Star Wars

I recently pirated 87 gigabytes of Rifftrax because I got fed up with trying to sync the audio files I got off their site up to the films manually. Thankfully, they're sensible chaps and leave a donation button on their website precisely for people like me.

Anyway, I was watching the Rifftrack of Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope and something struck me:

Star Wars is easily the least Sci Fi film I've ever seen that is still set in space.

I'm not even talking about the difference between soft and hardcore sci fi. I'm not enough of a sci fi geek to know the difference but I assume it's like the difference between Firefly and Battlestar Galactica.

Anyway, I'm supposed to be talking about Star Wars.

I was watching the bit where Han Solo's ship gets nabbed by the death star. Several things happen that made me go -hang on a minute-

The guys hide from the imperial soldiers by hiding under the floorboards of their ship.
They then sneak around the death star by beating up a couple of stormtroopers and stealing their uniforms.
The officers in charge don't notice because they're trying to confirm that the stormtroopers are okay over the fucking RADIO.

Now, I don't know about you, but that all stinks to high hell of a World War 2 film, to me. Switch the words "death star" for "nazi destroyer" and you're there.

This really annoys me. I don't like Star Wars, and haven't done since I re-watched eps 4 and 6 a few years ago but... I don't know. It seems that every time I re-watch bits here and there they've gotten even worse.

It just annoys me how there is no technology on this amazing battlestation. Where are the devices that allow the empire to track their stormtroopers? Where are the life sign readers? Where are the scanning devices that can detect organic objects within an object like the Millenium Falcon? Why are they still using fucking RADIO?

Now, a reason for this could be that it was made in the 1970's but I don't accept that. Issac Asimov wrote his I, Robot stories between 1940 and 1950, they're all much more well thought through and sci fi than this piece of crap.

Of course, Star Wars geeks (or idiots stuck in the past, as I like to call them) are keen to point out that Star Wars isn't Sci Fi, it's a Space Opera. A genre they made up to try and make Star Wars seem more important/legitimate as an art work than it is. There's no such thing as Space Opera, guys, you can't just make up genres to suit yourself.

I'm willfully ignoring the fact that Star Wars is so popular (or was, at least. It's popularity is weining slightly these days, in spite of the Internet's constant claims that it's still relevant and THE BEST THING EVARR) because it's essentially a fantasty film. Polorised good vs bad, no real complexity or morality. I just wish people would leave it alone. Yes, they were good films in the 70's and yes, they are still good childrens films now but for people who have seen a good few films? They're terrible. Just terrible.


Oh, and one more thing. Vader says:
"The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the force."

Let's just have a look at the things the force is used for in the films, shall we?

It let's Luke shoot an exhaust port with a missile.
It lets Luke sense where a droid is going to shoot him.
It lets Vader choke a man.
It lets Obi-Wan astrally project.

None of that stuff seems even a tenth as useful as the ability to destroy a planet.

Even in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed where the entire point was that this was The Most Powerful The Force Has Ever Been and it's all really overblown and over the top, the most impressive thing The Apprentice does is pull a star destroyer (which, incidentally, are very poorly named) out of orbit. That, likewise, is no-where near as impressive as the ability to destroy a planet.