Series Criticism: Star Wars (Part 2): The Beginning of Expansion

As long as Star Wars has existed there has been an element of the expanded universe. Wait, no, that shouldn't be "expanded universe." I've always known it as the Expanded Universe. Capital letters for a proper title. These novels and comic books are wholly a different animal from the movies and action figures that came before. They were no longer gimmicks trying to bank off of the movies. They were legitimate stories in their own rights. Well, that's half true at least. I think at first they had to be marketed from the movies, put out to be sold as sequels to the stories seen in the movies. The first real novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, was certainly marketed as a sequel to Star Wars (the original movie) just in case the movie was not a success. It was basically a Plan B if things didn't go right. Splinter of the Mind's Eye is a special novel in its own right, not really adhering to the canon set out in the novels or movies that followed, but still having a certainly popularity and Star Wars feeling since it was penned by the same man who wrote the original Star Wars. The problem is that certain characters, very popular characters, don't return for the book, and Han Solo and Chewbacca were far too valuable as characters and marketing gimmicks to just thrown away to the wind.

The movies were ultimately very successful, bringing new life to both the space opera and the science fiction genres. It opened new doors that many thought could never be opened. George Lucas was a genius and his baby was the star of the moment. Of course things would change. Demographics would change. People would change. Hell, even Star Wars, both the movies and everything else, would change. But that was down the road a bit. First, we have to talk a little about the comics and some of the first Expanded Universe material.

Now, I'm not going to say I'm an expert on the comics from Star Wars. I've read some, most of the ones I've read are either very old, from my father's day, or fairly recent from a few years ago. The comics were never brilliant, never really needed to give insight into the story of Star Wars. Mostly they were little stories that expanded the Star Wars universe, giving life to different planets, different characters, villains, heroes, and many other things, to make the universe appear like an actual universe. It had depth, both emotionally and geographically, and most of all it had a soul to it. The Jedi story was expanded. The Empire's story was expanded. Everything about the main characters, even the things that ended up not being canon, were expanded. And although there were a great deal of silly ideas and executions, there was a love of the brand seen all over the products.

The things that I was really into when I was young and so full of love of Star Wars were the books. I loved the Expanded Universe books, all the little new adventures of the main cast of the movies. I loved the new characters that were introduced, and I loved the new planets, new conflicts, and new ideas that came streaming forth from those novels. Most of the books were poorly written. And I mean really poorly written. Some were written by established authors, but others were written by people trying to get their foot in the door of science fiction. My biggest gripes were the people who just wrote stories that were awful, simply awful, although that happened rarely, with only one particular series actually being close to unreadable.

The EU really started things off right though with The Thrawn Trilogy, and its books: Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command. These were novels by Timothy Zahn, an already established writer, who wanted to tell some new stories in this budding universe. He really got the ball rolling, creating these books that felt very much like the movies they emulated. The characters were five years or so older than they were at the end of Return of the Jedi, but they felt consistent to those earlier characters, but also as if those characters had grown and evolved from their earlier forms. Timothy Zahn penned these novels, focused around the titular Grand Admiral Thrawn and his new Imperial potential, and they worked incredibly well, showing an amazing sense of grey in a universe that had always focused so heavily on black and white terms. He showed both redemption in the character of Mara Jade, a former apprentice of the Emperor, and a villain who was not evil at all in Thrawn. There were important and delicate conversations in the novel concerning philosophy and the philosophy of the Force, if the Empire was evil at all or if the man of the Emperor was the rotten thing of that institution, and racism. All of these topics were discussed in the universe of Star Wars giving an insightful look at both the fictional universe and our own. It was a groundbreaking series, being the first popular novels in the series and really kicking off the EU and what would become a central backbone to the entire series.

Timothy Zahn's books are of incredible quality, really being an expansion to the movies, almost so much so that they were for a time (and still kind of are) referred to as the "Sequel Trilogy." Most of the main themes from both the prequels and the original movies came into play here in these novels despite the fact that the prequels wouldn't even be considered for years. Elements from this series would end up in the prequels, most specifically Coruscant. In general the novels were brilliant, and they introduced Star Wars as a new type of series, one that could be taken seriously in both movie and novel form. These novels paved the way for Star Wars to be the multimedia franchise it certainly is today with their success.

Now, while I could go on for a very long time about just how amazing the Thrawn Trilogy is, there was one inherently bad aspect of them, and that was the idea that Luke Skywalker had to be paired off with a woman. It wouldn't have been bad if Mara Jade had been that woman and that was it, but for some reason she simply was not good enough for Luke, and another four years or so (ten in universe) would go by before Luke would successfully settle down with the character he worked so well with. So, while this isn't a negative aspect of these novels per se, it became a negative aspect when all the next four years of novels seemed to be were pairing off Luke with different women to see which one would stick the best. The next few years of novels were painful to say the least, with very few main series novels of any worth at all because of the focus on either Luke's love life or trying to make the series as sci-fi and different as possible.

I love the Thrawn Trilogy for what it is. I would gladly read those novels again, but when we talk about the Kevin J. Anderson novels, the Vonda McIntyre novel, and heaven help me, the Barbara Hambly novels, we get into territory best left for only the most hardcore of fans... or at least the fans who can put up with simply awful things. Kevin J. Anderson's novels, specifically the Jedi Academy novels, Jedi Search, Dark Apprentice, and Champions of the Force, were incredibly difficult to enjoy. Honestly they were at times painful to read, often focusing on plots and characters that made no sense, portraying certain characters from the movies as basically being superhuman, knowing everybody in the galaxy, and generally making everybody seem awful to be around for any period of time. Han Solo comes off as the best thing in the entire galaxy when in the movies he had been portrayed as a screw-up who got hit with the wrong end of the intelligence stick. Starting in these novels and continuing in many others, Han Solo is suddenly the best there ever was: the best pilot, the best husband, the best survivor, and the best of everything. It's sickening and a large reason why I dislike the character so strongly. I won't go as far as saying Kevin J. Anderson is a hack. He does have some decent novels to his credit, specifically the Young Jedi Knight series, but the Jedi Academy series and even moreso, Darksaber, are some of the worst things that Star Wars offers.

I can create an entire diatribe out of what Vonda McIntyre was thinking in writing The Crystal Star, having that be one of the most baffling books in all of existence. I will admit it isn't badly written. It simply was not Star Wars, not even slightly.With multiple dimensions and a being of infinite power, it comes off as a jumble of ideas better left for sci-fi than the space opera of Star Wars. The portrayal as Han as a character who could easily cheat on Leia at any moment and Luke as a bumbling fool also leaves a lot to be desired. It's easy enough to avoid though, even if you are the biggest Canon junkie of them all.

