Star Wars is Dead

Yes. Yes I am going to blog about this. Half the hits I get on this site are from Google searches of "maple leaf looks like pot" anyway apparently, so I can afford to.

I have loved Star Wars since I was a child. Most people born after the 1970s can say that. However, very recently I've started watching Star Trek as well, and frankly, Star Wars no longer measures up.

Why would I say such a thing about such an American institution? Well mostly because Star Trek is better. Way better. As long as we're discussing the Original Series or even TNG, it basically kicks the crap out of Star Wars. The characters have more depth, the aliens are more realistic (yes, they are; I'll get to that) and the message is far less cliche and far more applicable.

The original Star Wars trilogy was a damn good set of movies, despite George Lucas having written them. However, it cannot be avoided: they're essentially similar to every other classic story in history. It's a good versus evil thing where the lines are very clearly cut and very simple. The simplicity is good, and in fact, is what makes the old trilogy so much better, but complexity and clarity can be accomplished together without confusion and without having to rely on the same old story told throughout history.

Star Trek is really a good example of this. Each episode is designed to set up, and occasionally answer, a simple moral question. However, finding that answer is often very difficult. Often the crew members disagree with one another about what the right thing to do is. It's far more complex than the simple "rebels good, Empire bad" scenario seen in Star Wars. The United Federation of Planets far more accurately reflects a large organization, in which intercene conflicts, disagreements and questionable authority are as common as good commanders and loyal officers. It is far more complex, yet also far more realistic.

Witness, however, George Lucas' attempt at complexity: the second trilogy in the Star Wars series. It is unrealistic, it's difficult to relate to the characters, nothing really makes sense if you stop and think about it for more than a minute or two. When Lucas attempts complexity, he just confuses himself and his viewers. (There's a really really good review I'm sure most Star Wars fans have seen which addresses this as well as being hilarious. Youtube search RedLetterMedia if you're interested.)

Take, for example, the Anakin and Padme relationship. It in no way mirrors a real relationship and really it's difficult to see why the two even love each other. It's even worse when the actors try to show emotion of any kind. Anakin acts like he has serious psychological problems when he shows emotion, and Padme shows no emotion whatsoever. These actors have been in other movies, and one of them, V for Vendetta, is one of my favorites. Natalie Portman is not stellar in in, but she shows far more emotion than she does in Star Wars. One can only assume the direction is to blame.

What makes this more inexplicable is the fact that Harrison Ford and Carrie Fischer did an absolutely amazing job portraying a relationship, but then again, Lucas had less control over those movies, and Ford in particular is famous for ad-libbing brilliantly. (One of his most famous lines in Star Wars is completely ad-libbed, as is one of his most famous scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark.)

William Shatner, William Shatner of all people, does a far superior job of emoting than the actors in the new Star Wars trilogy. I sat through three movies of Star Wars without giving two shits about Padme and Anakin's relationship. Yet in one hour I was at least slightly moved by Captain Kirk being betrayed by a woman he actually seemed to care about. That's essentially because while Anakin constantly professes his love for Padme, it doesn't seem genuine or realistic. If anything it is over the top and creepy. When the time came in the movie for him to lose her, Hayden Christensen essentially delivered a performance which most fans openly laughed at in the theater. Compare this to Kirk's reaction when asked about the woman he loved, by whom he was betrayed: he simply orders the ship forward brusquely. He doesn't want to talk about it, or think about it, but is still visibly upset. That's far more understandable and believable than having James Earl Jones screaming a long-drawn out "no!" while you look up at the camera.

This realism is something that Star Trek delivers time and again, while Star Wars botches it worse than a 19th century Russian romance. I mentioned aliens earlier. Most people would tend to think that the aliens in Star Wars are more realistic because they're weird-looking. But when you get right down to it, that's all they have going for them. What do we ever really learn about the aliens in Star Wars? We see their physical differences, but we barely ever learn about their culture, their government or their way of life. They're just support for the human characters. In Star Trek the Vulcans may only be actors with putty on their ears, but we know about their planet, their mindset, their rituals, their government, everything that actually makes them truly alien. It's not some cheap costume or CGI that makes us think of the Vulcans as truly another race. It's their lack of visible emotion, their bizarre mating ritual and their hostile and uninviting planet that make us unable to truly think of them as human.

And yet somehow we feel like we do understand them, and can identify with them to an extent, because characters like Spock aren't crutches for the main characters to lean on; they're fully devoloped characters themselves who play foils to other characters and who create their own story alongside the rest of the cast. This ability of Rodenberry's to create a race which is at once more alien than anything in Star Wars, yet also more identifiable far outstrips anything Lucas has come up with. (If you're still unconvinced: Jar Jar Binks. Enough said.)

What it comes down to is that Gene Rodenberry was a writer whereas George Lucas' imaginative skills could be outstripped by an eighth grader doodling on his history notes. George Lucas likes CGI, explosions, laser-swords and battle stations that blow up planets. Gene Rodenberry was more likely to take some time and make sure what he was saying was actually applicable to his audience. The special effects in his series were tools to the plot, instead of the other way around.

And what a plot! And what a difference from Star Wars. There is virtually nothing brave or new about Star Wars. The characters are all white, except Lando who doesn't really do that much. Yeah I knew he blew up the second Death Star - using the white guy's ship. It's like he's the token black guy, as opposed to Sulu or Uhura who you don't even think of as being other races because it's just taken into stride. They're not "the black chick" or "the Asian guy" - they're the comm and navigation officers.

I'm not accusing Lucas of racism or anything, but again, it's totally unrealistic to think that that many people in an interplanetary universe would be white. I mean are they all from planets whose weather exactly matches that of certain latitudes of the Earth? In Star Trek it makes sense that there are so many minorities on board, because in the 23rd century no one really cares about race and all the world's countries are developed.

Which brings be to my final point: Star Wars is a reflection of the future (and I know it's the past; I'll get to it) without meaning; Star Trek is a reflection of the future that not only makes sense, but that you want to be in. I know Star Wars is set in the past, but to us it's a futuristic society. And that future sucks. Everyone's poor, an evil entity is ruling the galaxy. Is that possible? Totally. But it doesn't touch us. It's not what we all want and ultimately would strive to work for. Even the rebels are introduced without real background, and Episodes I through III did nothing to answer how the Rebel Alliance came about, what it actually stands for apart from stopping the Empire, or anything like that. There is an evil Empire and we must simply take it as fact that there is a sizable rebellion which was formed at some point to combat it. But why exactly should we care?

Star Trek, on the other hand, is a future that makes sense. It's organized, technology can solve any problem - though its flaws still exist and are readily apparent - the world is harmonious and peaceful. This is the future we want. It's a future you can identify with, that you would find yourself working towards. It's a bright ideal, a future with endless possibilities, a future where technology can solve any problem but in which questions still exist to be answered, in which people still strive to be better. It is the only possible fate humanity can have, other than extinction. It's great and noble and you want to be part of it somehow. It makes the Star Wars galaxy look bland and dead by comparison.

Today the entire Star Wars saga was released on Blu-Ray and there was a countdown website which crashed when it reached zero. I don't know if it was supposed to or if the site itself had no other goal. So it was either flawed on one hand or unimaginative on the other. Like Star Wars. Lucas has failed me for the last time.

I still love the original Star Wars and always will. But it's dead. This happened to Star Trek too, when Voyager came along (and I have a friend who will kill me for saying that, but nothing lives up to TOS; only TNG comes close). It's sad, but it's just the way it is. Star Wars is dead and no matter what Lucas does in the future, he will never revive it. He has no one to blame but himself.