Basketball is a peaceful planet

[prog]

Last night, a logical Friday (I get Monday off), I watched all three of the original Star Warses on laserdisc at the house of a local who got an LD player expressly for this purpose. (SW doesn't exist on DVD, except for Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, of which no more shall be said). Hey, these are really good movies! I didn't recall just how good they really were. I hasn't seen the first one since 1997, the theatrical re-release, and it might have been ten years or so since my last viewing of the other two. I had certainly never seen all of them in one gulp, either, and I'm glad that I had the chance.

Some thoughts (with no mind given to spoilers, because, pfft)

• I knew about all the different Rebel and Imperial ship types from playing X-Wing on my pizza-box PowerMac, six years ago. That was a mighty fine flight simulator, and I want to play it again! I asked Matt if there's a recent computer or console game that's like it, and he pointed me to Rogue Squadron which he owned for his Game Cube. That's a very beautiful thing -- surely the most movie-like video game I've ever seen -- but it's an arcade game, not a full-on, go-anywhere flight simulator like X-Wing was.
  
  Maybe I will try installing that old game today, just to see how it runs on my iBook. (And hope that it doesn't require a number pad to control.) I was sad to learn a few weeks ago that Lucasarts' wonderful Day of the Tentacle doesn't work in Mac OS X's Classic mode, and I am really not of a mind to reboot my computer (into Mac OS 9) in order to play a game... that's a little too old-skool.



• I agree with David Brin that Anakin didn't deserve to be grinning alongside Yoda and Obi-Wan at the end, since he's a million times worse than Hitler at that point, responsible for the deaths of entire planets, and a last-minute change of heart shouldn't really count all that much. It was like a Jack Chick comic. Gah.


• The light saber duels were kind of wimpy, especially in the first film. Vader and Obi-Wan just sort of pushed their swords at at other, moving little more then their wrists, and pausing every so often to taunt one another. I was reminded of The Secret of Monkey Island (Yet another LucasArts computer game of yore. I dedicate this weekend to George Lucas! Yaaargh!!) At one point Vader holds his saber steady while Obi-Wan bats lightly at it with his, DZZT DZZT, and then we cut away to a different scene. Huh? Denis and I had brief fun recreating this exciting battle using two of Matt's toy lightsabers as we waited for pizza, though we improvised our dialogue more. Geeks.
  
  The last movie was just starting to have all the backflips and Hong Kong jumps that would typify the duels of the prequels.


• I was ready to crank up the cynicism when the Ewoks showed up. I don't remember being annoyed at their presence when I last saw Return of the Jedi, but then I learned how much other fans despised them ("Care Bears!"), and certainly they were the "even worse than" comparison point when our friend Jar Jar showed up. And yes, they're cute and cuddly and all, but I found that they fit into the story perfectly, playing a role that stretched far beyond comic relief (though there was a bit of that).
  
  It was amusing to hear Matt and another guest arguing about the scene where an Ewok is slain by an Imperial walker; Matt felt that it successfully made him sympathize with the critters, while the other though it was the dumbest single scene from any of the movies.