Star Wars - Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

For the first time since 1977, my jaw hit the floor while watching the opening scene of a Star Wars movie.
The Force is strong in this one.
With the galactic-wide Republic collapsing under the weight of civil war, separatists have kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine in an attempt to end the Clone Wars, which have been raging for years. Jedi Knights Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker launch a desperate attempt to rescue him, unaware that the Chancellor has all this time been playing both the separatists and the Republic against each other in his quest for power. And Anakin’s ill-fated and secret love for Senator Padmé Amadala, who is now pregnant, plays into Palpatine’s plan, and sends Anakin over to the dark side.
And it is with Obi-Wan’s and Anakin’s rescue attempt that the film begins, a rip-roaring first act of amazing special effects and action. Even R2-D2 gets to play action hero as he kicks serious droid ass.
The film rarely slows down from there, mainly because writer-director George Lucas has left himself a lot of plot ground to cover. It zips along, tightly edited, grinding down, much like Anakin is ground down, into relentless darkness. As Palpatine unveils his plan and subverts Anakin’s will, Lucas turns the screws even tighter until Anakin’s mortal failings destroy him, body and soul. Literally.
Perhaps the most remarkable about Revenge of the Sith is that even though we already know how it’s going to end even before we enter the theatre, we keep our interest in this film. But only just – at a runtime of two hours and twenty minutes, it almost reaches the point of wearing out its welcome.
The special effects are simply stunning. Say what you will about the two lackluster predecessors to Sith, they were excellent eye candy. And this film is no exception. In fact, this is the best looking of all six films. It’s gorgeously photographed.
Lucas has also learned his lesson about special effects. While the film is just drenched in computer-generated wonders, he keeps the attention on the flesh and blood characters, and doesn’t end the film with a battle between cartoon aliens and cartoon robots, as in the much-lamented The Phantom Menace. In fact, the cartoon characters have been kept to a minimum. Jar Jar Binks is seen briefly but not heard, and the new big bad of the film, the CGI-created General Grievous, is dispatched halfway through the proceedings, leaving Yoda as the only cartoon character of note in the film.
It’s this tight focus on the human characters that make this film work as well as it does. This is the darkest of the six films, and delivers the most human conflict, and gives the actors a chance to shine. Ewan MacGregor is terrific as Obi-Wan as he channels the spirit of Alec Guiness. Hayden Christensen holds his own as Anakin. Less wooden than he was in Attack of the Clones, he’s still pretty much a one- or two-note actor in Sith, but fortunately he’s hitting the right ones. Natalie Portman has less to do as Padmé in this film, and doesn’t get much screen time to work. And finally Ian McDiarmid (as Palpatine) receives the chance to chew the scenery as if it were candy as Lucas’s normally awkwardly written dialogue oozes smoothly off his tongue. Christopher Lee and Samuel L. Jackson are pretty much wasted.
Again as in Menace and Clones, there is some stilted dialogue and awkward scenes, particularly in the film’s big pay off scene, the ultimate revealing of the helmeted Darth Vader, which while breathtaking (you could have heard a pin drop in the theatre when I saw it), ends with Vader’s gawky and embarrassing cry of “Noooo!” in a moment of superfluous cheesiness. Also clunky are many scenes involving Padmé and Anakin. But here Lucas has enough sense to cut to the chase and keep those scenes short and lean. There’s one marvelous and beautifully shot sequence involving the two of them as they reflect on the dark turns their journey is taking that has no dialogue, only ominously swelling music, courtesy of composer John Williams.
