George Lucas almost fits the profile of a frustrated genius.

 

Before Star Wars, he had just two - count 'em! - theatrical releases, not counting his student films (and who does?). Those were "THX 1138", a "thinky" science fiction movie that is the antithesis of all that Star Wars would stand for, and "American Graffiti", not a science fiction movie at all. Then he did Star Wars. Then he twiddled around. Then he made another Star Wars. then he twiddled around some more. The pattern has repeated now for about 30 years. Try as he might, he seems addicted to the success of Star Wars, and can't seem to do the same magic again without returning to his droids and Wookies.

 

In the end, we have six Star Wars movies, and a lot of holes that had to be patched back up. After releasing the three prequels, Lucas had to scurry back to the original trilogy to cut in scenes which helped the two sets of trilogies blend together better. This stands out as one of the sloppiest jobs of cinematic storytelling ever.

 

To use a science fiction analogy to discuss a science fiction movie, it fails the "alien test". If you had never seen the movies, knew nothing about how they were made, and sat down to watch them all in numeric order, you'd be perplexed. The "first three" build up in successively gaudier computer-generated effects, telling a story which seems to be about the rise and fall of one hero - who is to become Darth Vader. Then "A New Hope" starts and you're watching actors from the seventies filmed with seventies technology and a spliced-in scene or two of modern CGI, with the added jolt of a sudden shift in the focused character. The last two movies don't help much, since they each seem to have been made by completely different people, whereas the first three almost seem like one movie and could have been made by a cookie cutter. In fact, the ending of number six feels more like it's about to continue into number one, which is exactly how the order of them went.

 

Not to mention that the speculations run rampant as to how the whole plot is derivative. It is true that Star Wars borrows from or is inspired by many tired old cliches of both science fiction and adventure. But the fact is, at some point a huge blockbuster movie series would have been made at some point that distilled the adventure/science fiction genre into one big epic, so it might as well have been Star Wars.

 

That's the amazing part of the series, is that despite all of its flaws it is very watchable. There is so much crash and thunder and blazing lasers going on here, with so many alien life forms and strange worlds practically thrown away on the screen, that's it's almost as good a movie if there's no plot at all. You can tune in to pay attention every 15 minutes or so to keep tabs on the Empire and the Rebel Alliance, but really that's just background chatter while you ogle in amazement at the special effects.

 

Really, if the Star Wars series told a coherent story with a consistent logic, it might even be less fun. Check out the Star Trek TV and movie series, which was practically leeched to death by obsessive fans who meticulously fact-checked every new installment so they had to keep a bible going and stay within bounds. "Babylon 5" and "Firefly" narrowly dodged this fate. Science fiction series have that curse, which is that they hang in the balance between being too fringe to get any attention at all, and too popular for their own good.

 

But the Star Wars series managed to cheerfully dodge this effect, by being more an adventure story than a science fiction story. Science steps in only when it is needed to explain plot points. After all, how, exactly, does a lightsaber work? Why, with so many hundreds of sentient species present, do humans seem to run everything? Why are most sentient species just human-like bipeds in various shapes? Heck, why do things go "Boom!" when they blow up in airless space, which has no sound?

 

Did Lucas succeed in making a great science fiction series? Some say yes and some say no. Definitely the hard-core science fiction fans would say no. Ah, but did he succeed in making a great adventure series which just happens to be set in space and the future? Now you're talking!