[douglasdickel]

The Decline Of My Empire: Aidan Moffat On The Force Awakens

And then dinosaurs ruined everything. Lucas was so impressed with the work that his own special effects house had done on Jurassic Park, he declared technology had finally caught up with his genius, and thus began his relentless addiction to revision, a seemingly insatiable thirst for augmentation and enhancement to rival the most ardent celebrity sawbones. The original Star Wars trilogy was being defiled and vandalized by its own creator, as unnecessary as tattooing a child.

(...) The prequels disappoint for myriad reasons – the writing, direction, acting, and quickly outdated CGI among them – but mainly, I think, because it’s a story that didn’t need to be told. We’d already imagined the heroic young Darth Vader when Alec Guinness’s ghostly Obi-Wan, sitting by Yoda’s deathbed, told Luke – and us – the tale of the once great Jedi’s descent into darkness, and the movie that played in our minds turned out to look a lot better than the one in George’s.

(...) But for all the prequels’ flaws, there’s one detail that to me is so destructive, such an act of bewildering sabotage, that it just about cut me off for good. When I thought that Darth Vader was a fallible humanoid lured to the Dark Side in a moment of weakness, he was relatable, I understood. Everyone knows anger; we’ve all had bad days. But to then reveal his virgin birth and suggest he’s a physical embodiment of the Force itself – his midichlorians are off the scale! – and recast him as some mythic messiah, a “chosen one who will bring balance to the Force”, makes him harder to empathise with.