h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You must have heard of the book 'Is It Just me, or is Everything Shit?'
Well, what I'd like to know is is it just me, or do others out there think that the Star Wars films are a load of overrated derivative garbage?

This lot obviously don't : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6629907.stm

I'm the only person I know in my current peer group who has yet to see any of the Star Wars films. Sure I have episode 4-6 box set but I just can't be meithered watching them. I think it's still shrinkwrapped.

I think they're ok, but can't be bothered watching them again. I think I missed a plot point somewhere - still no idea why he turned to the dark side, so it's all a bit pointless really.

It would really bother me if my twin and I were separated for safety, and she got to be a rich princess and I had to work my butt off on a bloody farm in a desert.

I think that might tell you I'm not a huge fan, that bothers me more than anything else!

Were those the films where people had names like Darth Vader and there was quite a bit of swordplay and dancing with laser beams to some kind of Wagnerian space music?
Well, I think I saw one or two (where there any more?) but I have to say those Eagle comics, which I got from a boy at school in exchange for the Dandy and the Beano, were better.

I liked the first one - it was a bit of camp hokum and a lot of fun. After that they went seriously downhill.

Some kid in the year before me at school went to see the first film seven times. I can't abide the obsessive fandom that seems to go with the whole franchise.

The StarWars Lego game for the PS2 is seriously addictive.

It was only when I sat down to watch the original Star Wars with my 7 year old that I realised I had never actually seen the film previously - I knew the story, and everything about it, but I'd never actually watched it.

Hokum - but the kind of non-brain engaging activity you can just relax in front of.

It started out promising and went steeply downhill with each ensuing episode. At the end I think Lucas was doing a marketing survey along the lines of "how much offal will the public eat?"

I took my son to the first one, on the crossbar of my bike (that was in my upright-bike days). He followed the story better than I did (he was then seven, and is now 36) but I was captivated by the dancing camerawork. The way the tie-fighters and X-fighters swooped around the screen, filmed from another equally swooping point of view. And the spaceship that churned up from the back of the cinema through the sound system, then appeared at the top of the screen and swam majestically down to fill the frame. Shame about the dialogue, but terrific robot-speak, and of course Alec Guinness.

Then people took it seriously and George Lucas began toying with their touching faith.

I never bothered watching the last few episodes. The petty bickering between the young Obi and the young Darth Vader was too insufferable. And the egregious non-sequiturs . . . they may have amused George, but not me.

The best thing I can say about them is that they are a feats for the eyes. Mind you, so is the Aero desktop on my new computer, but I wouldn't go around dressed as a rectangle with transparent edges.