It was easier when I was seven.

That's how old I was when Star Wars came out. Back then, of course, it was just "Star Wars." None of that "Episode IV" crap. Just Star Wars. And it was kewl.

Seriously kewl. My grandfather had a big Stanley tape measure that I fastened to the sawed-off end of a broom handle and voila! I had a homemade lightsaber (with adjustable blade, both in standard AND metric!). Later my mom took pity on me and bought the lightsaber toy made by Kenner...which was a flashlight attached to a frosted plastic tube (You know, these kids have it easy these days with toy lightsabers which actually retract, but when *I* was a kid we didn't have that luxury!). Oh, the memories. And at one point I even had all the action figures. All twelve of them. You would then send in the proofs of purchase and seventy five cents and Kenner would send you a free display stand. Shortly thereafter, Kenner came out with another twelve and screwed me up for life.

So what was it about for me? It was about fantasy. It was about watching robots and spaceships and lasers going all over the place. It was about wondering what a Jawa looked like without the robe. It was wondering what was up with that Darth Vader guy. It was about making my mom watch that Christmas Special with me. It was about wishing I had a lightsaber. Star Wars showed a black/white world. It showed baddies who were indisputably bad. Their motives didn't matter at all. They were just bad. And it showed good guys who were good. Again, because they were just good. To a seven-year old (and to those much older) that's really all you needed.

Three years later I remember being totally bummed by Empire because it was such a downer (who would want to marry Darth Vader?!?). And three years after that I thought seeing Jabba was kind of kewl, and the new Death Star was OK, but...Ewoks?!? What, stormtroopers could slaughter Jawas but Ewoks were beyond their capabilities? If only the Jawas had hang gliders, everything would have been OK?

And that's when it left me. I was 13 when Return of the Jedi came out, and was in the process of graduating to more adult things. See, I never looked at the movies as anything other than a couple of hours of escapism. Frankly I was more impressed with Carrie Fisher as a slave girl than I was with the spaceships. But I still watched. And I still caught the "making of" specials on television. And that's when I finally realized that George Lucas may be a gifted man, but there's one thing that remains forever out of his reach...the art of bullshitting.

When Star Wars first came out, Lucas wasn't out there saying he had eight more films. He wasn't talking about a grand saga he had written. No, this was a standalone story. It was "Episode IV" because that was a device to make the Star Wars universe look like it had a lot of history behind it. It had throwaway events like the Clone Wars mentioned as if they happened a loooong time ago to create a sense of mystery and intrigue. It was only after the runaway success of the film that suddenly there was a larger story to be told. We had 20th Century Fox go to Lucas asking about a possible sequel, and like any good writer Lucas said yeah, I have lots of stuff, and the myth of eight more films came to life.

But it was lukewarm bullshit at best. If you have a big story to tell, why not start at the beginning? Well, because there WAS no "beginning." Star Wars (Episode IV) was it. Everything else was made up by Lucas on the fly and as he went along. Scads of continuity errors make this pretty evident. Lucas tried to "fix" those with numerous re-releases under various rationalizations (yeah, like Lucas didn't have the technology at the time to make Greedo shoot first. Whatever.), but the reality is the "clear vision of Lucas" for the flicks have always been mercurial, bending to the whims of the franchise owner.

And now we have "Episode III." Now we have Lucas out there changing his story AGAIN...that Star Wars wasn't about Luke Skywalker after all, but rather the redemption of Darth Vader. Funny that, because in his novelization George Lucas quite clearly described it as "From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker" and Darth Vader's portrayal was decidedly different than Lucas is now selling it. And if you want to channel your uber-geek, read the first drafts of the film, back when Darth Vader was "a tall, grim-looking general" hanging around the "evil Governor Hoedaack." None of the broad themes Lucas is now saying were always there were actually evident. So frankly, if Lucas had Vietnam on his mind when he wrote even that first draft, he isn't even bullshitting...he's delusional.

Look. I like the first movie, and I'm OK with the second one (The rest of them? Well.....). But let's not lose sight of the appeal of the franchise. It's popular because it's simple. It's a clear presentation of universal themes. It's good vs. evil. This whole business of Darth Vader suddenly being Luke's father was nothing more than a soap opera moment, with a brother/sister followup in the third movie. But even with that, I still like the flick. So why is there this sudden insistence by the Left to claim it as some kind of morality play? I can (mostly) ignore Lucas' inconsistent ramblings because I think he's just trying to sell the flick. If saying it has an anti-American bent will get more butts in French seats, then he'll say it. If saying there's a larger story surrounding the first movies will create intrigue and buzz, Lucas will say it. Lucas has long been proving that his god is the dollar (Exhibit A: Darth Vader Cheezits). But I do kind of resent the Left trying to claim this franchise as their own. It's like they're trying to rob the memories from that seven-year-old kid playing with a tape measure and a broom handle.