Halo 3, Star Wars, and my generation

I am beginning to think that the imminent release of the greatest FPS of all time is a good reason why i should restart this blog. If anyone reads this thank you for actually caring. The news flooding from Bungie Studios has lately flown so thick and fast that hardly a day has gone by without some goodies coming from Bungie. Halo has, in the minds of many including myself, become the Star Wars of this generation. I know this phrase has been thrown around a lot lately, but I would like to quantify this statement. The original Star Wars Trilogy was a fanciful story of a small group of freedom loving rebels taking down a large evil empire. Much ink has been spilled on these movies' relation to real life, but even I, untrained as I am in the matters of film, can draw out the basic correlations. The time when the Star Wars movies came out was a time of great uncertainty in America. People wondered whether the US's supremacy in the world was at an end. It seemed that our struggle against the Soviet Union was going badly. Star Wars does not translate perfectly into the events of that time, but the struggle of the Rebels (America and the West) against the evil Galactic Empire (Soviet Union) was very indicative of the losing attitude many Americans had, especially after the loss in Vietnam.

Now is a different time with different problems. WE are unpopular in a world that seems to continually use "America" and what she is seen to stand for as a scapegoat. Terrorism has affected America in a very strong way and we are in a war at the heart of the beast that is growing more unpopular daily. The simple desperation of earth's plight is a welcomed tale in the complicated and morally muddled world in which we live. Our country was attacked without provocation in both Halo (while it is instead our entire world instead of just America) and on September 11th and in both tales we face an enemy that will stop only with our total destruction. There are heroes in both battles and while we honor our valiant woman and med at arms, especially those fallen in the field of battle, the United Nations Space Command has in Halo a man who embodies all this courage, honor and inhuman resolve and adds a liberal amount of kickass--Master Chief--Spartan-117--John. A recently released commercial for Halo 3 has an old man telling his story of being a marine during the Human-Covenant War and almost losing faith until the appearance of Master Chief. His myth is almost that of a god giving hope to those who have none. He is an icon of an age that needs hope and will gain it from one of the most unlikely places--a video game. I don't think that it is a coincidence that the Star Wars extended universe has added a similar story to the universe with the invasion by the Yuuzhan Vong in the New Jedi Order Series. Here, however, one finds what I would consider a much more complicated storyline with much greater moral ambiguities.

So when you are playing Halo 3 don't see it only as a game, but a deep allegory of the days in which we live--great days for courage and honor but also dangerous in their moral ambiguities.

May the force be with you as you finish the Fight.