Every since Disney bought out Lucasfilm and announced their plans to carry on the Star Wars franchise, I've approached each new installment in the Star Wars story with a mix of trepidation and excitement. Like a junkie, part of me wanted to keep chasing that high I felt from the Original Star Wars Trilogy and the Prequel Trilogy, to recapture that same feeling of wonder and adventure and excitement and strangeness like surprise incest or random '50s-style diners. But the rational part of my brain kept trying to tell me that Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm marked the end of an era, and that the high I was chasing didn't exist, and I should devote my energies to other, more fruitful pursuits, like developing the world's first mass-produced, consumer-grade flamethrower. Unfortunately, Elon Musk beat me to this totally useful and not in any way egregious misuse of humanity's finite resources in a world where people are literally going homeless and dying from easily treatable medical conditions in the richest country in the world, so I guess I'll have to go with Plan B: miniature bidets for cats and dogs.
The Star Wars content that Disney did put out has, for me, been an exercise in diminishing returns. I'm still not completely caught up on the animated shows, but for me, Star Wars has always been about the silver screen experience: the epic storytelling, the larger than life characters and plot, the cheer of the crowd, the crushing of the enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentations of the women. At the time I'm writing this, there've been five Star Wars feature films released under the Disney Regime so far: Episodes VII, VIII, and IX carrying on the main movie storyline, and two spinoffs set between Episodes III and IV of the main series, Solo and Rogue One. Out of those five, Episode VII: The Force Awakens was essentially a soft reboot of Episode IV: A New Hope, Episode VIII: The Last Jedi stands with the best that Star Wars has to offer, Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker keeps getting worse the more I think about it, Solo was a decently fun galactic romp, and Rogue One was the movie equivalent of a couple of kids playing with their toys for a couple of hours.
“A Kansas City Shuffle is when everybody looks right, you go left.” – Mr. Goodkat, Lucky Number Sleven
I remember going to the theatre to see Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith for the first time, and kind of being blown away by the opening sequence. I couldn’t shake the feeling that George Lucas had completely pulled the rug out from under the audience in the best of ways. As Lucas himself has pointed out, Star Wars and its subsequent sequels and prequels have always been essentially modern-day fairy tales with the requisite binary morality. Revenge of the Sith still falls along this spectrum, but if all of the previous Star Wars films were the sanitized Disney versions, then Revenge of the Sith is straight up, motherfucking Brothers Grimm. Revenge of the Sith is the version of Cinderella where her stepsisters cut off their own toes in order to have their feet fit the glass slipper only to be found out due to the copious amounts of blood easily visible in transparent footwear.
After two prequels worth of the typical Star Wars fare, Revenge of the Sith takes a dark turn early on that I don’t think a lot of people expected despite knowing where the story had to go. Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is still hands down today the highest regarded film out of the saga among nearly any group of fans that you ask and is touted as being dark, but I think that Revenge of the Sith takes the mantle for the darkest entry any day of the week. The moment that indicated that this was going to be a different kind of Star Wars was the confrontation between Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) and Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) that ended in Anakin not just dismembering the good Count by cutting off both of his hands but then by brutally decapitating him once he is subdued and no longer a threat. Watching Dooku’s head bounce away like a tennis ball being chased by your pet nexu signalled a turning point in both the film and the series. In a film series that never shied away from casual dismemberment, there is something a lot more sinister here, something that “Oh shit” just doesn’t quite cover.
It's virtually impossible at this point to overstate the cultural impact that Star Wars has had. Its iconography has become a permanent part of our cultural landscape and has had an influence on the lives of millions of people across the world. There's something eternal about the mythology now, something that transcends time, which is maybe why it was all the more shocking to learn of Carrie Fisher's death on December 27, 2016. Official reports were saying that she died of a heart attack, but as the evidence mounts, it has become clear that she drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra. As part of the Star Wars mythology, there was something timeless about her. Death seems like too mundane a thing for stars that shine that bright.