The real dark part of the early Star Wars novels has to be Barbara Hambly's mess. Children of the Jedi is unreadable, with one of the worst plots I have ever seen, with some of the worst writing I have ever read. It is a novel terrible in every conceivable way. Even my ten year old self couldn't abide taking the time to read that piece of crud, and I read everything Star Wars related back then. The fact that I hated, hated, hated Callista and everything she represented, and that the entire plot was an excuse to make Luke and Callista be in love whether Luke, Canon, or anything agreed was too much for me. It was awful, painful, and terrible. I hated the Eye of Palpatine, a weird ship that did things that made no sense. I hated the contrived plot, the terrible love story... the everything. It was the first and only Star Wars novel I ever stopped reading simply because it angered and annoyed me so much. No, it disgusted me. The saddest thing about that novel is that today it is considered one of the better ones from the era of novels. What is wrong with people? If you are reading this and enjoyed that freaking novel, shame on you. Shame on your existence. I am disappointed with you, internet reader whom I've probably never met and never will. You now represent everything that is terrible in Star Wars. While Kevin J. Anderson was mediocre, Barbara Hambly started something in the EU (and even in the prequels) that never stopped: contrived romances, melodrama, a focus on getting girls and women to read the novels rather than just making it for the people who loved the series regardless of age, gender, sex, or whatever. It was selling out, pure and simple, and you'll see that the novels that are out today I have very little to say about because I have not read or bought a Star Wars novel in about five years or so. But I'll be getting to that in another review. Children of the Jedi is almost as bad... or would be if I remembered any of it. It was so rough that I basically forgot about it all. I know it was mostly about Luke looking for Callista, finding her, and then her disappearing from his life FINALLY. For all intent's this is the low point of the early EU, and it would not be matched for quite some time.

Now, yes, there were some bad novels in this era and some equally bad writers, but most of the stuff to come out of it was pretty mediocre. I mean, forgettable and just plain average in execution and intent. The Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy was just another way to try to get Luke with yet another woman, this one named Akanah. Lando features pretty prominently in that series, but largely this and many of the other series of this period I didn't mention are just there. They exist.

But, despite the terrible books, the mediocre books, and the ones that are so forgettable I didn't even mention them despite reading and owning them, there were some amazing gems to come out of the terrible stuff. Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston both wrote the excellent side-series X-Wing, which is one of the better series of all time, focusing on the pilots and missions of the Rogue Squadron, the squadron that Luke and Wedge Antilles created between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, and Wraith Squadron which was created during the series. The trials and tribulations of the pilots are some of the best writing in all of Star Wars fiction. Of course it had to take place for a side-series, right?

I, Jedi, also written by Stackpole, went and did something amazing, something only Zahn had been able to do before. He retconned some of stupid out of the EU, taking large chunks of the Jedi Academy Trilogy and making it make sense. It was a brilliant way of showing that even Canon with a capital C could be changed to have a greater quality than it had previously. I, Jedi stands in my head as one of the greatest literary achievements of Star Wars, not only retconning stupidity, but also having a first person perspective and really delving into a character that had never been in the movies with Corran Horn.

Zahn would come back in incredible fashion as well, giving two of the greatest novels in Star Wars with The Hand of Thrawn Duology with the books, Specter of the Past and Vision of the Future. The novels tell an amazing story certainly, but also exist to throw punches at most of the novels that came out between The Thrawn Trilogy and this series. Mara Jade, a character known for speaking her mind, seems to speak with Zahn's own voice for a time, telling Luke how stupid everything has been for so long, telling him how many bad decisions and baffling mistakes he's made, and arguably giving one of the best rants against other novelists who don't understand what they are writing in all of literature. I have to respect Zahn for what he accomplished here, writing the best Star Wars novel, hell, one of the best novels of all time, in Vision of the Future, and telling off both the Star Wars EU and the authors continually making mistakes at the same time. And somehow he got away with it and still writes Star Wars novels. The man is basically that good. And the duology stands as one of the great deconstructions of the Star Wars brand as well as being one of the most insightful, and certainly the best written.

With I, Jedi and the even more amazing Hand of Thrawn Duology, this era of Star Wars came to a close with an incredible bang. 1998 stands as the end of an era. It was a time before the prequels, a time when the original trilogy was the only movie trilogy. It was a time of innocence and trial. Many authors were still testing the waters of Star Wars, trying to get their feet wet, trying to make a universe that could be understood and emulated. It was still young, still vibrant. Twenty-one years has past since the advent of Star Wars, and only a year was left before a new trilogy would begin that would yet again shake up the Star Wars name. But in 1998 there was nothing better than being a fan of this series, believing that everything would be amazing. The books were so much better than they had ever been, the movie, Episode I of the franchise, looked incredibly promising, and so much was there to believe in...

So, there's my second part of this series. Tune in next time for a discussion of the early video games of franchise and maybe a little delving into what would become abhorrent to most pre-prequel fans of the series...

(You won't have to wait as long for the next part as you did for this one. I took way too long getting this out. The next should be fairly soon. Look for me kind of crushing out reviews for the next few weeks more than likely.)

Endings, Critics, "Journalism," and Changes to Products

So, hey, everybody. I guess I'll give a few more cents to this debate and then quietly bow out to start actually reviewing some more products deserving of intricate reviews and such. So, Mass Effect 3 is the game that finally brought people together to start complaining about certain aspects of gaming "culture" that are less than stellar. I'm not going to start with endings, like my title suggests I might, but rather, as the picture indicates above, I will start with "journalism."

Now, I put "journalism" in quotation marks here to prove a point. Partially this is expectation. And no, I'm not just going to bash critics or reviewers, but you'll have to read this carefully because I'd rather not be misconstrued. We, as gamers, as people enjoying products, as movie-goers, as whatever we want to be, expect a certain product to be a certain way. I would never expect Star Wars to be a musical or slap-stick comedy (The Star Wars Holiday Special be damned!). I'd never expect Silent Hill to start going down the road of romantic foible. Nor do I consider something like Twilight to be a product for actual thinking or breathing human beings that use their minds. Now, I insult a bit, but I insult for a reason. Each product is out there for a specific reason and we all have certain expectations for that product. I may have no interest in Twilight, but that movie or that book is not made for me, a twenty-three year old straight male who is cynical and a fan of actual horror and monster movies. It's simply not made for me. Yes, it has its audience and I'm happy, I guess, that it does, but it's not made for me. And that's okay, since I don't want to see it.

So, when a movie is made for me, let's say a horror movie, and I see movie critics bashing it left and right, then I go to see it and love it, it perplexes me. The problem here is that the critics in this case like certain types of movies, but horror movies rarely fit into their definition of good movie. Some of my favorite films of all time are horror and yet so few of them actually have decent reviews to back them up. A site like Rotten Tomatoes gives most of the movies I absolutely love, less than a 50% rating. Is that fair? Is it good that something like Ghost Ship (which I liked) or Pandorum (which I loved!) get such crappy scores when movies that I cannot stand like Dark City or Shutter Island get much better scores?

Partially, this is because of critics' personal preferences as well as my own. The problem is why are critics seen as the only voice of these opinions? Why is Rotten Tomatoes or for games, Metacritic, looked at with such awe? Why do the voices of these opinionated critics and "journalists" matter more than any other person? are they experts? Can one even be an expert on a media that is purely subjective already? If I want to write an article on a video game does that mean I have to major in video game journalism? If I want to write an in depth critique on movies, does that mean that I have to major and then get a PhD in Film Criticism or something? Why? Aren't there forms of media purely subjective anyway? Certainly there are plenty of movies I cannot stand, but those two movies that I say I don't like above have plenty of other people who love them. Does that make them better for me? Does saying that Black Swan (an awful movie in my opinion, seriously awful) received a bunch of awards make me like the movie better? ...I think you know the answer to that.

