100 sf

Friday, August 31, 2007

A Far-Away Legacy

I have mixed feelings about Star Wars. On the one hand, one of my earliest memories was standing outside of a movie theater in Michigan City with my dad, mom, and two brothers, waiting to get in to see the original film. I’ve been a space geek ever since that day, so much so that my parents had to coax me into seeing the first Indiana Jones film by telling me that Han Solo was the star. Lucky for me they did, because I loved that film too. However, Star Wars ruined sf filmmaking. Small, thoughtful sf films like The Man Who Fell to Earth were the hallmark of 70s cinema until SW came along. Now genre films tend to be large, lights-and-explosions affairs with little content or thoughtfulness, even when their source material is a metaphor-laced story by Philip K. Dick or Brian Aldiss. But I also must admit that SW’s place in pop culture is one of the few things that tugs at my thin feelings of nostalgia, and I still get chills from the opening sequence from the series. What a sucker, eh?


1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I also saw Star Wars in Michigan City as a kid!

5:20 PM  

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