Fisher was (by far) best known for portraying Princess Leia in the Star Wars saga (and also that nun who lived by a slightly different Book than George Carlin and Jay and Silent Bob). Aside from Ellen Ripley in the Alien franchise, there are few other iconic women ass-kickers than immediately come to mind, due in large part to Fisher's performance, which had no shortage of strength and tenacity. This speaks volumes about both the positive influence Fisher had as a strong female character and, conversely, the state of the film industry (both in 1977 and in 2016) where strong female characters are few and far between. Princess Leia never went full Ripley, but she kicked her fair share of ass, and most importantly never took any shit from anybody.
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Those fateful words will basically serve as the epitaph of an entire age of cinema. To most modern movie goers, those are words of a bygone era, but to cinephiles of certain age, they were a constant reminder of the subpar state of our home video versions of films. In those dark times, before the advent of the widescreen TV, audiences were forced to suffer through releases of films where it was possible that upwards of fifty percent of the image was chopped off just to account for the vast difference in aspect ratios between the original film stock and our televisions. In our darkest hour, "widescreen" versions of movies were paraded as some kind of special edition. Basically, it was a fucking travesty.
It always seemed appropriate to me, then, that out of my entire Star Wars movie collection, the only DVD that still bore those terrible words--Full Screen Edition--emblazoned across the top, those same, terrible words that were no doubt inscribed on the very gates of hell themselves, was my copy of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, my least favourite of the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
I have a distinct memory of sitting on my roommmate's bed watching a trailer for Star Wars Episode II on his Mac and wondering aloud about the effectiveness of the subtitle Attack of the Clones. I don't remember exactly what it was that I said, but I do remember that it wasn't positive. I wasn't so much unimpressed as I was bewildered. For whatever reason, it didn't seem Star Wars-ian enough to me. It didn't seem to fit with my idea of Star Wars, which was, of course, the obviously correct one, and George Lucas and everyone else be damned.
In preparation for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I made sure that in the week leading up to its release that I watched the first six movies as well as Tartakovsky's oft-overlooked Star Wars: Clone Wars show. For as long as I can remember, Star Wars has been a central part of my cultural vocabulary and an essential pillar of my own personal artistic cannon. Growing up on the margins of most social groups, the sci-fi genre was appealing because one of its core messages was always one of hope. Star Wars offered a different sense of hope than, say, the vision of the future that Gene Roddenberry gave us with Star Trek. The hope that Star Wars offered was the hope that for each of us there was the potential of completing our own version of the Hero's Journey: emerging from obscurity to stand against an unfathomably evil force and fighting back for the good of innocent people, your own survival, or to win a moral victory. It also offered the hope that no matter how badly you fuck up, like, say, making out with your own sister, you could still become a badass dressed in black walking the path of the righteous man.
In a lot of ways, Star Wars has become, both for myself and a substantial and increasing subset of the general population more than a series of movies--and video games and books and comic books and memorabilia of every variety that humankind can conceive of. It has become an icon, a cultural phenomenon that binds us and inspires us every bit as surely as the Force. Culture is a funny thing. Seemingly insubstantial artefacts are imbued with extreme significance, but as we validate that significance, we internalize it. Star Wars, like any other cultural text, is both completely irrelevant in the Grand Scheme of Things but intensely important on a very personal level and even on a macro societal level because it is integrated into both who we are and how we interact with each other. Being a fan of something isn't just some silly thing people do to pass the time and lower their chances of getting laid (by someone who isn't their sister); it's a part of their identity.
Today marks the last day that my stream of consciousness will include only six Star Wars films. Tomorrow, I take my first step into a larger world. Or, more accurately, my seventh step. But who's counting? I mean, other than the execs over at Disney? Star Wars: The Force Awakens marks the seventh feature film in the now-legendary franchise, which is simultaneously an inspiring tale of hope and redemption and symbolic of a sort of uber-consumerism with merchandising tendrils worming their way from all manner of action figures to kitchen utensils and appliances to makeup. Fucking makeup!
