Star Wars 30th anniversary

Today, exactly 30 years ago, was the start of the first Star Wars movie in theaters.

:thankyou::obiwan::DarthSidious::DarthMaul::fett::yoda::trooper:

Cool :thumbs:

In the years following it, how do people feel the franchise is treated?

When I was young and I started to grow tired of renting Disney movies at the local video store Star Wars was one of the first movies I discovered (Alien was still to scary for me) and it pretty much introduced me together with Star Trek to science fiction.

Years later I also found some of the Marvel and Dark Horse comics and collected quite a few of those, but only those stories that interested me.
Of course there were also the games such as the Dark Forces series that kept me hooked to Star Wars.

But to be honest, my interest in Star Wars started to wane after Episode One was released, and continued to decline over the years as we got more of Lucas's 'prequels'.

These days I only enjoy the Jedi Knight games and I feel that the franchise or 'cash cow' has been milked dry.

I saw all but the original Star Wars film at the cinema on release. I missed the very first film at the cinema because I was only 5 when it was released, but remember seeing Empire Strikes Back very clearly. Especially my Dad buying me the ESB comic/graphic novel of the complete film after the film (which I still have). And ESB is still my favourite Star Wars film to date.

I also have great memories of a Christmas around that time where I received a lot of Star Wars toys from my parents. AT-AT, Falcon, Speeder bike... a lot of the figures and quite a lot of other Star Wars related items which I still have all of as part of my Star Wars collection.

In the UK they also showed the first three films every Christmas so I got to see them regularly each year, and then once I had my first video recorder I purchased them as one of the first set of videos I had owned.

The updated CGI versions of the original trilogy were an interesting update. The cleaning up of the original matte and analogue composites that were slightly flawed in the original productions were a worthwhile thing to do (such as being able to see though parts of a vehicles cockpit in some shots), but other elements of CGI were badly added (such as the Jabba meeting in A New Hope) and would have been better left out of the update. Although other CGI updates such as increasing the population within some scenes did work well and adding to the original scenes.

My ultimate edition of the original trilogy would be a mix of the updated versions and the originals, removing any additional scenes added for just the updates, but retaining the additions and cleaning up of the update over the same scenes of the original. The update also had the advantage of remixed 5.1 sound compared to Pro Logic of the original (Star Wars was the first film ever to use surround sound).

As for the prequels for me they felt very different to the original trilogy. The CGI based effects and overall sharpness of the films have a very different feel to the stop frame animation and more realistic feel of the original three films film stock, and I much prefer the original trilogies feel.

But I wouldn't say I disliked the prequels, they were just different. It was good to see the stories behind some of the characters and their ancestors that we came to love in the original trilogy. Some things were however aimed to much at a childish level, or certain characters just didn't fit into the films style.

Also, although many of the characters were perfect for their roles, certain actors were completely wrong. I felt that both actors playing Anakin were too weak and not right at all for the part.

I've also been a collector of Star Wars items since the original films were released. I've kept all of the figures and other items from those times in perfect condition, in their boxes, and I still have them all in great condition. I more recently continued collecting and build up my vintage collection, completing the whole set of vintage figures, including all of the rare ones, as well as a lot of boxed figures and ships. I also started to collect the more recent figures for Episode one onwards, but didn't find them as nice or as interesting as the original vintage range, so although I do have a lot of the newer rangers I tend to stick with collecting the vintage items more.

I've also read many of the novels over the years and many of them have been fascinating and great to read, especially the ones that branch off from the main films and go into stories about events mentioned in the films or minor characters or bounty hunters from the films. However I haven't ever got into the Star Wars related graphic novels much, although I've always wished to.

The Star Wars games over the years have been handled in a very mixed way. The first Star Wars Arcade game was an instant hit and is still loved by many. The Arcade sequel was very similar but for me not as good as it made things more complicated to play. The Return of the Jedi arcade game wasn't as good, updating to much more colourful bitmap graphics but not having the great feel of the first game.

The 16-bit conversions of these arcade games were handled well, especially the ST and Amiga versions and I enjoyed playing those a lot. The PC X-Wing and Tie Fighter games were also both brilliant games and still as playable today as they were back then, and apart from the sequel to them, Alliance, nothing similar has been released since.

There have been many more SW based games released since then, many good, many bad. The Dark Forces series of games were great and were some of the first to make you feel a real part of the SW universe.

But for me the best games to date are the Knights of the Old Republic games. Being set 4000 years before the original films was a brilliant idea as it allowed the developers to include the great elements of the films, but add some unique elements to the games that made them unique in their own way. For me the KOTOR games are the best ST games to date. Although some of the strategy games have been good fun too. Some of the multiplayer games such as Empire at War and Battle Front have been great fun to play around with the technology of the SW universe too.

Personally overall I think a lot of great things have been created from the ST universe and there are enough good releases for anyone to enjoy. There just happens to be an equal amount of not so great games and other related ST items created over the years worth avoiding. But that happens with any franchise that is so big. Look at Star Trek for example.

I would however say that a lot more could have been done with the last three films to have made them even better. I feel that they were aimed too much at being child compatible that they lost the slightly more serious feel of the original trilogy and I think that is where they went wrong. Too many silly jokes and puns that the original films didn't need.