In pop
culture’s pantheon, Star Wars may reign supreme, challenged nowadays
only by the MCU, but in my personal pantheon of media juggernauts I’ve always
favored Star Trek. Exploring strange new worlds and seeking new life and
civilizations has always engaged my imagination far more than fighting in a
galaxy far, far away. Still, I won’t deny enjoying Star Wars’ popcorn
fun, at least insofar as the Original Trilogy (OT) is concerned. I retain an
affinity for the iconic characters that have loomed larger-than-life over
popular storytelling, and keep a DVD set of the OT on my shelf to watch again
when the mood strikes me. But as more and more content is added to the Star
Wars universe, the more the OT is the general limit to my appreciation. As
a vast media empire, Star Wars has come to embody everything I find
annoying and alienating about franchises – the endless churn of product, risk-averse
storytelling overly dependent on nostalgia, the collision of creative visions. It
appeals to the dark side of fandom, where marketing influences artistic
decisions by giving consumers what they want rather than engaging them with
stories told with integrity and respect for authorial intent.
The Force
Is Definitely Not With The Sequel Trilogy
While the Prequel
Trilogy (PT) left me unimpressed, but not necessarily closed off to further Star
Wars stories, it’s the misguided Sequel Trilogy (ST) that ultimately drained
the force out of any interest, however casual, I might have in anything further
Disney wants to sell. The best thing I can say about The Force Awakens
is that it looks professional, which isn’t saying much because I’d expect
nothing less given the money thrown at it. While I’ve never felt that J.J.
Abrams offers any particularly visionary directing, let alone a substantive
understanding of the franchises he works with, I won’t deny the polish he
brings to his films. If nothing else, The Force Awakens is a technical improvement
over George Lucas’ awkward filmmaking in his prequel trilogy. Beyond that,
however, I couldn’t be more mystified by the critical consensus that yields a 93%
fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes. While the film introduces mostly interesting
new characters – Finn is particularly notable as an off-template character, a
Stormtrooper who rebels against his masters as a matter of conscience –, these
are smothered by a story that yields no surprises in its development on account
of being so derivative of A New Hope. Sure, Abrams may have intended to
play off the new characters against the mythology of the original, as he
asserts in an interview with Rolling
Stone: “… to tell a story that was not just history repeating itself,
but a story that embraced the movies that we know as the actual history of this
galaxy.” But how disingenuous. Cf course he tells a story of history
repeating itself. All the events from the OT are repeated and rendered moot –
the New Republic is easily (and glibly) dispatched in a single blast by a long-range
weapon powered by ridiculous physics – and the attempt to exploit its iconic
characters to excite fans only comes across as a depressing attempt to replace
the old originals with passable replicas not beholden to Lucas’ vision. To
offer an analogy: it’s like replacing checkers with chess pieces on the board
only to continue playing checkers.
It’s not
only in the broad and derivative gestures of the narrative that The Force
Awakens sets a poor stage for the sequel trilogy; it’s in the details too,
those small character-defining moments. The most memorably stupid one is the
scene in which Kylo Ren tries to Vulcan mind-meld with Rey to extract
information, only for it to backfire and reveal his own greatest fear. You’d
think that the revelation would be something psychologically insightful, the
key piece of the puzzle that is Kylo’s motivation for serving Snoke and the
First Order from the Dark Side of the Force. Perhaps a deep alienation from
humanity, a fear of parental abandonment, his inability to find someone to lose
his virginity to – give me something! But no. What we’re given as his great
inner fear is his worry that’s he’ll never be as powerful as Darth Vader. Kylo’s
character never recovers from this missed opportunity to uncover an essential
insight into his personality and inner conflicts. As a result, the consequences
of his actions – notably, murdering his dad – ultimately comes across as
pathetic and gratuitous rather than tragic. Rather than a villain whose
fascistic pursuit of power has a deeply personal impact on his family, we get a
weirdly entitled kid who whines and throws temper tantrums. Sorry, critical
consensus: botching key dramatic moments and telling a derivative story just doesn’t
add up to a good film, irrespective of its entertainment value (or lack
thereof).
