Loklorien s'Ilancy
May 19th, 2005, 04:46:22 AM
I don’t remember when I first saw Star Wars. All I know is that it was a long time ago on a beat-up VHS tape, recorded off of HBO way back in 1983-ish. I thought it was cool back then, and a fun space flick to watch. I knew there were others, but I never really ended up watching ESB and ROTJ until years and years later. My interest was in just drawing, with no real direction other than (what I thought at the time to be) cool looking people with guns and swords.
It wasn’t really until I saw all of the Star Wars (ANH, ESB, and ROTJ) movies that I thought, ‘man, I can do that, too. I’ve got a good imagination; I can make up neat aliens and heroes and villains and neat technologies.’
Being an artist with a Navy pilot for a dad is interesting, let me tell you. While most little girls were playing dress-up and Barbies, I was playing ‘War’ or ‘POW’ with the neighborhood boys and getting with GI Joes for Birthdays and Christmases. I love science fiction; always have. I love reading about future wars and I’ve always been somewhat militaristic in many things. It’s one of the better attributes I inherited from my father, if not one of the only ones. Everyone has a different view of the future and what happens, and I like to see people’s take on it. I pretty much eat it up. Heck, I still remember my father pulling me out of class on a Tuesday morning and driving to the theatre to go see Starship Troopers opening day.
But with Star Wars, it’s something different. Unlike the sterile and formaldehyde feeling I get from Star Trek (which don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy to a degree) and a few others I’ve seen, Star Wars is simply a very used and very lived-in universe. To me, it always seemed like Lucas just took the world we live in now, and advanced it along a bit while still keeping that grungy, day-in and day-out feel, making it gritty and believable.
The aliens are crazy, imaginative, and exciting. Things that were once unheard of are now being seen and the amount of thought and effort put into each creature to bring it to life is staggering. Charley got me ‘The Art of Episode 3’, and I love looking through that and the ‘Wildlife of Star Wars’ book; the latter of which shows the amazing amount of effort put in to each drawing.
The sheer creativity is staggering to me, that one man and a simple script could explode the imaginations of millions of people all over the world.
But I look around today, and most of the time I’m disappointed with people who call themselves Star Wars fans; who praise the old trilogy and condemn the new. I wasn’t even a twinkle in my dad’s eye when the first Star Wars hit the screens back in 1977. But I do know that when Star Wars first came out it was very much an unknown. No one knew what to expect, and I bet the ones who went to see it were thinking it’d be just another cheap-looking sci-fi flick with little to no redeeming value. What they got however was something so vast, so epic, and so different, that it blew them out of their seats. It far and away scaled over every other sci-fi show/movie ever made. It was exciting, opening up people’s eyes to new worlds and aliens that weren’t simply people with green paint or full-body space suits.
When ESB debuted, of course it was highly anticipated. It was another Star Wars!! More aliens, more ships, more space battles, and more of those forever-classic heroes and villains. Same with ROTJ.
And then, to me, something changed. In the time between ROTJ and TPM, Star Wars fans lost something. And in my opinion, it was that child-like wonderment that was present through most of the OT. Now all I see are nitpickers and people who want to nag away at every little detail and basically take the fun out of it for myself and others like me. I like them all. I enjoy watching them to a very large degree. And it’s such a killjoy to hear someone say ‘Well that was just stupid and ridiculous’, or ‘it could have been better’.
There’s two things that take over my brain when I watch Star Wars.
1) The artist in me. I’m an artist. If you don’t know that then you haven’t been a member here for very long. I love art. I love to draw and paint and poke around in Photoshop. I’m also an animator. When I watch any of the newer Star Wars movies, I know just how long it takes to do stuff like this. Heck, to render a simple scene with lighting effects and a fog atmospheric can take all day. With that in mind, look at the incredible detail that went in to these movies. I can guarantee you that without a render farm, we’d still be waiting for TPM to come out; that’s how time consuming animation is. Oh it’s rewarding at the end; vastly rewarding to the point that I cried when I watched my demo reel for the first time all the way through, completely rendered out and on VHS. I can only imagine the complete sense of accomplishment the animators working on Star Wars feel at this point in time; heck, even after just TPM. The advancements made in digital media thanks to Lucas and his guys is phenomenal. So what if he used CG when he didn’t have to? He very well could have made a challenge to his animators to see if they could do it.
