Manda Watches Star Wars – The Original Trilogy for the First Time

I had never seen Star Wars.

I don’t know why, it was just one of those things I had never seen.  Most likely due to my Dad not really being into it either.  Indiana Jones was my thing, what a great trilogy…yep.

I had no qualms telling anybody this, it was more like a badge of honour at this point.  How can a person be so ignorant of Star Wars?  And it’s not that I just hadn’t seen them, in general, I had no idea what happened in them.  I knew the names of stuff, like Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Darth Vader, Princess Leia, the Force, the Death Star, but how all these things became a plot, nope, not a clue.

Well, mostly not a clue.  I hadn’t been able to avoid the whole Luke I’m your daddy! spoiler.  I mean, I do live on this Earth, I’m not a complete hermit.  But apart from that, I was going in pretty blank.

So now I’ve seen A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, in that order.  So what did I think?

Eh. Shrug.  I can’t say it’s left much of a lasting impression on me.  I’m not ordering key rings off eBay just yet, which is normally how you can tell I like something.  To be honest if I had to write out the plot of each film, I’d probably struggle.  Things just… happened.

Well lets start with A New Hope.  This film was alright, I could follow it with relative ease once we started focusing on Luke Skywalker.  I was a bit lost at the beginning with the whole capturing of Leia and the C3PO and R2D2 somehow ending up wherever it is Luke lives.  I think it may of been because I didn’t read that text crawl at the beginning.  Was there really no way they could of shown that with a voice over?  I might of better understood the motives of both sides then (this applies across this trilogy).  Darth blows up a planet, great, he’s evil!, and from then on he just walks around a bit and has a few conversations.  Oh.  I quite liked the Luke and Obi Wan side of things, it felt like a proper adventure – go find this guy, to get the thing, to do the next thing to beat the bad guys – standard. Han Solo is a dick, Luke saves the day and lots of people die.  Only Luke, Han and Chewwy get a medal, none of those other people doing stuff (like, you know, sacrificing their lives) were deserving apparently. I don’t really understand Obi Wan died for, he just…. did, I mean I guess plot wise it’s to grow Luke up, but Obi just stood their and took it from Darth.  Why?  What was he trying to accomplish?  I dunno.  But still, this film, as most first films in trilogies, stands on its own, has a decent beginning and ending and it is a great spectacle to watch.  So I like it.

The next one, The Empire Strikes Back.  This is the point where I started typing up my experience on G+ to friends, so I may just steal from there.  To be quite honest, I can’t remember how this movie starts, but I know that at some point Luke ends up in a pond on some planet.  And we meet Yoda.  A quote from me. “That Yoda’s annoying and I don’t have the energy to figure out what he’s talking about.”  I think I genuinely stopped listening to the film and checked reddit or something.  What a terrible idea.  But Luke doesn’t seem to be bothered about it, (or much of anything, we’ll discuss later), so here he is to become a Jedi, excellent, you stay there.  So the rest of the crew are on the spaceship and their plan is…..is….. I dunno.  They’re just flying around in space, flirting, arguing, kissing (a certain two people, regrettably), not kissing, eh.  They end up in an asteroid field at one point, great.  Erm, I don’t have a lot to say about them.  They don’t do anything.  So, at some point Luke is off to go see Darth, and they have a little argy-bargy and – oh no! – Luke arm gets cut off AAARRRGGGHHHhhhhhohwell.  After his initial scream, he barely cares.  I understand he’s in a bit of a situation but, dude, your arm, shit.  That’s pretty not good for you.  Anyway, here comes Darth and his big line which isn’t Luke, I am your father.  NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooohwell.  Apart from Luke’s initial reaction, we don’t get anything more showing Luke’s feelings to this oh so shocking revelation.  In fact, at the end, he’s smiling and holding Leia and seemingly pretty happy about everything (although knowing what she looks like in the next one, I too would find little to be sad about in that situation, Phwoar.)  Leia is also a little too happy, considering the love of her life was frozen in a block and flung off to the thing that will make a misery of his life if he’s allowed to live.  I will admit, that both the freezing scene and the confrontation scene are good, and put some actual emotion and consequence into the series to deal with.  We can’t brush off Frozhan or DarthDad, we gotta deal with those things.