Lucas even manages to tie up some loose ends: why doesn’t C-3P0 remember that his creator’s name is Skywalker, and the mystery of Anakin’s virgin birth. He takes a crack at explaining how Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Yoda are able to transcend death, but this is a continuity point that Lucas seems to have fouled up. (Apparently Qui-Gon discovered the technique of maintaining his consciousness after death and will teach it to Yoda and Obi-Wan during their years of exile. This explains why Yoda’s and Obi-Wan’s bodies discorporate when they die and why Luke can see them in their “ghostly form” in later films. It doesn’t explain why Qui-Gon’s body doesn’t discorporate when he dies, nor why he is not present in his ghostly form (although his ghostly voice makes a cameo in Attack of the Clones). Further, in no way does this explain how Anakin/Darth ends up in ghostly day-glow robes at the end of Return of the Jedi. Surely Yoda and/or Obi-Wan didn’t teach the evil Darth Vader this technique, and there’s no indication that they taught it to Luke and that Luke then taught it to a dying Anakin. That’s a big gaffe.)
Thankfully absent is much of the kid friendly humour that Lucas inserted in both The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. To market the first two as children’s films knowing the carnage to come in Revenge of the Sith is disingenuous to say the least. Kids may love Jar Jar, as Lucas once said, but they may have trouble watching characters get decapitated, and Anakin butcher children and get his remaining limbs hacked off as happens in this film.
So where does Revenge of the Sith fit on a scale with the other Star Wars movies? Sith is solidly in third place, behind the original Star Wars and the best of the bunch, The Empire Strikes Back. It makes you want to watch them all in one sitting, and certainly improves the original trilogy, making Vader’s redemption all the more poignant, and all the references to Luke’s father and the attempts to conceal his father’s past all the more ominous and understandable. It does not redeem Menace and Clones, who really suffer by comparison to Sith, for it’s clear that Lucas could have made them both much better movies. But I guess that’s what happens when the writer/director gets preoccupied by merchandising opportunities like the Darth Vader Lawn Sprinkler (available at starwars.com.)
Still, let’s take this movie for what it is: a fine piece of popcorn-munching space-opera. It could have been a train wreck, considering how underwhelming the previous two films were and how Lucas had to dovetail this one between Clones and the original Star Wars. The fact that Lucas had so much of this film’s plot already predetermined probably helped him stay focused on the story and not get distracted with bantha-dropping jokes.
It’s not perfect, but it’s not bad either.

Star Wars - Episode IV - A New Hope - The Special Edition

The recent retooling of Star Wars raises some interesting questions of art. When is art no longer the property of the artist and when does it become the property of the public?
Director George Lucas has added some new scenes and restored some lost scenes to the 20th Anniversary edition of Star Wars. Lucas has also replaced some of the clunky motion-control model spaceship shots with brand new CGI shots, which only point out even more how clunky those old models shots have become. State of the art once, but obsolete now. Why didn't he just replace all of them? But I digress. What if twenty years after the fact, da Vinci announced that he'd really wanted the Mona Lisa to be in a hot pink dress, but he just didn't have the proper shade of pink at the time. Is it his prerogative to make that change? Would Shakespeare, if he were alive, have the right to go back and tinker with the ending of Romeo and Juliet so he could set it up for a sequel? If Lucas' alterations were simply enhancing old effects shots that don't alter the story, that's one thing. But Lucas also has made a change that panders to political correctness, and changes a characterization: Greedo shoots first.
Greedo is the green alien who confronts Han Solo about a debt at a table in the bar at Mos Eisley. In the original version, Greedo is blown away by Solo, but in the new version Greedo shoots first and Han shoots back in self-defense. The issues raised by this are threefold: first, it makes Greedo look like at idiot because he can't hit a large target at a distance of about two feet (admittedly, we don't know a lot about Greedo -- he could very well be an idiot); second, this change smacks of political correctness -- we can't have a hero that would shoot first and kill someone; and thirdly, the character of Han Solo has been altered. As played out originally, Han is a selfish rogue who thinks only of himself. This makes his return at the end of the film all the more heroic as he has finally found something more important than himself. But by having Han shoot only after Greedo shoots first in the new version, this outlaw aspect of Han has been softened, thus also softening his change of heart at the end.
