I like superhero films, and I love Star Wars movies, but I want to make sure there's a wide diaspora of films getting made.
Inside 'Star Wars' are values that mean something to people. It's aspirational. It's full of hope.
All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.
At the New York Harvard Club, they've moved the memorial for those who died in World Wars I and II up to an obscure little hallway; they used to be in the main hall, in the most prominent location. The sacrifice of those young people I always found so stunning and so admirable.
I have served in the Congress during two wars and I have seen the impacts on our military, on their families and on our national deficit.
My friend Paul Ryan talks about fiscal responsibility, but voted to put two wars on a credit card.
We assume that we've come so far as compassionate citizens of the world if we do choose to read the news, yet the attitude towards life can be one where we put blinders on and forget that there are civil wars going on. It's easy to forget that there are so many people starving to death every single day.
During the twentieth century, men fought on behalf of nationalism. Yet the wars they fought were also engendered by dislocations in world markets and by social revolution stimulated by the coming of the industrial age.
The first 'Star Wars' film was enormously important. I grew up right smack-bang in the sweet spot of all of those. It's true cinema magic. It's fair to say that, as a kid, I would have been very happy to be Han Solo, and I would have been happy to have gone out with Princess Leia.
The wars we fought were forced upon us. Thanks to the Israel Defense Forces, we won them all, but we did not win the greatest victory that we aspired to: release from the need to win victories.
When I read 'Dream of Red Mansions,' I was really struck by the fact that it was built differently from a lot of genre works. Specifically, a lot of the events that should have taken centre-stage - wars, social upheavals - were seen entirely through the eyes of the women of a Chinese household.
I don't have sophisticated tastes. I have average tastes. If you looked in my collection of DVDs, you'd see 'Jaws' and 'Star Wars.' In the book library, you'd see John Grisham and Sidney Sheldon. And if you look in my fridge, it's, like, children's food - chips, milkshakes, yogurt.
All animation is a tremendous amount of work, but when you put 'Star Wars' on the top of something, there's already this bar that people are going to put on it.
That aesthetic of the Star Wars universe: the do-it-yourself, hotrod ethic that George Lucas exported from his childhood, is exactly the same kind of soul behind what we do and build for the show. It may not look pretty, but it gets the job done.
Africans are on the front lines of humanitarian efforts, distributing life-saving aid in dangerous environments. Africans comprise the vast majority of peacekeepers in civil conflict on that continent. Africans for the most part lead peace negotiations for the wars being fought in Africa.
For everyone, 'Star Wars' has been a part of their lives in some capacity. I remember watching it very early on with my cousins and my brother, and we were all cuddled around the VHS player, which sounds very old-fashioned, but that was the way then.
The military is not a social services operation or a testing ground for gender wars. It is a fighting machine. Women are not as strong as men. Their instincts and reactions in crises are markedly different.
'Jurassic Park' and 'Star Wars' shoved me into loving sci-fi and film in general when I was a barely coherent 3-year-old. And 'Lord of the Rings' took me to another planet entirely. Before that series, I knew I loved writing, but after, I knew that I had to write.
Yesterday, we fought wars which destroyed cities. Today, we are concerned with avoiding a war which will destroy the earth. We can adapt atomic energy to produce electricity and move ships, but can we control its use in anger?
Throughout the movies' golden age, the Western enriched Hollywood financially and artistically. But in the 1970s, the genre lost its audience appeal to fantasy films of the 'Star Wars' stripe, which told more or less the same story - elemental animosities leading to an armed showdown - but at a faster tempo, and in outer space.
'The Clone Wars' got very dark as we headed towards the end of the war and the downfall of the Jedi.
In writing 'William Shakespeare's Star Wars,' I had the freedom to go beyond the original script and add asides, soliloquys and even new scenes. The main characters all get a soliloquy or two - or in Luke's case, several.
I guess because I'm so young, I m not sure of what lies ahead for me. I'm more into going the route of producing and directing. I just made a little short film. I'm more excited about going the route of doing a Drew Barrymore or... what's the one from 'Star Wars?'
I literally cannot remember a time when I was not asking myself what events in 'Star Wars' were like for Princess Leia. The good side of all this is that what looked like 'goofing off' or 'daydreaming' these many years has all turned out to be valuable career preparation.
For years, I was compared to Wookiees, especially after I did the 'Star Wars Holiday Special.' I have some photos of me with a few of the Wookiees on the set, and it's hard to tell us apart.
'Star Wars' is very black and white, and honestly, I like it that way. But fantastical settings like that work best when the characters within them feel real. Real people have conflicts and make mistakes and get it wrong sometimes.
I think that war is diplomacy by other means, for sure, and there have been wars that have been fought for righteous reasons. There are wars that have had to be fought, and there will probably continue to be.
Science offers no brief for the telekinetic powers of Darth Vader and hardly any greater justification for the faster-than-light travel that makes his empire possible. And yet what is 'Star Wars' if not pure quill SF?
I wrote that President Bush is passing on to President-elect Obama two wars and an economic debacle. I call it a depression. And he is arming Israel against the Palestinians in every way in Gaza.
I can't get my head around the fact that the technology of the first two movies, which are forty years prior to Star Wars, is so much better than any technology they had in Star Wars!
For many years prior to the 1990s, European integration was embraced and supported by a large majority of citizens. A united Europe, bound by commonly-held democratic values, was perceived as an essential and effective buffer against the Soviet empire. A united Europe made a repeat of the First and Second World Wars almost unthinkable.
Our society is divided by the culture wars into the Left and Right, and the United Methodist Church has always stood historically in the center and has been willing to listen to and to bring together those things that often are found in opposite camps.
The key for me with 'Star Wars' is to stay in their world. Don't get in the way of what is already known and what works. I think of the basic nature of the filmmaking process that worked so well for the original trilogy. No stylistic flights of fancy for the sake of showing off. Tell the story, get the shot, get the performances, and move on.
The way they taught history in schools was not appealing. They stressed wars and dates. They left the people out. I was attracted to history by the need to know about the people. In China, I went to a British school, and we just learned about kings and queens. Back in America, I had the regular social studies curriculum.
Bullfights are a very cultural thing. I know many people think it's cruel, but so many things are cruel. Hunting, the electric chair, wars. These are all cruel things as well.
Wars never simply end, not for those in combat and not for the culture, and one way or another, they shape-shift from generation to generation.