My point here isn't that game "journalists" are wrong or right, but rather that they all have an opinion. Certainly those opinions might have something to do with the picture shown above, ad revenues, getting the games for free, full access to studios, et cetera... but I doubt that's a huge thing for most of the "journalists." In all honesty, despite the derogatory picture I posted, I sincerely doubt that most of these game "journalists" even care about things like ad revenues or are told to post certain reviews. Most of these reviews rely on subjectivity and criticism, and that's the problem. A journalist cannot be subjective. A journalist is supposed to present facts as truths, objective truths, possibly extrapolating from time-to-time, but certainly not letting their feelings of a product or story get in the way of what that story or product actually is. Calling a game "journalist" a journalist gets the wrong point across. they are critics, much like movie critics, subjective opinions and everything else that comes with it. Yes, they might be correctly called game journalists if they only report facts within studios and make no extra speeches or articles about how fans of games are dumb, but when those things happen, when reviews happen, when fans are called out, those people cease being journalists at all. They become a harsh parody of one.

And that's all in our expectations. We hear the title of "game journalist" and our minds go and say, "Dude, this guy is telling me the objective truth about the game." when in fact he or she is literally only saying their own opinions. But looking at the title, we wouldn't get this... even now a lot of people have trouble seeing the inherent subjectivity involved in the world of game "journalism." I mean, for example I hate RTS games. They are just not my thing at all. They don't work well for me and in general I would rather play almost any other type of game. If somebody asked me to review an RTS, I would give it a bad review, not because it is a bad game, but because I don't particularly like that type of gaming experience. The same kind of thing can be seen with Mass Effect 3 but... it's different too. Gaming critics say that the game is brilliant, fantastic... all of these other things, but this game is the end of a trilogy... it's the last game in an RPG story that has a heavy basis in choice. So, yes, the gaming critics may go out of their way to say how the gameplay is good, how the graphics are good... blah blah blah, but they will never have the same investment that a person who plays the Mass Effect  games over and over would. Most people, certainly not all, but most certainly think that the endings were fairly poorly executed.

Now, are the endings of Mass Effect 3 poorly handled. Certainly. There is no doubt. The game in general suffers from a large lack of focus and perhaps even a rush to a deadline. Pieces of the experience of the game like multiplayer and certain characters within the narrative could have easily been cut out with no detrimental effects except possibly to sales... and that's the big problem.

So, let me tell you what I think. I think BioWare is generally being very quiet on the Mass Effect front, but I was recently reading some things from the Dragon Age write David Gaider, who I think has a lot of very good insights to the problems. I'm not going to quote directly, but suffice it to say, his quotations are easy enough to find if you look in the right places. My point is that he speaks heavily, and in my opinion more frankly, about the process required to make games and the processes required to make money with games. I like all of the Dragon Age games. Certainly there are missteps, but it's mostly a very solid series. I appreciate Mr. Gaider coming out and saying things like they are. Some of what he says certainly reflects on Mass Effect as well. The constant need to make a product that will sell, the idea of making a game that also listens to its core audience and their ideas, the process of making something enjoyable and objectively "good," and mostly trying to get things done by a deadline.

And I think the deadline is what destroyed Mass Effect 3. Despite a lot of people coming out and saying that the game is perfect, the game isn't. It objectively is worse than Mass Effect 2 even when the endings are not counted. It took steps back, making sidequests into nothing more than either fetch quests or easy multiplayer maps without story. I mean, certainly there is some story, and some of the quests are fantastic... but so much of the game feels unpolished... almost unfinished. In some ways the game feels very much like my favorite game, KotOR II, but Mass Effect 3 just has different things that are finished and unfinished as compared to that game.

KotOR II is a fundamentally amazing game that has an ending that just kind of peters away. The developers wanted to finish it, but did not have enough time, as LucasArts wanted to push it out the door for a Christmas release... and that's the problem. They had the fundamental stuff, but had to cut unfinished content out of the released product, making the ending a jumble of incoherent screens and maps with obviously unfinished enemy models, and a highly unfinished plot... but it still worked in my opinion. Even with so much cut content it worked because there was an ending and the core game was so good that a mediocre ending just would not bring it down.

Mass Effect 3 also suffers from being the last part of its trilogy rather than an almost standalone game like KotOR II is. I feel that the game was obviously rushed, multiplayer was concentrated on, and balls were dropped all around. You can see the shines of polish in different places. Rannoch stands out, but they are hidden behind so many bad parts of the game. I mean the beginning just stands out to me so much... hell, Earth in general is incredibly disappointing. BioWare has never worked well with deadlines. They're like Valve, except Valve will wait to release a game, pushing back the date because they want to release a finished and unbroken product, whereas BioWare has to release a product when the publisher wants it out. KotOR or Dragon Age II can also show this pretty easily, with KotORs endgame sequence playing completely differently than the rest of the game with infinite spawning enemies and almost no dialogue. Dragon Age II, although I like the game, just feels like it has pieces missing, especially from the third act. In earlier games this cut content could be seen on the game itself. Hell, KotOR II has been restored by modders from cut content found hidden on the discs. It's ridiculous how much content was cut out from that game, hours upon hours... and every bit of cut content actually makes the game better, solidifying it as the best game of all time for me.

My whole point is that deadlines happen. Mass Effect 3 was pushed back once already... and I doubt that they were completely ready to release such a complex product. I have to believe that they wanted other endings or have planned for an ending DLC of some sort. Anything else would make so little sense it's mindboggling.

And I know I've put my personal opinion out there, but I don't need a happy ending. I just want no plotholes. I just want things to make sense. I can take nonsense if there are reasons for nonsense like in the Silent Hill series where it is pretty readily established that everything is weird and crazy. But Mass Effect  made fundamental sense as a space opera or space fantasy... and seeing an ending that makes so little sense with the rest of the continuity makes the game subpar.

See, I can take a sad or bittersweet ending. Hell, Nier (here are Nier spoilers by the way) ends with the main character giving up his existence and any memory of his existence for the woman he loves. And that's the freaking character you play as for the entire game. About half the main cast dies off in the ending and I never once complained about that because it worked. It was all set up... and when that message came up and deleted all my saves and my character's name and everything... it felt awful, certainly... I mean all that time, all that progress... but it also felt fitting. It worked in a fundamental way that was heartrending and beautiful. Mass Effect 3 does not work. It's ending does not fit. It feels awful and does not seem believable. When I reached the ending I reloaded a save and tried another ending just to find out that almost all the endings are the same... no real added content... no afterward... nothing. Nothing to resolve the plot. Nothing to evoke a response other than "What?" And that's not a good response... it's bad writing... it's terrible.