Worse yet, Lucas plans for this new version to be the definitive Star Wars. The previous version will no longer be available.And Lucas is not the only person changing old movies to be politically correct. In the recent reissue of E.T., director Steven Spielberg excised a line wherein one of the children says he wants to dress up as a terrorist for Halloween. Spielberg has also said that he would make other changes if he were making the film now, such as removing a scene where FBI agents are chasing a group of children with their guns drawn. I'm glad to see that Spielberg has grown up and realized that guns are not something to play around with, but obviously that was something he had not considered in 1982. But so what? Art reflects its times, and its creators. If Lucas and Spielberg feel grown-up now, that's great. But is it right for them, or anyone, to go back to inflict their modern maturity on their youthful exuberance? I mean, don't you think that fifty-something Pete Townshend would like to go back and re-write "My Generation": "Hope I die before I get old."
The special edition of Star Wars sets a dangerous precedent. Will other artists now revisit and retune their past works? What if Mel Brooks decides to redub Blazing Saddles in an effort to make it politically correct? Can you imagine the result? "The sheriff is an African-American!" Sure it's more polite, but is it funny? I hereby reserve my right to be offended.
(The Special Edition of The Empire Strikes Back contains few changes other than some special effect shots, although there is a new scene with Darth Vader inserted near the end that is not voiced by James Earl Jones(!). The Special Edition of Return of the Jedi also has mostly just special effects changes, and a second and longer song inserted in the scene in Jabba's palace (like we needed that). Verdict: Empire still rocks and Jedi still sucks.)

2005 Addendum:
The original Star Wars trilogy was re-issued in 2004, and George Lucas made further changes in the original trilogy in an effort to further conform the films to the new trilogy. With specific regard to Greedo, he still shoots first, although Lucas has attempted to make the shot a little egregious. But it still sucks.
Look, I don't care. Lucas can make as many changes to Star Wars as he wants. Just allow the original version to be available, too! Spielberg did this with the DVD release of ET. He removed the FBI agents' guns, restored other scenes, and redid some special effects. But when we bought the DVD, it had both versions. So the viewer had a choice of ET Redux, or the original ET.
The original version should be preserved and availble, if only in the name of cinematic history. It is, after all the 1977 version of Star Wars, warts and all, that set box records and sent people like Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Ridley Scott and a host others diving into movie careers, not the 1997 Special Edition, or the 2004 DVD version.

Star Wars - Episode I - The Phantom Menace

There are some that remember May, 1977 not with giddy nostalgia, but with a sad melancholia. For that month marked the release of the original Star Wars, written and directed by George Lucas, and for some, it marked the death knell of American cinema.Perhaps that’s a bit of an overstatement, but the unexpected and unparalleled success of the film marked a definite change in filmmaking, and ushered in the modern era of films driven by visual effects. Starting with the success of Jaws two summers previously, continued by Star Wars, and reinforced by the success six months later of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Hollywood turned towards big, loud, whiz bang effects-filled films to keep its coffers filled. Lucas had help redefine filmmaking, and he began looking for the next step in the evolution of the filmmaking process. He believes he’s found it, and as he returns as writer and director, The Phantom Menace is his ultimate experiment.
The Phantom Menace is a prequel to the original trilogy, and here we follow Jedi knights Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his mentor Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) as they investigate a dispute between the planet Naboo and the Trade Federation. As this dispute sows the seeds of what will become the dreaded Galactic Empire, they encounter a small boy with a dark destiny, Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd). Meanwhile, Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid, one of few actors reprising his role from the original trilogy), is moving behind the scenes to usurp galactic power for himself. And, with the help of a nasty dark lord of the Sith named Darth Maul (Ray Park), moving in the shadows behind them all is the mysterious Darth Sidious (also Ian McDiarmid).There are many elements from The Phantom Menace that resonate with the original Star Wars. We have the wise, older Jedi (played by an accomplished, “serious” actor) who sacrifices himself to save his young Jedi apprentice (Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan – Obi-Wan/Luke); a dark-robed, mysterious figure working malevolently behind the scenes (Darth Sidious – The Emperor); and a young boy, potentially strong in the ways of The Force™, breaks free from the bonds of the planet Tattooine and slowly discovers his destiny (Anakin Skywalker – Luke Skywalker). The film opens slowly, bogged down in exposition and drags ponderously in places. There is so little humanity in the film, it's very tough for the humans in the audience to find someone to latch onto and become engaged by the film.