Ever since George Lucas followed up his beloved original trilogy with the prequel trilogy, which received--to put it mildly--mixed reactions, the future of the saga remained a giant question mark. According to Lucas, his vision of Star Wars included a trilogy of trilogies and presumably orgies of cocaine and hookers dressed as wookies (at least you can always tell whether the walking carpet matches the drapes).
This past week there was a great disturbance on the Internet, as if a million souls watching movie trailers cried out and then all reason and productivity were silenced. In Hollywood* (*Now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Disney corporation), there is no such thing as luck because the inhabitants of that strange land have tapped into a power even greater than the Force: cold hard cash. And it seems like they are intent on using this diabolical power to serve us up another heaping helping of franchise frozen dinners. If revenge is a dish best served cold, then Hollywood is a dish served boiling hot around the edges but still frozen in the middle no matter how long the instructions on the box say to leave it in the microwave.
Two cinematic juggernauts are being brought back from the dead, though whether they turn out to be abominations akin to Frankenstein's monster or thoroughly awesome like Neo in the last five minutes of THE MATRIX (who totally would have beat the shit out of that impostor Neo in that weird alternate universe of the two sequels (That's the only way the world still makes sense!)) remains to be seen. Both the JURASSIC PARK sequel, JURASSIC WORLD, and the seventh feature length STAR WARS film (not counting BATTLE FOR ENDOR and CARAVAN OF COURAGE), STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, both started peaking down their respective birth canals. For now they are still floating blissfully in those delicious placental juices, but far sooner than we realize, they will arrive in the world, kicking and screaming and soaked in various, life-giving, vaginal fluids, and be set on the path towards becoming president of Earth or an overweight stripper strung out on amphetamines.
May 4, 2014, marked the annual unofficial celebration of an indelible part of pop culture history that has - for better or worse - contributed to the psychological development of countless grown men and women including, perhaps most notably, the proliferation of the "slave girl" sexual fantasy. May 4th has proliferated as an international day to recognize anything and everything related to the STAR WARS property (as if it needed any more recognition) due in large part to the date's name being easy fodder for geeky punsters ("May the Force/4th be with you.") who don't mind taking the chance of sounding like an offensive homosexual stereotype and the ability of the Internet to propagate information faster than people can effectively evaluate its relative worth.
In honour of the occasion, I decided to watch the originator and slapped STAR WARS (no fucking Episode IV bullshit) into my Blu-Ray player. As I watched what had undoubtedly been a formative text in my own personal psychological library and recited entire scenes word for word (much to the chagrin of my wife), it dawned on me what imperfect movies STAR WARS and all of its sequels and (even more so) its prequels actually were. In fact, even as a huge fan of the series, there is still a lot of stuff, even in the original trilogy that I had grown up loving, that is either really laughably bad or patently ridiculous or some combination thereof.
Despite the fact that STAR WARS was (aside from the special effects) quantifiably a B movie, it was - and still is - pretty fucking awesome. It wasn't because of the originality of the plot, which is filled to the brim with cliches, convenient coincidences, and (perhaps unsurprisingly frequent) lapses in logic. Let's face it, STAR WARS is not exactly the epitome of storytelling genius. It wasn't because of the acting, because even Sir Alec Guinness and Harrison Ford, the arguable acting heavyweights of the film, could only elevate the dialogue only so far. As a moral tale, it didn't really say anything that hadn't been said before or present the nuances of morality. In fact, it does the exact opposite, simplifying morality down to a really basic good versus evil dichotomy exemplified, of course, by the Light Side/Dark Side of the Force.
