The Soapbox: Rants and Commentary: The History Of The Force Composed by Dan O'Leary (dano@cybercomm.net) 1977. Steve Martin was wearing white suits and arrows through his head, The Love Boat was killing our collective IQ points, and a 9 year-old boy named Dan went into his local theater with his Dad and some friends to see some new space movie. This past month, moviegoers got to experience that sensation all over again...no, not those dopey white suits. I’m talking, of course, about Star Wars. All three Star Wars movies were given technological touchups and re-released for the twentieth anniversary celebration. My cynical side knew that Hollywood had dollar signs in their eyes when they released the films, but my sentimental side couldn’t resist revisiting a memorable little part of my past I shared with millions of other people twenty years ago. But I think there’s more to these movies than just a stroll down memory lane for me and a cash cow for Twentieth Century Fox. The trilogy has had a staying power with fans for two decades, and has crept into our societal psyche. Why exactly did these movies leave such a mark on popular culture? I think the main reason is the story. Sure, the acting is painfully bad in some spots, and a couple of dialog lines can make the average person cringe ("scruffy-looking, unkempt nerfherder" comes to mind), but the story overall is a modern fairy tale. It liberally combines elements from diverse sources – the magic of an Oz, the battles of WWII dogfight films, a splash of Errol Flynn swashbuckler, a mythos like Lord of the Rings, an empire like Asimov’s Foundation series, and the exotic action of the Flash Gordon serials – all wrapped up in a tale of Good battling Evil in a faraway land in a forgotten time. Innocent tales like this were, and still are, rare things for a cynical, shallow Hollywood. Not many films can lay claim to the fact that they don’t look dated twenty years after being made. Someone seeing Star Wars for the first time in 1997 (my wife, for instance) wouldn’t have to be worried about distracting, outdated ideologies and fashions hindering one’s enjoyment (try doing that with, say, the original Star Trek). Sure, Luke’s Shawn Cassidy hairstyle (though with the resurgence of the 70s, it’s not quite as dated as disco) and Leia’s attacked-by-baked-goods ‘do in the first movie are a little obvious, but the movies have held up surprisingly well in the decades since their debut. There are actually small, subtle things noticeable to observant eyes. In the first film, for example, the scene involving Leia grabbing the gun from the male heroes, firing at the guards, and blasting an escape route was considered comical twenty years ago: "Look at that! The girl is firing that gun! What a hoot!" This is less a movie flaw than it is a barometer of our culture’s progress in views of equality. The first Star Wars movie was completed with a budget just over $10 million, and single-handedly revived science fiction as a viable (i.e. "profitable") movie genre. The movie used cutting-edge technology (for the era) for its dazzling never-before-seen effects, but still managed to keep everything within the confines of a solid story. Many films in the last twenty years have tried, with much larger budgets and big-draw actors, to duplicate the trilogy’s success. Their creators, however, seemed to have forgotten that the greatest visuals in the world may insure a big initial box office, but the movie has no longevity without a memorable story line. Independence Day comes to mind in this department. (I’ve already ranted about that, so I’ll conserve space here.) Despite ID’s hype machine pushing it as the next Star Wars, I’m sure there won’t be a huge turnout for ID’s twentieth anniversary celebration. Hollywood has found it’s far easier to blow big bucks on new CGI effects, R-rated situations, and explosions, raising the FX and budget ante with each film, than to find a creative person to write something new and exciting. Waterworld and the new Godzilla film coming out this year (among others) were given budgets of $100 million, and, though I admit the possibility of bias, I believe neither film will ever reach the level of fans George Lucas’s trilogy continues to draw. So let Lucas and Hollywood reap their cash crop. I and millions of others love these films, and The Force remains strong for the next generation. Back To Rants and Commentary

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