Ambiguous title for a blog post when I haven't posted here in quite a while. For that I apologize; life with two small boys can get a bit hectic but I'm trying to get the ball rolling on the blogs again.
Anyway...
Excitement? About what you ask?
Star Wars.
Yes. I'm one of
those geeks folks. I love Star Wars; have since I was a little kid. I can remember hearing that unforgettable, send shivers up your spine opening music on an 8-track cassette (tape?) my parents owned. No, I was not born when the first movie came out in 1977 (I arrived two years later) but my parents loved Star Wars and so I grew up watching the original trilogy...and loved it.
Fast forward many, many years and the news that there would be...PREQUELS!!! OMG!!! We'd be able to see all that backstory that is only mentioned and hinted at in the original trilogy!! Star Wars fans around the world cheered and rejoiced like the Empire had just fallen.
And then they happened. And by "they" I mean the prequels. What started out with such excitement soon turned into...disappointment? horror? disgust? Maybe all of those. I tried to like the prequels. Really, I did. I'm a Star Wars fan and I'm SUPPOSED to like the movies. They're
Star Wars for goodness sake!! Well I do like the movies. I LOVE the movies...the original trilogy. While there were some nice moments in the prequels there was just something missing. Something wasn't right. I liked Ewen McGregor and Liam Neeson and even Natalie Portman. I felt they did pretty good with what they had to work with (okay okay...I just liked LOOKING at Ewen!). But the storyline, dialogue, something was just lacking (and I know the original trilogy didn't have superb dialogue either!). For me a big part (besides a Gungan which will remain nameless and hopefully forgotten) was the overall feel of the movies visually. While things looked
nice they were missing that charm that the original trilogy had; all that CGI stuff was "nice" but it just wasn't Star Wars.
I'm old enough and mature enough now to admit that the prequels were not good movies. That makes me sad because there was so much potential. Those three movies also tarnished some of that magic Star Wars had always possessed.
Fast forward a few more years and there's news that there will be new Star Wars movies, another trilogy, this time set AFTER the original. This announcement was not greeted with the same excitement as the announcement of the prequels. We'd been burned and disappointed and let down and and and...the skepticism was rampant, with yours truly included. I didn't want the beloved trilogy mangled and tarnished any more than it already had been.
Then there was...silence with only bits and pieces of information for quite some time. Then there were some sparks of - was that hope? Disney had control this time and Disney has a pretty good track record when it comes to making things work. There's a new director and Lucas won't have a much of a say so/hand in these (how much????). The original stars will have a part in the newest movie. There were hints and rumors about who will be starring in these new installments. As a Star Wars fan I couldn't help but be intrigued and curious but cautious at the same time. And then the news starting coming out (leaking out?) quicker until we get to April 30 and we see this:
I'll be honest. I have absolutely NO IDEA who the new actors are in this movie or what kind of work they've done in the past but I'm pretty excited to see Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Peter Mayhew, and Anthony Daniels returning. But what made me the happiest was when I read that the new director planned on using models, real sets, robots, etc for this movie and that it wouldn't all be CGI. Some of what I've read has given me some hope and excitement because it sounds like they're trying to find what made the original trilogy so wonderful and recreate that. Yes. Excitement. Of course there will be lots of critics who don't like the new actors, don't like the director, don't like this, don't like that but that's to be expected. I, however, have felt the first twinges of excitement for a Star Wars movie since Episode 1 was announced to be in production back in the late 90s.
I'm very much looking forward to December 2015; I'm going to make sure I have child care lined up way ahead of time because I don't want to miss this...though I'll be sitting in my sit with my fingers crossed, praying that the movie doesn't suck (and that there is no mention of midichlorians and no Gungans in sight).
May the Force be with them (because they're gonna need it)...