Four billion dollars sounds like a lot of money. And I guess it is. It's also kind of a meaningless figure. If you told me you had four billion dollars, you might just as well have said you had a hundred bajillion cazillion shmashmillion dollars, because both figures are beyond my realm of comprehension. When dealing with money in particular, numbers as high as four billion become surreal and completely theoretical. The difference between having a hundred million dollars and four billion dollars is arbitrary at best. Most regular people can determine the worth of five dollars or ten dollars or even twenty dollars, because they can conceptualize the quantity of shit that amount of money equates to. We kind of have an idea, given the current (un)fair market value of most products in that price range, of the amount of physical matter we could acquire in exchange for those sums of money. Even values like a million dollars are within the grasp of most ordinary citizens. After buying a decent house and a car or two, you'd maybe have enough money to last for the rest of a decade, assuming you set aside a comfortable annual allowance of $50,000 a year and maybe invested a bit.
Celebrity is a strange beast. While it is a reciprocal relationship it is not a personal one. Or, I suppose more accurately, it is an impersonal relationship with strangely personal emotional consequences for only half of the parties involved. It's reciprocal in the sense that celebrities need fans and ordinary people (or at least less extraordinary people) in order to be considered celebrities and the fans get some sort of emotional and/or intellectual stimulation/satisfaction from celebrities. On the other hand a weird kind of one-sided relationship -or virtual relationship- develops. Through a celebrity's "art" (or at least their product) and experiencing their public persona via various interviews and Celebrity Gossip Media (be it magazine or insufferable TV program like ETalk or Entertainment Tonight or TMZ or some other such bullshit) the fans -and really the general public due to the pervasive nature of media now- "get to know" said celebrity and develop an emotional bond with him or her.
Even though we have never met these movie stars or musicians we begin to feel like we know them, even though we couldn't possibly because we have never met them or interacted with them in any way. What we are actually doing is constructing a character based on the information we are given and compiling a compilation of traits that we associate with a series of images we see on the screen. We're creating characters. We construct narratives for these personas that are based on (key concept here) real people then we work these narratives into our our own personal narratives through our emotional responses to what these characters produce and what they "do" and say in their "real lives."
But here's the real kicker. While these relationships with celebrities we've never met are objectively Virtual they are subjectively Real insofar as that they provoke actual emotional responses in the minds of fans who have invested emotionally in these relationships. And that makes them Real. The only Reality that matters is perspective -both personal and collective- so while the fact that Justin Bieber is currently dating Selena Gomez is of no concern to most free-thinking citizens, to a teenage girl with fantasies of dating Bieber this is potentially crushing news, even though the fantasy may and probably will still manifest in some way. But the emotional response was real and that's all that's important. It matters if it matters to you.
It's like a metamorphosis. The Virtual is cocooned in emotion until it becomes Real. It's one of the reasons that celebrity deaths affect (some of) us so much. Even though we mean (literally) nothing to them through the lens of the media we have (vitually) come to know them so when they die the personas we have constructed based on the also die and we feel a (real) peronal loss.
And even though I am aware of the nature of this bond I not only continue to engage in it, I relish in it. It brings me great (potentially perverse?) pleasure to love and hate these unstrangers who probably have nothng more in common with me than the fact I have seen them on my TV and read about them on the Internet. I suppose it could be considered a double-edged sword, but that implies some kind of negative consequence for me, which I don't really think is the case because even when I hate a celebrity, deep down I still derive some kind of twisted pleasure from the hating. Just the sheer visceralness of the whole thing. Misery loves company and we love misery.
Like most people I tend to take the decisions of celebrities far more personally than I probably should. This is especially true of celebrities whose work I actually enjoy. I don't know Christopher Nolan personally, but for making THE DARK KNIGHT I am eternally grateful and if we ever met I would happily partake in any Heracles-style Labour that he sent me to do short of sucking his no-doubt gargantuan dick. (Oh, who am I kidding...) More than that, I actually felt joy at his success as the media kept posting the record-breaking numbers. I was totally stoked when THE DARK KNIGHT broke the1 billion gross mark even though I would never see a cent of that money. I got satisfaction from all of the critical acclaim the movie garnered him and his accomplishment not only of making one of the greatest films of all time, but also lending legitimacy to an entire genre of movies.
