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| Happy Birthday, Star Wars! |
For the record, I'm going to be ignoring the Expanded Universes of both franchises, so no novels or comics or any of that stuff; partly because there's too much of it all and my head would explode, and partly because I know too much about the Star Wars EU and nothing about the Star Trek EU, so it would be unfair. I'm also going to use the abbreviations SW and ST, because I'm already tired of typing it all out and switching back and forth into and out of italics.
Let's come out of the gate swinging with one of the big categories: villains! After all, everyone loves a bad guy, right? ST has a whole lot of villains, but the only one I'd consider a really great, recurring villain is their big bad, the Borg. They were in multiple episodes spread out over two shows and starred in one of the best ST movies. I know there were other villains like the Romulans and the Cardassians, but they never did anything for me. SW, on the other hand, only had one villain, really, the Sith. But whereas the Borg was just an alien, the Sith have the dramatic heft of being tied into the heroes in multiple ways, not the least of which being their greatest warrior was also the Jedi's greatest warrior... and is really the main character of the entire saga:
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| Of course he wins. I don't want to get Force-choked! |
This one is sort of a no-brainer: SW 1, ST 0.
Let's flip the coin and look at heroes. SW has the original trilogy heroes: Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, R2-D2, C-3P0, Yoda,and Lando. Luke is annoying for the first two movies and Leia is always annoying. R2 and 3P0 cancel each other out. Lando is only cool for one movie, and Yoda is only in about 45 minutes total. That leaves Han and Chewie. From the prequel trilogy, all we really get in terms of heroes is a real picture of just how awesome Obi-Wan Kenobi really is. So that gives us Han, Chewie, and Obi-Wan... against all of Star Fleet. Chewbacca might be a great first mate, but he's no Spock. And Han and Obi-Wan... well, they're just outclassed:
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| That's a whole lot of awesome right there. |
SW 1, ST 1.
Here's a two-point category: technology and starships. SW has lightsabers, the Death Star, star destroyers, AT-ATs, AT-STs, droids, carbonite, cybernetic hands, and the always-awesome but habitually falling-apart Millenium Falcon. ST has transporters, holodecks, tricorders, communicators, phasers, warp cores, visors, androids, time travel, alternate dimensions, and, of course, all the various incarnations of the U.S.S. Enterprise:
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| It really would fly circles around anything in that galaxy far, far away... |
And the Enterprise tips the balance in ST's favor. ST 3, SW 1.
Let's talk about sex appeal. ST has plenty of women who look damn good in those tight Starfleet uniforms, especially Jeri Ryan. They also have all the different hot alien chicks Kirk banged. But, SW has twi'leks. SW has Natalie Portman. And, most importantly, SW has:
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| Every man has this fantasy, and everyone knows it. |
ST 3, SW 2.
The last category I had thought about was storyline, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized you can't really compare the two. SW really is one cohesive story, whereas ST is much more serialized. Neither has an advantage over the other, they're just vastly different animals. So it looks like ST wins!
But, wait... they never had to reboot SW with a completely new cast to make it cool again!
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| Sorry boys, you just got burned. |
Star Wars wins!*
*Come on. The name of my blog is derived from Star Wars and I wrote a blog once about how Darth Vader is better than Jesus. Who did you think was going to win??
1. Wrong on sex appeal..she has a face only a tauntaun could love and the body of an English pirate riddled with scurvy.
ReplyDelete2.Star Wars hasn't been cool since 1983.
3.At least Gene Roddenberry had the good taste to die before leaving his fans jaded and disappointed. Anything that happened after 1991 is not his fault.
1. That may be, but the legacy of the Slave Leia outfit cannot be denied.
ReplyDelete2. Untrue. At the very least, the original CLone Wars cartoons, the shorts by Genndy Tartakovsky, were awesome.
3. Yeah, I can't argue with that one.
1. Slave Leia is like a Bob Dylan song..great when someone else is doing it.
ReplyDelete2.I'll concede half of that point..not towards Star Wars BUT that Genndy Tartakovsky can make almost anything cool...including the new suck ass clone wars characters.
It is more a testament to HIS writing, HIS producing and HIS animation/design team than anything that has to do with Star Wars. In fact the only reason he probably got the job was so Lucas could leech the cool off of the Samurai Jack style without looking like a total washed-up looser and a has been.
3. If you would have tried to argue that one I would have said you had finally gone insane.
...I guess I have to say circle gets the square on all of those.
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