Inexplicable Movie Review: The Star Wars movies (the good ones)

I don't know why the cover image is a shirtless Luke.

Note: Spoilers follow for the entire Star Wars movie series, although I mostly stay away from the newest movie.

Because Karen didn’t remember seeing them, I recently re-watched the original trilogy with her. It was probably my fourth or fifth viewing of them in order like this – A decent chunk of time, but nowhere near a true fanatic’s devotion level.

I actually gave my thoughts on the first six movies and how I’d rank them in this post on the Family Guy telling of the Star Wars saga. (It would be humorous if I now ranked them Family Guy movies, but, eh, they’re mostly shot-for-shot remakes; decent, but Robot Chicken has the vastly superior Star Wars episode.)

My ranking wouldn’t really shift from back then, except that I’d probably have Sith and A New Hope ranked about equal, instead of the former being better than the latter. I seem to be in the minority of really liking Sith, although I’ll admit that it’s a pretty dark, intense movie. I don’t really have any interest in re-watching scenes about child killing and flesh mutilation via lava.

A New Hope definitely still drags in the beginning, especially since I’m not watching it with the advantage of youth. However, the last of the first act – when they get to the cantina – and onward is all good stuff. Plus, it has a cool showdown between Obi-Wan and Darth, and while you might remember a bunch of lightsaber duels in the movies, there are really only three.

I still think Jedi is better than Empire, or at least, I like the replay value more. Yeah, some of the Ewok stuff can be a bit hokey and cutesy, but I want that on a second (and third, and fourth) viewing. I don’t want to re-watch the edition that ends with Han Solo in carbonite and Luke nursing his robotic hand.

One thing I definitely noticed on this watching – the seams from on-the-fly plot decisions. You know, like deciding Darth Vader is Luke’s father or that Leia is Luke’s sister. They both seem like “wtf???” moments because they were seemingly just made up on the fly, as opposed to always planned by George Lucas.

Karen’s review: “I like the second one because they cut off his hand. But then it just came back, so whatever. I think it sends a bad message to kids. ‘Don’t worry if you get your hand cut off, you can just get a new one!’ When did that black dude [Lando] come into play? The second one? I didn’t like him in that one because he was a dick. He should have figured out some way to warn them. But I liked that the big blobby dude [Jabba the Hut] died and I was glad he wasn’t in the universe anymore. But I didn’t like that pit [sarlacc]. Probably the first one was better, because it helped me understand what it was all about.”

Note: We still haven’t watched The Force Awakens, so that’ll be our homework for some point in the next few weeks. Also, I’m going to be watching some Gilmore Girls too apparently.

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