Movie 3, or VI or whatever, Return of the Jedi.  So we gotta go rescue Solo.  And we do that by also getting captured.  Oh.  But here’s Luke who is now a Jedi, I think, and some things happen and eventually everyone is brutally murdered and our heroes are away.  So at some point, Luke goes back to have a chat to Yoda, again I didn’t really listen, but apparently talking to Luke can bore you to death.  I think the jist was you’re the chosen one, go kill the bad guys, I must leave you now, just cause. And then.  The Big Revelation.  I genuinely did not know about what happens next.  I actually shouted WHAT out loud.  Luke and Leia…. are twins.  Actual biological twins.  But didn’t she whip her tongue back and forth in Luke’s mouth to piss Han off in the last film?  Yes, yes she did.  And you know what?  Somehow, she’s always known.  That’s her reaction to this news.  Did you ‘somehow know’ when you were cleaning Luke’s molars?  I can’t believe this plot point was planned, there’s no way people knew in Empire that they were siblings and then let them snog anyway.  Geez.  And the thing is, this leads no where.  This film would not change if they were not brother and sister.  It has no consequence on anything that happens.  It’s a waste of time, with incest.  Next (or was it before, I don’t remember the order this all happened in), there’s a planet of little bear things that like BBQSapiens.  I’ve been informed by my friend that these were and probably are very popular toys so I imagine that’s why they were there, as if Star Wars wasn’t making enough money.  They don’t do anything.  Darth’s boss is some wrinkly old guy, I didn’t catch his name, or his plan, or the point.  He has a chat to Luke at some point, I thought he was also going to turn out to be a family member, but I don’t think he his luckily for us, otherwise this may of turned into an episode of Who Do You Think You Are.  Oh I just remember, they want Luke to join the Dark Side!  I’m not sure why, because he doesn’t seem to be particularly special.  Apart from the Jedi thing, but he’s not even that good at it. Would anything really change if he did join the Dark Side?  He gets electrocuted for a bit and a single tear probably falls from Darth’s eye.  How dare he, I only cut off his arm but this is TOO FAR.  And then, our big bad, is rather easily picked up and thrown off a barrier by Darth.  Oh.  None of our heroes killed him.  Most of our heroes are nowhere near where any of this is going down.  And then he dies, I didn’t see how.  He takes off his mask and is very sorry about all of this business and Luke burns him with little feeling.  A lot more people die and the ‘good’ guys win, and then they have a Shrek dance part.  Luke sees Dad, Obi, Yoda as ghosts and is happier than I’ve ever seen him.  This film was lame.  Our protagonists didn’t do anything.

So that’s my Star Wars adventure so far.  I get why people like it.  I really do.  It does look fantastic, especially for the time, and it is extremely watchable.  Talking story though, and personally I care about really good stories whatever medium they’re in, and the story just isn’t their for me.  The motives of the bad guys isn’t very strongly shown, they’re bad because I’ve been told they’re bad.  They blew up a planet, but after that, everything they did was in retaliation to the Rebellion.  If we were to ignore that planet at the beginning, the Rebellion probably killed more people.  How heroic.

Star Wars is not that good.  But here’s some things I have learnt.

• Storm troopers aren’t robots like I always thought they were.
• It doesn’t matter when people die, they can just come back as ghosts whenever they want.
• Never kiss until you’ve seen the DNA test.

Next time, we Phantom Menace.

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My initial ramblings from G+ that I couldn’t be bothered to put slightly more coherently.

Just to let you all know, I’ve started my star wars adventure. The 4th one was alright. I’m in the middle of v at the minute, that Yoda’s annoying and I don’t have the energy to figure out what he’s talking about. I don’t really know what Han and crew are trying to accomplish, they’re just flying about in space. And I don’t really know why Team Darth Vader is bad apart from being told he’s the bad guy oh and apparently stormtroopers aren’t robots like I always thought they were so there’s that.

But that was after, what did he do before that.  I don’t really get what his grand plan is.  Also, Luke in that first one just kinda fell into the plot, he just happened to be there but now he’s like the Chosen One and I don’t understand why.  I mean if he didn’t buy them robots he would never of been involved in the plot and just died with everyone else assuming they got to obi some other way.  Also how come when when the light saber touched obi he disappeared but when it touched luke it cut off his arm? And he didn’t seem to care too much about that either, his reaction was more like he broke a nail.  It’s not bad though, I’ll watch the last one tomorrow I’m guessing it’s The Search for Han?

OH MY GOD HIS TWIN SISTER IS LEIA? Didn’t she snog him in the last film? Eww.

I think I’ve missed something, cause Lukes having a chat with the old guy,( i would like to think hes also a family member ‘luke i am your 2nd cousin’ )and I don’t understand why he doesn’t just kill him, Daddy Darth has disappeared(who incidently, hasn’t really done anything at all since he blew up that planet) I don’t know own who the fish ‘it’s a trap’ guy is.

 

So Darth picked up the old guy, threw him overboard, ran a bit then died. What did he die of, did he do his back in or something?

 

Is this film ending with a dance party like Shrek?

Oh that really was the ending. That was actually kinda disappointing. Luke did nothing. Most people did nothing. There was a bit of argy bargy, and then it was over. Who were the furry bear things, I didn’t understand what they had to do with anything. Why did the dark side need Luke? Surely they were coping perfectly fine before hand? I think this one is the worse of the 3. On a side (-boob) note, geez Carrie Fisher in that bikini. You could remove all my internal organs and I still wouldn’t be that thin. Phwoar.

So in conclusion, I get why people like it, I mean it does look really good especially for the time, and it’s still watchable. But the plot is a bit like he was making it up by the minute, it didn’t really flow, its didn’t really let people dwell on things they found out and most things had no consequence. Leia being his sis did changed nothing, and also, why was she not jedi trained and using the force and everyone wanting to convert her? The ending was lame, and the bad guys never were shown doing anything bad, I didn’t really see the threat. They blew up that planet, bad, and since then they did nothing, no more planet destroying, no terrorising the people, no slavery, in fact everything they did was just retaliating against the rebellion, because they were attacking them.