Fear and Loathing on Naboo, Part Four



As I said, it's a mistake to read too much into Star Wars, but it's also important to recognize that more than almost any other piece of popular entertainment in recent memory, the films have been constructed with an eye towards carrying a strong subtext. Admittedly, it is ham-fisted and occasionally leaden, but it's there and it's honest, the end result of the films' nature as independent productions. You're never going to see a Spider-Man movie that ends on such a down note as Sith, with bodies everywhere and the heroes dead or defeated. They are still, at their core, adventure movies, but unique among the seemingly infinite big-budget extravaganzas that were spawned in its wake, it also presents a workable facsimile of intellectual context in the form of a willingness to show the audience something more than what they passively want to see in the full awareness that it may unsettle or intrigue them - a subtle distinction from the nostalgic stasis of the fanboy contingent, but definitely predicated on the notion that the films, with their occasionally irascible subtext, are fully Lucas' creations, as opposed to the populous masturbatory chaos of the "Expanded Universe" . In a civilization starved for content, the degree to which the ideas embodied by the Star Wars movies haved permeated the body politic is embarrassing, but, in all honesty, people could do a lot worse than to pay attention to the issues lying just underneath the surface of the prequel trilogy. Better than merely parroting the veiled theistic propaganda of "May the Force be With You" - if there is a Force, I'd rather it not be with me, thank you very much Jerry Falwell.

The ideas at the core of the original trilogy were mythical in nature -- the heroic quest for enlightenment, the Biblical concept of redemption, the success of righteousness through sublimation to a celestial ideal of piety. But the original movies erred in presenting these mythical ideas without any criticism or cultural dialectic either assumed or implied, an anti-rationalist "poison pill" that carried a generation of blissful moviegoers back to pre-Enlightenment modes of thought on the back of an undenialy enjoyable adventure tale. A perfect lullaby for the rock-ribbed conservative, with their urgent desire for paternalistic power structures to reinforce their seemingly contradictory lust for unfettered individualistic adventurism. The rise of the original Star Wars films coincides rather uncomfortably with the rise of the Evangelical right as a force to be reckoned with in American cultural politics, and while it would certainly take a concerted effort by a much more dedicated researcher than myself to decipher whether or not there is any causation to this correlation, it is an interesting observation nonetheless. (On a purely anecdotal level, I can say from experience that the original films are perennial favorites among the evangelicals of my acquaintance - definitely one reason I have been forced into frequent reappraisals of the films' quality. News flash: none of the Star Wars movies are that great to begin with, cut, print.)

Thankfully, the prequel trilogy offers a much more muscular and gratifying thematic perspective than the original films - even if, admittedly, the dedicated viewer has a lot more work ahead of them in terms of disentangling the thematic meat from the often incomprehensible and convoluted storytelling. The sources here are no longer ancient myth and oracular legend but history and literature, in particular the drama and politics of ancient Greece and Rome. The idea that power exerts an inexorably corrupting force is one of the oldest, but it is still sickeningly current - as is the fact that democratic instutiutions are inherently fragile and prone to the pernicious influence of demagoguery (this is something that both the Greeks and the Romans learned to their chagrin). The best intentions of good men blinded by pride can lead to tragedy - or haven't you read your Sophocles lately? Blind obediance to authority is no guarantee of righteousness. Even the best-laid political foundations can fall pray to Bonapartism when pressed by unforeseen circumstances.

Are the prequels better films than the originals? Well, that would be a difficult judgement to make on the grounds of subtext, given as subtext is only a small part of what goes into making such immensely (and often unnecessarily) complex movies. By that same token, it would be churlish of me to dismiss the original films simply because they implied a philosophy I found distasteful, considering that the retrograde philosophy is only a small part of what makes them so enduringly popular. But I would be extremely surprised if the prequels' reputations didn't improve as the years go by and more studied moviegoers can examine Lucas' achievement apart from the rather jaundiced perspective of the cultists.

The Star Wars movies are escapism, but they are escapism of a kind rarely seen anymore. Most popular entertainment barely registers any kind of intellectual or rhetorical pulse anymore, beyond a flatline of bare consumerist nihilism, authoritarian conservatism or - as is the case with the Matrix films - baffled incoherence. Certainly, Lucas is no Almadovar, or even a Tarantino - as a filmmaker he is a craftsman whose formalist tendencies would probably have been better suited to the silent era, with little feel for the vagueries of individual actors or the emotional complexity of technique above the level of pure spectacle. But still, he is an exquisite craftsman (if anything, the prequels suffer from a surfeit of craft, often to the detriment of clean storytelling), and the (tentative) conclusion of his magnum opus should give us all cause to reflect on just how rare it is to see such a dedication to occasionally clumsy, occasionally thought-provoking, but ultimately engrossing entertainment. At the very least, the prequels, with all their warts and bruises, seem sincere - and that's just too refreshing a sensation in modern moviegoing for me to easily overlook.

