A Closer Look at Star Wars on Film and Off 315
mclove writes "Revenge of the Sith comes out on DVD today, and there's an interesting article on Slate dissecting the now-complete trilogy as the avant-garde, intellectual sort of film that Lucas keeps saying it is."` Relatedly inkslinger77 writes "ILM model maker, Brian Gernand, speaks about what it is like to work with George Lucas and why he thinks Star Wars attracts such a huge following, particularly among the IT community. He also gives some information about the technology that is used behind the scenes. "
"The Now Complete Trilogy" (Score:4, Insightful)
That's no trilogy... (Score:5, Insightful)
I stopped reading... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not that big of a SW geek, but even I know that there is a reason they ended up back in the same place.
The slate article seems more interested in the academic thought than the actual subject matter. They should at least be related.
Star Wars? (Score:3, Insightful)
All I can say is that I'm very grateful to have episodes IV, V, and VI in their original untouched format. IMO they are the only films deserving to be called the 'Star Wars Trilogy'.
The others films are an embarrassment at best.
Re:That's no trilogy... (Score:1, Insightful)
Cash Cow: Generates Income.
It "needed" to happen (Score:4, Insightful)
This article is a load of rubbish, unless of course if it is satire, in which case it is great.
That's a big "if" ladies and gentlemen.
Re:I'm not buying the Slate article (Score:4, Insightful)
Heh. Jar Jar represents the desire to sell a shitload of action figures to young kids via fast food outlets. If ever a character was invented purely to suck another age group into the maw of the Merchandise Machine...
Still, lesson learnt eh? Thy characters may be good or evil, funny, sick, demented or violent, but thou shalt never again employ irritating characters.
Re:Is it serious or a joke? (Score:3, Insightful)
As for me, the newest three episodes have been horrible but this author definitely casts new light on the whole masterpiece.
Re:Star Wars? (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you people have against Star Wars? Most people here think Star Wars (IV, V, VI) is cool because all the older geeks they live up to thought it was cool. Now everyone that watched the newer episodes (or even heard about them) and their grandmothers think they suck. Well you know what? If they did truly suck, people wouldn't go like crazy to watch them (don't forget, Episode I is 5th on the All Time Box Office for the USA) all.
Can anyone give me a precise reason why they think Star Wars I, II or III were horrible movies? Was it Jar Jar? If yes, how would you do it to make it suck less, stick to the original story and ensure IV, V and VI don't have to change? Remember, you still need a gullible character that can be trusted by the Jedis, loyal, possible elected to be a representative in the Senate at a future time and easily manipulated in the future. Any character you make like that (even making Harrison Ford play the character, since so many love him) would still make you hate him. It is the exact purpose of the character. And it is also the ingredient the movie needs to evolve.
The movie as a whole is truly amazing, and if people cannot tolerate a movie that provides them with the foundation of their "greatest movie of all time", then maybe they should reconsider their opinions. It is indeed a work of art. People should watch "The power of myth" [amazon.com] with Joseph Campbell and George Lucas (filmed in '88) to understand what George Lucas was actually trying to do with Star Wars. If you got it wrong the first time, don't blame the director/author. Blame someone else.
And to save you some trouble... Slate's analysis is close to what George Lucas was trying to do in the first place.
A friend of mine had a good insight... (Score:5, Insightful)
Followed by Vader whining about where Padme is, and then, of course... "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Lucas is great at molding basic story material, but he can't write dialogue or characters to save his life. He should have stuck to producing, which is what he's really good at.
What is this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Star Wars? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is it serious or a joke? (Score:4, Insightful)
However it doesn't change the fact that the prequels (and indeed Jedi) aren't particularly good movies, even if they have some good moments in them.
I'm reminded of the defenders of the 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies who seemed convinced that the whole Danté allegory made the films better. Clearly it didn't. The two Matrix sequels are turds, no matter how hard their authors tried to be clever.
