Star Wars Mythos

Growing up, seeing Star Wars and their sequels at the drive-in, I thought I was seeing the greatest science fiction movies of all time. This is the silly idea of what a child thinks SF is. Star Wars, at least the three 'real' films, are no more science fiction than The Matrix is. In fact, you'd have to tip the hat to The Matrix as far as science fiction goes, but not by much. The Matrix simply has more science fiction trappings to drape over its shoulders. They're both Fantasy, and they're both just simple retellings of the Monomyth, or the Hero's Journey.

Now, I love both trilogies, although the second Matrix movie isn't one I tend to watch when it's on cable. But there have always been things about Star Wars that have always bugged me, and that's what I'm going to write on today. What I hate about them is Droids have no rights.

This is where the Star Trek universe and Star Wars differ. How many episodes have there been where ST writers have tried to establish that technology-created personalities deserve to be recognized as citizens? At least two, one in Next Generation and one in Voyager. The poor Droids in Star Wars have no such recognition.

In fact, if you watch the movies, they're literally treated as little more than smart toasters that can walk/roll. When 3PO has all his fucking limbs shot off, as well as his head, the reaction isn't one of horror but of irritation. "Oh 3PO! You're a mess!" Like somebody just upended his crumb drawer and well fuck now we're gonna have to clean it up.

Or the multiple times R2 is shot up. While 3PO nells it up that his butch top just got a laser labotomy, everybody else is just kind of shrugging their shoulders and going "Oh, well we'll just get him some new circuits or something." I don't know about you, but if I considered somebody a sentient being whose life I valued, seeing their brains shot out would be a horror. Heck, if I came home and my HDTV had a pixel out, I'd probably find religion over it.

It makes me wonder why as a kid I identified with the Droids so much. Of course, I didn't notice how they were being treated at the time, but yeah, that's how people treated me as a kid. I wasn't a real person... oh just ignore him til he stops his crying. Kind of pissed me off, a lot.

I also had a sub-topic dealing with Dark City and how Roger Ebert, in BOTH his commentaries, never mentions the very important line that Mr. Hand (Richard O'Brien) utters on the rooftops: "We use your dead as vessels." Considering we know the true form of the aliens are inside these bodies, it makes the movie a little more horrifying; so they're experimenting on us AND when we die they scoop out our brains and crawl inside to animate us? GROSS. However, it's almost midnight and I need to get up early, so bed time for me.

Also I'm proud to say I've never seen any of the SAW movies.