Go Back   Freethought Forum > The Library > Articles & Essays > Reviews

Comment
 
Article Tools Display Modes
The Masked Man Reviews the Star Wars Movies
The Masked Man Reviews the Star Wars Movies
The Lone Ranger
Published by The Lone Ranger
01-07-2007
Default Introduction

Ruminations on the Star Wars Original Trilogy

Let me say right up front that I enjoy the Star Wars movies. I really do. They’re lots of fun to watch, even though they don’t make much sense when you stop to think about them. Certainly, I don’t see anything wrong with mindless popcorn movies – and when it comes to mindless but fun entertainment, the Star Wars movies immediately leap to mind. Having said that, I don’t feel there’s any contradiction between enjoying a movie and noticing that it has flaws.

When you think about it, it’s amazing that most movies are as good as they are. Movies are almost never filmed in sequence, so scenes that take place only a few seconds apart on screen might have been filmed weeks or even months apart. I would imagine this is quite disorienting for even the most talented of actors. In science-fiction movies, actors have it even worse, because so often they’re supposed to be reacting to things that will be added in by special-effects technicians months or even years later. (I remember reading an interview with Dirk Benedict of Battlestar Galactica in which he claimed he felt like an idiot standing in front of a blue screen and pretending to be under attack by an enemy he couldn’t see.) Surely, it takes a truly talented actor to convincingly “react” to things that exist only in the imaginations of the people involved.

Fantasy and science-fiction movies typically take place in universes where the laws of physics clearly function differently than they do in our own universe. That’s fine with me, so long as they’re consistent about it. I’m much less forgiving of logical inconsistencies and instances of supposedly-intelligent characters behaving stupidly.

So, what am I interested in discussing here? Well, I’m not going to concern myself with such questions as “Is the acting any good?” There are plenty of others who are better-qualified to answer those questions. For the most part, I’m not going to worry too much about whether or not the physics of Star Wars conforms with the physics of the real world either. (That said, there will inevitably be some things that just can’t be overlooked.) What I thought would be fun for this “review” would be to take a light-hearted look at how believable the Star Wars movies are: do they make sense? Of course, lots of articles and books have been written that “explain” seeming inconsistencies in the Star Wars movies; some of them are quite good. I’m not concerned with those here; what I’m interested in is whether or not the movies make sense on their own. If you must go to outside sources to resolve seeming inconsistencies, the film-makers haven’t done their jobs properly, in my opinion.

What follows, then, is a light-hearted examination of the original Star Wars trilogy. I hope you enjoy it!

Contents

Article Tools

Featured Articles
<< <    Next Page: The Physics of Star Wars (Page 1 of 23)    >  >>
Comment

  Freethought Forum > The Library > Articles & Essays > Reviews


Currently Active Users Viewing This Article: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Article Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump

 

All times are GMT +1. The time now is 09:53 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.2
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.

Article powered by GARS 2.1.8m ©2005-2006
Page generated in 0.16257 seconds with 17 queries