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In the order they were released...
Episode IV: A New Hope
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away lived two factioning sides of people. The good side and the dark side. The dark side was led by a bad dude dressed in black, with a helmet on his face and a big red sword. His name was Darth Vader. He lived in a giant ball that floated through space and spent his time blowing up planets. His army was large and powerful, but with one problem – his inept Stormtroopers. Hundreds of guys in white suits and laser guns that are notably the worst shots in the history of movies. Seriously, they couldn’t hit a wall if it was pressing against their face.
Now cue the good side; rebels, farmers, loners and weird looking aliens. Scattered across multiple planets throughout the galaxy. We meet a young guy who lives with his Aunt and Uncle. Luke Skywalker is his name, and he complains a lot. He wants to run off and pick up some power converters with his friends, but not till he's done his chores. Like a mopey teenager, he sulks and get’s on with it – and he will be the chosen one to save the Universe. Shit! He meets an old guy called Obi Wan Kenobi who is charged with the mission of helping one Princess Leia, as he is her “only hope”. She’s been captured by the Empire – the dark side – so when Luke has nothing left to keep him on his boring desert world of Tattooine, he goes with Obi Wan and two droids to save the princess.
Cue Han Solo; a renegade pilot who lives life by his own rules, and his only mate is a 7 foot tall, hairy beast called Chewbaca. He’s a Wookie. He looks friendly, but will growl and rip off your arms if you cross him. Hitching a ride in Han Solo’s ship, the Millennium Falcon, this rag tag team of misfits will enter the Death Star – Darth Vader’s giant ball base – and rescue the Princess from doom. Too bad she’s a self entitled and nasty little woman, but she’s important so they have to put up with her. Narrowly escaping, the good guys flee the base, with the plans to destroy it.
Cut the Rebels; pilots from the Good Side who will lead the mission to blow up the Death Star. Luke Skywalker joins them because he’s got nothing better to do. He learns about The Force; an ancient, mystical power used by both sides of the Universe to make things levitate and read minds. With the voice of Obi Wan whispering from beyond the Universe, Luke trusts his instincts and single handedly blows up the Death Star killing lots of inept Stormtroopers, but Darth Vader escapes.
Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
After blowing up Darth Vader’s giant ball base, the Rebels hide out on the shittiest planet they can find – Hoth. Gripped by an eternal winter, they freeze their arses off in caves hoping the Dark Side doesn’t find them. But they do, and launch an attack on the Rebels. Destroying their base, the rebels are scattered across the universe and try to regroup. Han, Leia and Chewy head to a place called Cloud City, which is a city in the clouds. Cue Lando Calrissian – the only black actor in the whole saga who isn’t what he seems. Luke heads to another shitty planet called Dagabar; a swamp of mud and feral creatures. Here he meets up with Yoda; a little green guy with a funny voice and a walking stick who is the greatest Jedi in the Universe. Yeah, right! He couldn’t win a fight against a koala. He lectures Luke for hours about the proper way to use The Force, but Skywalker is impatient and hurries through his training.
Meanwhile, Darth Vader plots to capture Luke Skywalker and turn him over to the dark side, because apparently the bratty little teenager would be a powerful ally, go figure… So Darth and his gang track down Han and his team on Cloud City and hold them prisoner. It’s a trap to lure Luke out of the swampy planet and rescue them. Off he goes, not having finished his training and confident he can take on Darth Vader – a guy who kills men by pointing at them and blows up planets for a living. Good luck Luke. Maybe you can kill him with your incessant complaining.
The stage is set for the ultimate confrontation, where Luke shows he’s learnt quite a bit about The Force and puts up a good fight. But once backed into a corner, Darth Vader reveals the truth about Luke’s father, who Obi Wan said was killed by Darth. WARNING – SPOILER ALERT. Darth is Luke’s dad, but still cuts off his sons hand and lets him fall from the top of the city and into the clouds, but Luke lands awkwardly on an upside down TV antenna and is rescued by Leia and Lando. Han was frozen by a bounty hunter and taken away. Luke gets a new hand, and they head off to find Han, while Darth feels sad his son ran away and pursues him across the universe.
Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Never having actually completed his training, Luke is now a Jedi, and looks the part as he dresses in black and can also kill bad dudes by pointing at them. He sneaks into the lair of Jabba the Hutt, a fat, slimy worm who holds Leia prisoner on a chain and makes her wear a bikini, as you do. They get Han out of his deep freeze and the Rebels find out Darth is building another giant ball base to hang out it. It’s being constructed near a moon called Endor, which looks nothing like a moon at all – it’s actually one giant forest, populated by hairy little creatures called Ewoks. This films then hands proceedings over to a bunch of muppets and creatures who will win the war for the Rebels. Talk about outsourcing to a gamble, but the Ewoks are violent little things that can kick your ass if you get in their way.
Luke confronts his father, accepting the truth of who he is, and is taken hostage in Darth’s ball, where he meets the Emperor – Darth’s mentor. A really old guy in a cloak with bad skin who brainwashes Luke into joining the Dark Side. Meanwhile, a massive attack is planned where the Rebels will take down the Empires base on Endor that generates their force field, and then have a fight in space with ships that is pretty cool. Inside the ball, Darth fights his father with their shiny laser swords, and Luke has clearly learnt some new skills. He backs his dad into corner then chops off his hand. The Emperor finds this amusing and pleads for Luke to join him, but he refuses. The Emperor throws bolts of lightning at Luke, and he’s about to die, when Darth steps in, picking up the Emperor and throwing him down a well. This weakens Darth, and he collapses to the ground. He asks Luke to take off his helmet, which he does, to reveal his father’s ugly face. He thanks his son for saving him, and dies.
