Don't Tug on Vader's Cape
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| Title: | Don't Tug on Vader's Cape |
| Creator: | "James Waikle - 'Impmeat' to message board regulars" |
| Date(s): | May 29, 2003 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | Star Wars |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Don't Tug on Vader's Cape, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Don't Tug on Vader's Cape is a 2003 essay by James Waikle at Echo Station.
"Should George Lucas have made the prequels? Or should he have left well enough alone?"
The Post
The year is 1999, and across North America millions of people are waiting with bated breath for something they never thought they would see. A new Star Wars movie. The lights go down, anticipation goes up, and we are treated to a spectacle like no other: Jar Jar Binks.And you thought the Ewoks were bad.
The year is 2002, and once again across North America people are waiting with bated breath. This time, though the fans are more cautious. Would the debacle that was Jar Jar be repeated? Well sort of. In the middle of a kickass scrap we get this cloying, sickening love story.
The year is going to be 2005, and across North America the last ever Star Wars movie is going to open. Will anybody care? The question needs to be asked, should George Lucas have left well enough alone and not bothered to make the prequels?
From 1983 to 1997 Star Wars was absent from the theaters. Then to celebrate the twentieth anniversary, Lucas decided to re-release the trilogy. Anticipation was high and the box office proved that people had been starved for Star Wars, but something funny happened on the way to the bank for Lucas. When he re-released the trilogy he had made subtle changes. Some were excellent: the power rings from Alderaan and the Death Star when they exploded. Some were just plain dumb: Greedo shoots first and that awful musical number in Return of the Jedi. We should have known when the new movies were announced that they could never live up to the originals, and Lucas should have known as well. For over twenty years we had filled in the blanks in the Star Wars history with our own stories, thoughts, and ideas. West End Games had provided endless background material, and authors had started writing books that took us back to a galaxy far far away. Unlike with Star Trek, those books were connected in the time line. [Well, sort of. -Ed.] The stories flowed, and we imagined great things for Star Wars.
Somewhere it all went wrong. The new movies were not bound by the new adventures we had read and loved, and so much that we had speculated on was played out on the big screen in a lame and disappointing way. Visually the new movies are great fun, but when things we have taken for granted for years are ignored or outright changed to the opposite, then fans become disillusioned.
With Star Trek the fans have been pummeled for years by bad books and games that can't fit into the time line no matter how they are twisted. But with Star Wars I took for granted how everything flowed and was so seamless, and I assumed George Lucas would follow what had gone before. Alas it was not to be.
As much as I love Star Wars and as much as I enjoyed the movies, I think George Lucas should have left well enough alone and allowed various others to play in his galaxy and further the story, instead of making movies that just don't measure up to the phenomenon that is Star Wars.