If I had any
hope that The Last Jedi might prove more persuasive, it came from my
enthusiasm for Rian Johnson as writer and director. And for the movie’s first
third, I absolutely did feel that rush of exhilaration comparable to the fun of
watching the OT. If nothing else, Johnson at least succeeded, where The
Cashgrab Awakens failed, in surprising me with a wholly original plot that isn’t
photocopied from past film scripts. Even better, he introduced some genuinely
new themes into the storyline, namely the conflict between economic classes
(via Finn and Rose’s mission to the Monte Carlo-like casino town of Canto
Blight) and a perspective of the Force from outside of the Skywalker family. I also applauded his revelation that Rey’s
parents are actually no one of mythic or historic significance, an intriguing subversion
of fan expectations and a further view of the Force beyond the Skywalkers. It’s
unfortunate that these ideas landed rather awkwardly given a lack of setup from
The Force Awakens and, worse, died quietly off screen with The Rise
of Skywalker. But Johnson deserves credit for at least trying to offer a
richer context to the conflict between the First Order and the Resistance.
I entirely
reject his treatment of Luke Skywalker, however. It’s bad enough that the
sequel trilogy essentially erases the events and outcome of the OT and replaces
them with facsimiles, but Johnson leans into this revisionism by reversing
Luke’s character development in Return of the Jedi. I understand that ROTJ
isn’t a fan favorite like The Empire Strikes Back, but whatever its
overall merits, its climax is much more subversive than people typically think.
Luke not only senses the good in his father, unlike Yoda and Obi-Wan, but
actively relies on it in a plan for redemption. At first, it seems like his
faith is misplaced, as Vader does bring him in front of the Emperor, the Dark
Side’s most fearsome and powerful embodiment. For a time, it seems as if Luke
will indeed succumb to rage and fall to the Dark Side as he duels his father.
But a moment of empathy, arising from the realization that he severed his
father’s hand just as his was severed, pulls him from the brink. In refusing to
continue the duel, he once again allows his (purposeful, it seems to me) vulnerability
to draw his father back to the light side, which is what happens when Vader
kills the Emperor to save his son. So what do we get? We get an ending that not
only shows Luke confronting a supremely powerful evil, but using an approach to
being a Jedi that is markedly different than Yoda’s and Obi-Wan’s. This is hard
to reconcile with the character Johnson gives us, a Luke who can be so
terrified of the Dark Side that he’d reflexively consider murdering not
only a student, but the son of his best friends. The problem is further
compounded in that this single moment, which is all the less believable given
how empty Kylo Ren’s character is, unravels everything about Luke and renders
him an utter failure at, well, everything. For all that time after Return of
the Jedi, Luke is given no accomplishments – no new generation of Jedi, no
new Republic to support, not even his friendships, which only highlights how bizarre
it is for Johnson’s ending to ask us to see Luke as a symbol of hope to the
galaxy.
Johnson’s
vision for Luke does have its supporters. Daniel Finney presents one in an
article at the Des
Moines Register, citing a University of Iowa playwriting instructor who
pushed back against his “hate” for The Last Jedi:
"It
blew up some of the sacred cows of the 'Star Wars' universe," she said.
"Characters developed, grew and changed. That was so satisfying to
watch."
Gogerty
argues that Luke's temptation to kill his nephew fits the arc of Luke's life.
He's always rushed in when he should have waited.
Gogerty
noted Luke disobeyed Yoda in "The Empire Strikes Back," taking his
weapons into the cave to face the dark side projection of Darth Vader.
Luke
abandoned his training early to rescue his friends on Cloud City despite Yoda's
admonishment he wasn't ready to fight Darth Vader.
That
rashness cost him a hand.
