The Jewphin Rants About...Star Wars
By: The JewphinA long long time ago in a galaxy far away, space wizards swing laser swords at each other and space ships fire photon torpedoes at each other to cause massive explosions. When I first watched A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and, to a lesser extent, Return of the Jedi, I felt sucked into the exciting world of Jedi, Sith, and rogues. Now I’m just bored.I don’t mean to say I hate Star Wars or that I have found some fundamental flaw with the initial trilogy. This is also not a rant of how the prequels broke the heart of a young man. The problem with Star Wars is that it is no longer doing anything new or interesting.You see, Star Wars had two things that made it awesome. The first is inherent to the world and the second is the story. The world includes lightsabers, wookies, blaster rifles, the jedi order, the empire, and the force. The story was one of good versus evil. It followed a young Luke who was taken from his family, met some droids, learned about the force, fought the pull of evil, and eventually saved the galaxy. And it was all great.The problem is not the initial trilogy – it was a decent story and an awesome world. The problem is with what came next. Nothing. There were two possible ways for a writer to innovate on Star Wars. The first would have been to expand the world. The second would have been to expand the story. The various writers of Star Wars have done neither and all that is left is the same story in the same place with the same characters and I AM BORED.There is so much that can be done with the Star Wars universe because the initial movies did so very little. We knew about two opposing forces, the rebel scum and the sith heroes. We did not know where any of the races came from or what any of them could really do. It was like the characters all moved through a cardboard world. It had the appearance of awesomeness, but absolutely no depth. Like Boba Fett – the awesome bounty hunter whose only accomplishment is flying straight to his death.Or the Empire who rule over the galaxy yet are never shown ACTUALLY RULING anything. I’m not even entirely sure rule by the Empire (or First Order) is that bad. They apparently rule a large majority of the galaxy, but we never see a planet that is actually being ruled by them. Are they authoritarian dictators who murder their civilians? Or have they found a way to make a peace-filled utopia filled with candy, sex, rock and roll, puppies, kittens, and new episodes of Rick and Morty without a year-long wait? We don’t know.There are so many stories that could be told with the backdrop of Star Wars which is what makes it so sad that we keep getting the same story of a young kid who was taken from a family, met some droids, learned about the force, fought the pull of evil, and eventually saved the galaxy. And I am aware that I have likely not ingested the vast majority of works that are set in the Star Wars universe. But if your main offerings are continually the same thing, I’m going to get bored and start looking for something original – like the new Pokemon.
