Sometime in the early 1980s I saw a poster for sale that announced in big, friendly letters: "Everything I've ever learned, I learned from Star Wars."
It made me cringe because I was a Star Wars kid and, at the age of 14, I knew that it was all becoming rather unhealthy.
What I learned from Star Wars was that some people took it all far too seriously.
They lived and breathed a life that cou
ld never be, preferring fantasy to the reality of their own existence.
Mostly it was all very harmless, but when the poster blurb became a credo, I began to get uneasy.
I was reminded of a friend who immersed himself in the Star Trek universe and who once berated me for calling him a Trekker. "I'm a Trekkie," he said. "I'm not a geek." It didn't matter to me, but it mattered a great deal to him.
One description was accepted and embraced; the other was a sarcastic put-down.
Later, both terms were globally swapped. I was baffled until I realised that this peculiar fraternity only converted to Trekkers when Trekkie became a pejorative term. Obviously, they wished to retain their dignity.
There are some people out there who will accept and absorb anything connected with George Lucas's on-going creation. I am beginning to wonder whether we are now seeing the scrapings of the barrel as represented by Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
There have been spin-offs before, some welcomed into the official Star Wars fold; others abandoned and left to rot in a non-approved limbo.
I remember a radio show, an animated television series for children, a couple of TV movies and the now notorious Star Wars Holiday Special from 1978. The latter has been expunged from Lucas film history. It is a non-show. It has ceased to be. It should not exist (and, officially, it does not).
Lucas's tinkering with his own creation has kept the flame flickering, but in doing so has diminished the value and wonderment of his concept.
What was once thrilling and cherished has become everyday and perfunctory. Star Wars was of its time, and that time has passed.
What can we learn from Star Wars? Quite simply, that Lucas should stop now before he spoils the trick.
We all of us know a conjurer is a master at sleight of hand, but knowing the secret somehow makes it worse, not better. Diluting the concept devalues it and reduces it to the merely ordinary.
And Star Wars was never ordinary.
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