When 40 Years Old You Reach, Look As Good You Will Not

I'll try to take a break from Trump-related articles now. I find myself wondering what one does when their ideals have been defeated and their values expunged from government. And the answer I keep coming up with is, accept exile on Degobah.

So, Star Wars. Are young people actually into Star Wars? Or is it just wishful thinking on the part of advertisers? I keep seeing ads for Star-Wars-related items portraying kids to young to remember the prequels as playing make believe in the franchise's .

I know some parents my age have introduced their kids to the holy trilogy. So it's probably easy to sell Star Wars toys to those parents. And there seems to be a wide market too; I mentioned Star Wars make up earlier. You can get Star Wars tights and other feminine clothing. I'm assuming the marketing juggernaut isn't slowing down or we'd hear rumours of companies dumping unsold BB8 necklaces in the desert.

The point is, it's kind of ironic that this third generation of Star Wars is a hit with the whole family. When the prequels started up in the late 90's, many of the old fans like myself thought they came off as a little childish. No, this isn't going to be another rant against Jar-Jar. Though, you know, Jar-Jar. But there we're lots of aspects of those movies that were cartoony or dumbed-down.

George Lucas answered criticism like this by pointing out that the original movies were made to appeal to kids, which is why folks like me - who were kids when the original trilogy came out - got into them in the first place. So it wasn't fair for us to begrudge the next generation their own child-oriented movie series.

I could see the logic behind that, except for a couple of things: Realistically, he had to know the audience would be mostly aging fans of the original, whether he likes it or not. And the fact is that young audiences are getting more mature in their media (witness the direction of superhero movies as an example.) In my admittedly subjective opinion, Lucas had gone in the opposite direction, trying to win over modern kids with movies more childish than the ones that won us over in the seventies.

So now the new movies - without Lucas' involvement - have abandoned his strategy. Instead, they're making movies that mostly fit with what the now thirty- to fifty-something original fans were looking for. And yet that ends up appealing to kids better than the prequels did.