The best thing about the opening of the original Star Wars was the sense that you were just dropped right in the middle of the story. With a few simple lines of dialogue, Lucas quickly established that there was quite a back story for everyone involved: “There’ll be no escape for the princess this time!”; “There will be no one to stop us this time!”; and the clear indications that Leia and Vader obviously have quite a history as antagonists.
Here, the villains have no motivations, at least none that are ever made clear. They are the worst kind of cookie-cutter villain; they are evil simply because they are evil (or maybe it’s because they’re just assholes). Perhaps all will be revealed in later films, but that is to the detriment of this film. Without any reason for their behaviour, they are behaving like simple evil cartoons (literally and figuratively in some cases). Darth Maul never really does anything evil, or never has any motivation to be evil. He just looks cool. In his introduction to the novelization of Return of the Jedi, Lucas wrote, “Star Wars is also very much concerned with the tensions between humanity and technology … In Jedi, the theme remains the same, as the simplest of natural forces brings down the seemingly invincible weapons of the Empire.” Lucas, it seems, has failed to learn his own lesson as he seemed more concerned with directing special effects than actors.
There’s no question that The Phantom Menace represents a quantum leap in the technology of filmmaking. It pushes the envelope for special effects beyond anything that could have been imagined even five years ago. The processor power is mind-boggling and is increasing exponentially. (At ILM, the Kerner Power Series 4 that rendered the digital effects for The Abyss and Terminator 2 has just been retired. It can no longer keep up with the demands of its current job: handling ILM’s email.) Lucas has been researching and testing this technology for years, and now here is its full-fledged roll out. Titanic featured 500 special effects shots, while The Phantom Menace has more than 2,000 (there are only 2,200 shots in the whole film).
Indeed, there is nary a shot or sequence in the film which has not been enhanced by some sort of digital manipulation. Many sets were extended or created entirely with digital animation. Whole battle sequences, with armies of thousands, exist only as data bits in ILM’s mainframe. Lucas’s ability to manipulate film now extends to actors themselves. The puppeteer performing C-3P0 from behind was digitally removed, while the actor who played Jar Jar Binks was replaced and rotoscoped by a character animated on a computer. Many of the actors’ performances were filmed against bluescreen so that the actors could be inserted into digital sets.
And Lucas was able to take his lead actors’ performances from different takes and put them together. For instance, if he liked Neeson’s take four but McGregor’s take six of a scene, he could (and did) digitally splice what he liked from separate takes and reassemble them as one scene. He was even able to take an actor’s facial expression from one take and superimpose it seemlessly onto the actor’s face from a different take. The screen is so often filled with anatomically improbable (albeit spectacularly designed and realized) animated characters, it’s easy to forget that you are watching a movie and start thinking that you’re watching a very long Marvin the Martian cartoon.
And Marvin would fit in with this bunch quite well – a completely implausible body, a strange dialect and voice and played mostly for comedy relief. But most of these characters exist as one-note characters.
