A random perusal of today’s Slashdot turned up this article regarding the news that the upcoming (and hopefully the last) Star Wars movie will be rated PG-13.
I point this out not so much because I’m interested in the reasons for the rating, or even in the film itself, but because of the nature of the ensuing discussion. It is fairly typical of the Slashdot community’s reaction to the Star Wars films, summed up by this posting:
This announcement does corroborate with the rumours that Ep. III consists entirely of Lucas squatting out an angry, sweaty dump in front of a blue screen while screaming insults at the fans.
I’m still going to pay to see it.
Now, I loved the original three movies as much as anyone when I was a kid. Saw them hundreds of times. Had all the toys. Read the novelizations obsessively. Read the comic book versions.
You get the picture.
However, none of this means that I feel any need to join with the hordes of apologists who insist that The Phantom Menace would have been okay had it not been for Jar-Jar Binks, or that Attack of the Clones in any way made up for it. In fact, I stand by my opinion that Attack was an even worse movie, and no, the masturbatory CGI battle sequence that took up the last fifteen minutes did not render the movie anything other than what it was—a giant, money-wasting pile of crap.
I guess I just don’t understand why people continue to pay money to see these movies. To this day, I have friends who say they are going to see the new one, even though the other two sucked (well, only because of Jar-Jar… and that kid that played Anakin… in the first one… well, the kid in the second one wasn’t very good either… and the dialogue could have been better… BUT THE GIANT SPACE BATTLE AT THE END REALLY KICKED ASS!! Didn’t it? DIDN’T IT?!!).
This makes no sense to me.