Conversely it always hurts when a celebrity that you like makes some piece of shit. It feels like some kind of personal betrayal. How could he do this to me? But more importantly: why? Perhaps one of the greatest betrayals came from none other than the Big Guy himself. That's right, I'm talking about George Lucas.
George Lucas is a strange enough idiom in and of himself. He's become a living contradiction: paradox incarnate. As the creator of STAR WARS he has created one of the most pervasive and important cultural texts in the last century. The intertext between the STAR WARS universe and modern pop-culture is so cemented that they have now become inexorably linked. Referenes to STAR WARS now pervade our culture to the point where fictional characters and technology have become incorporated into household vocabulary. Even people who have never seen a STAR WARS movie (I know, I know) or -even worse- have seen them but aren't fans understand these references. Han Solo. Yoda. Light Saber. My the Force be with you. Why the hell do I know who IG-88 was? It boggles my mind sometimes. George Lucas is one of the few people who not only influenced our culture but actually shifted it's tragectory. I don't even know if there is currently a cultural presence more pervasive than STAR WARS, or if there ever will be in the near future. Even if you're not a fan of the movies or -perhaps more importantly- the merchandise, if you take a look at cultural texts around you, you will see these intertextual references popping off of te page or screen.
Now here's where everything gets screwy. Even as George Lucas is the creator of this vast cultural empire (pardon the pun) he is also his own antithesis. This is kind of poetic, and also kind of sad. And at times, kind of frustrating. As much as George Lucas contributed to our culture, and as much as he became this icon, he also seemed intent on destroying his credebility as an "artist" and a rational human being. In seemingly complete defiance of all conventional logic George took one of the most beloved movie franchises in movie history and seemed to do everything in his power to undermine them and himself with his trilogy of prequels starting all the way back in 1999 with THE PHANTOM MENACE.
I'm not going to get into all the nitpicky details about why the Prequel Trilogy was far, far worse than the Original Trilogy, but even as an uninterested party watching all six of these movies it would be easy to see the decline in quality in the prequels. In general there was a heavy reliance on special effects to make up for a lack of quality storytelling (a perfect illustration of the difference between "pioneering" and "beating to death"), convoluted plotlines, wooden acting, and an all-around sense of lack of direction. And Jar-Jar Binks. To this very day I still can't tell if George Lucas is some kind of Malevolent Entity bent on torturing mankind, or a Supreme Being testing our faith. Neither one would surprise me.
I think what the STAR WARS prequels indicated was something fans had suspected for some time, but out of respect to their Messiah had not dared utter: George Lucas is not that great a director. This may seem like blasphemy, and I know there are some out there who will throw AMERICAN GRAFITTI and THX: 1138 back at me as examples of his directorial prowess, however I will still be willing to concede absolutely nothing (except that their dick-sucking abilities are probably superb). I'm a fan of those two movies as well, but they only further emphasize he point that Lucas is no maverick director. As a director he is adequate at best. If you look at the Original STAR WARS Trilogy and I mean really watch with a critical eye, I think the weakest one cinematically was the original STAR WARS. Most fanboys will maintain that THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is far and away the best STAR WARS movie (for me a very close second to RETURN OF THE JEDI) and despite so much inexplicable hatred for Ewoks that RETURN OF THE JEDI is also a better movie than STAR WARS. I'm not saying this to malign the original, because it was ground-breaking both narratively (well, not original, but innovative) and technically and captured the hearts and imaginations of several generations and without it we never would have had the subsequent movies. I only draw the comparison to make a point.
And the poin is this: while George Lucas is undoubtedly a visionary with a vivid imagination and a creative mind he is not a director. I think what George Lucas is good at is big ideas, but he has trouble working out the small details and navigating the nuances of translating his ideas onto the screen. I think it can generally be agreed upon by fans and nonfans alike that the two best STAR WARS movies were the ones that weren't directed by Lucas.
And this really sucks balls.
