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Cinecism: Star Wars

Star Wars, in a sense, is an easy target. Sure, it’s a ‘classic’, credited with revolutionising cinema, one of the most loved films of all time, eminently quotable and filled with iconic scenes and characters. But still (and this is the crux of my argument), it’s a bit naff.This may seem a somewhat churlish reason to take offence at a film which is so honest about its low-budget TV-serial roots. It’s all part of the charm, right? Well, it seems that line of reasoning has made Star Wars impervious to rational criticism. There’s the awful dialogue – ‘Travelling through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops, boy!’ – which most critics are unusually happy to gloss over, attributing it to part of the film’s charm. The acting is similarly acknowledged to be weak, verging on atrocious, but guess what? It’s got charm! Like Prince Charming’s lucky charm at a charm convention!Consider the plot itself, so riddled with contrivances that one wonders if George Lucas started off with just the plot holes, and cleverly weaved a story around them. The most obvious hole is the most literal one, which is that if you’re going to build a planetsized machine of terror, you’re not going to leave a tiny gap on the outside which leads directly to the ‘reactor core’. Forget missiles: what about stray birds?On the subject of Imperial stupidity, how on earth do our heroes escape stormtroopers by jumping into a ‘trash compactor’? Sure, the Empire’s elite would be incapable of hitting a barn door with a cannon that actually fired barn doors, but does it not occur to them to look in the trash compactor or wait by its only exit? And how does C-3PO manage to hide by locking a door? There’s really only one response to the stormtrooper who actually says ‘It’s locked, let’s move on!’ and that’s for the entire audience to collectively bang their heads on the seats in front of them.The editing is similarly dodgy, but cunningly disguised by the masterful soundtrack. Take away the music and you’re left with numerous awkward pauses and endless shots of robots walking into deserts. Then there’s the ‘Special Edition’, which is roughly the same as the original, except it contains small computer-generated creatures falling off larger computer-generated creatures, undoubtedly thought up in a moment of ‘hilarious’ ‘genius’.Finally, there’s the blatant Wookie racism. As if it isn’t enough that Chewie doesn’t get a medal at the end, he’s continually treated like an amusing pet/ slave, despite being the only one with enough common sense to question the sanity of deliberately falling down a ‘garbage chute’. So there. Star Wars condones slavery. And that’s really the crux of my argument.By Jonathan Tan 

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