Star Wars docu Only For Fanboys

Friday, May 25, 2007 -

It's pretty harsh, but probably well deserved. With the 30th Anniversary of the release of Star Wars: A New Hope, there's a lot of stuff going on in the SW-world including screenings at an LA convetion that intend to show all six films consecutively, along with a documentary on the sci-fi phenom from The History Channel called Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed (May 28th, 9PM.) It looks like nothing but a rehash that only a diehard fan would love -- in other words, there's nothing new to be found in this at all.

Why even bother?

In interview after interview, punctuated with film clip after film clip, one "Star Wars" authority after another compares the stories in the films to great epics and classical mythology. Over two hours, experts (an assortment that includes anchor Dan Rather, director Peter Jackson, journalist Linda Ellerbee, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and political satirist Stephen Colbert) find parallels to "The Iliad," "The Odyssey," "The Lord of the Rings," "Paradise Lost," "Jason and the Argonauts," "Hamlet" and the story of Christianity, among others. Rarely has so much time been spent on elaborating the obvious.

It doesn't end there, saying that the docu purposefully avoids valid criticism not just of the original three films, but also the most recent trio that really deserve a whole heaping pile of it. Such a shame, to think they could have done so many great things with this, but instead just went around to already "personalities" who talked about how great it was. We already know how great it was, so as I said, why even bother with this?

It goes without saying that the whole deal has been thoroughly mined out when the only new place to go with it is to write a story about the few people who've never actually seen the films.

Ah well, IGN has a bunch of stills from the docu up, so check 'em out. Or you could, you know, watch the docu on Monday. The official website of the franchise, starwars.com will be relaunching today with all sorts of...Star Wars stuff. Be sure to check that out, too.

Topics: Film, Star Wars, Georga Lucas

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