Rise of Skywalker (JJ Abrams, 2019)

Recyclable Skywalker

Finally, the last installment of this third trilogy that George Lucas a long time ago in an era far far away once cobbled together, from Flash Gordon serials, The Adventures of Robin Hood, World War 2 fighter plane footage (particularly The Dam Busters) and most of all Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (with a brief callback to Yojimbo). The capstone to his grand edifice of a fantasy* franchise if you like.

Does the movie live up to all expectations?

Rogue One (Garth Edwards, 2016)

The dirty half dozen

(Warning: story and plot twists discussed in explicit detail!) 

Gareth Edwards' one-off take on arguably the most successful movie franchise ever--good? Bad? Iredeemably ugly?

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

(Warning: plot twists and story discussed in detail)  

The Forced Turducken

Ingredients:


One (1) putrefying carcass of once-popular movie franchise.

One (1) fanatic fan base composed of millions of acolytes (cerebral cortex removed).

One (1) director fast becoming better-known for rebooting tired old series than original projects.

One (1) evil empire bent on dominating the minds of youths all over the world. 

The Phantom Menace (George Lucas, 1999)

Why this old piece? This is how I see it--if Lucas sees fit to recycle his works, I should be able to recycle my old article about this piece of garbage.  

So without further ado--

The world according to Lucas

   
The Phantom Menace has performed its relentless marketing blitz on the world, and lo and behold, it has reaped the whirlwind. Time Magazine called it "The Phantom Movie;" Newsweek was equally unenthusiastic. Salon Magazine (possibly the biggest of the web magazines), says Star Wars fans deserve better; Film Threat's Chris Gore and Ron Wells both give it only one or two stars; David Ehrenstein writes: "How does it suck? Let me count the ways…." Magisterial film critic Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic had this to say: "I still haven't seen an SF film as good as the best science fiction that I've read."

It would be tempting to go against the critics; they have too much stuffed up their alimentary canals, and I think it needs clearing. Kauffmann, for one, cites Isaac Asimov, C.M. Kornbluth, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Frederick Pohl as some of that "science fiction that I've read." Pohl and Kornbluth are fine choices, sure; Bradbury, perhaps, (though nowadays he reads like an adolescent boy pumped full of estrogen), Clarke is stretching it, but Asimov? Kauffmann is caught in a time warp; for him it's still the sixties, science fiction means John Campbell of "Astounding" stories, and Michelangelo Antonioni is the greatest filmmaker who ever lived. 

It would be tempting to go against the critics--but I've seen the film and am forced to concur: The Phantom Menace is a mess. The film when not showcasing some chase scene or the other meanders here and there; the characters--even the human ones--feel computer-generated. Nothing involves you in this picture, not even the special effects: when you see the computer-generated backgrounds of great forests and underwater cities and floating buildings, it doesn't give you the tingle of awe you get from, say, the first shot of Los Angeles in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. It lacks the charge of a visionary filmmaker.

What could you expect from Lucas, who famously hasn't directed a film for over twenty years? He may have taken his time like Terence Malick, but Malick has since come up with The Thin Red Line--a film that looks like nothing ever made, and probably ever will (for a few years, anyway). The way Phantom Menace looks--in a word, expensive--by the end of next year at least five other films with equally large budgets will occupy the public's memory. 

That Lucas is an overrated director shouldn't have to be stated out loud--it's embarrassingly obvious. THX1138 has good visuals, but a banal story; American Graffiti may be his most heartwarming, but is basically his autobiography (cinematographer Haskell Wexler gives the film its welcoming, neon-warm colors). Star Wars was the product of Marcia Lucas' (the former Mrs.) brilliant editing and John Williams swooningly romantic score. And yes, it did have a well-shaped story by Lucas--lifted from Akira Kurosawa. Empire Strikes Back is probably the single best work he's ever done, but that was written by Leigh Brackett, a veteran scriptwriter, and directed by Irving Kershner, a master filmmaker. Don't get me started about Return of the Jedi--no one I know likes those ridiculous Ewoks. 

The story--about trade embargos and wars waged by robots ('Droids, they call them)--is complicated, but not impossible to follow: Empire Strikes Back had an even more misshapen story structure, and a dangling, second-act finish to boot; it's how the story is developed. Lucas totally misjudges his characters: Jar-Jar Binks is incomprehensible and irritating (judging from public reaction, he's about as popular as the Ewoks). Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) poses and preens as queen, when she's not acting the token female sidekick handmaiden (translation: totally useless). She does come up with some useful strategies towards the end, giving them the viceroy and the game--which only begs another question: what's the purpose of Anakin Skywalker, a.k.a. Darth Vader, hotdogging around in a fighter and destroying the Droid ship then? More bang for the bucks, of course.