Re:Star Wars? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps the most laughable part of the movie was how utterly easy it was to pull Anakin to the dark side. They really should have spread this out more effectively through episode I and II to make it at least slightly more believable.
Palpatine: Learn to embrace the dark side of the force.
Anakin: No.
Palpatine: Do it.
Anakin: Ok.
It doesn't get much worse than this.....
Re:That's no trilogy... (Score:5, Insightful)
A little paradoxical don't you think? How can you go and see a film because you like it when you haven't seen it yet?
I - like many others I suspect - went to see Phantom Menace on the basis that it was the frst new Star Wars film for a couple of decades. I went to see Attack of the Clones in the hope that it would be better than Phantom - it was but not much. I went to see Revenge of the Sith because I had seen all the others at the cinema and wanted to catch this one on the big screen too.
I think I didn't like them - compared with the original trilogy - because I knew the ending and the whole thing felt like they were shoe horning a story I basically already knew into three long films. The sense of mystery - in not knowing where the story was going - was lost in these films compared with the original one.
As for the trilogy being a cash machine/cow. It is but then it was always going to be and in the end I think we kidded ourselves if - at this stage - we thought it would be a lot more than that.
Re:Why IT people like Star Wars... (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing absorbing about Eps 1 & 2 was the official SW toilet paper. I can't say anything about Ep3 because I haven't seen it and don't plan to.
I think the discussion is missing it. (Score:5, Insightful)
What I mean, is that the author both is and isn't kidding. Also, I'm both kidding and not kidding when I say "transgresses binary distinctions." Here's a helpful analogy: Let's imagine you're writing a horror story. You write, "Start breathing harder. OK. Let your pupils dilate. Shake a little. Cower. Think about other scary stuff. Be worried that something might kill you soon!" How effective would this be as a horror story? The answer is not at damn all. The best way to make someone frightened isn't to say, "be frightened," it's to say a bunch of other stuff that inspires fear in them.
Similarly, the content of the Slate piece isn't the point. The author almost certainly doesn't care whether Star War is "post-modern" or "avant garde." Instead, the author likes challenging his brain, and wants you to enjoy challenging your brain. So, he's given himself a task: come up with a post-modern meta-framing of Star Wars. Now, we the audience are supposed to allow our brains to quiver with joy as we connect the dots and think about whether and how the Force as a meta-explanation for plot coincidences in Star Wars can be called post-modern. The author is almost certainly serious in that this explanation is a valid one for Star Wars. The author is almost certainly joking in suggesting that Star Wars is High Art. The author is both serious and not, and that's the point.
If the author had written, "let your brain light up with activity. Think about connections. Enjoy the tingling of neurons firing," it wouldn't be effective. Instead, we're supposed to accept what the piece gives us without trying to shoe horn it into the category of "joke" or "not a joke." We're supposed to be enjoying how the piece is and isn't a joke, not trying to make it fit what we think about the quality of the Star Wars movies.
Remakes, anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, this might be heresy, but I'd like to see a bunch of remakes in twenty years time, where the story isn't made up on the hoof and the budget for hiring writers is slightly higher than cake budget. Imagine Joss Whedon writing the dialogue...
Just as long as Han shoots first, natch.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
The droids meeting up with Luke isn't neccessarily a coincidence either. R2D2's memory WASN'T WIPED!!! This is the big revelation at the end of Episode III that changes the way Episode IV is viewed. R2D2 knew he needed to get to Obi-Wan, knew he would live near Luke & knew where Luke lived - why else would he be so insistent on going in that direction?
Re:Is it serious or a joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can (hell, we used to do it for fun with our English Literature undergrad friends) construct deconstructionist arguments that shows that half the kids shows on TV as anarcho-capitalist propaganda pieces, or tracts of leftie-pinko-liberal-communist ideology... often in the same program, and often using the same quotes and events.