And yes, the endings should be changed. I don't think it takes away anything from the artistry or the whatever to add an ending. Filmmakers do it all the time. Books are changed by editors or publishers... and video games should have the ability to be altered as well. I don't think it's a bad precedent to make. I think it's an excellent one. Look at the Star Wars movies and the changes within. Even if you don't agree, the changes still exist. Look at Stephen King with new editions of older novels like The Stand or The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger. He changed and added stuff to the plots of both of those novels... one of which is the beginning of an entire series of novels and a short story and graphic novels. And he changed them. Is that a bad thing? No, because he has every right to change them and fans have every right to demand changes to a product they think is bad. Look at the Silent Hill HD collection that just came out. Look at all of the problems in that pack. They have to be fixed to have a good product. Why can't endings be fixed to have a good product too? It makes no discernible sense to me and seems patently false for reviewers and critics and game-makers to come out and say that fans shouldn't matter when they are the ones doling out the money for the game.

I guess I'm an old cynic though... and I feel as if these measures and protests and everything else need to be taken when a product is subpar... when promises were made and not kept... when deadlines had to be met and content stripped from the game. It's a fundamental flaw in the process for critics and reviewers who know absolutely nothing more than game-players... hell, they have almost no differences from those who play games except that they get paid and get less invested in the game... call out those players of video games as being entitled or flawed in their logic.

I know I'm not going to get a ton of people viewing this opinion piece, but I feel that very few people are being sensical here... and that bothers me a ton. I haven't seen too many people come out and say what I've said here... and it needs to be said, it has to be spoken, whether you agree or not.

All right then, last rant I'll do for a while. Expect some actual review content next week. I'm thinking Paprika might make a good review, but I also have a few movies that I've been meaning to watch... and a video game I'm in the process of playing. So, we'll see what comes next.

Series Criticism: Star Wars (Part 1.75: Where did the fun go?)

Okay, now we're getting into the bread-and-butter of my criticisms of the franchise itself. Look, the prequels are bad. We all know that. (Well, besides some writers who want to be controversial and go against the crowd, often saying that the prequels are better because of... uh... reasons? I'm guessing stuff like OH CGI IS BETTER and THE PREQUELS ARE SMART... but come on, does anybody really believe those things?) The prequels failed, maybe not in terms of money, but certainly in terms of support in the thinking people of the world because there was no heart to them.

Now, this is going to get complex and very opinionated, and I can't help that. All of this is opinion, and my opinions can sometimes be controversial or downright insane. Most of my reviews don't really go into some of my more crackpot theories, and I tend to try to avoid complex ideas of what people (actors, directors, writers) were thinking. But sometimes I have to point out when I think people are having fun or when they're not... and also when there are more abstract ideas of what makes something good or bad.

I don't like sell-outs. I like my moral high ground. I like having this idea that nobody ever has to sell out. Selling out=bad to me. And that's the problem. Star Wars was already a franchise based on selling crap, selling media, selling toys to the kids who would see it, but it always had a soul, a heart, in the center of it. Watch A New Hope or Empire Strikes Back and go and tell me that there wasn't a heart to those movies. The actors had passion for their parts. The directors and writers had passion for the story. Yes, they were making money, but there was care for quality. Everybody put in their time and effort. They went to locations and shot their scenes in deserts, in tundras... forests for Return of the Jedi. They built sets, sometimes, like with the original Death Star, from thousands of battleship models put together. That's insane and brilliant. It made the whole movie feel not only more real, but used up in so many ways. It added to the aesthetic which added to the mood which added to why the movies were so good. Practical sets are hard, but they pay off in the end by having stunning visuals that CGI just cannot replicate.

CGI is the bane of existence today. It makes good movies into cartoons and makes bad movies so much worse. George Lucas wanted to push the boundaries of CGI with the prequels and he did. I can't argue that. He pushed the boundaries of what can be done with CGI and movies. The problem is that he sacrificed story, characters, and the Star Wars franchise to do so. You can tell what he wanted. He wanted full control, he wanted to make money, and he wanted the movies to hold up against modern movies in terms of the look of the movies. He wanted to compete with other gorgeous movies, using every trick in his book to make his movies better. He wanted to appeal to every demographic, wanted Star Wars to be KING.

The problem is the movies, at their center, had no soul. There was no reason to care about Anakin or Obi-Wan. Hell, I barely had any reason to care about any of the characters. Anakin was a supreme jerk in the latter two movies of the prequels and in the first he was an annoying kid. Yes, he had some moments of trying to appeal to the audience, like when his mother died and whatnot, but ultimately it failed and fell extremely flat. I don't care about Hayden Christiansen as an actor one way or another. He could have been the best actor ever, his emotions still would have fell flat. Christopher Lee is a case in point. The guy is a very good, very accomplished actor. He's certainly had some bad films, but he's always had dignity in his roles. Compare his role as Count Dooku in the prequels to his role as Saruman in The Lord of the Rings films. There is no comparison. Count Dooku is both lackluster and unneeded. He has no personality, no reason for me to care about him or think about him at all. In fact he's become the punchline to a lot of jokes I make. But then you see Saruman and see that Christopher Lee is a damn good actor who can put in a performance that is simply brilliant. The Star Wars prequels didn't have the good direction that LotR did. That's for sure. But they also didn't have the well-written, well thought of characters. None of them mattered. Yes, we knew the story, we knew what would happen, but did it have to be so full of nothing? I mean, I've seen very few movies where both the settings and characters suffered so much because of issues on the filmmaker's part. Was the plot okay? I have no idea. Maybe it could have been, but the characters were so flat that I didn't care about that either.

Go ahead and tell me there characters are well-done. Go ahead. I dare you. You can't even do it with a straight face, can you? It would make your brain explode to call Anakin or Padme great characters worthy of being etched in history. I mean, Palpatine was the only character I enjoyed watching in the prequels and only because he was evil and didn't give a damn. His complications come from the fact he's playing both sides, acting both good and bad simultaneously. It gives him the illusion of complexity while he remains just as flat and stupid as every other character. Yoda was ruined by the prequels, although I guess everybody knows that by now. Mace Windu was garbage. And do any of the others even matter?

Compare any character from the prequels to the original trilogy and tell me what you get. The original trilogy, is always better. The characters are almost never flat, and the situations and scripts are well done. Watch The Empire Strikes Back and tell me that Luke and Han don't seem like best friends despite spending almost no time in the actual movie together. They do. And yet Anakin and Obi-Wan say they're best friends, spend half of Attack of the Clones together and never feel close at all. Do you see?

The prequels and Star Wars in general has lost their respective hearts and souls. They have sold out beyond comprehension, hoping to sell, to appeal, to look great, to be funny, serious, tragic, comedic... the list goes on and on, but the ending is always the same: the spirit of Star Wars was sacrificed to make room for a "vision," a vision that couldn't work, didn't work, and alienated people away from the franchise. And that's all I can say. The fun of the movies, the enjoyment... the adventure... was stripped out in favor of looks and flashing lights and a focus on a romance that not only didn't work, but couldn't work. The characters were broken beyond repair, flat and dead on arrival. And there was nothing that could be done once that happened.

