By: Gracie Swind, Contributing Writer
For the longest, my knowledge of the Star Wars franchise was heavily limited, and I mean heavily limited. My understanding of Star Wars capped out at being able to identify a Stormtrooper at an anime convention and whatever I was able to glean from that one ride at Disney World that I rode when I was 11. (See Star Tours)
My experience with Star Wars in general was also a strange one. From observing borderline-rabid fans at conventions and online forums to having a now ex-friend of mine claim to disown me after learning I had never seen a Star Wars film (not related), I can’t say that I’ve had the best motivation to pursue seeing any of the films.
Nevertheless, with the supposed “final” Star Wars film coming out around the end of 2019, I decided to make it my goal to watch all of the Star Wars films before I returned for the spring semester. I shelled out my $7.99 for the Disney+ subscription and then proceeded to procrastinate all break by watching old Pixar movies instead of being productive.
(Side-tangent: the Cars trilogy and both Monsters, Inc. movies absolutely slap and there’s nothing can you do or say to change my mind.)
Faced with only a week left before returning to campus and knowing that I had to write this article for the January issue, I did the only thing that any self-hating journalist could do. I set the movies up to play on my phone, rested my phone screen against my laptop screen, and did nothing but play Minecraft and power through eight Star Wars films over the course of about 96 hours.
So here are short, mini-reviews of each movie, coming from a person who didn’t know what Starkiller Base was before she started, and still doesn’t really understand it after. Be warned that there may be blood and there will definitely be spoilers.
Darth Vader, the menacing Sith Lord of the Original Trilogy
The Original Trilogy: What I Came For
A New Hope – The first Star Wars film was not bad at all; although somewhat slow and dry at times, I had a pretty good time watching it. The movie does a good job of acquainting the viewer with the universe that Star Wars takes place in and explains the basic functions and fundamentals of the Force and Jedi, but where it succeeds in explaining the concepts of the world, it utterly fails at explaining the smaller details.
Often while watching A New Hope, I felt like something had been left out or things were moving too quickly. At certain points, Luke would start talking to people as though we should recognize them or know who they are and then, ten minutes later and only through some forced backstory line, we realize that the person in question was just one of Luke’s old friends from Tatooine.
All in all though, it was a good action movie and generally entertaining, especially for the time when it came out. I give it 7/10 paws for a good, solid foundation to a franchise.
The Empire Strikes Back – The Empire Strikes Back followed the lead of A New Hope in being an enjoyable movie, albeit a little dry. Once again, it was a very long movie and the time frame was a little murky, but the overall story was engaging and interesting.
This is also the movie that coined the infamous “I am your father” line, which was certainly cool to see after all this time of hearing it referenced. We also start to see Luke maturing in a way and developing as a character, which is a breath of fresh air in the face of our present film industry which is heavily saturated in flat, unchanging characters.
The betrayals are predictable, but only because they’re realistic for the characters and situations at play. As someone who honestly didn’t know how the series played out, watching Han Solo get frozen in carbonite had me sweating, which was also really nice since movies rarely hit home with the idea that there are stakes in what is happening onscreen anymore. 8/10 paws!
Return of the Jedi – At this point while I’m writing, I almost feel like a broken record; Return of the Jedi faced the same pitfalls as the past two while hitting the same highs as well. It was certainly my least favorite of the originals simply because it feels like very few things happened and was very drawn out, on the whole.
At one point, it is revealed that Luke and Leia are twins, which only makes the fact that Leia made out with Luke in the previous movie to make Han jealous even more uncomfortable. The ending scenes with the final faceoff between Luke and Vader are both heart-warming and a little frustrating.
The movie ending was very satisfying and overall, it was a good wrap-up to the first trilogy. 6/10 paws; the ending was great, the rest could’ve used some work.
