Star Wars is Officially Stupid

I've been engaged in an ongoing battle with my Star Wars fandom for the better part of a year, and before that, when Harry Plinkett helped me figure out why The Phantom Menace was so, so terrible.

(Quick side story--my friend Dave, whose wife Rachel was in The Odd Couple with me and who are two of our favorite people to hang out with because they laugh easily, explained Plinkett's review to his eight year old daughter by saying she could watch it when "she (is) older and George Lucas was dead.")

And while I recently decided that Back to the Future is the superior trilogy, I still get a little wistful for my Star Wars geekdom.  I want to make an Endor terrarium or Wookie Cookies.

Not anymore.

Not with the release of the Star Wars game for Kinect.  Especially not the part where Han Solo Dances.  You see, the last time I checked, Han Solo wasn't on Dancing With The C-List Actors You Hate. (I don't mean David Arquette when I say this--everyone knows he's a triple Z-list actor who was a has-been by Arizona's definition of when life begins). And worse,  they rewrote awful pop songs so that they had Star Wars lyrics.  My sister Hilary did that when she was eight. Her rendition of "Obi Wan Kenobi" (to the tune of Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee") still makes me laugh when I think about it, but you don't see me putting it up as a dance remix.

A lot of people my age are prequel defenders.  They sit there and they try to tell me that George Lucas would never do anything to hurt them.  They insist that he wrote them as one big mythology and that he knows what he's doing.  And yet here we all are, dancing like goons in front of our TV to "Hologram Girl" (sung to Gwen Steffani's abomination "Hollaback Girl").  And because we are perpetual children fed fat on irony and quirk, believing that our helicopter parents will take care of everything while outwardly voicing that we don't trust the government or our teachers or anyone else.  Lucas is just another extension of the helicopter parent, assuring us that all is well, goodnight.  It would never occur to us to believe that the childhood he created for us was made solely out of greed.  The mean nasty black president is out to take our guns and force us to have partial  abortions performed by Muslim doctors, but George Lucas selling us out?  Never.

New flash: George Lucas is a dick.  If this doesn't prove that he is money-grubbing clown shoes, I don't know what will.  Look, I don't take Star Wars as some sort of great generational mythology.  It was a good space movie, and Han Solo was my first love . . . but I take it with the seriousness I take any story--I expect it to be told in an even tone.  There is nothing in Han Solo's character than indicates he would bust a move.  Lando, maybe, but not Han freakin' solo.  Leave the dance routine to Oola.

So Star Wars is sort of dead to me now.  I can't be that fan who thinks that this is cool and will happily eat whatever shit George Lucas shoves into my face. At least the Back to the Future game stayed within the relative realm of the story.

This week I finally made a decision that's been weighing on my soul for many, many years. I came to this conclusion based on a lot of inner-searching, catchphrase mining, Wii-playing, and record shopping:

Back to the Future is better than Star Wars.


I was in Binghamton last week, cashing in on a bet I'd made with my arch-nemesis Mike (Happy Birthday, by the way) and scouring big-box stores from the Monster High Operetta doll I've been coveting but am too cheap to pay $30 for on ebay and, not finding it, Ian bought me Back to the Future for the Wii, which I had also been coveting because Telltale Games is awesome.

I WANT THIS DOLLY!

So we played it for all of Super Bowl Sunday, which then got me thinking about how awesome Back to the Future is.  It's funny, it's intelligent, storywise, it's filled with wonderful callbacks and repetitions that aren't just shoehorned in for the sake of selling more toys.  The friendship between Doc and Marty seems so damn genuine, and everyone has known a Biff (mine was Chris Hampel, and he was as big and dumb a neanderthal as any incarnation of Biff ever was).  And, as I pointed out before, "The Power of Love" is the awesomest way to start your day short of getting shot out of a cannon. (and Alan Silvestri > John Williams any day)

In watching the trilogy again, as an adult (I always had a soft spot for III, probably because, at 11 years old, I had a weird sweet little crush on Doc.  No, I do not have daddy issues, unless you count that it was my dad who sat through endless viewings of these and who still occasionally calls me "McFly" when he's not calling me "Godzilla.") I realized that it was time to admit that there was only room for one sci-fi trilogy in my life, and Back to the Future was it.

It was a relief, really.  I felt like a real grown-up, leaving behind a devastatingly geeky childhood.  Remember, this was the 90's, and the films hadn't been re-released yet.  You had to buy Star Wars Insider in a brown wrapper.  Wal-Mart didn't stock an endless array of action figures.  Oh yeah, I was soon-to-be cutting edge, but translated, that meant that my sister Hilary and I were pretty much alone in our universe.

My obsession with Star Wars came very close to ruining my life. For all of high school and a good chunk of college, I dated a boy I'd fallen in love with solely for his great love of Star Wars.  We saw The Phantom Menace, in theaters, ten times.  In all fairness, we lived in Cobleskill and there was nothing to do other than go to the Park Theater, which still only costs $3.50.  Aaron was a prequel defender, despite the fact that I pointed out the inconsistencies, such as: 

-Leia remembering her mother (as she tells Luke in Jedi)
-Obi-Wan being Ben Lars' brother (I knew this because I had the official Star Wars character guide, which explains why I was capable of getting up at 9AM on a Saturday morning to watch MST3K . . . easy to get up when you haven't been out late the night before).
-Obi-Wan apparently forgetting Leia existed, despite, according to Sith, being there when she was born.
-Midiclorians, anyone?

Aaron sort of scoffed these off, forgetting that just because he had all the Star Wars tee-shirts (which he wore with tapered-leg jeans, white crew socks and Nike running shoes) did not means that I was not just as much of a Star Wars nerd as he was.

(Side note: Last night I impressed/depressed my boyfriend Ian by speaking in Hutt, which I remember more of than I remember of four years of high school French--je suis un ananas to you too)

I almost married this man.  And when I mean almost I mean ring on the finger, engagement party held, wedding books at hand.  It's a decision that I realize, in hindsight, would have destroyed my life and probably his.  And I blame Star Wars.


I tried re-watching Star Wars with a Rifftrax last fall (original trilogy VHS, baby--no Greedo Shooting First bullshit here!) and I couldn't do it.  It all seemed so stage-y and weird.  But watching Back to the Future didn't feel awkwardly nostalgic, it felt like seeing an old friend.  It filled me with such joy, such rapturous bliss in a way that I remembered Star Wars did when I was 13.   Because good-vs-evil doesn't seem like a fairy tale to me anymore.  I look around and I see various shades of evil every day--like Rick Santorum.  Or the owner of dogs that were starved to the point of eating their own feces that I had to grit my teeth and listen to make excuses for why he shouldn't be charged with animal neglect because my editor believes in the full story.   And that's not to say I don't see good in the world too--there's my minister, the Rev. Mark Montfort, who is a beacon of all that is good and light and kind in the world.  Or my editor, Jim Kevlin, who fights daily for justice and freedom of the press and who more-than-occasionally buys me lunch.

But it's a battle so commonplace that it's not a fairy tale anymore.  But what grown-up doesn't wish she could go back in time and make things right?  Who doesn't wish they could alter the circumstances of their families, their fate, history itself?  That's a fairy tale I need to believe in.

Discovery

I've discovered that it is impossible to have a bad day when you've started it with Huey Lewis and the News "The Power of Love"

Try it on a Monday morning!