the leaks could be the real thing after all… in which case, I am… concerned. I’m trying very hard to remain open-minded about this first post-Lucas Star Wars film. I want it to be good, I really do. I’d love it if The Force Awakens is so good that it heals the rift that the prequels opened and makes it possible to again be a Star Wars fan without having to qualify where you stand. That it will again be possible to talk about Star Wars without it automatically turning into another tiresome debate. I want this film to recapture the magic of the original trilogy while also paving the way into the next generation of the Star Wars franchise. I want a movie that everyone will love. But I have a very hard time believing that JJ Abrams is the man to deliver it, after the complete hash he made of Star Trek. His take on that franchise was superficial flash that contained a lot of surface-level nods to the source material — or at least to the general public’s notion of the source — but showed no real understanding of what the source material was actually about. Abrams-Trek was an impression of Star Trek, rather than an authentic or meaningful updating of the franchise. And I fear that’s what we’re going to get with his take on Star Wars, as well. Granted, much of the blame for the Trek debacle lies with the scriptwriters… but it was Abrams, in the end, who was calling the shots. And it’s the same with Ep VII. He may have Lawrence Kasdan involved in writing the screenplay, but that doesn’t mean the director’s vision is going to be clear. Or worthwhile.

I’m especially worried about the tone of Episode VII. I think it’s going to be incredibly difficult to pull off. The grown-up fans who’ve lived with this franchise for 40 years, such as myself, are going to insist they he take the material very seriously — we understandably want a Star Wars that speaks to us, that’s matured along with us, and not a version made for the kiddies — and yet this material was never meant to be dark-n-gritty in the currently popular mode of so much of our entertainment. Star Wars shouldn’t be The Walking Dead; it’s the heir to Flash Gordon. That’s always got to be paramount when approaching this material. But of course so many people have forgotten that, or don’t want to admit it. The original trilogy had its dark moments, true, especially during Empire… but it was always fun, above all else. That sort of tone can be found — I think the films that comprise the Marvel Cinematic Universe are doing an exceptional job of it — but can it be done with Episode VII? Or perhaps more accurately, has it been done?

The alleged Ep VII pre-production art that’s floating around the web is very cool… but also very dark. Whereas the storyline I’ve run across is frankly pretty silly. There’s an immense ying-and-yang tension at work here… and again, I’m just not certain that JJ Abrams has the talent, the skillset, or frankly the depth to reconcile the two extremes and make it work.

And then there’s the fact that Our Heroes are pretty long in the tooth. I’m not opposed to seeing beloved characters getting old — The Wrath of Khan, widely considered the best of the original-cast Star Trek films, was more about Kirk coming to terms with his advancing age than blowing things up; that’s what made it such a great Star Trek film — but will Episode VII actually address the aging issue, or will we have the embarrassing spectacle of seeing Harrison, Mark, and Carrie trying to behave as they did 40 years ago (as in the worst of the original-cast Trek films, The Final Frontier)? For that matter, will Our Heroes even be an integral part of the story, or are they relegated to mere cameos? Again, that “leaked” story I’ve seen suggests the real action of the film is carried by the younger cast. Which I suppose would be fine if Harrison, Mark and Carrie’s cameos have some meaning to them and aren’t just stunts. But at this point, it’s impossible to say which direction Abrams will take.

And then there’s Anthony Daniels’ recent tweet that this film is going to be better than The Empire Strikes Back, which struck me as somebody trying too hard and just makes me suspicious about the true quality of this thing.

Again, I’m trying, I’m really trying to be open-minded… but I keep hearing that oft-repeated motto of the Star Wars saga in my head: I’ve got a bad feeling about this… and nothing that’s come out yet, including the official title, has done much to settle that feeling…