As a fan of STAR WARS you can't help but be a fan of the entity who created it, despite any later attempts to alienate you. (STAR WARS CHRISTMAS SPECIAL anyone...?) And as a fan of George Lucas I couldn't help but try to forgive what I thought was shitty about the STAR WARS prequels (especially ATTACK OF THE CLONES) and found myself in the (oftentimes) unenviable position of defending what I thought were mediocre movies just on principle alone. Celebrity is a strange beast. Even while defending his work both to others and myself, I still felt the need to exonerate George Lucas in my own mind for his heinous crimes against humanity (midichlorians? WTF?). You've probably found yourself wishing at some point in your fan-life that the object of your fandom wasn't responsible. There must have been some other explanation, no matter how bizarre. At times I found myself wishing that it was all just a terrible nightmare and that George Lucas couldn't have been responsible for the Prequels. And now, thanks to YouTube I have an alternate, completely viable explanation as to what happened to bring about the STAR WARS Prequels in the form of a faux-trailer for GEORGE LUCAS STRIKES BACK which is loosely based onthe plot of OLDBOY.
There's tons of great little jokes like George Lucas getting upset at being labled "totally lame" by the media, his outrage over midichlorians, "I'm a businessman on my cell phone!," Darth Maul doing blow, assembling his team including Princess Leia, an older, rounder Short Round, and Chewbacca, Short Round's outrage over some clone trooper's admitted admiration of the new INDIANA JONES MOVIE, Greedo (not) shooting first, George Lucas fighting ninjas, clone troopers and Jar Jar, and several great lines like:
Princess Leia: "How do you take down an empire like that?"
George Lucas: "You shoot first."
Princess Leia: "It's OK, George, even good directors make bombs once in a while"
George Lucas: "But mine go boom."
Anyway, after basically describing the whole fucking video for you just check it out below. I found it quite hilarious and I hope you derive some pleasure out of the truth about what really happened in a galaxy far, far away...
On November 27 / 2010 the world of film lost one of the most influencial and lesse known directors of our time. Irvin Kershner, known to the geek community the world over as the director of one of the most influencial science fiction films ever and arguably (but not by me) the best STAR WARS film THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Although George Lucas will forever be hailed as the creator of STAR WARS and he has some pretty fucking cool ideas (I mean, who the fuck wouldn't want a light saber?) I think it can generally be agreed that he's pretty shitty at actually directing movies. I won't deny old George his own achievements and the undeniable influence he's had on the collective consciousness of humanity but I don't think his vision would have come to (the same level of) fruition without the involvement of Mr. Kershner. I don't know what magical combination of events lead to te awesomeness that is EMPIRE but it is undeniable that Irvin Kershner was a big part of that magic. He helped create one of the most seminal pieces of science fiction of the 20th century, but to me that's not his legacy. Or at least, not all of it.
To me Irvin Kershner's career is the ultimate embodiment of kharmic redistribution. He directed one of the most iconic movies of his (or any) generation, but then he also directed one of the shittiest. The same man who directed the superb and influential THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK also directed ROBOCOP 2, one of the worst movies I've ever had the displeasure of watching. He also directed NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, easily of the worst Bond movies ever, and definitely one of the worst movies ever. I mean ROBOCOP 2 and NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN aren't at the very bottom of the barrel, but they're pretty fucking close. This is not a bad thing, though. His amazing success and subsequent failures make Irvin Kershner's career and life almost mythic. It's as if, like Achilleus, Kershner was given a choice by the gods themselves: Make a lifetime of mediocre movies with moderate financial success but be lost in the deserts of history, or make one of the most important movies of your generation and be cursed to make some of the shittiest and have your name live forever amongst nerds around the world.
Irvin Kershner was lucky. I would consider myself lucky if I only produced one game-changing cultural work and then produce nothing but garbage in comparison. Because the thing is even though he directed ROBOCOP 2, when I hear the name Irvin Kershner I think EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Kharma is a funny thing. I always wondered if Neil Young was right about it being better to burn out than to fade away. Irvin Kershner was one of the lucky few: he was able to do both. May the Force be with you, Irvin Kershner.
