This is for those of us who spent our childhoods trying to bend minds with the Force and had a crisis of faith at the appearance of Jar Jar Binks in our universe. As we get gear up for our opening night costumes, here’s our wishlist:

Bring Back:

1) A seriously limited budget. And a Jedi that lops off your fingers if you try to reach outside of it. You must create your movie set entirely with products found at Walmart. There’s not an enormous green screen background in Walmart, you say, against which to extrapolate a gigantic CGI landscape? Our point precisely. Give us dirt, and grit, and cobbled-together aliens rocking out in a Mos Eisley cantina.

2) A GODDAMN STORY. We feel very strongly about this point. The original Star Wars endured. Avatar will not. CGI, or 3D, or whatever new schtick people dream up is a sugar-rush for the eyes, but the second it fades you’ve forgotten it completely.

What really sticks is the story written between the pixels. The dread in your gut when that first Star Destroyer slides across the screen. Leia’s face as Han Solo is slowly lowered into the carbonite. The second before Luke pulls off Darth Vader’s mask.

We need the kind of blood-and-guts story that you don’t get from sitting in fields of wildflowers speaking sappy constipated lines to each other (see point 6 in the “Ditch” section)

3) Heroes who aren’t heroes. Or who have to become heroes by learning wisdom. All of the three main heroes have to do this: Luke in one way (he gives up sex and worldly pleasure and becomes a monk), Leia in another (she learns to chill out a bit and listen to her feelings), and Han in yet another (he learns a bit of political correctness, gets a bit better travelled, and learns how to treat other people with respect).

The suspense is provided as much by character evolution as by the larger story arc. You get an idea of how the individual has an impact upon greater events, just by becoming better. Or worse.

Vader grows ever more bitter and powerful as a result. There’s pain and tragedy there which we can all identify with (estranged from his son/ deformed/ lost the things he wanted the most), and that’s what makes the fight scenes between him and Luke so poignant.

4) Incest. The Luke/Leia dynamic always intrigued us. Never mind the fact that George Lucas didn’t originally intend for them to be twins (he’s eighteen in the original script and she’s sixteen). We like to think that he plotted all along to create some naughty tensions.

5) Under-awed sidekicks. Sycophants get boring pretty quickly. Most of the sidekicks in the old movies spent their screen time being as irreverent as possible to the “heroes” of the tale.

6) Disgust and sensationalism. Jabba the Hutt drooling all over Leia in that gold bikini with a chain around her neck. It’s gross, and it’s compulsively watchable. Thank you Carrie Fisher for demanding a sexier outfit for Return of the Jedi.

7) Characters you can’t trust. The ambivalent, grey-area characters with their own moral compass, like Boba Fett.

8) Bromances. A game of intergalactic chess ladies and gentleman. C-Threepio and R2D2 versus Chewbacca and Han Solo.

9) Story kernels with no backstory.

The really amazing part of the original Star Wars was how the fans took the universe and ran with it.

Boba Fett, a minor bounty hunter, was appropriated by the fan community and became the epitome of cool. Characters with a few seconds of screentime got entire life stories. People obsessed about the TIE fighters, and engineers diagrammed how they would have fit together and flown. Fans created worlds and histories and languages for every random alien in Jabba the Hutt’s cave of decadence. The new movies felt like they needed to have a point and a logic for every character they threw on the screen. Don’t worry about it.

You want a squid playing a saxophone? For no apparent reason? Rock it down.

If we want to, we’ll figure out why he’s there without you spoonfeeding it to us every step of the way.

10) Groovy bars with intergalactic jazz. Sleaze is universal. Plus, we want the squid playing the saxophone.

11) Storm Troopers who can’t shoot. It’s tradition.

Ditch:

1) Excessive pomp and circumstance.

Diplomats are boring to watch in real life, too. If you must have politics, have politics, but bang it out Leia-style.

She can put on a dress and tiara when she needs to, and she can shut down Han Solo’s advances like a boss. Just because you’re a politician does not mean that your personality has been surgically removed. A plot that requires the main characters to be deadpan for most of their screen time does no one any favors.

2) Gimmicks. If you’re doing something because you said to yourself “oh, this is cool!”, stop it (unless, of course, it’s a squid with a saxophone).

No Yodas jumping around. No Darth Maul with tattoos and a double-edged lightsaber. No speedpod racing. None of that.

While none of these things are wrong in and of themselves, the new movies almost exclusively used these gimmicks as a substitute for story. So, we no longer trust you, and your gimmick privileges have been revoked until you can give us the kind of story that shows you deserve to have your toys back.

 3) Anything that would make a sarcastic 13-year-old roll their eyes at you. This rule of thumb will handily avoid another Jar Jar Binks debacle.

4) Anything that would prompt an elementary teacher to patiently and condescendingly remind you: Show, Don’t Tell! Don’t tell me that someone is powerful. Show me how people react to them. You can use the presence of Darth Vader versus the kitschiness of Darth Maul as your model for this. If you need to lay out why someone is dangerous, that means they’re not really scary. If you need to carefully and explicitly explain every bit of your plot, that means it’s neither powerful nor memorable.

5) Anything convoluted for the sake of being convoluted. Just because you make your plot complicated does not mean it’s “good.” No doubles, for the love of all that’s holy, and we could give a rats ass about complicated political intrigues. Unless you’re aiming to be spoofed. As with gimmicks, your convoluted plot privileges have been suspended until we trust you again. Get down to the meat of the story, and then we’ll talk.

6). Constipated sappy lines. It’s really rare for your audience to beg that you end our suffering. Don’t make us do this.

ANAKIN: From the moment I met you, all those years ago, a day hasn’t gone by when I haven’t thought of you. And now that I’m with you again, I’m in agony. The closer I get to you, the worse it gets. The thought of not being with you makes my stomach turn over – my mouth goes dry. I feel dizzy. I can’t breathe. I’m haunted by the kiss you should never have given me. My heart is beating, hoping that kiss will not become a scar. You are in my very soul, tormenting me. What can I do? I will do anything you ask. If you are suffering as much as I am, tell me.

CINEMA-GOER: Yes we are!

7) PC Reactions. All the characters in the new trilogy are unreal because none of them are ever surprised by the intergalactic diversity they are faced with. In the original trilogy, even Leia has her prejudices.