The Star Wars saga

This is the end, my friend. The last Rental Raves. For this momentous occasion, I am reviewing not one or two or three films, but six. Six films, two of which break my 10-year rule, but it's important to talk about them anyway. Every film in this series has been polarizing in one way or another. Get ready to travel back a long time ago, to a galaxy far, far away. This is the immortal Star Wars saga: 1977's "A New Hope," 1980's "The Empire Strikes Back," 1983's "Return of the Jedi," 1999's "The Phantom Menace," 2002's "Attack of the Clones" and 2005's "Revenge of the Sith."

Now, most people out there have seen these films, and those that haven't have been spoiled on all the major twists due to pop-cultural osmosis. Nevertheless, I wrote this review as if the readers don't know what really happened to Luke Skywalker's (Mark Hamill) father.

The original trilogy starts with Episode IV, retroactively titled "A New Hope." The aforementioned Skywalker is a farm boy on the desert planet of Tatooine when two droids named C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) fall into his lap. Apparently, they were part of a Rebel Alliance against the evil Galactic Empire, and narrowly escaped from an Imperial raid. Alderaan's Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) wasn't so lucky. She was taken captive by the Empire's most powerful agents: icy Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) and half man, half machine Darth Vader (David Prowse, voice of James Earl Jones).

Vader is one of the few remaining people who have the training to manipulate the Force that binds all living things. In the past, there had been a knighthood known as the Jedi who used their power in the Force for good, but they were betrayed by Vader and Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid). It is to Vader's former master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, that Princess Leia sends R2 to contact. However, Luke only knows of an old hermit named Ben Kenobi (Alec Guinness). Setting out to find him and see if he knows this Obi-Wan, Kenobi informs Skywalker that they are one in the same, and that Luke is better off coming with him as Imperial forces have surely tracked the droids to the farm by now. He also tells Luke that his father was once a Jedi before being murdered by Vader, and should Luke wish he can take up Force training.

Kenobi was absolutely right about the Empire tracking the droids, and they have trouble getting off the planet. Luckily, smuggler Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and his Wookie co-pilot Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) have no love for the Empire, and they are able to contract Solo's ship: the Millennium Falcon (the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy). However, getting to Alderaan may be a bit of a problem, as the Empire's latest and greatest weapon, the moon-sized, planet-destroying space station dubbed the Death Star, is being taken for a test run.

And thus many moviegoers were introduced to George Lucas's vision. Without giving too much away, "The Empire Strikes Back" deals with Luke continuing his training from an old Jedi master named Yoda (Frank Oz), and finding out more about his past. "Return of the Jedi" follows the Rebellion's last great attempt at overthrowing the Empire. The prequel trilogy ("Phantom Menace," "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith") follows young Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) as he trains Vader, here just a young boy named Anakin (Jake Lloyd in "Phantom" and Hayden Christiansen in the others), who is subsequently seduced by then-Senator Palpatine to the Dark Side of the Force.

Because of this, the film series is essentially a biography of the man eventually known as Darth Vader. He is introduced to the world as a main villain, and turned into a tragic figure. Unfortunately, most diehard fans do not count the prequels (except possibly and grudgingly "Sith"), as they see them as sub-par. To that, I say there is not one argument you can give against the newer films that you can't reasonably levy against the originals.

The truth is that all these films are a throwback to classic serials of the 1930s. Thus, you have the first film as "Episode IV" before Lucas even dreamed of filming his extensive backstory. Like another recent and polarizing movie ("Avatar"), it takes a done-to-death archetypal story and breathes new life into it by giving it a sci-fi twist.

Some of the dialogue can be extremely corny, but this is the nature of the beast. The story was always overly convoluted and full of plot holes if you stopped to think about it for a second. Even the newer films' over-reliance on computer-generated effects can be applied to the recent updated releases of the classic films (which, even though I agree with the point of making them all mesh better and doing what Lucas wanted to do in the first place but was heretofore limited, I admit could have been handled a little better).

At the same time, the effects in both sets were groundbreaking. We all know how the original films' pioneering in miniature, blue screen and puppetry changes the way movies were made forever. Most people tend to forget that the prequels had some groundbreaking changes, as well.

And here I bring up the character most people would like to forget: Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best). Binks is an alien that serves as comic relief in the first two prequels. He is a character of pure slapstick, and as such comes off as unusually annoying and childish. Plus, the fact that Best is African-American and Jar Jar speaks a kind of broken English made many people scream "racist stereotype." I personally don't see this at all. While his shtick gets very old very fast, I have to admit I actually like Jar Jar as a character. If we continue thinking of this as a '30s serial, then Jar Jar is sort of the Charlie Chaplin/Buster Keaton of the saga (though, with that voice, I see him more like Jerry Lewis). Plus, he represents the truth that importance can come from anywhere – not to mention he has one of the saga's most interesting character designs.