I used to read the Star Wars novels back in my misspent youth. Most of them were not good, but they weren't brain-crushingly terrible either. They had silly plots sometimes, and each of them (before 1997 or so) seemed to be intent on getting Luke to marry their girl of the month or whatever, but in general, although there were some very high quality ones and some very bad ones, most were humbly mediocre... and that's fine. I still read them. I still pretty much enjoyed them. But after the prequels came out, the whole soul of Star Wars seemed to shift. First it was the genre shifts as seen in The New Jedi Order books with the Yuuzhan Vong, bringing out a focus on both gore, grittiness, horror, and realism that Star Wars had long lacked. These elements were a break from the romantic and adventurous ideal Star Wars had been based upon, but maybe it was time for a change. maybe it could work. There were a few of the books in the, I believe, 19 book series that were pretty good. Some were awful too, but that's to be expected. On the whole though, the books and Star Wars, were stepping on thin ice, pushing the boundaries of what is Star Wars.

The problem was that despite the seriousness, the characters never seemed to change. Luke, Han, and Leia were essentially the same characters from the original trilogy of movies. Their twenty years of character development, relationships, and losses were all but forgotten under the guise of a new series, with new writers trying their best to make these characters their own. And the series fell into what I like to consider at the best of times "Fanfiction" and the worst of times something unspeakable. The things that are called Star Wars novels today are but a shadow of even the worst of the novels of the nineties. And that's terrible. I haven't read any new novels in years... probably since the Legacy of the Force novels, where I became so insulted at the writers of that series that I actually quit Star Wars. How could I not with such egregious violations of the fans' trust? Killing off a popular character in order to prop up an unpopular one? How is that even... I'm not getting into this. My point is that there were a lot of bad decisions and I hope that the teenage girls reading the Star Wars novels now are really happy in just how screwed up the franchise is. It has been a long fall,and it's still going.

Again, the heart of the franchise has been torn out and eaten. There's nothing left but the terrible parts of Star Wars. When no KotOR III established itself, I knew the franchise, to me, was dead, finally. Have there been some good thing in the past few years? Yeah, I guess. I liked some parts of the Legacy comics, and I like the idea of horror and Star Wars combining... but beyond that, I'm done with the series.

In a way Star Wars reminds me of some of my more hated franchises, like Harry Potter, which I felt sold out a long time ago... or, and I may like the webcomic all right, but the soul of it is now gone: Homestuck. Now, these two franchises are certainly, at this point in time, examples, in my opinion, of creators selling out, forgetting original visions, and appealing to the blind mass of fans rather than the art of the thing. Maybe it's just me, but that's how I feel: utterly disappointed in the creators.

I need to take a breath for a while, but Part 2 in which I rant about the early Star Wars expanded universe and Return of the Jedi will be coming soon.

Series Criticism: Star Wars (Part 1)

I start off this with a piece of concept art for the last good thing in Star Wars, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. It's a video game, and my favorite video game of all time, for reasons that I'll kind of get into here, and get way more into whenever I review this fantastic game. I start with the last great thing to come from Star Wars because it came out nearly seven years ago. And yet a lot of Star Wars has been coming out since. Very little of it has been any kind of quality, and for the most part, it has essentially kicked the fan of the series that I once had been in the teeth. I can't be the fan I was. Hell, I can't even be a fan at all.

Once this series stood for something. Back in the old days, days I don't even remember, when there were only movies, some comics, some action figures, and maybe a book or two, this series stood for something great. It was a series with infinite possibilities, an entire galaxy at the disposal of a great writer, a great thinker, and it was available to the masses. At one point you could watch the movies and know exactly all there was to know or care about in Star Wars. I've reviewed the original Star Wars movie, and I'm pretty sure I've made some of my feelings on the series known already. Star Wars was once great. Hell, the first time I saw A New Hope it was in theaters when the special edition came out in 1997. I probably saw it before then, my dad was a fan of Star Wars too, but the first time I really remember it, I was eight and I was in a crowded theater, loving the movie, falling into it every bit as much as I could fall into a good book. I fell in love with Star Wars from that moment on. I ate it up. I saw The Empire Strike Back, easily one of the BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME, in a nearly empty theater at midnight, possibly the most appropriate way to watch that bleak film. And then I saw Return of the Jedi and fell in love with the characters and the story all over again, even if ROTJ does have its own issues.

I believed in Star Wars. I believed that it could be great, that it was great. I believed that there could be a galaxy far, far away... a long time ago... that housed Jedi and smugglers, and amazing spaceships, and everything else. Wookiees, Hutts, Greedo, Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin... the list can go on and on. My point here is that I fell into the same TRAP that a lot of people did. I believed in Star Wars, and I believed in George Lucas. And today, I believe in nothing but lies.

It wasn't the prequel trilogy that broke me. No. Of course none of the movies were good, but I saw them when I was young. I knew things were wrong, but I never hated the movies. I still don't. I wish they didn't exist, and I treat them as if they don't exist, but I have ambivalence for them, not hatred. They didn't single-handedly ruin Star Wars, and they certainly didn't ruin the original trilogy for me. What they did was bring Star Wars into the mortal realm, the realm of fallibility, the realm of not being the best. Star Wars fans have, for years, wondered what the prequels did... why did they have to be so bad? Why did the acting have to suck? Why CGI? Why everything? The problem is that the times- they are a-changing. I know plenty of people who love the prequels, despite my own disgust with hearing that. I know plenty of people who like the prequels more than the originals. I know it's a travesty, but it happens. The reason for this is that the times are different. People have their opinions and even if they are wrong, they're opinions.

So, the prequels are simply white noise to me. They didn't affect me, didn't bring about some kind of change. I didn't watch the screen and believe in this unbelievable universe. Instead it brought the harsh reality to my young mind that Star Wars wasn't real. It wasn't real.

It wasn't real.

Nothing could have prepared me for that disappointment. I was a lonely child, a nerd of nerds, a reader of novels at a time I should have been reading crappy little  pop-up dog books or whatever. "See Spot run (away from Darth Maul, what a terrible name)." I was holding onto Star Wars, putting it up as some kind of king of stories, of movies, of everything... and the day that I learned it was a broken series was the day I also learned that nothing in this world was perfect. I became cynical so long before I ever should have. I brought myself into horror, into other pursuits that were far removed from the atrocities of Star Wars. You think, my reader, that you have seen war crimes? No, not until you read some of the Star Wars novels, not until YOU UNDERSTAND the worst the world has to offer. Let me proceed, but I warn you, if you haven't been a big part of the Star Wars fandom or fanbase or whatever over the course of the last fifteen years or so, much of this will not make any sense to you. I speak of Yuuzhan Vong, New Jedi Orders, comics, Karen Traviss, the deaths of characters for convenience, and how so many characters never change, never evolve, never adapt, and... at eighty are just the same as they were at thirty. I talk of character assassination, galaxy destruction, the butchering of stories, and an absolutely broken fanbase that simultaneously praises and hates.

"Tell me a story of how greatness falls." That is the statement that initiated this writing, this "article", this diatribe on the good things that can turn so bad so quickly. It's not that the series fell from grace, or even that it broke apart just as it was on top. Instead it was a downward spiral. It was as if the series that was so dear to many of us was addicted to something terrible. Call it CGI, call it overdone and contrived plots, call it terrible romance plots, or fanfiction styled writing. Hell, call it what it is: a trainwreck. I loved Star Wars once, at a time when I could dream beyond the stars and see the world full of infinite possibilities. I used to think about what other wonderful worlds there were, if Luke ever found more Jedi, or if he truly would be the last. I used to think about what would happen now that the Emperor was dead and the Rebels would celebrating it up with a bunch of teddy bears. Would there be Ewok pilots? Would they have an embassy or something? What about Jabba's palace and all of his dancing girls?

