The Star Wars Review

For those of you who haven't heard, The Star Wars is a eight-part comic series based on George Lucas's rough-draft screenplay (the second issue was released several days ago). It's exciting for Star Wars and science fiction fans alike--it's not every day that you get to see a first draft of one of the most influential and popular films of all time. Besides being a Star Wars geek myself, it's interesting to me because of the writing aspect; I've always been curious to see if the most renowned writers struggle with their first drafts as much as I do.

Oooo pretty

If you're expecting simply an alternate storyline to the Star Wars you've grown to love (and occasionally hate) like I was, look somewhere else. The Star Wars is drastically different, with only a taste of what George Lucas eventually turned Star Wars into. Some of the most notable differences are:

Luke Skywalker is a military general, leading the rebellion against the Empire

Annikin Starkiller is the son of Kane Starkiller, a main protagonist

Luke and Leia are not related--or at least not yet

The Empire has been around for quite some time

The Empire's capital is on Alderaan, on a platform similar to Cloud City

The political system is much more detailed and "antique," with Kings, Lords and Counts, ect

The Jedi are called the Jedi-Bendu and were, until recently, were the Emperor's personal bodyguards and in charge of the Imperial Space Force

Perhaps most important, the plot is significantly different.

There are some similarities found in both Star Wars and The Star Wars: 

The Jedi are almost extinct

The Rebellion isn't going well

Darth Vader still seems to be an important villain, although he is not masked

The Force is still key to the plot

The Sith and the Jedi are rivals

Lightsabers are still the Jedi and Sith weapon of choice, but they are all red (for the moment, perhaps)

I'm being brief, as they are more similarities and differences, especially in the upcoming issues. Han Solo, R2-D2, C3P0, Chewbacca, and the Death Star have yet to make an appearance.

Now, obviously I'm going to be bias going into this, but I've read it a couple times and have tried to take a neutral approach. I'll start with what I like.

I actually like how it's a bit more complicated politically. Looking at the final version of Star Wars, it seems like Lucas focused more on the way the story was told rather than the complexity and depth of the story itself. Everyone knows that it follows the Hero's Journey, and that Lucas didn't really do anything incredibly revolutionary telling the story besides taking classic Western (the cowboy films, not the Western part of the globe) conflicts and put them in space.

Pretty much every story follows something along these lines, maybe skipping a couple steps here or there.

Heck, even the famous scroll is from Flash Gordon.

Now, I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Every good story derives from parts of another--it's inevitable. But The Star Wars feels more original than Star Wars, and I think it's because instead of taking inspiration from Westerns, The Star Wars takes inspiration from Medieval story lines. Even the revised tagline hints at this: Longer ago, in a galaxy even further away..."

It's also something different. If it were too similar to Star Wars, it wouldn't be as special. It's kind of like the Walking Dead television show vs. the comic series. You can enjoy both because they're different.

The art is really well done. I'm certainly not an expert on comic art, but pleased with Mike Mayhew's style. It's not too playful but it's also not too serious. Mayhew has done work for Marvel in the past, so he knows his stuff. 

Preview from page 1 of The Star Wars

He had some original art to base his work from. 

What C3P0 and R2D2 looked like

There's also an interesting section in the back of the comic called, "Redesigning the Universe," for those who are interested about the changes to the visual universe being made.

So here's what I don't like. I can see why some of the changes were done to the script, specifically some of the names and places. Skywalker, Darklighter, Starkiller, The Palace of Lite...I mean, come on. He kept Skywalker, which is fine, but some of them are just plain silly and start to take you out of the story.

My main complaint is that the pacing is extremely quick. I realize that they are trying to put it in eight issues, but anything with Star Wars thrown on it or even Lucas's name is going to sell and make profits, so I'm not sure why they felt they needed to limit themselves. The aforementioned complexity requires a little more time to get used to, and some of the characters who seem important are blown by, like Darth Vader, who only gets a couple lines. The character names, as silly as they sometimes seem, blend together, and can get confusing. It's also hard for someone with knowledge about the Star Wars university to acclimate to all the changes, which I think is most of the problem, so maybe I should just put my foot in my mouth and shut up. This is just the first issue, and it wasn't bad enough for me to not enjoy it, so I'll be patient. 

Sorry that it took so long to get around to doing this. I'll try to get my hands on #2 soon and write about that. Also, I know that my reviews are not really complete or typical--I just want to write what I think about things, not tell people the entire plot. Feel free to comment and discuss what you think.