Well, I finally watched all three of the original Star Wars movies. After years of people thinking I'm into Star Wars because I'm into Star Trek, when in fact I had never seen Star Wars and the two have NO relation other than stars, I decided to watch them while visiting my parents last week. My youngest brother still lives at home, and he had all the Star Wars movies, and I was able to watch these three while I was there.
I have to say that on the whole, I enjoyed them. My expectations were that it would be a classic action movie with good guys, bad guys, and a princess, and that the good guys would ultimately win. It met my expectations. There is definitely something positive to watching a fun action movie that you don't have to wait for your child to be asleep to enjoy.
I guess since the movies are approximately the same age as me, some cheesiness by today's standards is to be expected. I don't remember all the things I was thinking as I watched them, but here are the things that still stick out to me several days later.
- Princess Leia is referred to as Lee-uh in the first movie, A New Hope. I swear no one pronounced it Lay-uh until a little ways into The Empire Strikes Back. I guess Lee-uh was just a little too common for a princess and they had to take it up a notch.
- Chewbacca's....I don't even know what to call it....warbling drove me insane! There were parts of all three movies when I was like, for the love of God, shut that up! Nice how Han could always understand him and speak English to him, but Chewy could never manage to get anything out but a warble.
- Yoda, yoda, yoda. I guess it makes you a deep thinker if you can invert the structure of all of your sentences. Also, I really expected a Jedi Master to have more of a calm zen-like voice. Instead, I'm going to be checking imdb.com to see if he's voiced by the same person as Grover.
- It's not that I had never seen Luke Skywalker on the side of a Burger King collectible cup or anything, but after watching him for three movies, I have to say, I really expect the "good guy" lead to be a little more attractive. By Return of the Jedi, when we had moved a little more into the 80s, his hair looked slightly better, but still. I kept thinking about hearing how the actor had some accident that disfigured his face and wondering if it happened before or after the movies were made. (Not nice, I know!!)
Having said all that, I really did enjoy it, and Harrison Ford will always have some small piece of my heart. He still looks best in Indiana Jones, but it was fun watching Han Solo.
I can't wait to watch the three prequels now. I usually like Natalie Portman, and it will be nice to see Anakin's background. Now that I know how Darth Vader ends, which was a surprise to me--I had somehow missed out on that spoiler all these years--I'd like to see how he came to be. So for all you Star Wars fans out there (Leah), I'm joining up!