Kids-friendly#
Lately, we re-discovered Star Wars universe in our family, after we noticed the universe is quite suitable to watch with little kids.
Perhaps, our kids are too young (pre-school age), but if you watched any of Star Wars movies, you’d remember they have mostly no scenes inappropriate for kids. Yes, there are killings, but they’re not gore.
There are lots of hands slayer episodes, yet it’s shown as a normal thing, e.g. Anakin Skywalker has no right hand since the end of Episode II, and it’s no problem, his robotic hand is good as original.
Apart from that, I noticed only the final battle scene of Episode III to be quite harsh.
- Yet, our 3.5 years son watched it too closely, and I didn’t notice him being afraid. My mum would probably yell at me that I must go leave the room and never watch. The thing is, the most terrible thing isn’t some body injury (unless it’s demonstrated in great details), but rather psychological damage. I’ve been given a bad parenting service in that.
For us now, the universe gives the great balance of being not interesting for kids, so they got bored and fall asleep. Yet it’s something we can watch.
We’re too overwhelmed by this mostly Pixar+Disney and DreamWorks duopoly on motion pictures for kids. There are very talented works by [Wolfwalkers] or newly-created [Klaus authors] too. But they have not much. And the works of Ghibli, of course.
Over the course of previous months, we watched many of Star Wars movies and TV series. Today we finished watching the classical franchise with the Episode III.
Classical Franchise#
I wanted to re-watch all the 6 episodes, and we weren’t sure which order to choose. The chronological one, meaning episodes 4-5-6 (70-80s) and then 1-2-3 (2000s), or the storyline with 1-2-3 then 4-5-6.
I was thinking of the chronological order, as they were filmed. So after some short discussion (Solomia mostly didn’t care), we started with the Episode IV.
The ‘classical franchise’ may be not a correct name, but it is for me. In my vocabulary, it’s these first six episodes.
There are newer episodes, there are some TV series, cartoons, maybe something else too. Yet, for me, it all happened like that: George Lucas filmed the original Star Wars story, the first three (chronologically speaking) episodes, then he added prequel in early 2000s and that was it.
Then, only recently, there was a sudden blow of new movies. I’d say starting with 2015. To me, it looks like a very typical Hollywood-ish story. They’re milking the cash cow, nothing to be surprised of.
My Perspective#
Childhood#
Even despite I’m surrounded by Star Wars universe since my early childhood, I’m not a fan. My foster father (I lived with my non-biological parents during some part of my childhood) loved the universe. So, we had a huge collection of Star Wars books, and it was him who introduced me to the Episode I, when it was released.
- He was a software engineer, by the way. So some of you might get a better picture.
The Star Wars books they had were the mass-produced fan-books. I remember Timothy Zahn, but there were many other authors too. I won’t recall how many books did they have (tens of them) and how many of them I read.
- Not many, a couple or so. I wasn’t too attracted to the universe.
I remember my great awe of the Sherlock Holmes universe (probably it’s my favourite), of The Great Oz (my 2nd best, I read it a hundred times), Musketeers, The Lord of the Rings. But I cannot remember being too impressed by the Star Wars universe, at all. I’m not against it, and I’m not a naysayer, I’m just… not a fan.
Partners#
As a grown-up man, I remember my cinema visit, with my then-girlfriend to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), aka Episode VII.
It was so shitty mediocre, that I remember us being discussing it as some very low-quality movie. We expected it to be on par with Episodes I, II, III. And it was on par with some Avengers shit, or even not there.
After that, I wasn’t sure I want to continue exploring this universe.
A year later, I happened to be invited to watch Rogue One with a random girl I met just once. (Another one, we parted with the force-awakens one.)
Santa brought her the tickets, and she hadn’t made her mind with whom to go to the cinema. I was interested in the girl, and wasn’t too much interested in watching just another Star Wars movie. I agreed to go, otherwise I’d just shave it off as a not-gonna-waste-my-time event.
