An open thread dedicated to discussing books, movies, and tv shows we love. And occasionally some politics.

I've been thinking a lot lately about Star Wars. I think it's going to take two Open Threads to get through all my feelings about Star Wars, because the prequels are kind of their own banquet of horrors (I'll do them next week).

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHfLyMAHrQE]

I do love this movie, and the fondness it generated in my nine-year-old heart for George Lucas' galaxy far far away endures even after a lot of miles of bad road for both me and the franchise. I don't love it as much as Gene Roddenbery's galactic civilization, but it will always have a place in my heart, and I will have the first two movies basically memorized until the day I die.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvJDItC6tE0&index=3&list=RDP9_KIKwMN1w]

But.

As all Star Wars fans know, George Lucas severely disappointed them, as well as doing damage to his own narrative, from roughly 1983 to 2005. His ability to keep fans coming back and paying money to watch his shows despite being disappointed for twenty-two years is outdone in American culture only by the Democratic party, which has now disappointed its fans, and done damage to its own narrative, from roughly 1972 to 2016. Even Vincent Kennedy McMahon has not so consistently disappointed the fans of the World Wrestling Federation, and that's saying a lot.

By the way, this is what I'd like to do to the Democratic party:
"Turn her around!"

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9_KIKwMN1w]

Ah, that was cathartic. Now where was I? Oh, yes, what Lucas did to his franchise. Rather than tormenting all of you with analysis (and clips) from all the prequels, I want to focus this week on the end of the story (as far as Lucas is concerned) Return of the Jedi. Because the fact is, even if Lucas had done stupendously well in making an engaging, inspiring story in the prequels, having the climax of your story massively suck is not something that can be fixed. Even J J Abrams can only make reasonably good movies in this universe, not great ones (though I hope Rogue 1 proves me wrong), because the pivotal point of the narrative--the movie where Anakin Skywalker is redeemed and the Empire falls--is, well, crap.

Lucas spends the first half hour of the movie with an opening as tone-deaf as a Hillary Clinton campaign slogan ("I'm With Her" with an arrow horribly combined the 80s t-shirt "I'm With Stupid" with an attempt to get into the VIP area by saying you're best friends with America Ferrera. Really bad.)

Lucas basically takes everything the fans love about his franchise and takes a giant dump all over it. First, of course, there's Leia. While not the first, second, or third favorite character in A New Hope (I'd say that would be Chewie, Han, and Vader--or, possibly, Chewie, Han, and the Falcon, if you want to include semi-sentient objects), Leia was the first spunky princess. This is more important than you might think if you didn't grow up female in the 70s. More than a decade before Disney's Belle, she was an oasis in a desert for a young girl growing up, whose other choices for strong role models were Rizzo, Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, and the short-haired Charlie's Angel. Oh, and Uhura. You'll note that Nichelle Nichols provided the only other really cool option since Rizzo is embattled and despised by her society, Wonder Woman has a really goofy transparent jet and truth lasso which seriously diminish her coolness, and Kate Smith's character is, um, working for a goddamned invisible male millionaire.

So Leia was important to me. At the age of what, sixteen, seventeen? she was already a diplomat and a senator. She was also a freaking freedom fighter undercover. She smuggled secret plans to defeat tyrants. She withstood torture, and even under the pressure of watching her beloved home planet threatened with death, refuses to betray the Rebellion (one of my favorite moments is when they figure out she tricked them. Ha!) Then, in The Empire Strikes Back, she actually saves the day by saving Luke's life, revealing that she has Jedi powers!

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu5-hq-h_4Q]

Sorry. It still gives me chills.

So what does Lucas do in the first few minutes of Return of the Jedi? He makes Leia's rescue attempt of Han fail and puts her in what is now known as a "slave Leia costume." In a metal bikini and skirt, chained to what looks like a cross between a giant talking penis and a sandworm from Dune, the Jedi Knight Leia Organa disappears and never returns in the entire goddamned fucking franchise. So does the Leia capable of intrigue and winning a fight (the fact that she's able to get the drop on an ordinary Storm Trooper later doesn't make up for it.) It's as if Lucas was saying, loudly, "Sorry girls. This is the boys' clubhouse. You have cooties."

But sexism isn't where it ends.

He also screws up Han Solo. Now, of course, after being frozen in carbonite, none of us would be at our best. But no Star Wars fan really wants to see Han staggering around completely helpless because he's temporarily blind and weak. What makes this much, much worse is how it relates to Boba Fett, the second most beloved villain in the Star Wars universe. Han's feud with Boba is intense and wonderful, two guys on the fringes of the law dueling with each other as only rogues can, equal in intelligence and guile. And how does it end? Accidentally:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwC_o_fcW1s]

Wow. Way to show your contempt for both Boba Fett and Han, and not incidentally, your fans. Worst. Booking. Ever.

Then there's Luke. Is it me, or does Luke come off as an arrogant, annoying asshole in that opening sequence?

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSVCvC-jU68]

It's really late at night as I'm writing this, and I feel myself shrinking from dealing with the Ewoks. A lot of people disagree with me on this one, but at the age of 15, when I was first disappointed by this movie, I found the portrayal of the Ewoks amazingly condescending toward indigenous people, enough so that I was uncomfortable. I mean, look at it. You have these pre-industrial people living in what looks like an Amazonian rain forest, waving little spears, practicing cannibalism and believing C3PO is a god (because why? he looks like he's made out of gold? It's never clear). And what are they, when it comes down to it? Teddy bears. I get this strong feeling we're supposed to find them cutesy and funny with their quaint little primitive ways.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmdEg3T8IOM]

I've rarely found anybody else who thinks this is racist, but my fifteen-year-old self did, and Lucas' later portrayal of the Gungans made me suspect she was right. But that's a story for another time. And again, not only was it racist, it was really bad storytelling--sort of like the opposite of cool.

I could go on and talk about how lame it is that the big plot twist is that the Death Star Mark II is actually ready to shoot something. I could talk about how freaking weird it is that Leia accepts the notion that Vader was her father so easily (for God's sakes, he tortured her! But who cares about girlie feelings, am I right?) I could talk about how it's a really good thing that Lucas went back and redid the ending when he re-released the DVDs, so at least we saw celebrations of the Empire's Fall on multiple planets instead of, as my boyfriend puts it, ending with Leia motioning Luke away from his father's pyre in an effort to get him to join in the Ewok yub-yub song:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np6vAuS0KNs]

But it's very very late.

Anyone want to defend Star Wars? Or share some of your own favorite least favorite moments (heh)?
Or share some movies that almost made it to good but ended up falling flat.

Put in your two cents!