"Star Wars": Hype Over Substance. - Brief Article - Review - movie reviews

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Sept, 1999 by Christopher Sharrett

In this, the original "Star Wars" indeed announced the arrival in the 1970s of a new film industry that wants to overwhelm the audience with sights and sounds, and pick its pockets of all disposable income. Virtually every moment of the original "Star Wars" cycle has been turned into a spin-off product, and the same process is taking place with "The Phantom Menace." The picture ends up ingraining its concepts, however thin, into public consciousness by the sheer insistence of the commercial marketplace. It is questionable if the whole thing will stick this time around.

"Star Wars" is a means for a technically accomplished and extremely pragmatic industry to put very stale wine into very glitzy bottles, with the hope that a culture lacking in the ability to make distinctions, but hungry for new satisfactions, will keep queuing up.

Christopher Sharrett, Associate Mass Media Editor of USA Today, is associate professor of communication, Seton Hall University, South Orange, N.J.