The girl happened to become my wife a couple of years later, so that waste-my-time event was extended significantly. Or… the time investment paid off tremendously! Depending on the perspective, we’re still married :)
The second attempt was three years later, when we — me and my wife — decided to watch some newly released Star Wars movie, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019). Partly because of our shared nostalgia over that first date (if we’d call it so) in the cinema.
I have no memory of any details of the movie. The only memory is me basically ruining the evening with my whining over how shitty this movie is. Well, my wife wasn’t too impressed either. The movie was so mediocre, I took it as an offence.
‘Are they serious right now? They just ruin their cult-status!’ was what I’ve been saying.
A New Hope Against Hope#
Yet, some years later, we decided to watch something, and came to this point of watching mostly all the popular Star Wars movies and TV series. Fortunately (to me) there are not too many of them as of now.
Saying that, you may continue reading my story. As my current perspective is mostly positive. I guess, I’ve learned to appreciate the hard work the universe developers are doing these days. I see it mostly as an attempt to save the universe for the current generation of younglings.
Order#
Not to the galaxy!
I want to specify the order of which we watched the works.
Well, with me, it’s easy to predict if you know me personally. I think, it’s good idea to explore some works in their chronological order, even if the later works are prequels.
If you want to learn the chronology of Star Wars movies, I found this:
We hadn’t started with Episodes IV, V, and VI from 70–80s. We started with Mandalorian.
I won’t recall how I joined the show, but it could be a classical way of my wife watching season 1, then there would be season 2, or 3, and then she’ll ask me to join, telling me the whole series isn’t (too) bad, so I might watch it with her. If I’m not too eager to fight, we watch.
Mandalorian was mostly okay. It set my expectation not too-high, and it kept the bar by not being worse than I expected initially.
Upon the latest Mandalorian season, we discovered that there’s some gap in the story, that’s how we accidentally discovered the Boba Fett series, and swapped watching it first.
Then we watched Andor (2022), Ahsoka (2023), The Acolyte (2024) and about to start Skeleton Crew (2024, ongoing as the time of this writing).
Also, we watched Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022). It was the latest one we watched, and it was very good (when my expectations for the universe were settled accordingly). The series time-frame is in-between Episodes III (2005) and IV (1970, the very first one) of the original saga.
I watched these three episodes in my school, and I have these good memories of the movies being good. I liked them. Yet, I remembered mostly nothing, only some vivid episodes. At this point, we discussed we’d like to refresh over memories and explore the universe with the new us.
Original Saga#
If you’re a super-fan of the cult-episodes, you may leave now to save yourself some good mood. As I’m going to tell what I think of this. The original saga is just pathetic. That’s how I see it. I watched it only once, probably 10 or 15 years ago. I remembered nothing. Perhaps, I just hadn’t finished watching them. I won’t recall. I never reflected upon this too much. To me, it was just not worth my precious time.
My perception haven’t changed upon this fresh look either. The original saga is just shit.
Probably More likely, it’s a point of view of some privileged kid of the new generation. The one, who sees this original saga from this modern view of special effects, HDR10, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos 4K goodness. Yes, I am. And not just that, I did special effects myself, I’ve been in advertising for almost a decade. I know this cuisine, you know.
But not just that. I never perceive the cinematography from just the special effects point of view. It’s story that gets me first. I’m a storyteller myself, you know.
Original saga ought to be perceived with the grain of salt. Or, better to put it differently, with the context. It was a very good work for the special effects industry in 80s and especially in 70s. But these days, it just very unprofessional. A college student with her iPhone can make a better movie than this piece.
Yet, it acquired the cult-like status over the years.
Lucas’ Intuition#
When I’ve been reading the ‘Focus’ book by Daniel Goleman in 2014, I remembered this story of young movie director who wanted to make a weird story. He offered the script to someone, they gave him funding, but asked for the changes. He refused, and made the movie on his own, according to his feelings towards it. This movie became wildly popular, and Daniel Goleman shows it as an example of a good intuition.
I think, the most difficult thing was to invent that universe. And the primary role of those three original movies was to introduce the viewer to the universe. That job was done good, and kudos to Mr. Lucas for his vision.