Fear and Loathing on Naboo, Part Three



I've been a Star Wars fan for almost as long as there has been a Star Wars to like, and yet I find myself strangely at odds with the majority of Star Wars fans for one simple reason: I really, really liked The Phantom Menace. I'm not going to say that it's my favorite of the films (I won't rule out the possibility), but in all seriousness, it's the one that I enjoy watching and re-watching the most.

The prequel trilogy benefits from the fact that all three films were conceived as a complete thematic unit a priori, and not merely ad hoc. There is more there for the interested viewer to latch onto. A great deal of the antipathy towards the prequel trilogy among fans may stem from the fact that the movies are far denser, in terms of both visual and thematic content, than any of their predecessors. This is understandable, considering that these early films carry the heavy burden of establishing context - building a world - for everything that follows. In doing so he has managed the sly trick of recontextualizing everything we thought we understood about Episodes IV-VI - revamping them without revoking them. To a group of fans who regard the original trilogy as "Holy" (their word, not mine), even the slightest recontextualization undoubtedly feels like a knife in the back.

As much as I love Star Wars, it has often been hard for me to defend the movies on the basis of their not-so-subtle ideological content, the exact same themes on which much of the excessive philosophizing has been built. At their core, the original three movies propose an almost Medieval value system, a world of blind animistic obeisance to unseen forces and unwavering commitment to spiritual asceticism. It's hard to rationalize this subtext in a post-Enlightenment world. Not surprisingly, Christian evangelicals have always responded strongly to coded messages of piety and submission in the films, despite the frequent Buddhist overtones that also sneak their way into Yoda's pronouncements.

To my mind, the single most significant and gratifying element of the prequel trilogy was the creation of the Midichlorians. The fans weeped and wailed that the Force had been reduced to such a literal and mechanistic plot device, but this one revelation totally redeemed the movies in my mind. Whereas before the films had portrayed the Force as a kind of universal "Holy Spirit", an invisible manifestion of the Godhead in the presence of the faithful (and wicked), the conception that the ability to tap into the Force is merely the function of microscopic parasites is ingenious. It irrevocably changed every facet of Star Wars mythology, adding layers of complexity where before there had been none.

The primary theme of the prequel trilogy is corruption. Power corrupts, almost inexorably. The Force is not a blessing, it is a blind and insensate power that scars all those who use it. Those who embrace the "Dark Side" - the villainous Sith who embrace the unrestricted license which the noble Jedi deny themselves - are corrupted by the use of the power, just as the Jedi are corrupted by their pride and the Draconian self-abnegating measures they institute to prevent the abuse of their power. I don't think it's a coincidence that the two most powerful characters in the Star Wars universe are also the two most wizened and bent - Yoda and (Emperor) Palpatine. The Force has used them, the Midichlorians operating as parasitic symbiotes to consume the host bodies. Sure, they may seem spry and athletic in the prequels, leaping and running and whirling through the pixelated air, but all their magical power also renders them strangely impotent. They are vulnerable to the pervasive doom of their destiny, fastened to the pre-Christian notion of "doom" as an irrevocable compact with fate. The more power you have, the less free you are. In the Star Wars universe, God is a powerful idea, but it is also, ultimately, chimerical - too potent for mere mortals to harness without being burnt and broken - a sobering idea for those Christian ideologues who embrace Lucas' stories as their own. In a wonderful bit of anti-theistic repudiation, Darth Vader was revealed to be a virgin birth - but not a child of divinity, but the product of ruthless genetic design, a vessel for power through untrammeled ambition.

This undoubtedly came as a harsh bromide to anyone who grew up with an image of the Jedi as kind and incorruptible symbols of chivalrous honor. But throughout the prequels, the Jedi were portrayed as arrogant, superstitious and tragically unyielding. Episode III states in no uncertain terms that the Jedi fail because they have become bloated and unfocused, with Yoda's once-insoluble wisdom rendered strangely soggy by the mad rush of tragedy. Throughout the course of these movies - some twenty years - we saw them unable to identify the "Phantom Menace" in their midst, unable to see the delicate machinations of their foes, unwilling to look past a blind obedience to prophecy in order to grasp the concrete nature of the very real dangers surrounding them. Of course, their prophecies would eventually be fulfilled, but only in the nasty way that most self-fulfilling prophecies have a way of coming to fruition: yes, Anakin would eventually bring "balance to the Force", but only after he's become Space Hitler and killed many billions of people.