It's also very, very (really, I can't stress this enough) important to remember that
Postmodern != Good
Postmodern != Entertaining
Postmodern != Coherent
Just because something's "postmodern", it doesn't mean it's "worthy", interesting or any good at all. However, many lit-crit writers seem to make this mysterious assumption.
This essay also uses a common postmodern lit-crit trick of setting up flawed axioms[1], frantically hand-waving to make sure nobody notices the basic problem, then (gasp!) proceeding to show how your flawed, biased axioms inevitably lead to your conclusion.
Finally, when assessing any kind of field as logically flimsy and frequently intellectually self-pollenating as lit-crit, it's important to remember the differences between fields like it and the hard sciences and engineering:
In science, you get points for being Right - producing theories that stand the test of time, and map 1:1 to reality. In Lit-Crit, you get points for being Clever - your position doesn't have to have any kind of basis in reality at all, as long as it's well-argued and persuasive. In fact, there's some evidence that interpretations that do actually map to reality are looked down on, since arguing in favour of those doesn't require much Cleverness.
Oh yes, and you should really read "How to Deconstruct Almost anything [ucl.ac.be]". I once gave it to a English Lit undergrad girlfriend, and while she didn't like the implications one bit, she really couldn't fault a single argument.
Footnotes:
[1] Examples of flawed (or at least questionable) axioms that underpin the entire article:
The force makes everything in the universe happen - Less some waffle about destiny or "prophesy", there's no evidence that I can remember that the Force makes everything happen according to some predefined plan. This would completely negate free will, which undermines Anakin's entire fall from grace.
The light side of the force is all about feeling and passivity, the dark side is all about conscious control and order - Right, which is why (for example) Obi-Wan is always telling Anakin to reign in his emotions and be more calm and ordered, and the
emperor is trying to get him to lose control and give in to his anger. Both individuals argue for both things, just in different contexts.
"we are led to understand in Sith that it was Palpatine himself who set the entire plot in motion by manipulating the Force toward Anakin's virgin birth." - Now, maybe I haven't watched it enough, but I don't recall this implication anywhere, and it's a pretty important one, which changes the whole epic story. Did I miss something here?
Re:Movie fantasy leads to real world technology (Score:3, Insightful)
but, going a step further and a tad geekier, consider that the blade itself, which can cut through anything except the beam of another saber, is incredibly light-weight. since light itself has no mass, the only weight of the thing is in the handle, so its incredibly easy to do quick shifts of position. add that to the jedi's ability to sense the world in a unique way, and not only is it a sword, its also a shield against incoming projectile attacks.
compare that to the longsword of comparable size (when the saber is extended, anyway) that I bought at the renaissance festival, which weighs (probably) 20 pounds, which i can (awkwardly) lift with one hand but couldn't likely swing with any accuracy or force, and you'll understand why people like the concept of lightsabers so much.
Re:Star Wars? (Score:4, Insightful)
Like all artistic endeavours, whenever you do something great eventually the artist faces the excruitiating disjuntive: I created something great, should I keep producing more versions of it or try something different?
By following the latter you risk to turn your creation into something trivial, trite, obfuscated, mundane and unimaginative; killing the unique quality of the original. Examples are a-plenty:
The Simpsons.
Rocky.
Jaws.
Alien.
Mad Max.
and of course: Star Wars.
Star Wars could have been a mystic sci-fi like Blade Runner or Brazil but instead became
a regurgitated product that pops out of nowhere every holiday season..Like the Chia Pet!
That's why I know hate Star Wars.
Re:Star Wars? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you're wrong about the original Star Wars movies and about the LoTR movies - but I see your point. There's a lot to crticize in both. Star Wars was cheesey, and Frodo only had two expressions in the movie: "oh sam!" (the silly grin) and "ugghhhh" (the hobbit pushing out a man-size turd grimace).
