Return of the Plot

Here is my five-word, short, non-spoiler Revenge of the Sith review:
Fuck you, I liked it.

Here is the longer one:

George Lucas finally succeeded in creating what’s been his supposed intention for the last twenty years. Namely, create a big-budget, Saturday matinee serial. The kind with swordsmen, cowboys, space ships, evil wizards ,and ham-fisted dialogue all rolled into one. The problem most of us have with this is that the first trilogy has became so much more. They aren’t my movies though, they are his. It just took this long to realize it.

I started drawing because I needed to make new Star Wars adventures. Jedi knights and Sith Lords covered my walls and notebooks. Of course at the time I called them bad Jedi and good Jedi. I also thought ‘the force’ was synonymous with ‘lightsaber’ due to poor wording on my Empire Strikes Back book and record (you will know it is time to turn the page when you hear Artoo-Deeto beep, like this). Hey, I was five.
When I was thirteen I made about a dozen Star Wars home movies on my parents camcorder. Some with toys, some with cardboard sabers and bb guns (I decided I was the smartest person ever when coming up with the idea of loading red party straws into the air-rifle to fire ‘blaster’ shots). The camera I broke three years later filming a climatic ‘Millennium Falcon crashes into Tatooine’ scene.
When I was Seventeen I started my first ‘novel’. It was set in the Star Wars universe and filled with the absurd amount of knowledge gleaned from running Star Wars RPG games for something like 6 years.
That was my Star Wars.

Then I saw the Phantom Menace.
When the opening scrawl inched across the screen Aspirin Kid turned to me and said ‘I am so excited I think blood is going to spray from my fingertips.’ After the movie I remember saying “I do not think I will ever be excited about anything again. Nothing ever lives up to expectations. It all turns into shit.” A gross overstatement, but exactly how I felt at the time: heartbroken.

Attack of the Clones came and went. It was not as excruciating, but even less memorable. I felt George sat down and said, “Hmmm. We need to fill up two hours before we get to the Vader sotry…let ‘s just show Boba Fett a bunch. The kids like Boba Fett.”

And here we are. I went into the theatre thinking simply this. ‘George, just show me something I cannot feel bad about liking. I want to see some Jedi’s knocking stuff over with the force. I want a new space fight (not the RotJ one that was in Phantom, or the ESB one that was in Clowns). And I want to see Anakin fuck some Jedi up. Show me why he is the most evil thing in the galaxy. If you could throw a bunch of A New Hope references that will make the nerd in me slobber all the better (though no more of this Darth Vader sewed all the clothes that the characters wore in the other movies bullshit). I had been so beaten down that’s where I was. I just wanted to live in that universe one last time, and then let it all go. And I got it.

I cannot tell you if it was a good film. On the scale of other movies it probably was, but Star Wars is not other movies. What I got was the realization that this is just a movie and these characters are not mine, and that is okay. We cannot hang on to our childhoods forever. If this is the way this part of mine ends, fine. I’ve grown up, and I can like the movies George is trying to make for himself. I should be making my own stories now instead of telling him why Artoo can’t fly, anyway.

Oh, and those four duels were pretty neat.

What say you my little padawans?