Introducing Star Wars.

[captain nemo1701]

Lucas conceived the whole thing as a serial, based largely on the 1940's Flash Gordon & Buck Rogers saturday matinee films with an over-reaching strory arc spanning six films. Nine films were mentioned back in '77 but he later stated that it would work better as six. Each movie is therefore called an 'episode' as if it's a weekly serial and has the scrolling 'story so far' opening titles. So it would make sense to start at the beginning and go from 1-6. Watch episode 7 if you like, but the story does kind of reach a natural end in Jedi. Episode 7 comes along a long time later and, for my money, sits uncomfortably between trying to reboot an old franchise (the young lead star is now into his 60's) with new faces for a younger audience while simultaneously trying to appeal to the nostalgia that my generation (I saw the original aged 13 in 1978) had for the original characters. The result IMHO, is a bit of a mess. Yes, it has a bigger budget, super CGI mega- SFX, but all seems rather familiar and ends up retreading old ground. The forthcoming stand alone movie, actually a prequel to episode 4, could be fun as it slips into the original story arc unobtrusively - Episode 3.5?.

 

[Levo-Lon]

Watched the new film the other night...i thought it was pretty crap..dissapointing over hyped..

Im done with starwars

 

[Yellow Fang]

I don't think you can just show Star Wars to your son without first showing all the films that inspired George Lucas in the first place ( Dambusters, 633 Squadron, the Ikura Kurosawa film The Hidden Fortress, probably several others), explaining which bits inspired which.

 

[fossyant]

I enjoyed the new film but it was rather deja vu ! The 'stand alone' Episode mentioned above is centred around rebels obtaining the blue-prints for the Death Star.

Possibly worth going 1-7 for a youngster to get the story. I still think the old ones have stood the time with the extensive use of detailed models.