Indeed, some even verge on racism. The aliens leading the trade embargo have Japanese accents. One sometimes gets the feeling that you’re watching a bad WWII film about Pearl Harbor and that Toshiro Mifune was hired as the dialogue coach.And Jar Jar Binks is an abomination. With his pidgin English (“yousa” and “messa” for “you” and “me”), dreadlock-like ears, and bellbottom pants and vest, he is a jive-walking Uncle-Toming token toady, the latest in a long line of cinematic black stereotypes. Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, described Jar Jar as “a Rastafarian Stepin Fetchit on platform hoofs, crossed annoyingly with Butterfly McQueen.” Rick Barrs of the alternative Los Angels weekly New Times wrote, “[We] can only hope that Massa George comes to his senses...and kills off shufflin’ Jar Jar.” Lucas spent a lot of time and effort trying to create fully animated virtual characters, but instead of creating characters, he created caricatures. As a special effect, at times Jar Jar is moderately effective. Unfortunately, as a central character, he delivers a lot of exposition that at that is nearly undecipherable because of his (seemingly) Jamaican accent. He is often so obviously a special effect that he doesn’t become anything more than a painful distraction.And many of the special effects do become just distractions. Lucas has fallen into the same trap that Return of the Jedi fell into (but avoided by Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back ): the effects must serve the story, not the other way around. The aforementioned battle sequences do not stir our emotions nor engage us in any way. The battles are between cartoon Gungans and cartoon robot droids, and we don’t care much about either faction. It looks wonderful; it resonates nothing. And the actors often seem at a loss. Certainly, this is the toughest job for an actor: acting in front of a bluescreen, playing a scene against nothing, and reacting to a character that only exists in the director’s mind and will upstage you when it’s finally inserted into the film. And it seems that most of the time, Lucas simply abandoned his actors. Both Neeson and McGregor have publicly decried their experience making the film. Neeson is sometimes effective, but often seems bored with the whole thing and throws away some of the best lines in the film. McGregor is more effective, but is often given little to do while playing second fiddle to Neeson. Directing only his fourth movie (and first since the original Star Wars 22 years ago), Lucas’s direction is uneven and choppy.
And let’s face it – Lucas was never a gifted director in the first place. THX-1138 and American Graffiti were good films, but the direction was nothing special, and Star Wars succeeded in spite of Lucas’s sometimes pedestrian direction. Lucas has often said that he didn’t always know what he was doing when he made Star Wars and that he filmed it by the seat of his pants, whereas The Phantom Menace represents the zenith of filmmaking. I wish Lucas would go back to those days when he didn’t know what he was doing. Maybe then we would have had a good film. The humour is forced, childish and unfunny. Fart jokes, do-do jokes, kicked in the groin jokes, slapstick during the climactic battle sequence. Memo to George; these aren’t funny! And Lucas’s sudden spin that these are children’s films doesn’t wash. Star Wars is not a children’s film – billions of people die. And Empire is most definitely not a kiddie’s film. This is a series of films with the repeated image of people getting their limbs and body parts hacked off, not exactly family viewing. And the prequel trilogy is dealing with heavy, dark themes -- we will eventually see the destruction of the Jedi knights, and the brutal rise to power of Palpatine and the Empire. One way of looking at the first trilogy is that this is a series of films about Hitler’s childhood and his eventual rise to power through murder and mayhem.
Jake Lloyd, the child actor portraying young Anakin is mostly ineffectual in the central role. Not all of the fault can be put at his feet. Lucas has given him stale, cliché-riddled dialogue that no actor could deliver and no child would ever say. And all the characters are saddled with hokey, hoary dialogue that, well frankly, just sucks. (Harrison Ford is reported to have once remarked, “[George] can type it, but we can’t say it.”)
The problem with Anakin as a character is we never understand what Qui-Gon sees in the boy. Qui-Gon believes young Skywalker is strong in the ways of The Force™, but no one else can see this, not Obi-Wan, not Yoda, not the Jedi council and, most especially, not the audience. (And why didn’t Anakin use The Force™ to assist himself during the race? This movie hinges on the fact that Anakin is supposed to be strong in the ways of The Force™, yet we never see this and a golden chance for a demostration of power during the pod race is missed.) And Lucas never uses his large, six-movie canvas to any advantage by hinting or foreshadowing Anakin’s future (or Senator Palpatine’s dark destiny as the Emperor for that matter). A hint of the future, even a subtle one, and of the darkness to come would have helped this film immensely.And Lucas has inserted concepts which undermine the strengths (and plot points) of the entire series. A person’s ability to use The Force™ now depends in part of some strange particles (midichlorians) in your blood, not on your inner strength of character and resolve.Apparently, Anakin is “the chosen one who will bring balance to The Force.™” Huh? Most of the Jedi in this film speak pseudo-New Age gibberish. Pity poor Sam Jackson spewing this nonsense in his cameo -- it’s a big fall from Pulp Fiction.
