The "galactic gasbag" article, while extremely harsh, raised a good point about the way that the Star Wars series began as a fun, un-serious movie even though Lucas later tried to add deeper meaning to it.
However, this article skips over the most important question: why would Lucas feel the need to fabricate an academic-sounding backstory for an action movie? We know that the partnership was profitable for Campbell because he got a lot of publicity and public awareness of his research out of its association with such a popular movie, but what about Lucas?
He felt the need to justify Star Wars' popularity by turning it into a spiritual, academic work, something it isn't and will never be. Lucas is not the only person who thinks this way. We all divide the world up into 'things we can learn from' vs. 'things that are fun and entertaining'. One of the most obvious places we do it is separating books into "literary" and "popular" or "genre" fiction.
The problem with this way of thinking is that it promotes the idea that only "serious" works have meaning and value. It makes us look down on amazing, entertaining stories that look at the world in a less serious way.
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I believe that Lucas was not alone in his quest for deeper meaning in Star Wars. I believe that every fan of Star Wars wanted it to be something more intellectual because they felt like it was wrong to dedicate so much attention to a film with no deeper aspirations than providing cool explosions and lightsabers fights. If Star Wars was a profound and thought provoking work, then the guys arguing about whether jango or bobba fett was a better bounty hunter were not sci-fi nerd but instead scholars. However, I believe that there is nothing wrong with being a sci-fi nerd and that people should not be ashamed with finding entertainment in a movie that was made to entertain.
ReplyDeleteI think that the addition of new technology makes the old movies more serious. George Lucas got carried away with making big crashes and laser explosions. This made the whole tone of the movie to be more serious and took away from the light hearted, funnier first movies. If they had more technology to work with in the old movies, I think the tone of the movie would have been more serious.
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