Force, meet Farce

John Scalzi today, in which he vents about Star Wars:

I defy you to find any person who was genuinely entertained by Episodes I, II and III.

Hi! My name is Kelly, and I was genuinely entertained by Episodes I, II, and III. Nice to meet you.

Nothing else here is new -- it's just the standard boilerplate "George Lucas is a pretentious hack" thing that you can read by just about anybody, complete with masturbation metaphors applied to George Lucas, so I won't go into it further. (My reasons for enjoying Episodes I, II and III can be found in posts linked in the sidebar, if anyone's that interested.) But I'd note that Battle Beyond the Stars is not anywhere near as entertaining as Star Wars. I didn't find it so when I saw it in the theater when I was eight, nor did I find it so when I saw it on TV on matinees occasionally in the 80s, nor even when I watched it again five or six years ago. That's not to say that it isn't a fun little flick, because it is. But advancing it as some kind of pure ideal of entertainment, or even just as a test cast against Star Wars, is just goofy.

(For some real entertainment, though, find a copy of the soundtrack to Battle Beyond the Stars. The film was scored by a very young James Horner; it was one of his first scores, and there's not an original musical thought in it. It's pure homage to Jerry Goldsmith all the way. But there's a track called "Cowboy and the Jackers" in which Horner writes this ostinato for the trumpet section that pretty much goes throughout the entire track, but he pitches it very high in the trumpet's range, so on the recording, as the track winds down, you can actually hear the slow agonizing death of those poor trumpet players.)