According to Yoda, Anakin is too old to be taught the ways of The Force™. Hmmm, so if Anakin at ten is too old, I guess Obi-Wan was really going overboard when he decided to teach 20-something Luke. There is a delegation of ETs in the Senate. Yes, those ETs! And visible in at least three shots. (Okay, so Spielberg stuck a Yoda gag into E.T., but come on....)
Slavery exists on Tattooine while the galaxy is under the rule of the Republic (the good guys) but doesn’t exist by the time of the Empire (the bad guys). That doesn’t make much sense. And why would anyone need slaves anyway? Droids are a dime a dozen. In fact, Anakin has built one -- C-3P0! (Which starts another plot problem -- why doesn’t C-3P0 recognize the family name of Skywalker when he’s purchased by Luke’s uncle in Star Wars? Surely he can remember the name of his creator! And in a strange coincidence, Vader and C-3P0 never come face to face in the other films.)
And speaking of droids, why are there armies of robot battle droids now, yet in later films these have all been replaced by human soldiers? Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
McGregor’s “rat tail” of hair changes side throughout the movie -- I guess Lucas was too busy making animated characters fart than to worry about continuity involving his human actors.
And when Qui-Gon meets with an untimely death, how come his body doesn’t dematerialize like every other deceased Jedi’s does? Not enough left in the budget for day-glow pajamas for Liam Neeson? There are some moments in the film that work. The last ten minutes of this movie rock, particularly the lightsaber duel between our Jedi heroes and Darth Maul. It is, finally, a human moment, with human conflict being played out. But it doesn’t work as well as it should because Maul has no characterization to speak of. He has ten minutes of screen time in the whole film and is nothing more than a token bad guy; we never find out anything that would make us hate him other than the fact that he picked his costume out from the “Bad Guy” wardrobe trailer. Plus, the fight is interrupted by some force field screens that appear and disappear for no logical or explainable reason, save that they serve to artificially heightens the tension. The big action set piece of the film, the pod-car race, is visually impressive, but, much like the rest of the film, it fails to grip the audience. In fact, the whole scene is silly. In order to win Anakin’s freedom, the best idea that two Jedi knights could come up with was a glorified stock car race for Anakin’s pink slip. This is the best idea Lucas could come up with? This reeks of something out of Dukes of Hazzard, not a galaxy far, far away. But pod racers mean more toys to sell.
And make no mistake – as Lucas is now able to manipulate every pixel that appears in his film, he also controls all the (excessive) hype and all the (over-)merchandising. He could be somewhat forgiven if he could say, “Hey look, I needed some bucks to make this movie so I sold the merchandising rights. I’m a filmmaker. I care about what’s on the screen, that’s what matters. That’s my vision, that’s the story I want to tell. Yoda golf club socks? I have nothing to do with that.” But he can’t say that because it’s been his plan all along. While making the original Star Wars, Fox offered Lucas $500,000 for the merchandising and sequel rights. He refused the offer and holds those rights to this day, begetting a cottage industry that produces such wonderful products as the Darth Vader disco light, the Ewok movies, and kids’ books like Darth Maul Galactic Games and Puzzles. (In fact, Ewoks represent the ultimate marketing success – everyone knows what an Ewok is, yet the word “Ewok” is never mentioned in Return of the Jedi, except buried deep in the credits. But I digress. And any woman who goes to bed with a guy wearing any Star Wars underwear should, before stomping out the door and leaving him, say, “Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?” But I digress again.)
