Trollheart Explores the Legacy of
I’m old enough to remember queuing to see the original release of the first
Star Wars movie, now titled
Episode IV: A New Hope. I remember the line stretched all the way down the street, and even for my time this was unusual. People queued for movies, yes, but generally you were talking maybe fifty or so people max; for the line to run down the street (this being O’Connell Street, the main one in Dublin city centre) you would need a few thousand easily. But that was what it was like when
Star Wars was released in 1977: everyone wanted to see it, and that included adults and a whole lot of people who wouldn’t even watch a science fiction movie.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, for a very long time - up to the release of this movie, in fact - science fiction was seen as the purview of two types of viewers: kids, and nerds who enjoyed science-y stuff, and almost always by default wore glasses, had bad unfashionable haircuts and lots of acne. One thing science fiction movies at least were not was fun. Look at the ones before this time - even relatively light fare such as
Logan’s Run (released only a year before this, and look how different it is, the audience its writers were catering to) had a dark, almost fatalistic element to them, and others such as
Planet of the Apes and
Silent Running were really meant to be taken seriously. You had the serials of course from the 1930s and 1940s, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers flying around in unrealistic spaceships in tight-fitting costumes, the hatches of the ships specially widened to admit those strong, lantern jaws. Nobody took these things seriously. Nobody could, and maybe nobody was meant to.
And of course you had television trying to make science fiction “respectable”, with shows such as
Doctor Who and
Lost in Space, and the big one,
Star Trek. But while these managed to divest science fiction somewhat of its geeky/kids-only trappings, at the cinema folks still went to see westerns, romances, comedies and adventure movies. Horror was okay too. But science fiction? What am I, seven?
All that changed with the release of George Lucas’s blockbuster. It’s not in any way hyperbole or overstating the case to say that
Star Wars - the first movie as well as the later franchise - changed the face of science fiction cinema forever. After this, everyone would jump on the light-hearted, family-friendly adventure in space, and hundreds, if not more, clones would copy the success of a man whose movie had not even been expected to be a success. A blueprint for science fiction movies had been laid down, and with slight variations, still drives most of the movies of that type today. It wouldn’t be true to say that every science fiction movie owes its existence to Lucas, but as a whole, science fiction film came of age under Lucas’s then-young hand, and a movie about far-flung empires, bad guys in black and princesses set the blueprint for what was to follow.
I was, of course, a fan of
Star Wars, and for a long time there were only the three movies. We thought that was all there ever would be, and to be fair, the third one had wrapped up the story pretty well. Nevertheless, Hollywood is a hungry beast, and rumours abounded of “prequel” movies, but nobody really ever believed they’d get made, never mind see the light of day. Lucas was tight-lipped, dropping hints and giving knowing winks throughout the late 1980s and into the next decade, and indeed the millennium was nearly out before we got the “next” movie, which was indeed a prequel, and was indeed pants. Like a lot of fans, I found myself wishing he hadn’t bothered. Sometimes a classic (even three) is best left alone.
Although I’ve seen, only once each, the “first” three prequels, I never went any further, and this journal aims to do just that. With a total now of eleven movies (including the originals), a staggering seven separate animated TV series (and this doesn’t even include a further seven micro-series, whatever they are!) and three live-action TV series, it’s safe to say
Star Wars, the franchise, is giving the other big name in the science fiction TV and film universe,
Star Trek, a real run for its money.
So, hell: there’s a lot to get through, so you’ll appreciate it when I say do not expect major episode or film synopses. What I intend to do here (and it’s going to take some time, let me tell you!) is watch all the movies (starting from
The Phantom Menace*, as I know the other three backwards and in the original Klingon, sorry, wrong series) though I will be talking, of course, about the original trilogy, and the TV series, and comment on them, where I see there being major changes, how they impact the overall storyline set out in the originals, or don’t, how they fill out the history or mythology of the franchise, and how, in general, they add to, or detract from the franchise.
I feared for
Star Wars when Disney bought them out, and I think my fears have been more or less justified, with the emphasis more on games and toys that can be squeezed out of the movies and series now than the actual stories, but we’ll see as we go along. I will do everything in order, sticking to a strict chronology, so if for instance there are two movies with a series in between, I’ll do one movie, then the series, then the second movie, so that the timeline is maintained.
Of course, it should go without saying, comment, discussion, debate and bare-knuckle fist fights are all involved (please deposit any light sabers or blasters at the door, thank you) and if we can get a discussion going and some interest, maybe this will be fun. If not, well, at worst it will allow me to catch up on the many, many elements of the
Star Wars universe I’ve been either missing out on, or have mercifully escaped. At the end of this project, I will at least have formed a proper, informed opinion of how the franchise has gone, and how things have developed, for good or bad, since I stood outside the Savoy Cinema in O’Connell Street with my brothers and my ma, munching on a Kit-Kat in the rain, a geeky fourteen-year-old, wondering if it would be worth it.
Forty-five years is a long time - most of my life, in fact: let’s see what Lucas - and Disney - have been up to during that time.
* Correction courtesy of Batty