More likely, the then-modern tech of 50 years ago wasn’t too good to allow making this job better. Possibly they were underfunded either. To me, it’s the actors play that was just too mediocre. Yet, I bet my two dollar banknote that the careers of three main actors, [Luke], Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fischer, skyrocketed after their roles in the original movies. Yet, I assume that at least in private, they would acknowledge that they’re much better actors than they were then. Harrison Ford is so good in Shrinking (2023), he’s just miles ahead of Han Solo from 80s. (Not surprising, of course! So much practice as an actor for the course of his entire life.)
Prequel Episodes#
When I was watching Episode I in my childhood, I wasn’t aware of the whole story. I knew nothing of Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, anything. It was my entry point to the universe.
My foster father had it on a disk, so I watched the movie a number of times back then. Didn’t help, I forgot almost everything and watched these movies as new this week. Almost quarter of century passed, although. I’m a bit older, and my life is a whir wheel the last decade. Especially the last three years, since ruzzia attacked us. (I have a special separate blog for that, war.basil.)
To me, this was just a story about the young boy and some magical world. I was not much older than him, which helped me to immerse into the universe.
The Episode II and III, I think I watched them some time later than they were released, not in cinemas, but from my PC.
Cash Cow#
Upon watching the newest TV series, I got a strong impression that the Lucasfilm (or Disney) just tries to save the original episodes (of which I wasn’t too fond of) by adding more context and expanding the universe. That’s a wise move, and I’d do just that if I was some Hollywood producer myself.
I forgot to add another context to this essay. I’m not too fond of Hollywood, as I see it mostly as a very successful business. Every film is just a separate business entity to me. It’s a company, main goal of which is to aggregate money. Its life purpose is to get revenue. Watching from that logic, I shouldn’t be too disappointed in modern cinema’s culture. Yet, I’m still disappointed. Way too often. Hence, I’m not too eager to watch American cinematograph. Yet, I do that, mostly as an ‘okay, let’s watch this shit’ move. Those are my silly attempts to stay at least a little bit of a normie. My attempt to understand the modern humans. To understand some culture, mostly western global culture.
Directed by Lucas#
From that (somewhat critical, I think) point of view, I approached these new three episodes, Episode I, II, and III. I was surprised. They are a decent work! After watching them, I’d even dare to say they’re the best Star Wars movies released so far.
Perhaps, George Lucas had this [imposter] syndrome. Perhaps, he was thinking the original three episodes weren’t his best work, and he could do much, much better. Perhaps, he felt the technology is finally here, so he could realise what he truly wanted to realise. Special effects in those three movies are no worse than those in all the most recent ones. It’s 25 years of technology development! My wild guess is that the modern movies are just much cheaper to make. And that those three new episodes from the 2000s were very expensive. Yet, perhaps they allowed Lucas to sell his company at a different price, returning the investments tenfold.
Although, money aside, I see these three I-II-III episodes as a very good piece of work. I wonder how much resources were put into them. So many years later — and 25 years is a long time! — and they’re still good. I’m rather a critic, not a fan, and I would applaud. Good job, George! Well done. Truly.
Not a single moment, I thought ‘oh, this is so childish.’ To me, he succeeded in his attempt to make a balanced movie out of it. It’s still suitable to watch with kids, yet it has its depth. It’s not silly and ‘well, it’s Star Wars, what would you expect?’
There’s drama, action, dialogues, massive scenes, (so many) new races and creatures, very different locations, story, new depths of the universe. Without these three films, the original ones would just be some nerdish films of the past. And the newest ones would just be the cash cow for Disney.
To me, the critic, they’re all that with or without these three films. Yet, they added some magic to this long story. Disney makes their attempts at trying to make it a much better universe by introducing newer and newer details.
Again, I think, the universe is the main creation here. The movies are just someone’s attempt to show their vision and their story.
I’m curious of the future, will there be some point of time when all this become a public domain. Isn’t this universe our common heritage already?
Credits#
All images are taken from TheMovieDB project.
