Seeing an advert in Metro for Star Wars Episode I 3D a while
back, someone asked me “Do you like Star Wars?”
And I replied, “That’s a big question.”
Ten years ago, I would have described myself as a Star
Wars fan, but not a Star Wars nerd. I know the name of the alien that attacks Luke
in the cantina in Star Wars; I don’t
know its life story.
I don’t actually remember seeing the original films for a
first time. I vaguely remember not being
sure if the Hoth battle was in The Empire
Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi,
but I’ve always had Star Wars in my life.
Growing up in a household of 3 brothers, we inevitable had a large
collection Kenner action figures and vehicles – all decidedly worn and torn
from use. We had the films recorded off
the telly and would watch them regularly.
We also had the wonderful Star
Wars the Empire Strikes Back Mix or Match Storybook. Star Wars was a powerful story full of
excitement and danger and it shaped my life in a number of ways. I think I have a strong moral compass and
those original films with their distinct good and evil characters attributed to
this significantly (not to diminish the part played by Mum and Dad). It also shaped my sense of romance, burdening
me with the misconception that I was Han Solo and I could find an unattached
princess (but I did eventually).
The films were rereleased in 1997. It was exciting to get see them at the cinema
(the first time for many), but the special editions heralded the first signs of
future woes. CGI technology granted
George Lucas the ability to create anything he could imagine and increase the
scale and detail of many sequences. But
many of those additions add nothing to the story or worse, actually detract
from it.
A major offender here is the scene between Han and Jabba the
Hutt. In the now defunct 1983
documentary ‘Making of a Saga’ Lucas clearly states his reasoning for dropping
the sequence from the 1977 release when
it became clear the special effects needed for Jabba wouldn’t work. It tells you nothing at all you don’t already
know from the earlier scene with Greedo.
And it detracts from the moment when Luke first sees the Millennium
Falcon and dubs it a ‘piece of junk’. These
are far more convincing reasons for leaving it out than restoring the sequence
simply because it was possible to add a CGI Jabba (which looks crap in all its
incarnations). To paraphrase Jeff
Goldblum in Jurassic Park, they were
so busy seeing if they could do something, they didn’t stop to think if they
should.
At about this time I mistakenly studied “media” at
college. This involved a lot of studying
narrative and film. I gained a new
appreciation of the saga that could be viewed as an archetypal myth filled with
characters from Propp’s theory and elements from Norse, Greek and biblical
legend. My interest became in the story and how it was presented.
As well as marking the twentieth anniversary of Episode IV,
the special editions also began the countdown to Episode I. Before discussing The Phantom Menace, let’s consider how much it had to deliver. Firstly it was a fourth instalment in the
most successful and admired film franchise of all time. It had to feel like a Star Wars film without
looking like it was twenty years old. It
had to take a few oblique references across three films and meld them into the
beginning of a coherent story. The film
needed to appeal to new, young audiences whilst simultaneously sating sixteen
years of speculation.
On initial view, I didn’t hate The Phantom Menace; it was merely disappointing. Aside from the brevity of Darth Maul’s screen
time, the main problem was how frivolous it all seemed (yes I know it’s a
film). It wasted so much time – time
that could have been spent exploring the Star Wars universe, with its new
complexities of politics, slavery, corruption and formal jedi training. But these opportunities were squandered on
“comedy” droids, slap-stick sequences and too much pod-racing. One new piece of detail, that the ability to
use the force is dependent on your blood meant that rather than anyone being a potential
jedi, it was something only a select minority could achieve. And although the jedi were far more athletic
than in the original trilogy, they were transformed into a centralised elite
and their inability to foresee a future the prequels constantly foreshadow or
detect the evil around them, makes them less than masterful.
It was only with subsequent viewings I really got annoyed
with Jar-Jar Binks. While I recognised
that he served a function of bringing the Gungan Army on side for the final
battle, he serves no function at all for the majority of his screen time, seemly
created specifically to baby-sit youngsters through the film. At times he detracts from the plot, ruining
the scene when Anakin and Padme first meet, which could have quite touching if
it hadn’t been for Jar-Jar’s “goofing” (and some horrendous lines).
Attack of the Clones
initially looked like it would be a return to form; less Jar-Jar, no kids, guys
in white armour and a guy who looked like Boba Fett. Episode II wasn’t received much more
favourably than its predecessor and suffers from most of the same faults. The slapstick, provided by C-3PO, grates even
more when the overall tone of the film is meant to be one of gathering
darkness. This sense of impending doom
takes a heavy toll on the central character.
We know Anakin Skywalker will become Darth Vader. The prequels signpost this rather than showing
him as the good guy he apparently was pre-helmet. Anakin from Episode I aside, he possesses
little heroism and even less pathos, changing from wholesome all-American kid
to stroppy teen to angry young man. This
makes the love story of the prequels rather hard to swallow.
While many wrote of the prequels off, this wasn’t when I
fell out of love with Star Wars, mainly due to the restorative power of Episode
III. The opening space battle is
visually stunning and gives us a glimpse of a heroic, if stubborn Anakin. It also solidified the Star Wars galaxy, as Clones had hinted, as vast in scale with
complex political manoeuvring involving brutal and dirty armed conflicts. There is something powerful about watching
the republic be destroyed from within. If
you watch it as a single film and mentally divorce it from its chronological
predecessors or successors, Revenge of
the Sith is great sci-fi /fantasy film about a noble society being corrupted
into a dictatorship while the protagonist is simultaneously destroyed by his
own inner demons. When viewed as part of
a six part saga, it breaks down due to the sheer amount of story needing to be
told – most of the critical plot of the prequels occurs in the last two thirds
of Sith. Then Sith
actually raises more questions than it answers and the prequels remain an
unsuccessful experiment in telling a story back to front.
What ultimately undid my “fandom” was that post-Sith the admittedly already massive Star
Wars marketing machine seemed to go into overdrive. First there was the Clone Wars, which was bartered as being canonical but seems to be
an exercise in recycling elements and characters from the films into more
merchandise, at the expense of any plot points from the films. It is inferred in Sith that Anakin and Count Dooku haven’t met since the duel at the
end of previous film; in Clone Wars they seem to run into each other every
week.
Also since the movies wrapped up, Lucasfilm seem to have
become innately aware of the cultural status of Star Wars and there’s been an
explosion of new licensed merchandise to cash-in on it. Now this may seem rather naive – obviously the
vintage action figures and even the Star
Wars the Empire Strikes Back Mix or Match Storybook were also part of a
prolonged marketing campaign, but either because I’m aware of it now, or
because it appears to be an attempt to deflect attention from the short comings
of the prequels, it’s more offensive. The
last few years has also seen Star Wars characters in commercials. The worst example of this is the recent Vodafone
advert with Yoda perusing lightsabres or “handsets”. This advert, plastered on a giant hording, embodies
the undoing of my Star Wars fandom. Perhaps
my tastes just changed; perhaps I want something more morally ambiguous, grittier
and more complex from films these days.
But I think the commercials and the endless t-shirts emblazoned with weak
gags and the over-priced toy lines were what did really did it. Thinking of Star Wars as a mythic story for our
time is troubling. It’s depressing to
think the Beowulf of my time isn’t an epic poem; it’s not a novel or even a film
saga; it’s an enormous cash cow.
