Has anyone noticed that the debate among fans of the old and new Star Wars trilogies mirrors the debate over the old and new Simpsons almost perfectly? Here’s USA Today on Star Wars – check out the parallels:
We’re not talking Jedi knights vs. Sith lords, Obi-Wan vs. Anakin or even good vs. evil.
When Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith hits screens next Thursday, fans of George Lucas’ six-part opus will again clash over which films rule: the original hits of the 1970s and ’80s or the prequel that began six years ago.
Conventional wisdom has the original films — 1977’s A New Hope, 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back and 1983’s The Return of the Jedi — winning hands down.
Fans of the early movies tout the breakthrough technology, the story lines and the birth of such unforgettable characters as Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Yoda and the suave Han Solo. (Related story: Compare Anakin and Luke)
“There is no personality in the new movies,” says Michael Walker, a 39-year-old Star Wars devotee from Decatur, Ala. “The new movies, it seems that they are trying to win you over with fantastic special effects.”
But fans younger than 25 — many of whom had their first Star Wars theater experience with 1999’s The Phantom Menace or 2002’s Attack of the Clones — have a different perspective. They find the old films slow, the dialogue corny and the special effects crude.
“I watched the originals to learn the whole story, but I couldn’t watch them more than once,” says Jean Burton, a 22-year-old Los Angeles retail sales employee. “I like the worlds in the new Star Wars.”
The dispute can get downright testy. Yale Tindell, 28, a Baltimore automotive service manager, says “These new ones are an abomination. They have weak actors, weak stories, weak effects. They’ve bled the originals for profit.”
Of course, my generation is right that the new Star Wars and Simpsons are terrible. I can’t believe they found people who would even compare Episode I and II to the original trilogy — that’s sacrilege. (I am hopeful, though, that Episode III will be better than I and II. It would be hard to be worse.)
By the way, the capper to the article is a set of comparisons between aspects of the two trilogies — check out the reasoning they use to claim that Jar-Jar Binks is better than the Ewoks:
The winner: Jar Jar, by a nose. Sure, half the film galaxy loathes him, but he’s the third-most-popular toy, behind Yoda and R2-D2, according to Lucasfilm.
Who says logic is dead?