What Does Star Wars Mean To You?

Alec Guinness will always be Prince Faisal to me.

 

Posted in error - remove if poss

 

I shan't repeat what has gone before, I will just say that mnay of the above posts have done a great job summarising what this group of films has become for so many people. To me too, they're not just films, they're mythology in their own right. Whilst I would say that I appreciate literature, I certainly have not studied it or read as widely as many other references above imply others have, so don't really know when certain themes and tales were first written, but for me there is no question that SW is the greatest myth-cum-fairy tale of the last century.

I'm sure the majority of Sw fans, of which there are many, would give it similar status. More widely, outside the realm of SW fans, there are many who would scoff at this suggestion and perhaps look down their noses at SW and begin to cite many authors/novels and directors/films (of which I doubt I'll have heard of many at all) who deserve more appreciation. These people may have read more widely and watched films from a wider spectrum than I have, but I find it quite pretentious. The reputation the films have for box-office returns, special effects and merchandising would probably be a large factor in this perspective, consigning the saga to the 'summer blockbuster' heap. But as we all know, SW grabbed a massive section of an entire generation (or two)'s imagination and is endlessly cited, parodied, referred to, etc. on a scale that no other film/s has ever been, or is ever likely to be. This is what qualifies it as the greatest myth-cum-fairy tale of the last century.

But what makes it even greater is the medium in which it is boradcast. Although it is quite plainly an amalgamation of many tales previously told, the combination of emotional and spiritual sentiment, the sound, the visuals, the music, the action, the breadth of the frame of reference - this all propels it to an unrivalled level. In the history of civilisations, spoken and written word have been the medium for myth and legend for thousands of years. Film has only emerged in the last 100 years and so is not given the same histrorical weight - somehow the achievements of film are not seen as being as worthy as those of literature (possibly due to the commercial nature of film as well). But it's because of this, because film is somehow seen as the 'cheaper', 'more common' distant cousin of literature in terms of artistic worth, that SW achievements are even more outstanding, because SW has overcome this stigma for so many people. Yes, I bought some of the merchandise, and yes, I have bought the films in VHS, DVD, and will buy again if ever a worthy saga edition is released, but this commercial aspect of the 'franchise' is only an element of the SW effect, and should take nothing away from the films themselves and the credit they deserve for the way they portray the fall and rise of a civilization and family simultaneously.

You hear some people, who I can only call pretentious snobs, say that the use of music and special effects somehow devalue the merit of a film, because the director is resorting to cheap tricks to influence the mind of the viewer - I say these snobs should get their heads out of their own exhaust ports. It's quite obvious that the contribution of John Williams to the SW experience is immeasurable, but this is something the saga should be praised for, not marked down for.

This started off as a short post. I just wanted to echo previous posts and add a comment that had occurred to me while reading. What I wanted to add that I don't think has had much mention so far is that watching SW provides so much pleasure to me, not only because of the elements mentioned above, but because of the richness of characters created right across the saga. Watching SW is like watching a documentary on the wildlife of a tropical rainforest - you see all these never-before-seen beings and just love them, you don't know why particularly, you just do.

For example:

Watto - love him
The Battle Droids - love them
The Rancor Keeper - love him
Lobot - love him
The Nemoidians - love them
Nien Nu