The plot of Star Wars is certainly nothing new: a group of good guys tries to overthrow an evil space empire. Ruling the evil space empire are an evil count, James Earl Jones (a Negro), and an evil spaceship commander, Peter Cushing (Dracula A.D. 1972, The Curse of Frankenstein). Among the good guys are a princess, Carrie Fisher (The Blues Brothers, Shampoo), an old warrior, Alec Guiness (The Man in the White Suit, Murder by Death), a young warrior, Mark Hammil (Corvette Summer, Three Women), a mercenary, Harrison Ford (Witness, The Conversation), and assorted robots and aliens.
From its opening scene, where two spaceships chase each other around a planet while trying to blow one another to smithereens, the movie loses any semblance of realism. The spaceships make swishing and humming noises as they maneuver about, and their lasers make zapping noises as they fire -- all despite the fact that it has been scientifically proven that there are absolutely no sounds in space.
In another gaffe later in the movie, a robot supposedly manages to go up and down a staircase, even though it is quite obvious that it is structurally impossible for the robot to do so. The camera cuts away just as the robot gets to the staircase, but the viewer is again jolted by the obvious impossiblity.
More important than any scientific error, however, is the glaring lack of any moral statement. In a time of mass starvation in central Africa, terrible human-wave battles in the Middle East, repression of civil rights in the USSR, legalized racism in South Africa, and rampant terrorism everywhere, this movie just hums merrily along with its rose- colored glasses.
For example, when Hammill, the supposed hero of the movie, sees the burned corpses of his parents, he responds by turning his head sideways. No tears, no shouts of outrage, just a crick in the neck and they are forgotten. Later, when an android buddy of his is discriminated against in a space-bar, he accepts the wrong without a blink. Late in the film, when an entire planet full of billions of sentient beings is annihilated, the good guys just sort of go, "Gosh, that"s too bad." The bad guys, of course, smile cruelly. These kinds of responses to murder, discrimination, and genocide certainly do not encourage the kind of consciousness needed to overcome today"s problems.
Star Wars contains a lot of action sequences, so it will no doubt have a strong draw on today's young people. Nonetheless, parents should make every effort to keep their children away from this morally bankrupt movie and direct them toward a film which takes a useful stand on some of the issues facing our world. And, naturally, all ethical adults should stay well away from it themselves.
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(Updated September 20, 1998)