2) The child in me. On more than one occasion I’ve been called a big kid. And I am. To a magnificent degree. When I watch Star Wars, that artist part of me watches in rapt fascination at the skill and dedication put forth by those that brought the movies to life, and the child in me completely and utterly wallows in that sense of being immersed in a different setting. For two and a half hours, I’m no longer on Earth. I’m on different planets watching governments fall, spectacular space battles being fought right in front of me, and people having to make drastically life-altering decisions. Do I sometimes wish I lived on one of those planets? Who doesn’t? Who hasn’t seen a Star Wars movie and wanted to visit the Mos Eisly Cantina to have a couple drinks? Or walk through the museums on Naboo? Or even (if you’re really nuts like me) go snowboarding on Hoth? I know I always wanted a speeder bike like the ones in ROTJ and a podracer. There’s a sort of naïve innocence that has to be present when you watch any Star Wars movie. Where you look forward to meeting new aliens and visiting new worlds that do indeed have not only breadth and scope, but history as well. You have to watch these movies without any expectations at all. They’re stories. They are meant to entertain us and transport us away from our normal lives for a few hours; to let us see things that we never see in our daily grinds. To watch people go about their business on Tatooine and Cloud City, to watch huge factories churn out druids like the Mercedes plant a half hour away from me roll their cars off of their conveyer belts. It’s something new yet ordinary at the same time.
I loved ROTS. I loved TPM and AOTC. Do I watch them very much? Not really. But when I do I allow myself to be drawn in to this universe that Lucas spawned; I smile and chuckle at R2, and even Jar Jar. In a world where many movies now days have underlying political messages and agendas, I take Star Wars for what it originally was and for what I still believe it to be: a journey to new worlds where I can be introduced to aliens I could never have thought up and a front row seat to exciting action and stories. This is what I think a lot of Star Wars’ fans have lost; the ability to let go and just live in the moment of the movie. They always find something to nag on, something to gripe and moan about, and in my opinion they’re missing out on just sitting back and letting Lucas take them for a ride through his imagination. Nothing will ever be perfect I do admit that, but all those years ago, that 8 year old child that watched wide-eyed as the first Death Star was destroyed is gone. Now he/she is replaced by someone whose expectations will never be met because let’s face it – that just doesn’t happen.
To me, as I’ve said before, Star Wars is something different. Not a ‘religious’ experience to me, but certainly a tremendous phenomenon and a part of our culture. It inspires me to branch out with my own creativity, and to create my own universe of aliens and heroes and villains. I know Hollie knows this as I’ve been sharing a lot of it with her, but I write my own science fiction stories. Since I was thirteen I’ve been writing and making up aliens, worlds, and cultures each with their own histories. I've come up with my own terminologies and technologies/gadgets. I have my own universe that I work on and am constantly developing with its’ own unique cast of characters from all ends of the spectrum. In fact, it’s where Lok s’Ilancy first came from. I pulled her from my own work and dropped her into Fans; though the s’Il in my stories and the s’Il here have taken very different paths and are a bit different from eachother.
But the fact remains. Star Wars makes me want to use my imagination. It’s an igniting spark that gives me a significant drive to push on and continue creating and drawing my own fanciful aliens and creatures.
Because frankly, if George Lucas can do it than by goodness so can I.
It wasn’t really until I saw all of the Star Wars (ANH, ESB, and ROTJ) movies that I thought, ‘man, I can do that, too. I’ve got a good imagination; I can make up neat aliens and heroes and villains and neat technologies.’
Being an artist with a Navy pilot for a dad is interesting, let me tell you. While most little girls were playing dress-up and Barbies, I was playing ‘War’ or ‘POW’ with the neighborhood boys and getting with GI Joes for Birthdays and Christmases. I love science fiction; always have. I love reading about future wars and I’ve always been somewhat militaristic in many things. It’s one of the better attributes I inherited from my father, if not one of the only ones. Everyone has a different view of the future and what happens, and I like to see people’s take on it. I pretty much eat it up. Heck, I still remember my father pulling me out of class on a Tuesday morning and driving to the theatre to go see Starship Troopers opening day.
But with Star Wars, it’s something different. Unlike the sterile and formaldehyde feeling I get from Star Trek (which don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy to a degree) and a few others I’ve seen, Star Wars is simply a very used and very lived-in universe. To me, it always seemed like Lucas just took the world we live in now, and advanced it along a bit while still keeping that grungy, day-in and day-out feel, making it gritty and believable.
The aliens are crazy, imaginative, and exciting. Things that were once unheard of are now being seen and the amount of thought and effort put into each creature to bring it to life is staggering. Charley got me ‘The Art of Episode 3’, and I love looking through that and the ‘Wildlife of Star Wars’ book; the latter of which shows the amazing amount of effort put in to each drawing.
The sheer creativity is staggering to me, that one man and a simple script could explode the imaginations of millions of people all over the world.
But I look around today, and most of the time I’m disappointed with people who call themselves Star Wars fans; who praise the old trilogy and condemn the new. I wasn’t even a twinkle in my dad’s eye when the first Star Wars hit the screens back in 1977. But I do know that when Star Wars first came out it was very much an unknown. No one knew what to expect, and I bet the ones who went to see it were thinking it’d be just another cheap-looking sci-fi flick with little to no redeeming value. What they got however was something so vast, so epic, and so different, that it blew them out of their seats. It far and away scaled over every other sci-fi show/movie ever made. It was exciting, opening up people’s eyes to new worlds and aliens that weren’t simply people with green paint or full-body space suits.