"Luke
has always been pretty impressed with himself," Gogerty said. "It
makes sense that he would give into a moment of darkness when he was frightened
by a vision of his nephew turning to the dark side."
Setting
aside the question as to why people seem so eager to see Luke dismantled, and
whether it’s an exercise in cynicism or not, interpretations like Gogerty’s
don’t persuade me to change my opinion of The Last Jedi because they
don’t strike me as a good fit with what we see on screen. It’s a strange
argument to advocate for Johnson’s “change” in Luke by returning to his
character in The Empire Strikes Back and ignoring his subsequent
personal growth – let’s even call it spiritual growth, since understanding the
Force, light and dark, and handling it with skill is surely what defines a Jedi
Master. Luke clearly evolves from The Empire Strikes Back to Return
of the Jedi, growing from an arguably rash apprentice to a patient, calmer,
more spiritually courageous, and more assured planner. Indeed, insofar as there
is any character development in the OT it’s in the hero’s journey Luke
experiences. Even Yoda, who criticized Luke for abandoning his training in
Empire and rushing unprepared to face Vader, eventually tells Luke in Return
of the Jedi that no further training is needed and that he must confront
Vader to truly become a Jedi. Yoda’s acknowledgement of Luke’s growth makes it
all the more disappointing when Johnson brings him back to push a spiritually
defeated Luke into action in a scene that plays back the teacher-student
dynamic in The Empire Strikes Back and essentially emphasizes Luke’s
failures. But while the scene makes some sense in terms of Johnson’s
characterization, it rests on a rather unsteady reading of Yoda’s character,
and Obi-Wan’s by association, as a wise Jedi in the OT. Is that really what we
see, the impetuous Luke disregarding his teacher’s sage counsel as proof of his
life’s arc of rash action? Consider an alternative interpretation. On sensing
that his friends are in trouble, his moral intuition is to do what any good
friend would do: try to help. Yoda reacts, not by offering to go along and
help, but with a disapproving attitude and dubiously helpful advice. And what
about Obi-Wan, the man who told Vader “if you strike me down, I shall only
become more powerful?” Apparently, that translates to him telling Luke: “If
you choose to face Vader, you will do it alone. I cannot interfere.” Add to
that the blatantly manipulative withholding of information when it came to
being Vader’s son, I’d argue that neither Yoda nor Obi-Wan come across as
shining moral examplars. As for the consequences of Luke’s alleged
recklessness, while he clearly suffers from his encounter with Vader, what doesn’t
happen is just as notable as what does: he doesn’t join the Dark Side and
become the Empire’s new weapon, choosing suicide instead. Dark, sure. But not
without some nobility and perhaps even a long-term benefit. If his hand hadn’t
been severed, would Luke had felt a saving moment of empathy when he later cut
off his father’s hand? I’d argue that the premature confrontation with Vader ultimately
enabled the Rebel Alliance’s eventual victory, which makes Yoda’s warning – “If
you leave now, help them you could, but you will destroy all for which they
have fought and suffered” – quite wrong.
Given the
many ways in which Luke could have been included or simply referenced in The
Last Jedi and, previously, in The Force Awakens – the underlying
question is: why commit to a tragic and pessimistic characterization? Without
requiring perfection, noting that even great teachers may make mistakes or
simply not achieve the desired connection with students that makes learning
possible, Luke could still have been presented as a person whose life overall had
a positive and inspiring impact – especially in contrast to wishy-washy hand
wavers Yoda and Obi-Wan. (It’s worth noting Darren Mooney’s charitable reading
over at The
Escapist, but I personally agree with commenter Inkstained Wretch that the
equivalency between Yoda/Odi-Wan and Luke misreads the OT. More fundamentally, I
think The Last Jedi could have addressed the theme of exhaustion,
cynicism, and optimism in the context of vigilance against fascism, or perhaps
as an analogue to the struggles of civil rights movements, in a much better way
than it did, and with greater focus on Rey rather than Luke. If that was indeed
Johnson’s intended subtext.)