What I'm saying is that the universe felt so large because it left me asking so many questions, but not caring about the answers. I can truly say that Star Wars is the series that gave me the desire to first start writing. It was also the series that sparked me to do this blog for the internet. I didn't want to blast the prequels or yell or rant or hate, I just wanted to be able to speak my mind, to say that I have been disappointed, fans of Star Wars have been disappointed. Some people may read this, may agree, may even like it, but I wish that people who had control over the franchise would read it. I wish that they could understand that Star Wars was never about gimmicks and crappy romances and appealing to the masses. It was a world of infinite possibilities. It was an action space fantasy about a ragtag group of rebels facing off against some terrible empire, even if the Empire seemed as okay as the rebels. Yes, some Imperials were bad like Tarkin and the Emperor, but most were simply regular guys. Some didn't even want to face off with the rebels. And the rebels probably had the same kinds of good and bad people too. Look, it created a realistic world where people acted like people and the universe made sense, not like the YOU ARE EITHER GOOD OR EVIL sense that the prequels gave to Star Wars.

Darth Vader wasn't evil, he just had different ideas. He disagreed with Obi-Wan and he disliked incompetence when his time was limited. He was focused and driven. Obi-Wan's term of describing him as "twisted" works well and fits. Then you look at Darth Maul. Yeah, not really feeling the complexities there. You can compare the bland and lackluster, almost confounding, General Grievous (What a name...) to Grand Admiral Thrawn from Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy of novels. How can you even compare the two characters? How can they even be seen as comparable at all? Yes, both are commanders of military things or whatever, but General Grievous is an absolute travesty of a character, whereas Grand Admiral Thrawn is a well done morally ambiguous "antagonist" to the main characters. He is both well-written and well thought out, which can be easily said for all of Zahn's characters, most of Michael Stackpole's characters, and Aaron Allston's characters in the X-Wing series before he became a big part of what is wrong with the Star Wars expanded universe.

So, this is my first part of an entire series analysis and criticism of Star Wars. I'm just getting started, giving you an introduction. I have no idea how many parts this will be, but next time I'll be focusing on where Return of the Jedi screwed over Star Wars, and the expanded universe stuff that came out until around the time the prequels came out. We're going to touch upon some incredibly awful parts of Star Wars, including Kevin J. Anderson, Barbara Hambly, The Crystal Star, Luke's love life, and the end of an age. Stay tuned...

Movie Appraisal: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)

Star Wars... the original, the one that kicked off an entire franchise that nerds and normals equally love. It is a near-perfect space opera, a fantasy done in a science fiction universe with an epic story and beautifully done characters.

I was originally going to start my Star Wars movie reviews off with The Phantom Menace, but I thought that the name of that movie was so stupid that I'm going to save that when I'm feeling particularly vicious and angry at everything.

Star Wars, the original, also subtitled these days as A New Hope, and which I will abbreviate as ANH throughout this review for ease of typing since this is going to be a particularly long review, is simply a sublime movie from beginning to end. Some may say that Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is the best of Star Wars, but I tend to believe that they are objectively equal in status and quality. ANH starts off the story, it begins everything. It is a self-contained story full of great characters and situations, humor, seriousness, and many other beautiful and colorful elements. Despite the alien environments, we connect with the characters. We understand their plight.

Luke Skywalker (played by Mark Hamill), the protagonist, is a young man working on his uncle's farm (It's a moisture farm for those of you who want to know.) who dreams of one day doing great things, going to the Imperial Academy to be trained and then defecting to the Rebellion against the Empire. He hates the Empire and everything it stands for, and our impressions of the Empire are already not good. The Empire has stormtroopers, and a big guy in a black suit and helmet named Darth Vader (David Prowse, voice by James Earl Jones), who really does not really seem like a good guy. The Empire also employs only British actors, so therefore they must be evil! Seriously though, the Empire comes off as a bunch of regular bureaucrats and such working for a corrupt and often evil higher management. It almost, and I'm certain this was meant to be the case, is indicative of the Nazis. This extends to not only how they act, but the way they are dressed as well. Stormtroopers bring to mind the German Storm Troops of World Wars I and II, and Darth Vader is very reminiscent, especially in the way he acts, as being an SS officer controlling the shock troops.

This whole idea makes the entirety of ANH a fight between good and evil, and we see it as such. We are reminded of the Nazis and just how bad they are and we are made to feel a certain way about the Empire and feel pity and even hope for the small band of rebels struggling to change their galaxy. We see heroic archetypes all over the place, from Luke Skywalker being the classic hero, without a tragic flaw, ready to stand up and fight against nearly insurmountable odds, to Han Solo (Harrison Ford), the anti-heroic archetype, the rogue with a heart of gold in the end. We see that Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) is the damsel in distress as well, just like in many classic myths and stories, but the twist is that she's a strong woman, ready and very able to take care of herself in a hostile environment. This shows so much about the story and I have not even touched upon the story yet. 

The characters define the plot. Each and every character is memorable. When you think about Star Wars you generally are going to think about something in this movie, whether it be the Death Star, any of the characters or situations, or a quotation or two. That's one of the reasons this movie is so good. It is so memorable. It sticks in our heads and makes us want to fly our own Millennium Falcon, shoot down a Death Star ourselves, or join a band of freedom fighters looking to save the galaxy from oppression. Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) represents an old mentor, dying before his time and giving the hero a reason to fight, a real reason, and not simply a philosophical one. He becomes the most interesting character in some ways because of his relevance and because of how he is portrayed within the film itself. I will get back to that point.


ANH takes ideas from so many other places that it is ridiculously derivative in some ways. The obvious ones are from World War II, but other ideas come from Frank Herbert's Dune in terms of Tatooine, the desert planet to "spice" and its connotation in the film, to Akira Kurosawa Samurai films, especially The Hidden Fortress (1958) where much of the ideas of the droids, the princess, and much of the main plot comes from. The droids, R2-D2, and C-3PO, are used as comic relief in some ways, but they are never unrealistic despite something like a droid not actually existing in our own world. They do things that are not impossible for a droid to be designed to do. They help make the universe of Star Wars have meaning, and it becomes defined forever as a science-fiction fantasy epic, as full of humor and social commentary as it is with heroic ideals and wonderful visuals.


You come to fall in love with each and every one of the characters in turn. Every single one means something to the story. Obi-Wan Kenobi, for example, despite being an old man full of regret, still deems it necessary to fight in any way he can. He is an old Jedi, basically a warrior-monk with a lightsaber, a sword that can cut through anything, and the Force. The Force is everything in the galaxy. It is a religion, a way of life, and source of energy and motion of the mind. Jedi can control the Force and direct it outward, either to see into the future, feel what's going on in the present, and speak with other peoples' minds across a great distance, or to use it to perform extraordinary acts, like moving something with their mind, tricking people into thinking or doing things they would not have otherwise, or simply doing something that requires an intense trust in oneself.


