What He Said

I was pretty much done with “Star Wars” posts, but then I read author Orson Scott Card’s review, which is as perfect a take on the new movie as I can imagine:

Even though the characterization is nonexistent, the relationships like a seven-year-old’s impression of how grownups act, the politics clearly the product of a mind that has never grasped history, and the science at the “How can rivers flow north?” level, the underlying saga still manages to touch a chord.

Don’t misunderstand. I laughed along with the other people in the theater at those horrible moments when the poor actors were forced to say some of the most appalling lines ever spoken on the screen. I could not possibly care about characters who were never for a moment believable as human beings.

But the story itself, the epic that had so inspired Young Mr. Lucas, does have grandeur in it that his own ineptness was unable to destroy. There is power in the sheer ambition of it.

…

Here’s the strange thing. Even though that opening day audience largely understood how bad the writing was — and laughed out loud and even cheered for the absolutely worst lines — they still got a sense of fulfilment out of watching everything come together.

I’m glad I saw it.

And, incredibly enough, I will almost certainly see it again. And buy the DVD.

Read the rest, and be sorry that Lucas didn’t have the good sense to hire somebody who writes as well as Card.