Before I get to my final analysis of
Star Wars Episode III:Revenge of the Sith, I thought it would be appropriate to give you my
Star Wars "roots" (if you will). I’ll also give some general thoughts on the saga and hopefully have a review of
Episode III and a “final ranking” of the 6 movies posted shortly.
Warning: This is a really long post...but that's okay because I'm bored and you have nothing better to do.
I was born in 1981, a year after
The Empire Strikes Back came out, and roughly two years before
Return of the Jedi. I was not even a twinkle in my mother’s eye when
A New Hope (or more commonly known as just “Star Wars”) came out in 1977. I was not one of those kids at the “perfect age” for the release of the original trilogy but if you’re reading this post, you know who you are: you were 5-12 years old at some point between 1977-1983.
My earliest memories of
Star Wars are actually not related to the movies at all. I remember a cousin of mine owning a number of the action figures and he would occasionally let me play with them (my favorite being Wicket W. Warrick, the heroic Ewok). I remember being terrified of the mere visage of Darth Vader. I’d see him in magazines or on TV and would be scared of his menacing mechanical monstrous appearance (how’s that for poetic dialogue?—more on that later). I’m sure I saw snippets of
A New Hope on TV here and there, but I never actually sat down to watch a
Star Wars movie until I was 8 or 9 years old. I guess that’s what’s so remarkable about
Star Wars isn’t it? It went so far beyond “just a movie” so quickly. It became ingrained in our popular culture all but instantaneously. Sure there have been popular figures and icons and movies over the years, but in terms of the impact
Star Wars has had on almost every aspect of our collective psyche,
Star Wars is beyond compare.
Then came March ( I think) of 1990.
Return of the Jedi, the 3rd film of the trilogy was to make it’s network television debut on NBC-TV. It was a saturday night, my dad (for some reason) fired up the VCR to record the event, and I settled in for my first
Star Wars experience.
I was blown away.
Miraculous I think that a 7 year old movie, playing on our crummy 19” TV could move me in such a way, but it did. I watched the whole thing straight through and loved every minute of it. I loved Jabba the Hutt’s palace and all the weird aliens in it. I loved the rescue of Han Solo and the sail barge fight (still one of the best action seqeunces in the saga). I loved the crazy “Max Rebo” band. I loved the creepy Emperor. I loved the Ewoks and the nifty battle they fought with logs and rocks. I loved the space battle and what looked like a thousand spaceships fighting. I loved the final lightsaber fight between Luke and Vader, and while I didn’t quite get what was going on dramatically, I loved Vader tossing the Emperor down the Death Star II reactor shaft. I loved the emotional ending with Anakin, Yoda and Obi-Wan reappearing.
What’s amazing to me is how much I loved a movie that most people now think is one of the worst of the saga. The 9 year old in me can’t believe it, but there are actually people who
hate the Ewoks?
And think that Jabba’s palace is stupid and just a bunch of muppets? It was critics and whiney fan-boys who said, and continue to say these things. But you know what? I didn’t care, and I still don’t. I discovered this movie on my own and to me there was nothing finer.
I nearly wore out the fateful VHS tape that held my new favorite movie.
I would later catch the first
Star Wars on the Disney channel and like
Return of the Jedi I taped it, and watched it over and over again. I rented
The Empire Strikes Back after that but eventually wore out my own VHS copy of that as well. I liked them both, but nothing could top
Jedi in my mind. It was maybe not “technically” the better film, but it’s own goodwill and the nostalgia factor were enough to keep it at the top of my list.
I continued to become more entrenched in the
Star Wars universe. That may not be sound like that crazy of a thing nowadays, but in, say 1992,
Star Wars was pretty much at a lowpoint in it’s popularity. There hadn’t been a new movie in almost 10 years, and generally the merchandising had gone away all but completely.
There were some new “Expanded Universe” novels, and a smattering of toys and other junk, but
Star Wars was all but dead...
But then word came of more movies! George Lucas was supposedly working on more
Star Wars episodes, in particular the “back story” or episodes I, II, III that would lead up to the original
Star Wars. I couldn’t have been more excited at this prospect. The thought of new episodes of
Star Wars was almost surreal to me. I knew they would be different stories and would largely be missing the characters that I knew and loved, but who cares? More
Star Wars is never a bad thing!