So we’re
stuck with tragic Luke leading into Rise of Skywalker, a film that
manages not only to insult intelligence but dumbness as well – as in, it
doesn’t even rate as good dumb fun. Sidelining Finn and Rose, effectively
ending their stories, is a wasted opportunity for interesting characters with
genuine potential, while Rey and Kylo’s stories amount to little more than
melodramatic mush. (Rey’s adoption of the Skywalker name, after it’s been
dragged through the muck in The Last Jedi, is a particularly sour cherry
on the film’s tasteless sundae.) Of
course, the crux of the movie’s is that somehow, Palpatine returns. I’d point
out how the franchise tends to give the Sith all kinds of novel powers while
Jedi seem limited to tricking minds, levitating objects, and telling the truth
from a certain point of view, but the Force has never been anything other than
an incoherent concept bendable to whatever scriptwriters want, a magic plot
device akin to a deus ex machina. Still, while the magically arbitrary
means of Palpatine’s return is ridiculous in and of itself, the decision itself
to revive Palpatine as the ultimate evil behind the First Order makes the film
worse and demonstrates bankrupt storytelling. In keeping with the ST’s
commitment to erasing the OT’s (few) accomplishments, Palpatine’s return
renders moot the victory Luke and Anakin achieve at the end of Return of the
Jedi. (And forget that whole balancing the Force thing from the prequels.) It
also takes deprives Supreme Leader Snoke from a deeper characterization, even
if in a retroactive manner given his death in The Last Jedi. When
considered as a whole, the ST merely expresses the worse tendency of franchise
storytelling: compromising story, characters, and artistic vision by wallowing
in the past rather than focusing on new ideas – storytelling by committee and
marketing.
Looking
Back at the Original Trilogy
As much as I
can criticize Disney filmmakers, the root cause for the ST’s failure, in my
view, actually rests with the OT or, to be specific, with how it’s been
perceived and interpreted. I’m not alone
– see here and
here
–
in being skeptical of the perception that the OT films are great cinematic art,
noting they have many of the shortcomings that sunk other films. Sure,
the OT benefits from fantastic design. And many action scenes, like the Death
Star trench run and the Battle of Hoth, are energetic and engaging. But the OT
films don’t surpass earlier or later films in terms of cinematic experience and
the fight choreography is hardly groundbreaking even by the standards of the
time. Some scenes, like Obi-Wan and Vader’s duel in A New Hope or the
barge fight scene in Return of the Jedi, are fine, but hardly worth
getting overly excited about. Shaolin kung fu movies coming out of Hong Kong at
the time offer more kinetic and imaginative fight scenes than even the best
lightsaber duels in the OT.
Nevertheless, I’d agree that Star Wars generally
succeeds in providing a cinematic experience befitting the spirit of adventure
serials. It’s the quality of the writing that really doesn’t hold up to
scrutiny. To begin with, characterizations
are thin. Only Luke experiences meaningful growth, and arguably Vader although
his growth is less of an arc than a sudden epiphany. Han’s transition from
self-interested mercenary to team playing hero happens quickly in A New Hope
and doesn’t evolve much from there. Leia starts as a strong leader and ends a
strong leader. The romance between the two is rather incidental, requiring only
a few scenes to develop. Beyond that, most characters serve as set dressing and
fashion models, with great costume design but little personality let alone
impact on the narrative. Even those few given opportunities to utter some lines
of dialogue here and there, like Boba Fett, barely get to register as
personalities let alone characters with psychological depth.
As for the plot, that too is rather thin, with A New
Hope having more plot than The Empire Strikes Back and Return of
the Jedi combined. It’s rather interesting to consider how The Empire
Strikes Back is rated the best of the trilogy when its “story” consists of
rebels escaping from an Imperial assault, Luke going to Yoda for training, Leia
and Han on the run until they get captured, then another escape from the Empire
at the cost of Han’s capture. Without A New Hope, the film is
meaningless. Without Return of the Jedi, it’s incomplete. And while it
does have one of the trilogy’s most dramatic scenes, a scene does not a story
make. All in all, the OT is an example of sacrificing plot on the altar of
zippy action.
