[2006] in Humor
HUMOR: An Explanation behind "Star Wars"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Tue Apr 8 11:49:52 1997
From: <abennett@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 1997 10:27:34 EST
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 22:05:43 -0800
From: Connie Kleinjans <connie@interserve.com>
From: jeff.snyder@octel.com
An Explanation behind "Star Wars"
-- by James Lileks
I think "The Empire Strikes Back" would have been more interesting if
Darth Vader had turned out to be Luke's mother. Someone brash and
commanding, such as Madge the Manicurist from the old Palmolive ads.
The Dark side of the Force? Why, you're soaking in it.
Unless I missed something in the course of watching these movies 60
times, we never heard much about Mrs. Skywalker. Luke never asks
Obi-Wan about Mom.
Maybe she left Luke's dad because he spent every night down at the
Jedi Legion hall and left her with two telekinetic brats. Perhaps she
left Luke's dad for Obi-Wan, and that's why Vader turned to the Dark
Side. (If so, it makes the scene where the two men fight each other
with glowing wands a little too Freudian for my taste.) Given Princess
Leia's hairstyle, it is possible Mrs. Skywalker died giving birth.
"The Empire Strikes Back" is my favorite of the Star Wars movies,
simply because it contains absolutely no Ewoks. Those nattering teddy
bears ruined "Return of the Jedi," turning the grand epic scale of the
saga into the Muppet Babies vs. the Red Army.
"Empire" is solid. Ewok-free. Darth Vader is evil throughout, unlike
the third movie, where he takes off his helmet and smiles. I can't
quite see Darth as evil anymore, because I know his head looks like
your big toe after you've been in the bathtub for an hour. "Empire"
has the defining plot twist of my generation, the
no-Luke-I'm-yer-pappy line that absolutely stunned me. (I'd kept my
fingers in my ears for a week before I saw the movie, just so no one
could spoil it.)
Compared to this, the revelation in "Return" that Luke and Leia are
brother and sister seemed contrived, and made all the PG-sexual
tension between them downright creepy. What was next? Boba Fett is
your second-cousin, Luke. Jabba is your uncle, the one who always
smelled of beer and cigars. He developed a skin condition. Don't
mention it, he's sensitive. Oh, and the Wookie is your mother; after
your father left, she stopped shaving.
Not everything in "Empire" is perfect. Consider the battle on the Ice
Planet Hoth. The Empire sends down a squadron of Imperial Walkers --
incredibly cool machines, but probably the worst piece of military
hardware ever designed. Top-heavy, slow, prone to crashing: the
Windows 3.0 of tanks. Dropping the Walkers on an Ice Planet is like
sending in a dozen Statues of Liberty to fight on a skating rink. They
probably sent fifteen Walkers to do the job, but ten slipped and
busted a tailbone.
And how did the Walkers get to the planet's surface? Parachutes?
Unlikely. There's nothing more ugly than two Imperial Walkers with
tangled chutes, kicking at each other. No, a ship delivered them to
the surface. If that's the case, the ship had to be very
large. Huge. Instead of depositing the Walkers, the ship could have
sat on the rebel base like a sumo wrestler squatting on an
anthill. The Rebellion is crushed, Lord Vader. Really, really crushed.
More faults: Billy Dee Williams confuses grinning with acting. The
Yoda scenes tend to drag the tenth time you've seen them. ("Stall we
must. Second act this is. Talk odd would you if puppet with hand up
rear were you.")
For all its charms and foibles, though, "Empire" and the whole Star
Wars universe is sadly out of date with modern society. When Han Solo
slices open the belly of his Hoth-horse to provide warmth, he is not
immediately picketed by Animal-rights activists, with signs saying
"I'd rather go naked than wear guts." Was there a seven-day waiting
period before Luke got his light saber? When the Death Star destroyed
that planet, didn't they have to file an environmental impact
statement? Most telling moment: when Luke slams his X-wing into Yoda's
backyard, I realized something very odd about the Star Wars
civilization.
All that high technology, and they never managed to invent the air bag.
----
James Lileks is a nationally syndicated columnist for Newhouse News
Service. He's in the Washington Post now and then. His latest
collection is "Fresh Lies," published by Pocket Books.
