Scott Rosenberg in Salon:
Millions of people, including millions of science-fiction-loving kids, fell in love with "Star Wars" on its original release in 1977. I wasn't one of them. An 18-year-old bookworm who'd weaned on Heinlein and Asimov, feasted on Zelazny and Herbert, and graduated to Le Guin and Dick, I watched "Star Wars" with a sinking heart, because I knew that it would set back the cause of "real" science fiction for decades.
The problem wasn't that "Star Wars" was in itself a bad movie; it was made with love and care, it told a decent story, it passed a couple of hours entertainingly. There was nothing shameful in itself about the way George Lucas built his saga from the spare parts of a thousand serials. But in resurrecting the old Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, E.E. "Doc" Smith tradition of space opera, with its stereotypical characters, its potboiler plots and its pseudotechnology, Lucas completely bypassed the previous 20 years' worth of evolution in science-fiction writing and moviemaking. [full article]
I have to say, I can relate. Not that I had this opinion in 1977, when I was 10, but I have certainly come to it since.
Still on the fence about seeing Episode III.
