Just been watching the end of "The Empire Strikes Back" on TV and trying to codify my strong objections to the "Star Wars" films. It isn't that any of them is *per se* offensive (altho Jar Jar Binks comes pretty close) - it's just the sheer blandness of the content and the unimaginativeness of the filmmaking that gets me. I've expended a good deal of time & energy convincing the Heathen (i.e. a lot of literary types who recoil from 'genre' fiction) that SF has the power and the scope to explore issues that others cannot reach - and I'm happy to cite Lem/ Tarkovsky's "Solaris", Sturgeon's "More Than Human", and anything by Barry N. Malzberg in support of my case - only to find idiots like George Lucas peddling simple Good-vs-Evil shoot-em-ups to the ignorant, masquerading as the real thing. Frankly, I'd rather have "Dr Who", "Star Trek", or "Red Dwarf", all of which - on a fraction of the budget - have managed to to produce genuinely exciting, moving, and/or funny variants on the staples of interplanetary exploration, war & misunderstanding than the po-faced puerilism of "Star Wars." What really astounds me is how many people who claim to be serious SF aficionados go for it: you are being treated like children, folks - and even then, I wouldn't want my children to swallow the expensive simplicities you're prepared to pay for !