Worlds Building

My friend said that she will get a post about Humpday, the free movie I had to give up my tickets to, written within a few weeks, so I will post it when I get it. The "Up next" line at the end of my last post has two meanings. The first meaning is that, next Friday, I will be leaving for Prague, Czech Republic for a month-long study abroad program, and I doubt I will do much posting while I am there. The other meaning refers to my next post series, which will probably be different than the style of most of what I have already published. I got the idea on July 4th, when I was over at a friend's house. We were supposed to go to the beach to watch the fireworks at Navy Pier, but the weather wasn't cooperating. Instead, we stayed in and turned on the TV. Return of the Jedi was on, and my friends and I started talking about various aspects of the Star Wars films, from the politics of the Empire, to the moral ambiguity of Darth Vader, to the quality of the prequel trilogy.

I can't believe I haven't done a Star Wars post yet for various reasons. For one thing, it is one of the most "holy" aspects of geek culture. It was the first of the "Trinity of Trilogies" released from the late 70s through the late 80s (the other two have already been covered here [Indiana Jones and Back to the Future]; interestingly, they are all connected through their creators because George Lucas created Star Wars, worked with Steven Spielberg on Indiana Jones, and Spielberg produced Back to the Future). The original trilogy has been referenced, parodied, and studied ad nauseum by filmmakers, scholars, and fans. Kevin Smith probably owes half of his estate to George Lucas, and Darth Vader has become a cultural icon.

In addition, there was a time in my life when I was absolutely obsessed with Star Wars; I saw the original trilogy an inordinate amount of times, I read the Young Jedi Knights books featuring Han and Leia's twin children as they trained to become Jedi (as I recently learned, one of them eventually became a Sith), and I eagerly anticipated the release of Episode I. My birthday is in May (for a long time, I was under the impression that the original film had been released on my birthday in 1977, although I later learned it was released about a week later), and when Episode I was released days after my birthday, my party was a Star Wars extravaganza culminating in my friends and I going to the movie (some of us for at least the second time).

I still highly anticipated the other two prequels, but after Episode I, my fandom decreased dramatically. Years later, after watching Firefly, there was a time when I had actual antipathy for the Star Wars universe due to the sheer "blind faith" that many people had for the series. I have since come to terms with the fact that (1) Firefly will never be as loved and (2) there are plenty of good aspects of the Star Wars universe. However, I certainly don't see the films the way I once did.

This post series will focus on various aspects of the six films (I am not going to venture too far out into the "Expanded Universe" of the multitude of books, games, comics, etc.). I will examine the politics (which were almost non-existent in the original trilogy and an enormous aspect of the prequel trilogy), morality in the galaxy far, far away, including the failings I now see in the Jedi Code, and how the series has influenced me in ways I did not realize until relatively recently.

Up next: Restoring order to the galaxy...