The film might have worked, given a good actor playing the soon-to-be Star Wars villain. But Jake Lloyd as Anakin (he's called "Ani," which makes you wonder if that particular trauma was what triggered him to go over to the Dark Side) is your standard Hollywood cute kid. There's nothing dark to this tow-headed tyke, no texture to him, no anger; you can't see him growing up to become a member of Melrose Place," much less a future Sith Lord. He's called a "slave" but slavery for this kid consists of tinkering with robots and rocket engines--which is what he wants in the first place (maybe if his slavemaster--a bulbous-nosed alien cockroach--looked at him with covetous eyes…but I forget, in the Star Wars universe, human sexuality doesn't exist). He risks his life in "pod racing"--a lift from William Wyler's chariot race in Ben Hur"--and his mother lets him, just like that. 

It's as if Lucas has a story all right--he just keeps forgetting about those damned inconvenient humans. The cast and crew of Star Wars complained about Lucas' ineptness with actors; Lucas himself has admitted he wants to digitize everything, from the backgrounds to the special effects, to specific creatures--and by implication, though he's careful not to say it out loud, to the human actors as well. The man's in a world of his own, playing with chess pieces of his own imagining, and he wants it to remain that way.

True, millions of people want to follow him into that world; it's a tribute, I think, to the simple power of Star Wars, the evocative mythmaking of Empire, and the millions (maybe billions) of dollars spent on marketing money and merchandise tie-ins. Never mind that almost half the ideas in that world were filched elsewhere--from Joseph Campbell to Flash Gordon to, again, Kurosawa (Queen Amidala posing as handmaiden to "learn about the world" was basically purloined from The Hidden Fortress). Lucas plays his pipes, and all the lemmings--I mean, children--must follow him into the drink.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote a story called "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." It's about an imaginary world called Tlon, found in the pages of an encyclopedia. Soon, references to it pop up everywhere, where none existed before; objects from its culture are found, and ruins from its civilization are dug up. An entire set of its encyclopedia is uncovered, detailing its society, arts, fiction, philosophies. 

Everyone starts dropping his own pursuit, and entering into the study of this created universe; obsession with all things Tlon becomes rampant. The all-too-short story ends with the chilling words: "The world will be Tlon." On reflection that might have been a preferable fate: I would have liked to have lived in a world created by hundreds of artists, scientists, philosophers (and behind them all, the overarching genius of Borges). Lucas, with his simple (and square)-minded vision and  marketing millions, is all set to do the same thing to this world--and do it sooner than you think.

First published in Businessworld, approximately June 1999 

What if Robert Towne had written "The Empire Strikes Back?"

Skywalker crawls away from Vader who follows, looming over his prone form. "Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father."

"He told me enough!" Luke yelled. "He told me you killed him!"

"No. I am your father."

Skywalker without thinking about it whips his lightsabre handle across Vader's mask. CLANG!

In a shaky voice: "I am your brother."

CLANG!  

"Your father."

CLANG!

"Your brother."

CLANG!

"Your father, your brother..."

CLANG!

"Your father and your brother!"

Luke's arm freezes. Vader with faceplate dented looks at him, trembling. "Your sister Leia and I...understand? Or is it too tough for you?" 

With apologies to Mr. Towne.

Star Wars: the Clone Wars (Dave Filoni, 2008)

Cloned Wars

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Dave Filoni, 2008) sucks. How much? Think of the business end of a vacuum cleaner; think a boat caught in a giant maelstrom; think a spaceship tipping into a black hole's event horizon.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars stinks. How much? Think pig carcass stuck in a car in summer heat (I happen to have been watching a replay of Mythbusters). Gas masks and biohazard equipment, for the record, are ineffective at countering a stench this vile.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is hateful. How hateful? I'm seriously considering whether or not I would rather undergo a root canal without anesthesia than watch this again.

It's basically the story of--but I won't bore you with the details. Painful enough trying to piece things together from the mindnumbingly dull narration, the at times pretentious-sounding dialogue (which had all the fizz and verve of flat Coke), the at other times ridiculously childish banter (George Lucas' screenplays have this odd disconnect--it's as if he had written an endless historical epic full of elderly statesmen debating economic and political issues, a junky B-movie script about a band of lobotomized smart-aleck adventurers who try at witty dialogue, and had accidentally mixed their pages together).

The character design--well, Lucas is on record as wanting a look reminiscent of Japanese anime and the 'Supermarionation' of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. By way of review: Japanese anime is designed to use flash and visual impact to disguise the reduced number of frames per second of the animation (frames per second determining the smoothness of an animated figure's motions); 'Supermarionation' is basically stringed puppets brought to life (and more or less enchanting the pants off of a select (and rather lucky) group of kids)--any possible appeal it possesses comes from the brassy music score (you often didn't know whether to listen or march to the music) and the solid, incredibly detailed sets the marionettes pretend to walk around in. Combining anime with 'Supermarionation' successfully combines the worst of both worlds: the clunkiness of Japanese anime (usually hidden by quick editing and various musical and visual punctuations (bursting lights, wind-ruffled hair; blaring music)), the woodenness of marionettes.

