The Sagacious Spectator 01.27.10: Star Wars

Posted by Steve Yanosey on 01.27.2010

I promise to tread lightly here...

I have a heretical subject I'd like to discuss today, one that will probably get me booed light years across the universe into a galaxy far, far away. But first, reader comments from last week.

These two responses regard my saying that Lord of the Rings has racist undertones.

From Madcapunlimited:

"I like the article-- but the whole Tolkien thing about race is off base. Enough already about how down trodden the 'dark skinned' people are.

The people who care already care, and the people who don't aren't going to be convinced by you. Just talk about movies and leave the race stuff alone."

And from Joe:

"…Take a look at any nation or society that relatively keeps to themselves and you'll find that traditions, viewpoints, customs, etc, are rather similar from family to family. The United States differs in this regard because it is a melting pot of different cultures from all over the world. The racist viewpoint as it applies to LOTR is a pretty weak one, to be honest. You can look for racism in anything, however, and you'll eventually always find it."

Ok, I understand where you're both coming from. However, it's hard to talk about movies if you can't discuss what you notice about them, and whether it was intended or not (I don't presume to know), one of the first things I noticed when I saw those films is that they can be interpreted in that manner. It's not like you have to stretch the imagination to fit in the parallels. Joe, your last comment about looking for racism in anything – c'mon, now that's pretty hyperbolic. Anything? However, you do make an excellent point when you state that all of the races in the book live in total isolation, and maybe that colors the way they perceive the world and governs their actions. Maybe Tolkien was simply saying that variety is the spice of life. Who knows.

But subtext that obvious is always worth a mention, whether you agree that it was intended or not, because it's still a part of examining a given movie's characters, messages, and themes.

Next, from Jason, who noted that I erroneously referred to Pierce Brosnan as a Welshman:

"An Irishman and a Welshman? You lost me. Brosnan's Irish. Neeson's Irish. There are so few Irish actors worth a fuck, the least you could do is give us credit where its due..."

Yeah, I don't know why I thought Brosnan was Welsh. Of course, I usually double-check in instances when I'm not sure, but for some reason here, I thought I had it right. Obviously, I did not. My apologies to the Irish (or to the Welsh, depending on your opinion of Pierce Brosnan).

Now then. Onto this week's topic.

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I really like the Star Wars saga, but I don't love it. There are two reasons.

The first minor reason is (A) I wasn't super-attached to them growing up, and the second, more significant reason is (B) I don't think that they are very interesting (not including Episodes Four and Five) as seen through the eyes of anyone other than a child or the aficionado. Stay with me here – I'm talking about these movies from a completely impartial view. The Star Wars story itself has endless potential, but the final three movies have been wasted on shit dialogue, terrific characters rendered completely impotent, and infantile garbage that belongs in a Barney movie. The newest three films alone rendered light saber duels utterly meaningless by overusing them.

Before you string me up, hear me out. I otherwise enjoy the six installments. I just want them to meet their potential as "serious" movies. At the beginning, it was executed perfectly. Then it all seemed to fall apart after Empire. So here's my solution: Everything gets remade at some point – ancient myths have been told and retold for millennia, books get reprinted and updated, and Bo Diddley's famous beat has been reused a thousand times over in rock. Likewise, Star Wars' character archetypes have been around forever, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal to take another crack at them, to elevate them to their proper standing. And since everyone has a strong opinion about this kind of stuff (at least everyone who visits this site does), here's a few recommendations if they ever decide to this again:

The creators should release the story chronologically and make them three epic-length movies, not six. There aren't any surprises left for the older folks, and for the newbies who'll be watching, showing them out of order wouldn't work to the story's advantage using this new structure. Taking a cue from Peter Jackson, filming them all at once keeps the characters' dialogue and the movies' feel consistent. It reinforces the connection between the three films and allows them to be released in back-to-back-to-back years. Split ‘em like this:







First Movie: The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and almost all of the Revenge of the Sith. These installments were all so slowly paced and spread out that they can be condensed to one 3+hour film. Easily. That film will be Anakin Skywalker's rise, starting when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan find him, and end with Anakin in his prime, thus giving a "this story is just beginning" feel a la Fellowship of the Ring to the movie's end, and it saves Vader's birth for the beginning of the next installment. Fans have a whole year to remember Anakin as a good guy, this way his eventual heel turn has that much more heat when it does happen.