To tide everyone over Lucas released the
Star Wars Trilogy:Special Edition in early 1997. This was my first chance to see the “big three” on the big screen and it was just as wonderful as I thought it could be. It was a totally different thing to see the saga play out on a huge screen with big sound (as opposed to a tiny TV screen, with not-so-big sound). I was enthralled. I was dazzled. And I couldn’t wait for
Episode I.
Then came 1999 and the release of
The Phantom Menace. I remember waiting 2 hours for a tiny Quicktime file of the trailer to download—ah dialup internet but it's still one of the best trailers of all time and got me even more stoked for more
Star Wars.
Finally the day came, just before my high school graduation that I saw it. It was almost too much to take in.
The Phantom Menace was probably the most anticipated movie of all time. It could not have met the ridiculously high expectations put on it and it couldn’t largely because what made the first
Star Wars such an incredible thing is that it
wasn’t anticipated. Not to take anything away from
The Lord of the Rings but those movies were adaptations of a story that had been around for nearly 50 years.
Star Wars came out of nowhere and knocked everyone’s socks off and to try to recreate that is an impossible task.
I liked
Episode I and I also liked
Episode II when it came out in May of 2002. They are fitting entries into the saga and are pretty much on par stylistically and thematically with the original trilogy. The problem I think is one of familiarity. There are many (including myself) who have seen the original movies hundreds of times. You begin to
overlook certain things, and even
love certain things that maybe aren’t as wonderful as you think they are. People have complained about the “prequel” dialogue as being too “cheesy” or “sappy” or “clunky”. Well that may or may not be true, but is the much maligned Anakin and Padme dialogue any worse than this exchange from
The Empire Strikes Back (largely thought to have the best script of any “Star Wars “ movie):
Leia: Han we need you.Han: We need. But what about you need?Leia: I need. I don’t know what you’re talking about.Han: You probably don’t.That’s of course, ridiculous stupid dialogue. It’s silly, it’s hokey but
Star Wars fans love it. Why you ask? Because it’s so great and poetic and well written, or because it’s silly stuff that we’ve heard 500 times?
Star Wars movies are a hard thing to catergorize. They are essentially sci-fi/fantasy/action films and have their roots both in rich mythology and the near anti-thesis of rich mythology—1930’s action serials ala
Flash Gordon and
Buck Rogers. People who complain about
Star Wars dialogue don’t bug me all that much it's just that they are uninformed. Go watch a
Flash Gordon sometime and
Star Wars dialogue will look Oscar-worthy by comparison. George Lucas is a visual filmmaker and uses this to his advantage to portray all the above mentioned aspects of his saga. If you want hip quips and snappy modern romantic sarcasm check out
The Fantastic Four coming to theaters this July (and forgotten by audiences by, well, July).
That
Star Wars has had it’s success despite some definite flaws and inconsistencies is a testament to George Lucas’s abilities as a filmmaker.
Star Wars movies are for the most part, much greater than the sum of their parts and evoke emotions through a combination of factors largely visceral and not literal. Yes there are certain great exchanges of dialogue and interaction humorous and/or dramatic peppered throughout the saga, but the movies don’t rest there. The movies move visually along with the accompaniment of the musical score and sound. All of the movies are consistent in this construction and sadly it goes unnoticed mainly because people are too upset about Jar-Jar or Anakin saying “I don’t like sand.”Indeed all of the films have flaws, and clunky moments but they rise above them because the story isn’t hanging on every word of every character. They aren’t designed that way.
The bottom line is that the
Star Wars movies are fun. Fun in many different and surprisingly complicated ways. Han Solos sarcasm. Obi-Wan Kenobis wit. Princess Leias sass. Lukes whininess. Anakins intensity. The Emperor’s creepy, screen chewing excess. Darth Vaders imposing presence. Padmes love. C-3POs fussiness. R2-D2’s tenacity. Chewbaccas loyalty—these are big broad emotions here portrayed for a large audience, not the subtle nuance of a Bergmann or Alan J. Pakula film. And which would you rather watch:
Star Wars or
Sophie's Choice?
Stay tuned for my analysis of
Revenge of the Sith. (I'm going to see it a 3rd time first...)