The Rebels win the war on the planet below, blow up the Death Star again, and party with the Ewoks like it was 1499 – it could have been, Star Wars was a long, long time ago.
So from here, it looked like the war was won and that was it. But in a clever move, George Lucas took us back to where it all began in 1999, giving us Episode I: The Phantom Menace. It was hyped to become the most anticipated movie of all time, but the final result…
“Hey loyal Star Wars fans who grew up on the original trilogy. Forget you guys. You’re grown up now but probably have your own kids so I’m going to make a movie for them” George Lucas might not have said exactly, but it was what he certainly did. Taking us back thirty years before the events of the first Star Wars film, he made the real first Star Wars film, a Prequel as it’s called. Showing Darth Vader as a little boy and how he grew up to be a bad guy. We also meet Obi Wan when he’s young and still mastering his Jedi Skills. We also meet Princess Amidala, who is ten years older than Anakin Skywalker (Darth Jnr) but has feelings for him – creepy. Rescuing the boy from his slave life on desert planet Tattooine, he is whisked away on the adventure of a lifetime.
Meanwhile, in the shadows of space is a guy who flies around on a hover-scooter, carries a red sword, and has horns on his head. He’s a Sith, and a mean one. But he is also a former gymnast, flipping and jumping around just to look cool. And look cool he does. His job is to kill any remaining Jedi’s, making Obi Wan and young Anakin targets.
Anakin is taken to the city planet of Coruscant, where we sit through council meetings, senate hearings, and more forced romance and cheesy dialogue to establish the relationship between Anakin and Amidala, because when they’re older and it’s legal to do so, they will have babies, that will became Luke and Leia. We know this of course, but they don’t.
In this film, we were let down from the hype even more with the introduction of Jar Jar Binks. A fully computer animated character who was conceived to be the comic relief but ended up being the pain in the ass. He sounded like a Jamaican on helium that just got in the way and made his scenes appear like "Space Jam", where humans and cartoons interact for slapstick shenanigans. He was given far too much screen time, and George Lucas learnt a valuable lesson – just becauseyou think a character is a good idea, doesn’t mean it is.
As we know there would be two more movies in this second trilogy, which is really the first in the saga, that sets up the second trilogy which we first saw twenty years before, but set thirty years after this. The movie ends with the stage set for Episode II.
Episode II: Attack of the Clones
People were a little let down by Phantom Menace, so had high hopes and higher expectations for the second installment. The trailers certainly looked awesome, and we jumped forward ten years to show Anakin all grown up. Played terribly by “actor” Hayden Christensen. The walking plank of wood mulls and trolls his way through two plus hours of romance and some of the worst dialogue ever written for a movie as he tries to woo Princess Amidala.
Meanwhile, Obi Wan investigates about a droid army being made for a full scale attack on the Universe. Apparently, they thought a guy with a thick New Zealand accident would make a good clone, so they used him to be the template for the future army of Stormtroopers. I guess that’s why they were such bad shots in the original trilogies, as you know what they say about clones – they’re just copies of the original so never as good. Case closed.
Again, no real plot or high point is explored in this film, as Anakin and Amidala are thrown into an arena Gladiator style to do battle with alien monsters. I can’t really remember what else happened as the film went in and out of my mind pretty quick. Thanks to the performance of Hayden Christensen ruining the movie, it was just a bunch of action scenes that were cool to watch but didn’t mean anything. Again, our high hopes were reserved for the final film in this trilogy.
Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Definitely an improvement over the first two films but still a cousin of them, Episode III wrapped things up nicely, and set the stage for Episode IV.
Anakin and Amidala/Padame are clearly in love, but as he starts to turn bad, their relationship suffers. It’s painful to watch, not because of their problems, but because Natalie Portman who plays his woman can actually act, but down plays things here to match the mediocre performance of her co-star Hayden Christensen. But, by this point we’ve come to accept that and just get on with things.
Slowly but surely, Anakin is corrupted by the Emperor and does some bad things. He becomes so bad in fact, his eyes turn red, just to show how evil he is. Swiftly, the Empire’s army swoops in and destroys almost everything in the Universe, claiming that they are here to stay.
Obi Wan and Anakin face each other in the ultimate showdown on a planet full of lava. It’s a cool sword fight, and WARNING – SPOLIER ALERT – Anakin gets his legs chopped off, is burnt half to death and almost dies. As Obi Wan leaves him behind, heartbroken his young apprentice has gone bad, Anakin is rescued by his new mentor, the Emperor. He’s taken to the dark side’s version of ER, where a black suit, new legs and a helmet that will give him raspy breath a cool voice are waiting for him. He becomes Darth Vader.
And that’s all you need to know about Star Wars before you go watch the next one. Keep in mind, the new one is Episode VII: The Force Awakens; the first film in the third trilogy that is the first to come out in the right order, and is set thirty years after the last film in the second trilogy and shows a new threat growing and new heroes, as well as some old ones returning for nostalgic purposes. Directed by JJ Abrahams, who crossed a very fine geek line by directing both Star Wars and Star Trek – as you can only like one and not the other apparently – he will bring a fresh vision and some coolness to the Star Wars saga that was clearly missing from the prequels that ended a decade ago. Once again, we enter the cinema with high hopes and the highest of high expectations, but given JJ Abrahams track record, he shouldn’t disappoint.
The Force is Awake, so you can put the prequels to sleep, revisit the original films and enjoy the new generation of Star Wars which isn’t just made for fans of the originals, or kids like the prequels were, but for all of them and all of us.
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