Whenever prophecy rears it's ugly head in popular fiction, my eyes roll - there is no less modern an idea than predestination. The existence of free will is absolutely mandatory for any conception of individual determination in a liberal society. Thankfully, the notions of prophecy and predestination have been roundly debunked in the prequels, as the Jedi's dependence on superstition and hollow ritual to the expense of common sense play an enormous role in their downfall. The image of Yoda in Episodes V-VI has changed from wise and righteous to chastened and defeated - sadder but infinitely wiser. There is far more pathos - and much more dramatic potential, for those raised with the image of Yoda as the apogee of oracular greatness - in seeing a righteous man overcome by hubris than in seeing him fall through no fault of his own. It's the stuff of tragedy since the very beginning of drama, and it still resounds, even when the vehicle is a two-foot tall green Muppet. Even an eight year old, watching The Revenge of the Sith, should be able to tell that Yoda and his cohorts screwed up: infallibility is a myth.

Fear and Loathing on Naboo, Part Two



Whether or not Lucas takes his own movies too seriously is an open question, but it's interesting to contrast Lucas' career with that of the Wachowski Brothers, who crafted The Matrix and its ill-begotten sequels. Regardless of whatever kind of philosophical or mystical mumbo-jumbo may have been sitting on the wings, Lucas takes great care to make his movies, all his movies, wildly entertaining. The Wachowskis, after the release of the first Matrix film, were faced with the daunting challenge of crafting a movie trilogy which most were comparing - the second two films sight-unseen - to Star Wars. As everyone knows, they blew it. Not even the most hardened cyber-partisan could view the second two Matrix films as anything other than shambling messes punctuated by occasional bits of gorgeous imagery. (The fact that they were still quite successful - albeit nowhere near as successful as they would have been if they were any good - says a lot about the unrelenting mediocrity of moviemaking in the 21st century.)

The Lucas of 2005 knew the same thing that the Lucas of 1977 did, which is that at rock bottom you have to have an enjoyable film, or people just won't care. The Wachowskis put their cart before the horse by crafting a nonsense philosophical manifesto and then bolting a movie series around it. It's interesting to note that both Lucas and the Wachowskis fell into problems for similar reasons (although Lucas was able to extricate himself with far more equanimity): neither Star Wars or The Matrix were initially pitched as self-contained trilogies. Both were single movies that became trilogies by way of their unanticipated success. Lucas was able to think on his feet fairly well, but there are enough inconsistencies in tone and theme between the films of the initial trilogy that it's easy to imagine that A New Hope would have been a far different film if he had known he would be saddled with these characters and this universe for the next six years, let alone three decades and counting. (As it is, A New Hope seems to exist apart from Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, the latter two essentially one long story, whereas the first movie was complete in and of itself. Lucas would return to this structure in the prequel trilogy, with The Phantom Menace acting as a kind of self-contained prequel to the prequels.) Taking into account the numerous discrepancies between the later films and Lucas' own novelization of A New Hope, along with early artifacts such as Alan Dean Foster's Splinter Of The Mind's Eye and the regrettable 1979 Christmas special, it's easy to see that the "mythos" took a while to develop.

These inconsistencies in tone are almost entirely absent from the prequels. What few unfortunate moments there are occur seem to occur almost exclusively as a result of Lucas changing the shape of the movies to fit the preconceptions of the fan base who wanted the movies to be something other than what they were obviously designed to be. The fact that the origin of a minor character like Boba Fett featured so prominently in Episode II pointed to decisions made not necessarily for the health of the picture but to appease an unappeasable fanbase - could any uninterested observer, having seen the original films but nothing else, have reasonably predicted the prominent role Fett would play in Attack of the Clones? Also, the fact that Jar Jar Binks, despite his significance to the plot, plays a far less prominent role in the second film than the first, and is entirely absent from the third, implies that poisonous fan reaction took its toll on Lucas' better judgment. It's common knowledge that most people don't like Jar Jar, but writing out the character simply because he proved unpopular bespeaks a regrettable loss of nerve on Lucas' part. Perhaps I was the only one, but I was sorely disappointed to see Jar Jar missing in action in the second two episodes. (Hopefully the forthcoming television series will remedy this exclusion by showing us more of Jar Jar's adventures in the intervening years.)