Second Movie: End of Revenge of the Sith, A New Hope, and The Empire Strikes Back. This might seem a little crammed, but it's important for pacing to end the second movie of a trilogy on a cliffhanger-y sour note in order to set up the happy ending of the next movie. Anakin becomes Vader, then we jump ahead to A New Hope's storyline and merge it as best as possible with The Empire Strikes Back, ending with Han in ice, Luke getting the bad news from Pop, and everything basically turning to shit.



Third Movie: Return of the Jedi. Unfortunately, it's gonna have a very similar title to the final movie of LOTR, but what can you do? Episode Six always needed more emphasis than it originally got anyway, and this time without the Care Bears. It's got so much going for it – the psychology in the scenes between Luke and the Emperor are begging to be expanded, as is Vader's redemption. This way, he can spend a little extra time as a good guy again. The first time around it seemed a little too much like a deathbed conversion.

By the time it's all over, the overall story will be less focused on Luke and more focused on the true star of the Star Wars saga: Anakin, and his rise, fall, and salvation.

I'd also like to see the filmmakers shoot for at least a PG-13 rating. In any type of story where there's a war going on, it shouldn't be sterilized for the kiddies or for the adults who can't handle it. Yet they still do this all the time, and it's completely desensitized the entire United States to TV and movie violence. Which is why in America, you can watch a guy get shot to death on network TV, but if a nipple slips out, it's a fucking amber alert.

Yes, characters in the films have had their heads and hands lopped off, cut in two, exploded inside jetfighters, fed to monsters, and remade into mechanical Frankenstein's Monsters. But it's still sanitized, in a weird way. I'm not saying the gore has to be up to Saving Private Ryan levels, but at least crank it up to Braveheart. Show the pain, show the misery and cost of war. They can help this by keeping George Lucas the hell away from the screenplay and from designing too much of the characters' appearances.

Without Lucas, there is no Star Wars. But because of Lucas, we need a team of philosophers from Athens and a team of psychologists from Vienna to understand the logic behind Jedi and Sith conversations and belief systems. I'm still not clear on why Anakin is not allowed to be "afraid" in The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith. The Jedi condemn uncertainty, so how the hell is the average moviegoer supposed to relate to these guys when most of us are looking for answers in our own lives? In essence, this kind of thinking makes the Jedi a fascist regime -- there's no room for error. "Either do, or do not", remember? I mean, technically he's correct, but what kind of message is that to get behind? Anakin suddenly doesn't seem so nuts when he finally loses his shit on them. Maybe that's what Lucas wanted.


So close…

Obi-Wan, a character whom I thought had the potential to be very interesting in Episodes 1 - 3, showed none of the dry wit I was expecting. Instead, he was a bore. I will give some credit, however, since I thought McGregor showed traces of brilliance toward the end of The Phantom Menace, really one of that movie's only bright spots. In the following films he descends into utter blandness with the rest of the cast. And it's really something to be able to reduce Samuel L. Jackson into an emotionless, uninteresting blob of nothing, but Lucas pulled it off. And Hayden Christensen? An abortion. The only person who consistently entertained me in the newer films was Ian McDiarmid as Senator Palpatine, whose creepiness knows no bounds.


I never want to see him again. He was good in Shattered Glass, though.

Natural character dialogue and interaction advance a narrative, not exposition and things blowing up. In the first three Star Wars movies (and even in The Phantom Menace), the Jedi moments and the big star cruiser battles were used as occasional climaxes, not to move the plot along. I get that the later movies were supposed to represent an age where these things were in full swing and the Jedi were prolific, but by the end of Revenge of the Sith, every time a light saber was whipped out, it was like, Again? The last three movies were sterile and cartoonish because of this overkill. The first three flicks, while technologically inferior in comparison, drew me right in. Maybe it's because I was younger and more impressionable, but even today, the occasional use of brick-and-mortar effects plays a much more subtle trick on the mind. When it's done for three straight hours, it just loses all impact.

Obviously, these specifics are all just wishful thinking on my part. And even when this does happen eventually down the road, it won't be for some time. But mark my words, these movies will eventually get remade. It's a sacred franchise, but it's a franchise nonetheless, and that sacredness is trumped quite easily by dollar signs.

I bet we'll see new ones before this decade's out.