Recently twitter has assiduously informed me that the Star Wars prequels are shit. Well, maybe but Star Wars Episode 1 took $1,000,000,000 at the box office so it must have done something right. I did see it at the time. I think I even enjoyed it at the time. I haven't felt the need to see it since. I couldn't remember much of the plot. I do remember some corny dialogue and lots of politics and plotting and political shenanigans which to this day I still don't comprehend. And of course the Jar Jar Binks CGI controversy.
To me Star Wars is for children. The originals were a long time ago in a far away galaxy. The prequels are really a very very long time ago in a far away galaxy. They're really fantasy in a science fiction costume. The whole thing of celibate monks fighting each other with strobe lights seemed faintly ridiculous. But the anger they seem to produce sometimes makes me want to see them again. And then it doesn't. Someone said something weird about them being benchmarks of American culture. Well, maybe that's why I don't want to watch them .... the weird reverence around them... No doubt due to their peculiar religious undertones.
I mean I have tried. I watched the first of the sequels but after that I didn't keep up. It was okay. But the way people go on you'd think this is all there was to American culture. Or indeed culture in general. Or film in general. I think I tried watching a bit of Rogue One once but switched off after 10 minutes. Mainly because it was on Netflix.... Perhaps the reason I'm not watching them is these are things that are not repeated on the telly. Whilst James Bond is often on you won't see Star Wars on Freeview.
The thing is there are so many other films to see and watch and discuss. It bothers me that the conversations are always stuck upon this. People talk today about franchises but there really were not any when I was a child. Sometimes you'd get a run of three films like Star Wars or Indiana Jones or the Dollars Trilogy but then they'd stop because.... They'd run out of ideas. But now the cash cow has to be milked forever. It's like a form of intensive farming. Of course there was James Bond but they were kind of working their way through the books to an extent... And the Carry Ons? But they were parody...
Researching this without the strain of actually watching a Star Wars film again I was saddened to discover that young Jake Lloyd's adult life has been plagued with schizophrenia and many of the dreadful consequences that come with that disease. He would seem to have literally travelled to the dark side. Which makes the above poster seem quite an upsetting portent of doom... what a tragedy. Lost innocence indeed.
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