This is continuing the discussion started on thread entitled something like "Why do people hate Star Wars d20", which turned into a "Well My Star Wars is Better than Your Star Wars, Is Not, Is So, Nahaa" thread. So I am officially moving this fascinating discourse here. I will warn you in advance that this post/thread will be long and rambling, and more than half incomplete but since you are a Star Wars Fan or Trash Talker you will read it anyway and then post something.
You've been warned.
The following was my email retort to a friend's assertion that Attack of the Clones was a good movie that cleaned up all the problems from the previous Phantom Menace. It is dated July 3, 2003
My turn please.
First though I would like to set a few things straight. Uno, I have not visited the hypertext site nor read any of its content because quite frankly I don't have the time to waste. In fact I am discounting the thing out of hand as a morass of useless sheep's puke. Second, though I am apparently enough of a geek to name my email box after the bounty hunter that I occasionally play in both home and a sanctioned tournament games, and that I won the first and only time I played Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, I myself have not lost all my senses and joined some fantical fan boy cult that offers up Hasbro light sabered victims on an altar to the Great Old One, George Lucas.
So to the chase.
As a movie I didn't like it much. My reasons are many and varied, but on the whole they stem from the fact that George is breaking Yoda's Writer's Rules for Writing Number 1: "Show, Do Not Tell. There is no tell."
Now tell me if I am wrong, but it probably went like this (I even have the DVD interviews to back some of this up.)
1) George writes Star Wars back in 197?. Comes up with a ton of great stuff, and where it all comes from. He realized he was onto something big and flew with it. He comes up with the characters and scenes and backgrounds for his Campbellian Mono-mythic add on. He has enough stuff to do a passel of movies. Great. We're cool so far.
2) "Well, I can only do one movie at a time." He says to himself. Where do I start. "How about the really really Campbellian one? Its got that farm boy and the old guy and the Death Star/Underworld and everything. Neato! (Hey, that sounds like a great name! I've got to write that down. NEATO!)"
3) "That turned out really well. Although some people complained that my dialogue was bad. i.e. 'flying through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops' and 'Govenor Tarkin's foul stench' and whatnot."
4) "Wow! the second one was even better. It was dark didn't
pander and I didn't even have to write it."
5) "Cool we wrapped up all the loose ends with the third one."
Many Years Later....
6) "Ah. technology has just gotten to the sweet spot. I think
I'll go back and make the first three movies and explain everything.
No, no, no, no. You never explain things! When you write a book or shoot a film you never ever, ever explain anything. You tell a story and allow the audience to figure out stuff along the way. Case in point Lin Carter is so far the least likable Mythos writer I have encountered within the Lovecraft circle. Why? Because he writes like a fan
boy (Apparently there were fan boys before comic books. Go figure.) He tries to make sense of the Cthulhu Mythos. Why do I find that a stupid thing to do? Well, the obvious one is that its all one great big fabrication. It's a writing device that Lovecraft and his friends partook of to add a backdrop to their tales, to make them seem more real. It is a meme, an idea that transcends the page it is written on. Lin Carter
spent most of his time explaining how it all worked not in telling any compelling stories about people, or self-discovery, or even the horrific idea that man in all of his splendor was not the center of the universe and that the laws which we hold as firm and inflexible can be turned upside down by beings who look upon us as we might look upon bacteria or a bit of lint on our cuff. Second, the Mythos like any real
and living mythic cycle was wrought with inconsistencies. It was a writing device after all not the Declaration of Independence. Lin however had the fan boy's (and I guess this speaks to my definition of "fan boy") need to put all the Mythos entities into their own pigeon holes and tidy things up. However in doing so he not only showed us the magician's book of secrets he didn't tell us anything we couldn't have done without. In fact, I am of the conviction that he may have wasted my time some thirty years before I was born.
Lucas in my estimation has done little better.
He didn't loose his mind. He lost his focus. When he was coming up with all that cool stuff for the first three films (real time). He had this grand built-in background of Clone Wars, Blue-clad citadel guards, the Republic, Jedi Knights, the Force, the betrayal of Anikin Skywalker, etc... All of it really great stuff, stuck in the back of his head and tucked into the corners of those three movies. Great stuff that
you didn't see with your eyes as much as you felt within the places you went and the characters that you met. There was a pattern overlayed upon another pattern like the layers of a finely done oil painting. There was a texture. When you strip away the Rebellion Movies, you are left with the base coat which has nothing but white canvas to rest on. Suddenly
our painted illusion has grown thin. There is no substance underneath and I don't really feel for anyone.
Sure I am intrigued by the future Emperor's plots and love seeing Obi-Won in his prime (although he's fed some god awful dialogue), but really that's about it. I liked the parallel drawn between Anikin who looses the one parent he will ever know and young Boba Fett who is in the same situation, but they didn't go anywhere with it. And that the poor
guy they've got playing Anikin. That scene when Amidala is packing her things to go home is so awkward I squirm just thinking about it. I honestly don't think it is directing that is to blame. It's the writing.
Granted neither of us is in any position to judge to harshly, but I know for a fact that I am not alone on this one.
Well, I (and you probably do too) think I've gone on long enough. It certainly wasn't as bad as Hobgoblins but neither was it great Star Wars. So how about that other sequel that's coming out this year were we will once again here Christopher Lee talk about another "Dark Lord."
End of Excerpt.
