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An Animated, Open Letter To J.J. Abrams About Star Wars
juliangamble writes "Designer Prescott Harvey has written and animated an open letter to J.J. Abrams about the plans for the next Star Wars movie. He says, 'Like so many people, I've spent most of my recent years wondering why the original Star Wars trilogy was so awesome, and the new movies were so terrible. What are the factors that make Star Wars Star Wars? I took an empirical approach, determining what elements were in the original movies that differed from the prequels. My first major epiphany was that, in the originals, the characters are always outside somewhere very remote. The environment and the wildlife are as much a threat as the empire. All three movies had this bushwacky, exploratory feel. Contrast that with the prequels, where the characters are often in cities, or in the galactic senate. In order for Star Wars to feel like a true adventure, the setting has to be the frontier, and this became my first rule.'"
Agreed. I saw the original Star Wars in theaters. I saw of the original trilogy in theaters, and then the special edition re-releases in theaters when I was in college. I still enjoyed the movies then just as I had before, then again, I had an absolutely cool Rocky Horror Picture Show type crowd in the audience. The movie could have been Manos: The Hands of Fate, and everyone would have been just as awesome.
Looking back, Star Wars really wasn't good except for the special effects. He is right about the frontier aspect, but more importantly, Star Wars was a combination of swashbuckling Errol Flynnn and Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns wrapped up in a WW2 war movie. There was a universality to the stories in the original trilogy. The conspiracy aspect of the new trilogy is very black helicopters and tin foil hat in nature, and seems to naturally fit in our era today. Whereas the original trilogy was largely a light heroic high fantasy adventure, the new trilogy was a dark tale about corrupt governments, secret alliances, and a shakespearean tragic hero. Darkness isn't bad; it is the standard now, but the dark serious aspect of the new trilogy is greatly hampered by the cuteness that appeared in Return of the Jedi and was turned up to 10. All the jokes C3P0 made during the first film was unbearable to me, more so than Jar Jar Binks.
But looking again at the original trilogy; the acting was largely cookie-cutter. The dialogue was intentionally comic bookish in order to make the film fit within its heritage. That's fine. There were a lot of sci-fi fantasy movies you could have watched then, and the acting was pretty much on par. The original trilogy's greatness comes in the nostalgia. I actually know adults who have never seen the originals, and upon watching them, thought "Meh, that was fun." And that's it. Star Wars was fun. And it was made more fun by the fact that we were kids when we saw it.