When ESB debuted, of course it was highly anticipated. It was another Star Wars!! More aliens, more ships, more space battles, and more of those forever-classic heroes and villains. Same with ROTJ.
And then, to me, something changed. In the time between ROTJ and TPM, Star Wars fans lost something. And in my opinion, it was that child-like wonderment that was present through most of the OT. Now all I see are nitpickers and people who want to nag away at every little detail and basically take the fun out of it for myself and others like me. I like them all. I enjoy watching them to a very large degree. And it’s such a killjoy to hear someone say ‘Well that was just stupid and ridiculous’, or ‘it could have been better’.
There’s two things that take over my brain when I watch Star Wars.
1) The artist in me. I’m an artist. If you don’t know that then you haven’t been a member here for very long. I love art. I love to draw and paint and poke around in Photoshop. I’m also an animator. When I watch any of the newer Star Wars movies, I know just how long it takes to do stuff like this. Heck, to render a simple scene with lighting effects and a fog atmospheric can take all day. With that in mind, look at the incredible detail that went in to these movies. I can guarantee you that without a render farm, we’d still be waiting for TPM to come out; that’s how time consuming animation is. Oh it’s rewarding at the end; vastly rewarding to the point that I cried when I watched my demo reel for the first time all the way through, completely rendered out and on VHS. I can only imagine the complete sense of accomplishment the animators working on Star Wars feel at this point in time; heck, even after just TPM. The advancements made in digital media thanks to Lucas and his guys is phenomenal. So what if he used CG when he didn’t have to? He very well could have made a challenge to his animators to see if they could do it.
2) The child in me. On more than one occasion I’ve been called a big kid. And I am. To a magnificent degree. When I watch Star Wars, that artist part of me watches in rapt fascination at the skill and dedication put forth by those that brought the movies to life, and the child in me completely and utterly wallows in that sense of being immersed in a different setting. For two and a half hours, I’m no longer on Earth. I’m on different planets watching governments fall, spectacular space battles being fought right in front of me, and people having to make drastically life-altering decisions. Do I sometimes wish I lived on one of those planets? Who doesn’t? Who hasn’t seen a Star Wars movie and wanted to visit the Mos Eisly Cantina to have a couple drinks? Or walk through the museums on Naboo? Or even (if you’re really nuts like me) go snowboarding on Hoth? I know I always wanted a speeder bike like the ones in ROTJ and a podracer. There’s a sort of naïve innocence that has to be present when you watch any Star Wars movie. Where you look forward to meeting new aliens and visiting new worlds that do indeed have not only breadth and scope, but history as well. You have to watch these movies without any expectations at all. They’re stories. They are meant to entertain us and transport us away from our normal lives for a few hours; to let us see things that we never see in our daily grinds. To watch people go about their business on Tatooine and Cloud City, to watch huge factories churn out druids like the Mercedes plant a half hour away from me roll their cars off of their conveyer belts. It’s something new yet ordinary at the same time.
I loved ROTS. I loved TPM and AOTC. Do I watch them very much? Not really. But when I do I allow myself to be drawn in to this universe that Lucas spawned; I smile and chuckle at R2, and even Jar Jar. In a world where many movies now days have underlying political messages and agendas, I take Star Wars for what it originally was and for what I still believe it to be: a journey to new worlds where I can be introduced to aliens I could never have thought up and a front row seat to exciting action and stories. This is what I think a lot of Star Wars’ fans have lost; the ability to let go and just live in the moment of the movie. They always find something to nag on, something to gripe and moan about, and in my opinion they’re missing out on just sitting back and letting Lucas take them for a ride through his imagination. Nothing will ever be perfect I do admit that, but all those years ago, that 8 year old child that watched wide-eyed as the first Death Star was destroyed is gone. Now he/she is replaced by someone whose expectations will never be met because let’s face it – that just doesn’t happen.
To me, as I’ve said before, Star Wars is something different. Not a ‘religious’ experience to me, but certainly a tremendous phenomenon and a part of our culture. It inspires me to branch out with my own creativity, and to create my own universe of aliens and heroes and villains. I know Hollie knows this as I’ve been sharing a lot of it with her, but I write my own science fiction stories. Since I was thirteen I’ve been writing and making up aliens, worlds, and cultures each with their own histories. I've come up with my own terminologies and technologies/gadgets. I have my own universe that I work on and am constantly developing with its’ own unique cast of characters from all ends of the spectrum. In fact, it’s where Lok s’Ilancy first came from. I pulled her from my own work and dropped her into Fans; though the s’Il in my stories and the s’Il here have taken very different paths and are a bit different from eachother.
But the fact remains. Star Wars makes me want to use my imagination. It’s an igniting spark that gives me a significant drive to push on and continue creating and drawing my own fanciful aliens and creatures.
Because frankly, if George Lucas can do it than by goodness so can I.