Getting back to Obi-Wan Kenobi as a character though, he becomes devious in the movie, moving the plot along and manipulating circumstances to get exactly what he wants. And he's a hero! You may not see it all at first, but watching it as many times as I have, I have come to see which characters are much more than they appear and which are single-minded, and none in this movie are single-minded... at least not in the bad character kind of way.

You can balance Obi-Wan Kenobi against the true villain of ANH. No, it is not Darth Vader, despite every single fanboy thinking that is the case. The real villain is Grand Moff Wilhelm Tarkin (Peter Cushing), the man who destroyed an entire planet, who had no mercy whatsoever, and who nearly destroyed another. He wanted to wipe out the Rebellion, and succeeded in wiping out a planet sympathetic to the Rebellion and what they wanted, but this also succeeded in rallying people against the Empire and what they stood for. Their show of force was countered by an equally brutal show of force when Luke blew up the Death Star moments before it would have blown up the fourth moon of Yavin where the Rebels were based.


The whole story has a very early cinema feel to it, taking things from Metropolis (1927), like C-3PO for example, and a movie like Casablanca (1942). Han Solo especially gives off the vibe of a Humphrey Bogart-like character, and the dialogue seems so natural and banter-ish, that it is easy to see where the fast-talking World War II movies had their influence here.  


The plot is so intricate and fascinating. Everything flows together, from beginning to end, shaping our perceptions and our sympathies. We have fallen in love with this film because we have had no choice. It is an objectively good film, derivative in all the right ways, new in even better ways. What is does right it does so well that it blows most other films right out of the water, and what it does wrong is very little.


I have mentioned the characters so much because those are the iconic elements from this film. Sure, there are many great plot pieces, from the Millennium Falcon and our heroes getting stuck on the Death Star, the Empire's fortress, to Obi-Wan Kenobi letting himself be struck down so that he can assist Luke in the future by being even stronger than he had been. The first shot of the movie, the VERY FIRST SHOT, tells us everything we would ever need to know about the very nearly simplistic plot of the film. The Rebels are in their blockade runner, the Tantive IV, racing away from the Empire, represented by a gigantic Star Destroyer. The Rebels have stolen the plans to the Empire's fortress and evil space station, the Death Star, that has power enough to destroy an entire planet in a single blast.

The Rebel ship is boarded and we come to see and fear the Stormtroopers and their apparent leader, Darth Vader. They make short work of the poorly equipped freedom fighters. At the same time, seamlessly integrated into these scenes are the first two major characters introduced, the droids. We sympathize with them. R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) is cocky and rebellious himself, hotheaded and ready to help in anyway he can, whereas C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) is timid, and would rather not get involved in anything too sketchy, and yet he is every bit the hero that R2-D2 is, but in a different way. He focuses more on the moment and communication, but helps in his own way throughout the film, even if its nothing more than reprimanded R2-D2. And because these droids receive our good graces, everyone associated with them gradually does too. Princess Leia, a strong female archetype from beginning to end, interacts with R2-D2 all but a moment and her status as a hero in her own right is established early on.

Then as the movie advances we meet Luke Skywalker, the new owner of the droids. We see his life, see him whine about not getting the chance to do what he wants. We get the feeling that he is being held back for some reason, but we never see why, not until the next movie at least. His Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru seem to think he would be safer away from the war and the Jedi, and yet Luke is picked up and dragged into the fray as if he were destined to be a hero from the very beginning. His uncle and aunt are ruthlessly murdered and set ablaze by the Stormtroopers looking for the information on the Death Star placed in R2-D2 by Princess Leia. With nothing left, Luke decides to fight and the plot kicks off and never stops. Obi-Wan and Luke meet a rogue with a heart of gold and his hairy co-pilot, Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), and they set off on an adventure to find Alderaan, and help out Bail Organa, Princess Leia's father and a leader of the Rebellion against the Empire.


Unbeknownst to them, Alderaan is destroyed by Grand Moff Tarkin and the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo's ship, is taken into custody by the Imperials while our heroes go off to save the Princess and themselves. The Death Star scenes are some of my favorites, a comedy of errors and misfortunes, eventually resulting in almost all of our heroes getting away, with Obi-Wan sacrificing himself in front of Luke, I think, for the purpose of showing Luke the true evil of the Empire, and how he needs to fight them and not run away. Remember that Han Solo, before he leaves right before the assault on the Death Star, asks Luke to come with him. Maybe the outcome would have been different if Obi-Wan had not died. Maybe everything would have changed. Maybe he needed to die to cement Luke as the hero of this story rather than a simple side character. And that's the brilliance of Star Wars. The rogue comes back to save the hero and the hero succeeds and gets awarded for his bravery in the end.


The perfect ending to such a wonderful and engaging story. I could spend hours going over every aspect of this film, from the beautiful scenery, to the special effects which were amazing for their time, and, in my opinion, are still gorgeous today, even by modern standards. The aliens seen in the movie are diverse and different, giving a feel of a place so far away, but with the same problems we face. And that's the brilliance. That's the art of Star Wars. It is not about the special effects. It is not about what could not be done. Instead this movie seems to be a triumph in the idea of winning in the face of every adversity. If you go and watch a making of feature about this film, you will see just how many things the filmmakers had going against them. They were doing something completely new in some ways, the special effects were ahead of their time, the costumes, and George Lucas, the creator and director of Star Wars wanted things to go his way despite really not getting his way over many things. Some editors he worked with only wanted to do their cut of the movie rather than what he wanted. He had constant fights with the cameraman over angles and the kinds of shots he wanted. The actors more than likely improvised large portions of dialogue, and the filming off of any set was difficult. Filming in Tunisia for the Tatooine scenes were particularly trying. And maybe that's all part of it. Maybe the artistic vision needed to have setbacks, needed to have troubles. It made everybody more invested, more in love with the product they were making. It was not about being in front of a green screen on a sound stage, or inserting CGI all over the place without giving us a reason to care about the characters. No, it was a character study from beginning to end, giving us the feeling of real relationships happening between characters, real friendships either forming or being there all along. EVERY character feels real. Every plot is engaging. You can feel the budding friendship between Han and Luke, the stable friendships between Han and Chewbacca and between the droids.You can see how Luke truly respects R2-D2 and C-3PO, but also uses them as the tools they are meant to be, something we do not understand because to us the droids are every bit as much characters as Luke or Han, but in the Star Wars universe, they are machines used for doing certain things, and that is what this movie gets right. It gets the details right, the feeling right. Sure, there may be mistakes that anybody can point out, but on a whole this is one of the best movies to ever be made, both in terms of scope and in terms of quality. This is the movie that made me into a Star Wars fan to begin with, and I will always look fondly on this film, even though I have seen what Star Wars has become. To go from such amazing beginnings and to end on such a low note, to have the drivel that is coming out of the collective excrement hole of all the writers and such of Star Wars today is a sad thing to see, but I will, no, we will, always have the classic... Star Wars.