It’s difficult to remove the film from the hype and treat it as a separate entity. And that is not fair. But neither is the complete media bombardment that Lucas has foisted upon us all. And it’s all to the detriment of his film: no film could live up to all this hype.And there is no question that this is a quest for bucks. Yes, TPM was not a cheap film to make ($120,000,000 or so), but Lucas owns it, financed it and knows he will make his money back in the first week, enough to produce the next two Star Wars films in the second week, and enough for a couple of Howard the Duck sequels in the third. So why all the merchandising tie-ins? Do we really need thirty-five different Star Wars books such as those that came out on May 3? Why does Lucas have a $2 billion cross-marketing deal with Pepsico? Why are we going to be so inundated with hype, crass marketing tactics and mass-produced commercialism that we are all going to hate this film, no matter how good it is? Is this the future of filmmaking?
I have in front of me a shopping flyer from a large, multinational department store chain (who shall remain nameless, but their initials are Wal-Mart). Over twelve pages, they offer such tie-ins as computer games, action figures, alarm clocks, toy lightsabers, model kits, jigsaw puzzles, 3D puzzles, games, playing cards, banners, books, doodle bags, skateboards, inflatable pool toys, books-on-tape, N64 games, a Star Wars Monopoly set, stickers, towel and facecloth set, dinnerware sets, watches, bedding coordinates, 20 different collector Pepsi cans, T-shirts, ball caps, runners, sandals and at least ten different Lego sets. My favourite items ware the Anakin Skywalker sleeping bag ($33.86), the Jar Jar Inflatable Pool ($29.97 and recalled as due to safety defects), the Darth Maul Interactive Talking Bank ($49.97), Dancing Jar Jar ($49.97), and the Lightsaber Duel Lego set ($8.93) which features tiny Lego Qui-Gon and Darth Maul figures ready to do battle, smiling those cute Lego smiles even though in the movie both characters meet rather nasty and violent ends. To purchase one of every Star Wars item listed in this flyer would cost me just a fraction under $3400 (plus PST and GST). And this does not begin to cover the myriad of tie-in products available.
Is this the future of filmmaking?
Two young men sitting behind me in the theatre were seeing The Phantom Menace for the fifth time (on only its third day in release). The theatre was filled with 12-year old kids and I felt very sad for them. All the hype and all the product and media tie-ins are telling these poor kids that this is a good movie. They are being lied to. The hype is training them to accept mediocrity as excellence. This is a mediocre film. Wonderful to look at and stunning eye-candy, to be sure. But a very mediocre motion picture.
Is this the future of filmmaking?
If the Star Wars mythos is about finding the force within yourself to conquer your fears and do good in the universe, then why are there expensive toy figures of characters that had only 3 micro-seconds of screen time? If it’s about realizing that no soul is irredeemable no matter how lost it has become, then why are there four different covers for the $35 hardcover novelization except to squeeze every last nickel out of fans? If it is about finding something bigger than yourself that’s worth fighting and dying for, then why has it been demeaned to the point that Zellers is selling Darth Maul boxer shorts?
Star Wars, like Star Trek, is no longer (if either of them ever really were) an uplifting moral fable – it’s now just an industry, just a product, just a money machine, just a marketing strategy.
It’s all come down to selling Yoda golf club socks. And are we going to have to endure The Phantom Menace: Special Edition in 20 years?
Star Wars: A New Hope succeeded because it was fast, fun, full of characters you could identify with and relate to, and offered a simple spiritual message of inner strength and belief. The Empire Strikes Back succeeded the most of all four Star Wars films because director Irvin Kershner, writer Lawrence Kasdan and the cast and the crew had the gall to actually take the material seriously and believe in it.
Return of the Jedi is less of a film than it is a toy commercial.
The Phantom Menace is no fun, has no characters worth relating to, can’t be taken seriously and subverts the original’s spiritual message.
And it’s not even a very good toy commercial.