But the LoTR? I mean, in high school I thought a lot of the books I was told to read sucked. I still have papers I turned in ridiculing Kafka's "Metamorphis", Hesse's "Siddhartha" and pretty much every other book I had to read. But to me the only thing that looks ridiculous now is how self-assured I was at age 14 that I was smarter than all the novelist, critics, and readers who had read the books for years, decades, or centuries before I was born. It took me a few years to realize that even when I really disliked a "classic" novel (I hate Moby Dick) the only thing I achieved by stating categorically that the works "sucked" was to make myself look like an utter idiot.
It's not that I've learned to bow before the group consensus - I still really disllike "Siddhartha" for example, and for a lot of the same reasons I had when I first read it. But I would be hesitant to call widely acclaimed books that have stood the test of time "a bunch of pretentious garbage". Instead, it's better to be conversand on WHY they books are lauded in the first place - and to respond to that ongoing discussion. It's not like the "classics" are all universally hailed by English professors everywher either.
But hey, I guess you're just way more perceptive than all the millions of people, some of whom have devoted their lives to words, novels, and literature, who love Tolkien's works. Maybe you should consider becoming conversant with the external context of a work before you display your unabashedly uninformed categorical opinions on it. I wouldn't say for every Coke commercial you see on TV you need to exercise this degree of care - and hey, you don't HAVE to do it at all. But when you come across a work of truly significant stature you can either converse, or you can whine. It's your pick.
You're welcome to your opinion, whatever it may be, but some opinions cast you in a worse light then you could ever cast the object of the opinion in.
-stormin
Re:That's no trilogy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever since 1977, people have been demanding to know the story behind Darth Vader. Now he's given it to his established audience as a true storyteller would, and there are people calling him greedy and an "exploiter" because of it.
At least I can agree on matters like Jar Jar being a flop, hell, even Lucas admitted it. And yes, I do wish he'd stuck with more traditional methods of filmmaking rather than putting so much trust in CGI. Sure, he made some mistakes along the way. God forbid Lucas actually be human like the rest of us. I, for one, wouldn't dare accuse him of "exploiting" the audience. The audience constantly demands more, and he has given up 20 painstaking years of his life to provide it to us.
Re:That's no trilogy... (Score:3, Insightful)
It was just a really bad film.
Poor acting, poor script, poor pacing, no interesting characters or situations, no tension, no drama, nothing worth watching at all. It was like a filmed-version of some crappy anime. I'm sure that if the Star Wars name wasn't on the film no-one would have bothered seeing it, it would be another Final Fantasy.
The special effects were poor as well. Yes they were technically good, but it looked like a cartoon. 2001 A Space Odyssey had more realistic looking space scenes, and that was just models. All the computers in the world can't make up for subtlety and artistic ability.
But then Kubrick was a genius, and Lucas is a hack.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:1, Insightful)
2 Points. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Anakin was a loving, good-intentioned person with a conscience. The film's attempts to drive him to the Dark Side were staged and pushy and contrived and ultimately ridiculous. --You can frustrate a person and make him/her angry, but to become Vader, you have to scramble a person as a child. Anakin was already well past the point of such vulnerability; he had seen and learned love and friendship during his formative years. --His love and selfless good deeds were rewarded with the gratitude and returned love from solid, respectful friends, and thus his belief system and internal compass about how the world can and should be would have been set and anchored deeply. It would have taken a LOT more than a sly Palpatine whispering shit at him to screw up a 20-something year-old Anakin. Heck, even the flying junk-dealer from his childhood spoke of little Anakin with pride. --There are fatherless kids out there in the real world who would do anything for the kind of affection Anakin was shown in Phantom Menace. If you want to create a Vader, you have to start kicking him as a baby and never let up. Anakin should have been the second coming. Vader? No chance.
2. I DID however like the illustration of how a republic can easily turn into a fascist state. We all can take a lesson from that and pack our bags and move to Canada, France or New Zealand. . .
So Lucas gets half marks for insight. Politically, he's got a clue, but otherwise he's still learning. Evil is a tough problem.
-FL