Okay, here we go. I'm going to do my Star Wars rant, and there's nothing any of you can do to stop me! ::insert maniacal laughter::

I don't remember how old I was when I saw Star Wars, which means I was about four or five, because that's where my memories begin. I do remember playing with Star Wars toys. My dad is a huge fan of space opera shows like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Buck Rogers, so it was certain that he'd like the Star Wars saga. And since it was the perfect movie for kids, he fulfilled his own desires for the toys by buying them for my brother and I. For years, I can remember creeping down the stairs on Christmas mornings to find beautiful Star Wars dioramas under the tree. (It wasn't until after Jedi that I ever saw a Star Wars toy in its original packaging outside of a store.) Mom would grouse at us about all the time spent putting the ships and whatnot together, but with the eyes of an adult, I just know that my Dad had a blast.

I grew up playing Star Wars. My best friend Jeff was Luke (because he had blond hair), my brother was usually Han Solo (because he had dark hair) and I was Leia (because I was a girl). That was the core of the show, right there. My dad occasionally joined in as the terrible and frightening Darth Tickle, who would torture his prisoners mercilessly. Our bicycles were our fighter ships, and the bed of Dad's pickup truck was, alternately, the Millennium Falcon or the Death Star. (Dad's truck had a ladder rack, which we climbed on like monkeys. I am astonished that they let us get away with that, actually, and even more astonished that we never had an injury more serious than a few bruises or scrapes.) Some of the best afternoons of my life were prefaced by my Dad looking out the front window and telling me, "Here comes Luke Skycrawler on his X-wing two-wheeler!" We didn't stick to the movie-defined plot - that would have been boring. I could tell you some of the adventures we had (like the time all three of us were killed by the invisible stormtroopers in my bedroom) but it would be pretty pointless. If you had a childhood like mine, then you had most of those same adventures. If you didn't, well... I'm sorry.

I didn't much care for Empire, and it's still my least favorite of the three movies. It's dark, and grim, and ends on an uncertain note. The reason I like the Star Wars movies is because they represent hope, and there's precious little of it in Empire. I stopped collecting the toys shortly after Jedi. I'm pretty sure I had an Ewok or two (I'll confess right here and now, I thought the Ewoks were cute as hell, and I loved them!) but it was my brother and not me who got the elaborate Ewok Village, and it didn't really bother me. We managed to tape Star Wars off some cable channel once, and that tape (a Beta! Anyone who remembers the Beta - vs - VHS war, raise your hands!) was watched endlessly through my high school years.

When I got to college, I fell into a group of friends who had many of the same loves. The Star Wars saga was equally precious and culturally defining for them as it was for me. What fun!

Now, finally, years and years and years later, they're starting up again. And I've been hearing crap. A lot of it. People are worried that they're not going to like this movie, and that it won't live up to the saga. Okay, let's take a long deep breath and think about this for a while. The Star Wars saga was pure magic when we were kids, and that's why we love it. Just once, put it in your VCR and watch it and try very hard to forget that you were once a kid who held your breath in fear whenever you heard the rasping of Darth Vader's respirator. Try to watch it as if you were seeing it for the first time.

It's crap.

The acting is pretty awful, the dialog is absurd, and the plot holes are so huge you could ride a Bantha through them. What the hell is this garbage I've been seeing lately about Luke being Campbell's archetypal hero? Who the fuck is Campbell? And I've heard from at least four different people that the Star Wars trilogy embodies some impressive Greek mythology. Excuse me??? Will someone please tell me what myth they think is being acted out here so I can laugh in their faces?

Sure, Lucas pulled from mythologies! He's doing the same thing with Phantom Menace - I heard a story that a lot of research was done on devils and demons in a lot of different cultures in an effort to make Darth Maul as hideously evil-looking as possible. But Star Wars was just a story. It wasn't an attempt at a larger or deeper message! Those of us who loved it, loved it because it was so wonderfully black-and-white. The good guys were good. The bad guys were bad. No one was grey. No one. Characters changed sides, and some changed frequently - but they were always on one side or the other. No middle ground or moral ambiguity.

You know what I think about all of this archetypal hero mythology mumbo-jumbo? I think some people adored the movies, but knew deep down that their love was elemental. Kid stuff. And they wanted an excuse to keep watching when they grew up, so they made up this bullshit that makes them seem deeper than they really are. And other people decided that having an intellectual reason to like something was even better than just liking it because it brought back great childhood memories and was fun, so they jumped on the bandwagon. My opinion of these analyses can be summed up in one word: pretentious.

As for the reviewers and critics? Well, their job is to judge each movie on its own merits, and I won't begrudge them the probability that this movie won't stand on its own. But no one is going to see this movie who doesn't already know the ultimate outcome. It doesn't have to stand on its own merits. Part of the beauty of this movie will be that we know that this adorable child is going to grow up to be a terribly evil man. That knowledge is going to color every action, every word, every gesture that the child makes. We're going to be waiting, trying to find the moment when it becomes inevitable that Anakin will turn to the Dark Side. Maybe that moment isn't in this movie. It may well be in the second or third movies, that haven't been made yet. But we'll be waiting, and watching. So the reviewers don't like the movie. Who cares? They hate all science adventure movies. Forget about them!

So tomorrow afternoon, Matt and I are going to go to our friend Greg's house, and we'll watch marathon sessions of the Star Wars saga, and then we'll be all keyed up and excited when we walk the few blocks to the theater. The group of us will be chattering incessantly, excited and almost nervous as we sit in the theater waiting for the lights to dim. We'll cheer loudly when it starts, and then we'll lose ourselves. We'll turn over control to our inner children, who know that in a really good movie, the good guys always win, but that they may not do it in the way you expected them to, and we'll re-live bits of our childhoods. "Here comes Luke Skycrawler on his X-wing two-wheeler!"