I wrote this for this week's Leisure section.

Commentary
Why I hate Star Wars

By SPC. IAN BOUDREAU

I confess: I used to be a bit of a Star Wars geek.

As a kid growing up in the 1980s, I dreamed about being Han Solo, blasting Imperial storm troopers and flying around the galaxy with a hairy pal and a razor-sharp wit. My brothers and I had buckets of Star Wars action figures, some of which met unfortunate demises in our sandbox.

The original three Star Wars movies – which we now know are Episodes IV through VI – were a pop-culture phenomenon that inspired countless fans and spinoffs. Star Wars had that down-to-earth human feel to it. A farm boy gets unwillingly swept into a huge war and becomes a hero – how can a story like that not strike a chord with its audience?

The final installment of the new Star Wars trilogy – the films that tell the "backstory" behind the original movies – hits theaters May 19, and I probably won’t be going.

Something went horribly wrong in the mind of director/writer/producer/ plutocrat George Lucas in the 16 years between the release of "Return of the Jedi" and "The Phantom Menace." I was horrified when I saw it – it bore almost no resemblance to the Star Wars I’d grown up loving.

In "The Phantom Menace," we’re treated to the story of young Anakin Skywalker, who we all know will eventually become Darth Vader, one of the most memorable villains in cinematic history. Here, though, he’s a sandy-haired, spunky youngster who has a knack for building things and charming interstellar princesses.

I thought it was a bit like going through Ghengis Khan’s baby album.

Worse, the world is now populated by as many computer-generated characters as can be crammed into a frame of 32-millimeter celluloid. There’s the two-headed announcer for the races, a revamped Jabba the Hutt, and of course, the deal-breaker: a floppy-eared, long-tongued, baby-talking alien called Jar-Jar Binks, who does everything possible to make the film totally unwatchable, and is completely computer-generated.

Computer animation has come a long way in past years, and has made it possible to splice amazing effects almost seamlessly into live-action cinematography – if it’s done right.

In the case of the new Star Wars pictures, computer effects are about as overused as the ribbon magnets folks can’t seem to get tired of sticking to their cars.

Take Yoda, the tiny wizened Jedi master, who Luke Skywalker finds in a swamp on a remote planet in the original movies. There, he’s a puppet manipulated and voiced by Frank Oz, of Jim Henson Studios "Muppets" fame (Oz was the voice and puppeteer for beloved characters like Miss Piggy and Gonzo the Great). Yoda’s really there – Luke reacts to him realistically, not pretending to speak to something that’s going to be added into the film later.

In the new movies, Yoda has been created digitally. He moves differently, he looks different, and something’s just a bit off – enough, at least, to ruin my suspension of disbelief.

Another element of the old films that made them amazing was the light-saber, the glowing sword that the Jedi use to battle each other. You knew, when you watched the original movies, that when a light-saber was whipped out, some serious stuff was about to happen.

In "Attack of the Clones," the second of the new Star Wars films, there’s a scene where there are more light-sabers waving around than lighters at a Scorpions concert. The audience is overdosed on light-sabers, and they lose their mystique.

There are plenty of other examples, such as the scene where the trash can-shaped robot R2-D2 is inexplicably able to fly in the new movies, or the close-up shots of armored warriors who don’t exist – you guessed it, they’re computer-generated. And yes, you can tell.

I can’t say this for certain, but I think it’s pretty apparent that Star Wars could be a case study for how mass-marketing can take a good idea and turn it into a steaming pile of shit manure.

When Lucas made the first movies, he probably didn’t anticipate my brothers and me playing in our sandbox with six-inch versions of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Now, he’s counting on it.

Countless action-figures, Halloween costumes, video games, replicas, Lego models, fruit snacks, pulp novels, and comic books have been spawned by the Star Wars marketing juggernaut, and the combined effect has been to cheapen and ultimately ruin a story that started off with a farm boy possessed with delusions of grandeur.

So when "Revenge of the Sith" hits theaters May 19, you won’t see me in line. I’d rather keep the memory of the original Star Wars movies unsullied by easily-marketable garbage.

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