Actually, I'd like to pipe up a moment on behalf of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Yes, they basically cooked up silly puppet shows to foreground their incredibly modelwork(the Thunderbirds sequences featuring Tracy Island with its tilting coconut trees (to make room for Thunderbird 2's wings), its swimming pool that slid to one side (Thunderbird 1's exit point) are worth the price of admission (all right, it's TV) right there), but the marionettes were not totally inexpressive--they could lift a hand just so to suggest puzzlement, confusion, just a hint of depression; they could shake their heads and imply desperately conflicting desires; they could hold absolutely still and you'd swear there was a malevolent glint in the corner of a villain's eye. Comparing Lucas' Clone Wars characters to Gerry and Sylvia's rather entertaining efforts is actually an insult--they deserve better.

I'd mentioned the dialogue. The mix of highflown exposition and lowdown comedy is generally regarded as part of the charm (saw the movies again and no, the charm hasn't aged well); I possibly wouldn't have minded this particular screenplay so much if it wasn't for the fact that half the story and dialogue's been recycled, not once but several times throughout the movies--when Anakin is stuck on the planet Christophsis, for example, he's forced to deal with yet another shield generator (what is it with these things that makes them so damned popular? They haven't done squat for anyone who actually used them); after completing his mission he's basically sent on yet another rescue (Star Wars and the opening of Return of the Jedi, anyone?); and while the phrase "I've got a bad feeling about this" is missing from this picture (the first Star Wars movie ever to do so), any number of other worn-out phrases (yes, even "I've got a bad feeling" felt tired way back in the '80s) are repeated ad nauseam (Anakin is described as "a new hope" or "their only hope;" opponents are taunted with "you'll have to do better than that;" a villain's presence is detected thanks to "a disturbance in the Force").

It doesn't help that where the heroes aren't lackluster they're downright annoying--take Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), Anakin Skywalker's new padwan, or apprentice; not five minutes from setting foot on the planet she's already sassing Anakin (Matt Lanter, making no particular effort at capturing the especially unparticular voice of Hayden Christensen) and talking like a Queen Bee. Jabba the Hutt had his gross charms in the otherwise charmless Return of the Jedi (1983), but here (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson) he resembles nothing more and nothing less than a large turd; in which case his son Rotta the Hut (David Acord) resembles a large dingleberry (if you google that word, check slang definitions), and his effeminate uncle Ziro the Hutt (Corey Burton) a turd produced by someone who'd been eating purple yams.

(Ziro incidentally, is an offensive stereotype--so if someone coded purple with a woman impersonator's voice, does this mean he's perverted, treacherous, untrustworthy? Anyone looked at Lucas' movies lately? His most forthrightedly gay character, See-Threepio (Anthony Daniels) is an ineffectual buffoon, meant to act as comic relief and foil to the more manly (if diminutive (not putting down short folks, just noting the negative connotations Lucas inserts)) Artoo-Detoo)

The movie's generally considered to be the pilot to an animated series to be shown on Cartoon Network later this year. Now pilots are usually created to test a series; if the pilot did well ratingwise and with the critics, the series was approved; if it didn't, the series wasn't. I more or less have an idea of what most critics think (in a word: "Fpthtpthpthpthpthpthpthpth!") and it's on record as the first ever Star Wars movie that failed to open the weekend at number one--does this mean we're to be spared the TV series? Desperate minds want to know.

(First published in Businessworld, 8.22.08)

Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas, 2005)

This post is part of the Star Wars 30th Anniversary (and boy do I regret most of those years) Blogathon


A piece of Sith

Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo
Tell me that you love me and your love is still true.
You saw the Phantom mess, the Clones waded through
Don't leave while you got a dollar left to woo.

I've done all you wanted, what's left for me to say?
Double the action, thrice the CGI frappe.
Even got Tom Stoppard to make the drama play
(Though did he make a diff'rence? Can't tell either way)

Don't the FX matter, the ships that go "wheet!"?
Don't all that magma heat the soles of your feet?
Don't the colored flashlights send tingles up your seat?
Wasn't all that money spent good enough a treat?

Even put a polit'ckal subtext in for free
'Bout how "if not a friend, then you're my enemy"
Michael Moore it ain't, but wait a week or three--
My inbox'll fill with right-wing calumny.

My bro Coppola got me a dialogue coach
'Cuz he knows I'd rather handle a robot roach
So what if I let Hayden in his worries poach?
Humans are always so damned hard to approach.

But enough! I've called in the real big guns now;
Recycled the best stuff from Star Wars, and how:
Like that double-sunset, and James Earl Jones' voice--wow!
Can't you tell that I'll do anything for thou?

Don't you say that we're all done, that we are through
Four movies, and I still can't get through to you.
What do you expect, when I can't even spell "poo?"
Please--hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo


5/20/05

Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones (George Lucas, 2002)

(This post is part of the Star Wars 30th Anniversary (and boy do I regret most of those years) Blogathon)

Interview with a Jedi

(We are pleased to bring you an exclusive interview via internet of Jedi Master Yoda, one of the oldest knights of the Jedi Council, on his latest (second earliest, if counted chronologically) picture, Attack of the Clones...)