When I was eleven, a friend from school invited me to his party. We went to see a movie called Star Wars. After that, like most of the movie viewing population of the world, I was hooked, line and sinker. The next two movies were equally satisfying and then we all lameted the passing of Star Wars and the golden era of the SciFi Space Opera. It didn't matter that Space Ships make can't make noise in space, it made a better movie if they did. It didn't matter that many of the aliens were puppets, we wanted them to be real. Star Wars placed humans at the top of the Galactic league of Creatures. But then, it all changed...
George Lucas began re-releasing digial copies of the movie and changes the ending a little. The Galaxy was more diverse than we were led to believe. The aliens were more exotic and interesting and all in CGI. Then it all went horribly wrong when he released the fourth movie and I nearly threw up. I was so horribly disappointed in George's vision that I felt I had been cheated of my youth. Ja Ja Bing. OMG. Where did George get Ja Ja Bing from? Why? Why? Why? But like any good magician George moved onto the second and third in the pre-quel and some misgivings were placed in a dark box in my mind, called George's Foibles. In the end,he gave his Star Wars loving public what they really wanted. Light Saber fighting! Goodies and baddies in equal measure. Cool space ships and glorious fight sequences. Tragedy on the scale of Romeo and Juliet. And so, that's all Star Wars every was, a glorious omlette of the old and the new. George should thank his luck stars (no pun intended) that there were no half-decent CGI effects available when he was making the first movie. He shot the desert scene in a real desert. Would he have done this if he'd had CGI? Who knows? He might have made a glorious flop with all the computer power at his disposal. In the end, what really impresses me about Star Wars is the way George is always moving technical Story Telling forward. He's getting reality and grit back into the CGI process and movies like 300 have benefited from it. Even now, I call my kids, younglings!