Two things:
1 - I've just come off a Star Wars binge.
2 - Having nothing better to do, and being grievously bored, I dredged up some dusty Rex Murphy articles and happened upon the following, which I thought was a great bit of fun:
http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national/pgminfo/rex/pov990513.html
Star Wars: Phantom Entertainment May 13, 1999
I thought I'd seen the last deep sad consumer folly when way back in 1995 Bill Gates threw Windows 95 at the world, and people lined up at computer stores at midnight to be the first to bring it home. There were people lining up at midnight to feed money into Microsoft's insatiable glitch-hagged maw. I thought then, and I think even more so now, we are all gravediggers at the death of reason. Next thing you know, we'll be lining up to be the first to buy a new Goodyear at Canadian Tire. This was before George Lucas awoke and decided to re-confect the plastic mythology and rattlecan subtleties of Star Wars 2, the prize in the cereal box of yuppie nostalgia.
Star Wars 1 was an abomination; a great thieving of story lines so old, the mildew on them can be carbon-dated from Robin Hood to The Wizard Of Oz; The Lord Of The Rings to the Road Runner. The special effects for that first cold stew were the big draw. And what were they? Flashlights on sticks; some small washing machine on wheels that sounded like Mickey Rooney in a tin can, and a full size tin can, C-3PO, and of course old rumblebox himself, Darth Vader -- "this is CNN" -- James Earl Jones's voice coming out of a Nazi helmet with a train's cow-catcher for a mouthpiece. The rest of it was 1950s pinball machine with a lot of Dolby noise and music that would embarrass John Tesh.
Now they're lining up like pilgrims at Lourdes for another fix of Lucas light magic. In Winnipeg, Toronto, New York and Los Angeles, normal, quite decent people, otherwise sensible, who have let themselves be drawn in to the force-six tornado of supersaturated hype and the greatest marketing blitz since tulip mania or the invention of the wheel. They're on the sidewalks of every North American city; the intellectually homeless, doubtless fondling Obi-Wan Kenobi statuettes and offering prayers to the god of the ticket sellers and the patron saint of overpriced popcorn, that they'll be let in before the unclean and who think that this is -- oh Mother of All Blasphemies - just another silly movie.
Star Wars is even more inexplicable than Star Trek and believe me, there's more suspense, action, drama and story in most phone bills than there is in the long armada of "dreck" that began eons ago with William Shatner. And Star Trek has siphoned the strange enthusiasm of millions for a generation, and lives somewhere in the wild world between a cult and an addiction.
But compared with Star Wars, Star Trek, for all its obnoxious spin-off "make it so" durability, is Hamlet and Lear alongside saved by the bell. Liam Neeson is the star of Star Wars 2. I insist on Star Wars 2 instead of prequel. Prequel is yuppie-speak for something that comes out 20 years after -- before and after being difficult concepts for Star Wars fanatics. Good old Liam as Qui-Gon Jinn, the hero in this film, is represented as fighting against the forces of greed. A Star Wars picture that preaches against greed, a little like Bill Clinton in the pulpit for a chastity-begins-at-home campaign. There's not a six-year-old on the continent whose mind is not a pincushion for the most relentless marketing of dolls and games and model star fighters and battleships and books; Star Wars is the real Toys 'R' Us, and the movie one long, pretentious, self-regarding orgy of hard sell for the plastic trinkets and Pentium play toys that the empire sells back.
Star Wars is said to be the self-defining icon for a generation. Icon -- they got one syllable right --con. This is all fluff and feathers; "Skywalker" as panhandler for the disposable income of kids and boomer sentimentalists. Star Wars is not an event. The Phantom Menace -- it's phantom entertainment and menacing merchandising. Sleep overnight in a line-up to see Star Wars? It's a felony against good taste. May the farce be with you.
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