A Special Review for a New Year!!! Video Game Assessment: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KotOR) (2003)

Okay, there are some things I really hate to admit, but here's one of them: I'm a pretty big fan of Star Wars. Now, don't get me wrong, I hate a lot of Star Wars stuff. I literally cannot stand the Prequels, most of the books suck, the comics are mostly terrible, and the video games which all make me kind of want to vomit up piles of blood... that and I black out for long periods of time after partaking of any of those activities and wake up with gore all over my hands, a toy lightsaber that seems far too dented to be good, and a Jar Jar Binks mask...

...uh... moving on... I'm not proud of being a Star Wars fan in this day and age. Star Wars has gone pretty far downhill since around... oh... let's say eleven-and-a-half years ago. I wonder what could have happened then...? Well, I obviously have no clue at all.

See my problem is that there is a lot of bad Star Wars out there. I mean, besides the Original Trilogy (and not really even a good portion of Return of the Jedi), what else can a Star Wars fan do?

Well, here's the answer. This game and its sequel are the sole shining lights in an age of terrible darkness for the Star Wars franchise and its fans. I understand that sounds like quite a hefty charge to be making, but understand that I do not make this fact-based argument lightly, nor do I let nostalgia of Star Wars get in the way. I freaking HATE the Prequels. Let me say that again so that everybody can truly understand me here. Most of the games suck (although some of the early games aren't terrible), especially those games that have come out most recently. You people who like The Force Unleashed and its sequel are the garbage of society giving a man named George Lucas more money than he should have ever had on a franchise that is bloated beyond reason, a terrible fat monster... and it has needed to be put down for a long time.

Yeah, I'm talking about the death of Star Wars here. This video game and its sequel are the last good things to come out of Star Wars and they will always be. I'm not biased here either, this is the truth. Mr. Lucas doesn't seem to have a mind for anything more than money, and it's sad. It's sad to see something that I've loved ever since I was young being mutated into a terrible monster that needs to be stopped by any means.

I'm not going to rant too much longer on how terrible Star Wars has become. I'm going to be doing that when  (and yes, I do mean WHEN) I review some of the terrible things of this franchise. But in the meantime, I'm going to stop talking about the terrible things, and instead start talking about something great in a sea of crap.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, usually known as KotOR is something amazing to come out of this bloated franchise. It does what so many other things have failed to do. It captures the spirit of the Original Trilogy without riding its coattails and trying to make everything more COLORFUL, more INTENSE, MORE CGI-ish, and more "AWESOME". It relies on storytelling, great and memorable characters, and the universe of Star Wars really brought to a new life. This video game feels like a movie. Hell, I'd take this game as a movie over almost anything else crapped out these days.

The game was released originally in 2003 for the Xbox and PC. It was developed by Bioware and published by the behemoth LucasArts. When this game came out it was overshadowed by more hyped games, but soon maybe even in spite of those other games, gained a following. It was a great RPG (role-playing game), and it was made even better by taking place in the Star Wars universe. Hell, this game became 2003 Game of the Year almost universally. Do you know how many other Star Wars games have done that? Exactly zero. And yet, and I think this shows just how "committed" Mr. Lucas is to "art", this franchise was cancelled, despite being intensely popular, and featuring some of the best overall video games to come out in their respective years because the games didn't sell as well as the more hyped and more intense games LucasArts were publishing at the time. So, instead of hyping this legitimately good franchise up, they abandoned it. And don't even talk to me about the MMORPG of The Old Republic coming out. That is a blatant money-maker and nothing more. They call it a "sequel" or "spiritual sequel" to the KotOR games, but all it is is a cash-in on a few legitimately good games. Stupid MMORPGs...

Anyway, I guess I should review the game now and tell you why this game is one of the best I've ever played. First and foremost, even if you have little knowledge of the movies, this game is great.You don't need to know the movies to know this game because it takes place 4000 years before the movies. No, that's not a typo. I did type 4000 years right there. So, no characters ever mentioned in the movies are in these games. Yeah, you see a lot of alien species that also happen to be in the movies, but you see some alien species that are never featured in the movies at all.

The story is a basic one, but it works really well. The Jedi and the Sith are at war after the devastating conflict of the Mandalorian Wars tore them apart. The new Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Malak, who took the title from his own master Darth Revan after he attacked and defeated the previous Dark Lord, will stop at nothing to capture a young Jedi woman, Bastila Shan, who happens to be incredibly powerful in a rare force technique called "Battle Meditation". He intends to capture her and turn her to evil to be able to use her power against the Republic so that he can take it over for himself. There, it's a basic good versus evil story, the heart of the Star Wars franchise. It gets pretty epic and works really well.

The characters are what drive the story and they are really what makes this game not only memorable, but fantastic. Bastila Shan, the young Jedi woman, Carth Onasi, a captain in the Republic's navy, Jolee Bindo, a failed Jedi, Canderous Ordo, a tough Mandalorian mercenary, and HK-47, and assassin droid with a distinct personality, comprise just some of the crew of characters you meet along the way. They also happen to be the best characters. This game is fully voice-acted and features some of the best voice acting of its time that I have ever heard. The characters are believable and feel real in their own way. They're every bit as memorable as Han Solo, C-3PO, Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, or R2-D2. They have this feel of Star Wars realness to them. You come to like them and hate them just as you might like or hate real characters. The voice acting helps so much too. It makes the character-oriented story work beautifully.

The graphics and gameplay are good. They may not be the best of their time, but they still stand up well today. I could easily play this game and compare it to other, very recent games, and be happy playing this one over a more recent game. That probably sounds a little ridiculous. Newer games should be better, but that's often not the case. KotOR is in a class of its own for me. I love the game. I love how well it worked. I love how everything comes together and makes sense. I love the combat system and the gameplay. The graphics, story, characters... they're all believable and fantastic. The settings are wonderful, ranging from a huge ecumenoplis of Taris, to the desert world and familiar landscape of Tatooine, to a throwaway planet spoken about in A New Hope, Dantooine, to a water planet called Manaan, and the world of the Wookiees, Kashyyyk. The settings are simply fantastic. Of note are Manaan and Taris, which are absolutely gorgeous pieces of programming. They both make you feel like you're actually on the planet while you're playing. You may think I'm kidding, but I always have a hard time keeping myself from simply staring off into the distant ocean when I'm on Manaan or looking up at the huge skyscrapers of Taris. It's absolutely gorgeous, and needs to be seen to be enjoyed.

This game happens to be one of my favorites. The sequel is my absolute FAVORITE video game of ALL TIME, and only because it takes everything from this game and makes it better. The characters are better, the settings are better, the gameplay is better, and the story is better, but that doesn't take away from what this game accomplished and how well it was received by both Star Wars and video game fans alike. There are many reasons why this game is one of the best games ever made despite LucasArts and its time limitations and the cut content lurking within this game (Yes, there was even more content made for the game that was never implemented because LucasArts instituted a Christmastime deadline for this game, which means things had to be cut. This means that this game could have been even better. What the Hell, Lucas?). This game brought back the nostalgia of the Original Star Wars trilogy without compromising story for Jar Jar Binks "hilarity", overly stupid lightsaber duels, podracing, terrible acting, or needless characters, and insipid dialogue.

This game, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, is Star Wars to me. Hell, to me this game is more Star Wars than 2/3 of the movies, which is a travesty, I must say.