The Hype of Star Wars

When I was a teen, many of my friends bragged about how awesome Star Wars (the whole trilogy) was. They’d so how awesome it would be to have huge ships that could go such-and-such a speed or how awesome Boba Fett is… I’d say how awesome it was to have just seen Captain Picard go Roarin’ Twenties gangster on a couple of Borg, and they’d chime in, “I hate to interrupt you, and I’ma let you finish, but Jabba the Hutt is one of the best gangsters ever.”

Now that I’ve seen the trilogy (both of them), I’m left to wonder… What the heck was so awesome about any of it? For instance, Boba Fett was pretty much useless. He did very little of interest the entire time — certainly never anything to live up to the “greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy” epithet — and when he did get his big chance to save (wreck?) the day, he gets outwitted by an amateur Jedi and a decades-obsolete astrodroid. Super.

Can I just say it? The only time anything in Star Wars lives up to the hype is in the Clone Wars animated mini-series. Only in it did the Jedi really shine as soldiers that could wipe out entire armies single-handedly. Only in it were enemy forces halfway effectual at being a threat. Only in it did Anakin put his angsty teenage boo-hooery aside to stand out among all the others as someone who could really threaten the entire galaxy.

In the original trilogy, the only thing that lives up to the hype is the Death Star. And even it gets blown up.

Twice.

Just had to get all that off my chest. I feel better now.

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