An orphan boy grows up on a boring farm, dreaming of a life of adventure. He has never met his real parents, and while he loves the people who care for him, he knows he doesn’t really belong with them. He meets two exotic strangers who befriend him and become his servants. They wind up leading him to an old wizard. The wizard tells him there’s more to his past than he ever realized, and gives him a magic sword. He also teaches the boy how to unlock amazing powers he never realized he had within him. After discovering that his family has been killed, the boy goes off with the wizard to rescue a beautiful princess from the clutches of a Dark Knight leading an army of minions in the service of an evil king. The Dark Knight is also in league with a giant dragon that can wipe out horrifying numbers of people with its devastating fire breath. Along the way on their journey, they are joined by a lovable rogue knight and his strong, silent squire. Together, they invade the Dark Knight’s lair, escaping from the dragon’s belly with the beautiful princess in tow. They later rally to destroy the dragon, but before he can meet justice, the the dark knight escapes to fight another day. The princess rewards them all, and there is much rejoicing as they are applauded as great heroes. The end.

So began George Lucas’ Star Wars saga. I’ve been waiting for…

…the hype (and anti-hype) of Attack of the Clones to die down before commenting on this latest installment.

I was eleven years old in 1977, and my Uncle Eddie took me to see this thing called Star Wars. He had already seen it and wanted to take me. I told him I wasn't interested. I liked Star Trek and The Twilight Zone, but these seemed like rare exceptions in a world of bad SciFi movies and TV shows.

My Uncle Eddie had to practically drag me to the nearby theater there in El Paso. We were a minute or two late. I remember walking into a dark theater to the sound of a piccolo and a scene of a planet and stars. A string section started vamping, and a huge spaceship (as real as anything I'd ever imagined from books) burst screaming onto the screen. It looked enormous, and so real. Not the smooth, elegant saucers and rockets of earlier SciFi and TV movies. No, this looked like something put together with bolts and welds, and wasn't even streamlined. That was great--even at that age I knew things don't need to be streamlined in a vacuum. This looked like something a construction crew had put together in space.

The huge ship roared on, guns blazing at something behind it. Then the ship chasing it, a flying wedge, oozed onto the screen. It rumbled on, and on and on, impossibly huge. Finally it looked like the end—but no! That was just some sort of hanger! It kept rumbling on, impossibly massive, filling the entire screen, until finally the huge glowing engines in back blasted into view.

I don't remember finding our seats. I don't remember if I ate or drank anything. I wonder at times if I even breathed. I was transfixed. That summer, I managed to wangle just about every adult relative to take me to see it again, sometimes even lying to them and saying I hadn't seen it yet just so they'd take me. I saw it 6 or 7 times, and would have gone several more times if I could have gotten away with it.

I have never had such a thrilling time, never drawn more pure pleasure from a movie (although it says something that at age 35, I took almost as much pleasure in this summer’s Spider-Man. But that's another story.)

When I look at Attack of the Clones I’m not surprised some people didn’t like it, although I'm a little impatient with some of the comments from people who've slammed it. Especially from those who say they loved the original movies but don't like the new ones.

Now, as it happens, I loved it. But I didn't love it because of some nostalgia trip. Nor was it because I loved the special effects. Nor because I’m a geek with no life. Nor because I've been wooed by yet another "corporate juggernaut." I find all that a little insulting when I hear it.

It’s fair to say that the Star Wars series would not be so popular if it were first being released today. I don’t know if younger generations can ever quite experience it like people my age (say, age 40, plus or minus ten years) experienced it. The first movie came out before DVD, before VCRs were in most homes. Hell, almost no one had cable TV then. The first time seeing it for us was the big screen, where it was more impressive than it could ever be to people who first saw it on TV.

But more than that, no one had ever done anything like it before. So many movies have followed in George Lucas’ footsteps, the series can probably never have quite the “oomph” it did for audiences back then.

But I know I’d still like the series even if its beginnings hadn’t marked such a memorable part of my childhood. The question is, why? The smoldering love scenes? Nah, for all the snipping about the romance scenes in Attack of the Clones, none of the movies ever had very much of that anyway. The first movie was as chaste as a Hardy Boys mystery. The subsequent films had only one minor romantic sub-plot, and that was half-comical.

So, is it the special effects? Nah, those are neat, but, there’ll always be something better sooner or later. Hell, I think The Matrix is still more impressive in many ways than Attack of the Clones as far as that's concerned.

Yet, I liked this movie a lot, and found it quite worthy of the series. Why? Well, Abraham Lincoln once remarked, "For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like." It was meant to be funny, but it’s the most apt one-sentence review of the entire Star Wars saga that anyone could write.

These movies don’t appeal to stupid people, or to naïve people. They don’t appeal to people who are have no lives. Nor do they appeal primarily because of nostalgia. They appeal to people—very smart people, in my experience—who happen to enjoy and respect mythology.

We also tend to like interesting universes, tales of faraway, exotic lands. That’s hard to do on Earth anymore, now that the whole damn place has been mapped by satellites. We enjoy political intrigue. We enjoy universal archetypes and stories. And, frankly, we tend to believe there are such things as good and evil, and we don’t find such concepts laughable or childish. We realize such things can be oversimplified; in fact, we know that perfectly well. We just don’t care, because these are movies for goodness sakes. And, as movies, they say more about the best aspirations of the human soul than a truckfull of silver-screen onanism like American Beauty or Pleasantville or the latest pretentious Indie fare that's lauded as "important" and "daring" and "insightful."

The carping about all the talk, talk, talking in the movie is, frankly, a drag to hear. I loved it. But see, I like history, and politics, and I enjoyed the way Lucas weaved his tale of intrigue, backstabbing, betrayal, and personal horror in with the action and romance. And yeah, I liked the cool fight scenes, just like I enjoyed ‘em in Braveheart

Special Effects-wise, I found the movie impressive but not mind-blowing. I will say that, having seen it on both 70mm and Digital, you simply must see it in digital. It’s a different movie, and the special effects play much better. Some of the scenes are gasp-inducingly beautiful on digital.

But I saw it first on 70mm, and I enjoyed it so much I wanted to see it again. Not because I wanted to be a child again, but because I got to find out a lot more about a neat universe I’ve known from previous movies. It was damned fun. And by the way, didn’t they do a good job picking Alec Guiness to play the old version of Ewan MacGregor’s character, Obi Wan Kenobi? (Yeah, MacGregor was that good.)

I was rarely bored, always intrigued, and had all kinds of fun. For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they’ll like. I like this sort of thing a lot.

Don’t go because of the hype. But don't refuse to go because of the hype, either. Go if you like this sort of thing, with cool universes, realistic special effects, and cool stories with twisty plots mixed in with universal themes.

If you haven’t seen it on digital yet, there’s still time.