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You can’t go home again

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star wars

And when this kiss is over
It will start again
It will not be any different
It will be exactly the same

TalkingHeads, “Heaven”

Just before the new Star Wars movie opened, I wrote a brief post, asking in what I intended to be a non-rhetorical non-snarky non-pomo way why the Star Wars films had become such a cultural phenomenon. This generated a several-hundred comment thread, which I suppose was an illustration of the very thing that gave rise to the question.

I finally saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and here follows the review everyone has been waiting for:

Star Wars: The Force Awakens features all the strengths and weaknesses of the original Star Wars film, with one unavoidable exception. The original movie had nothing cynical about it, while SWTFA is probably the most cynical movie ever made.

It seems clear that somewhere in the Disney Corporation is a windowless warehouse, where hundreds if not thousands of employees were chained to desks in front of computer terminals and forced to read and then summarize every single objection anyone ever made to George Lucas’s three prequel films.

These summaries were then fed into a computer, which then ran an extraordinarily sophisticated AI program, designed to create a template for the new film. After running for 17 days and nights, the program generated three words (ALLCAPS in the original): REMAKE STAR WARS.

After seeing this movie I have some real sympathy for Lucas, who at least tried to do something different with the prequels. SWTFA takes about as many chances as the invasion of Grenada, which makes perfect sense in fiscal terms, but should still be deplored by anyone who cares about movies.

Speaking of which, the original Star Wars trilogy consisted of three cheesy but fun cartoonish action movies. They were fundamentally intended for kids, but, like a lot of well-made children’s entertainment, could be enjoyed by adults under the right circumstances. All the subsequent nonsense about how if you squinted just right you would see it was really Sophocles with light sabers — the Hero with A Thousand Faces blah blah blah — was just a rationalization for adults enjoying stuff intended for kids. This in my view, isn’t something that needs to be rationalized at all, since it’s harmless fun to be let oneself be 12 years old again for a couple of hours.

What’s not so harmless is the urge to treat Star Wars, and the various “blockbuster” film genres to which it gave birth, as something other than mindless entertainment. Again, mindless entertainment always has its place, but when a basically trivial movie for kids becomes something everyone is talking about, something may be out of wack, culturally speaking.

“Reviewing” this movie makes about as much sense as reviewing a quarter pounder with cheese, large fries, and a Coke. It was pretty good for what it was, I started to feel sick about three quarters of the way through, and I couldn’t really remember it a couple of hours later.

The end.

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