I am not going to get into a debate about realism and why Star Wars is better or worse than Star Trek or Farscape, Firefly MST3k Doctor Who or My Favorite Martian because they are all different beasts. Star Wars being a space fantasy (with laser swords, ships that make noise in space, lasers that make noise, etc.... Nor am I going to delve into minutia like how the various sword fighting styles evolved to make light saber contests look more impressive. If you want sword fighting watch the The Four Musketeers or watch Basil Rathbone go toe to toe with Errol Flynn, in Robin Hood sometime and if you think I'm speaking treason when I say something that old can compare with an uber-special effects banaza like like episodes I and II, you're right I do speak treason -fluently.
I just want to talk about how they rate as movies. Period. Did you enjoy yourself? Where you swept up in the drama? Did you laugh? Did you cry? Did you feel for the characters? Was it exciting?
Personally I just groaned through the big ground battles in Episode I and II. Give me the "Don't get cocky kid!" battle any day. Sure I play the RPG games and know everyone’s stats like the back of my hand and someone will say "but most humble and magnanimous lord of all he surveys, there where only four tie fighters and we all know that they can't his the side of a space barn." To which after have more peel grapes I would respond "Use your imagination and where are my grapes!?!" I mean really is it even remotely possible that a person could know too much about the Star Wars universe? So much that the movies, which for the most part are supposed to be fun romps just become exercises in d8+2 Blaster shots and AoO's with a light saber? That and I just can't get all worked up about one obviously CG army of battle droids fighting another CG army made up of the same five gungans though I still enjoyed that far more the freaking horrible C3PO one-liners in the arena scene in episode the second.
That scene deserves its own thread for how bad it was. The creepy sand "gets everywhere" scene, the "I am good enough to be a jedi" (did anyone ever get the impression that Obi-Wan and Anikin got along let alone were friends until Episode Three?), and Padme's reaction to the "I killed them all." scene pale compared to how horrible the arena scene went.
You would think that adding jedi to a scene would be cool, until they all start posing like they are on the cover of a WWE magazine. And if they were all over the place how did they get into the center of the arena to do their reenactment of the charge in Braveheart. And Kip Fisto (isn't his arch enemy Mr. Bill?). A jedi is to have the most serious mind.... No, I think I'll just grin like a weasel on speed for this whole scene. "But oh great one, his race has a permanent rictus, It says so in this incredibly hard to find interview with set directors second cousin's-" "Grapes!!!" Writers and directors can control those sorts of things - especially when they are the same person! How would it have looked if in Fellowship of the Ring Sean Bean as Boromir was lying there dying near the Anduin after slaying twenty orcs and he was wearing a huge purple pimp's hat? But even worse than that on some people's list of complaints is C3PO's impression of Gerald Ford doing an impression of Henny Youngman. It was almost as bad as watching Greedo shoot first and having Han not even notice or register the fact. I guess those are my biggest gripes with Attack of the Clones, which had in its favor the dogfight between Obi-Wan and Jango, a straight up fight between the two and very decent series of light saber battles with the ill-named Count Dooku with Christoper Lee who was relegated to about five minutes of screen time at the end of the movie. Episode II trails in my Star Wars movie rankings somewhere behind the two Ewok Movies, (but still much better than the Christmas Special). "This party's over" -Shaft, I think.
Episode I has grown on me a bit, but reducing the Force down to a midichlorine count seems a bit too scientific and the explanation leaves me longing for my math test to begin. Don't explain stuff let it just happen. The audience will figure it out. The pacing is a bit slow in parts as well with stuff slowing down when it should have been picking up.
Once again though the dialogue and in young Ani's case the execution of it is quite dreadful at points. "Are you and angel?", "That is the sound of a thousand terrible things." "A communications disruption...", "A particularly dangerous dug.", "What was it?" (he looked more like a who to me) "Yipee." are the ones I can think of off the top of my head - oh, and going through "dah planet's core" seems like it might be stretching the fantasy aspect a bit too far. I'm mean shouldn't it be hot down there?
Episode three is by far the best of the new bunch. I think it was HK who said that the seventies hair style in Episode IV looked dated, but I wonder what people will think about the "big ole jedi mullets" (to quote Ewain McGreggor) a few years from now. Once again my problems lie more with directing and writing rather than the special effects. Lines like the "Noooooo!" make me want to say the same but instead I'll just drop to my knees and weep on the inside the way I wished Vader had done in that scene. Still this one ranks in the top 3 or four of Star Wars films for me at least because they at least looked like they where having fun making it (except perhaps for poor Padme who got shuffled off to the side.) Like the other prequel episodes it looked at times like they where trying to force things into the plot (really was Chewbacca really so important that they had to marginalize other characters that this part of the story is supposed to really be about? The same goes C3PO and R2-D2 I don't mind them being here I just think they should have served more purpose as they did in the later -err, earlier uh, umm, well you know what I mean.
If I were to rank the movies (and it is possible to do that they are movies after all) they would probably go like this:
Empire Strikes Back (Fun dialogue, cool action scenes)
Star Wars You can call it A New Hope if you want to, but sans the Slimfast Jabba, quick-fingered Greedo and that really lame Boba Fett walk on. For a second I thought he might wave to the audience and say "Hi kids!"
Toss up betwixt Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith though I don't recall cringing at Return where as Revenge did make me cringe once or twice.
Phantom Menace I really don't mind Jar Jar that much, and Darth Maul looked as cool Boba Fett did. I still get shivers when the doors open up on him or when Qui Gon shoves his light saber though the blast doors. Maybe I'll put this one up in the toss up for third.
Last and least by a bit of a margin for the above stated reasons Attack of the Clones.
Oh well, time for more grapes.
Hopefully they are not sour,
GGG