In retrospect, the original films suffer for their tight focus on a small set of central characters -- an unfortunately aristocratic reaction to the challenges of filming a massively broad and essentially sui generis epic the likes of which no one had ever really attempted before. (The scale of world-building on display was unprecedented, and while many filmmakers would attempt to duplicate it in the years that followed, few would succeed.) Many of the emendations that Lucas has subsequently perpetrated on the original series have been conducted with the express purpose of pulling back the tight focus and inserting more of the truly cosmic scope that pervades the prequel trilogy. There is no way that Star Wars fans will probably ever warm to the "Special Editions", and in their defense there really isn't any reason they should have to. The original three movies are unique and special for many reasons both nostalgic and historical, and by tampering with them Lucas was admitting his dissatisfaction. He should allow the fans their memories of the original trilogy, while taking deserved pride in the fact that the prequel trilogy is the most perfect reflection of his ideas possible. (Whether or not those ideas are any good is, of course, in the eye of the beholder.)

With the creation of the prequel films - and regardless of their relative or perceived quality - Lucas has stepped into the ranks of the most exacting auteurs in the history of filmmaking. The fact that he enjoys practical and absolute authority over his productions, from every step of financing to the creation of the entirely digital environment in which his characters interact, might just make him the single most powerful filmmaker in the history of the medium - it's odd to imagine a hypothetical Hitchock in the age of pixels and CGI, but it's hard to argue that he wouldn't have embraced any techniques that would have maximalized his control over the finished film.

Fear and Loathing on Naboo, Part One



It goes without saying that some people are way too invested in Star Wars. Anyone who didn't understand this basic fact was probably a bit shocked by the massive worldwide phenomenon that was the first film in the prequel trilogy, 1999's The Phantom Menace. Although the hard and brittle core of Star Wars fandom is essentially the same crew that has always celebrated fantasy and science-fiction properties like Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix, the cult of the Force has spread a bit wider that of than any other comparable nerd totem. Everyone who has ever loved Star Wars - and there were many millions of them - came out in force for The Phantom Menace.

And, as is also widely known, the vast majority of the hard-core recoiled in horror when they actually saw the movie. The reaction was far more extreme than anything Hollywood had ever seen before. Considering the shaky quality control of beloved franchises such as Star Trek, Batman and Superman, the true-blue fans had never reacted so harshly to a bad sequel. The hyperbolic refrain of "George Lucas has raped my childhood!" was heard and echoed across comic book shops, office water-coolers and internet chat-rooms across the globe. (But, of course, they still bought tickets and lined up in droves.)

Star Wars is just a movie. A good movie, a movie that may have done more harm than good to the business and art of moviemaking, a movie that may excel at evoking particularly fond childhood memories in the minds of many, a movie whose numerous charms far outweigh its few serious flaws - but still just a movie. I remain convinced that the vast majority of fans who deride Episodes I, II and III are all, at least to a degree, in thrall to exalted memories of the original trilogy in such a way that they simply could not rationally judge the new movies for what they were on their own merits. They would have been happy with nothing less than an exacting stylistic homage to Episodes IV through VI - essentially they wanted Han Solo and Chewbacca, and anything that deviated slightly from their impossibly high standards of nostalgic bliss was going to be doomed from the start. The endless reams of indulgent fan-fiction masquerading as novels, the video games, and the comics are dedicated to nothing more than perpetuating a blissful stasis wherein Star Wars remains a steadfast bulwark against any kind of dynamic change, leastwise the dynamic change that entails growing up and away from the fleeting childhood pleasures of familiar intellectual properties. Art and nostalgia are warring impulses, and for Star Wars to retain even its limited dignity as a work of art, the tendency towards nostalgic inertia must be actively suppressed.

The worst hypocrisy, to me, was the endless recitation of the new movies' objective flaws - as if the original Star Wars films didn't have more than their fair share of wooden acting, cutesy characters and contrived plot points. Chewbacca was a giant teddy bear, Yoda was a muppet, and R2D2 was seriously annoying - go back, watch the original movies, and tell me that you don't want to punch the droids in the face. I just can't get too upset over Jar Jar Binks.

The worst thing that ever happened to Star Wars was that the fans took it so damn seriously. On their face value, the movies are great fun, dazzling spectacle and melodrama with just enough thematic meat on its bones to fuel a thickly allusive but occasionally corny storyline. Certainly, Lucas' debt to Joseph Campbell's pop-mythography has been dissected to exhaustion, but it is a mistake to read the movies' debt to myth and legend as anything other than plain dramatic horse-sense. Almost all popular stories - or, at least, popular stories with any lasting resonance - have their roots in older traditions. Lucas knew how to tap into familiar myths (or, steal from public domain) in order to give his stories more of this kind of resonance, not to make any deep philosophical statements. There's nothing much new under the sun, as they say, and even if Star Wars was more bald-faced than most in its appropriations from myth, any stories with lasting power are going to carry echoes of the past.

You Know You Want It