Star Wars!

I fired up the ole TV today for the first time in a few weeks (I'm not kidding) to veg and watch a good movie. There wasn't much on so I decided to check On Demand and was pleasantly surprised to see that they have all 6 Star Wars movies for free. I fired up the first movie (technically the 4th) and was really looking forward to some mindless entertainment. As I was watching, I began to draw some parallels between the movie and some of the games that we have been discussing in class. This promises to be a random blog, with thoughts interposed throughout and no general structure, so enjoy.

The first thing that really hit me was that all the scenes that occur in the hallways of the Death Star are reminiscent of many of the linear FPS games that I have played. I began to wonder whether or not the Star Wars movies' depiction of the hallway was the inspiration for the standard world that many FPS's exist within. In thinking about this, I was drawn to the idea that if the Star Wars movie was the inspiration for this aspect of the game, then it is also part of that games peritext.

On to targeting: there were several scenes in the movie that seemed to focus on targeting and what seemed to be a rudimentary form of video game. Luke and Han are in the Millenium Falcon and are fighting off some bad guys and instead of seeing the actual ships being targeted and shot at, we are presented with an archaic 3D image of the ship being targeted and the targeting system. The whole battle scene was played out in this image rather than in "real time". I couldn't help but think about what it meant to the viewer to be watching the action through a video-game like interface rather than as an image of the occurence itself. It opens up the action to different types of interpretation as well as more interaction with various types of viewers. Any fans of video games might view this scene of the movie as something that they could identify with.

Finally, the end of the movie is comepletely dependent on the idea of targeting. In order to destroy the Death Star, they needed to drop a bomb into a 2 meter wide opening in order to destroy the reactor core of the space station. It required a direct, perfect drop that was partially dependent upon the correct targeting of the objective, but also was dependent of the user interaction with the ship. The ship's pilot needed to take data from the targeting system and release the bomb at the precise moment necessary. In doing so, the movie reproduces the idea that targeting and user interaction are a way for us to overcome, in this case, and perhaps in all cases, some evil force.

What is interesting about this is that when Luke successfully drops the bomb, he does so with no assitence from technology. He switches off his targeting system and R2 is rendered unusable by a blast from an enemy ship. Perhaps in this instance the movie is commenting on the dependence of gamers on targeting systems, but in a way that seeks to assert that such systems are inherent within us all. Perhaps targeting is more than the reaction of a technological program, it is an inherent need in us all to overcome.