Plot isn’t the only sacrifice, though: so is
worldbuilding. The politics of the Empire and Rebellion are poorly explored. The
Force is nebulous hand-waving, at best, with no conceptual structure beyond
boiled fortune cookie utterances. (What is the Force? How does it work? Why is
it divided into such Manichean moral sides, and what is the psychology of Force
practitioners within this division? Perhaps it’s no surprise that the physics
of the Force are so poorly determined. After all, Lucas couldn’t even be
bothered with real physics in his space-based dogfights.) Even the dramatic impact
and moral contexts of key moments are glossed over in the rush to get to the
next action spectacle, Alderaan’s destruction being a prime example.
These shortcomings are not disparate, but rather symptomatic
of a deeper issue, namely, that Lucas’ vision for Star Wars has been
opportunistic rather than coherent and methodical. Compare Star Wars to
the depth of literary universes such as Dune and Lord of the Rings,
or comprehensively planned TV series like Babylon 5. There’s a clearly
visible difference between a series whose story and background details have
been methodically mapped out and a hodge-podge approach, however creative in
parts. Although to some extent it’s no different than the brainstorming any
creative goes through before finalizing a story, the many stories of the
various ideas Lucas considered and discarded offer some proof of this. For more
definitive proof, consider this:
Lucas commissioned sci-fi author Alan Dean Foster, who wrote the novelization
of A New Hope based on early script drafts, to write a sequel that could
be filmed on a lower budget if the first movie performed poorly at the box
office. That sequel was the novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, and its
significance isn’t only that it gave us an entirely different story direction
than The Empire Strikes Back, it highlights the extent to which Lucas
was perfectly content with outsourcing Star Wars to other people rather
than conceiving his own vision. And, crucially, allowing his vision to be
drastically altered by financial considerations. The Empire Strikes Back
and Splinter of the Mind’s Eye are the cinematic equivalent of A/B
testing in online advertising.
Assigning a Grade: B
Altogether,
the conclusion can only be that the OT is B-movie grade, a triumph of style
over substance. But to say that the OT movies are B-movies isn’t to say that
they’re bad entertainment or can’t be personally meaningful in some way.
Recognizing that a film’s entertainment value doesn’t necessarily correlate
with its quality, there’s no contradiction in viewing the OT as engaging but
superficial. That “B” isn’t a scarlet letter. After all, it’s not uncommon for
B-movies to connect with viewers, especially as cult cinema, while more
elevated award-winning fare may shine for a moment at the Academy Awards than take
a nap outside of pop culture’s spotlight. A movie doesn’t have to be profound
or exceptionally crafted to be relatable, inspirational, emotionally resonant,
or meaningful in some way.
Still, the perception
of the films as something they aren’t explains why attempts to fix the OT’s
shortcomings creak and groan from the strain to make the continuity work, a
common problem with franchises. Because with all the later retcons and reinterpretations
reinforcing what people want Star Wars to be rather than what Lucas present,
we see the franchise transformation from light swashbuckling adventure to Very
Serious Storytelling and, in my opinion, losing the quality of undemanding fun that
characterizes the OT. (The shift is almost like watching an Indiana Jones movie,
deciding that the Nazis need explaining as villains, and creating a spinoff
called Indiana Jones and the Rise of Hitler to show us why Nazism is
evil all the while doing some PR to rehabilitate Indy’s image as a less-than-heroic
figure.)
Rogue One
is a
tempting milestone for the decision to tell Very Serious (and Absolutely Not
B-Movie) Stories, given a downbeat ending that is far from the swashbuckling
happy ending heroism of the OT. But Lucas himself arguably changed course with
the Prequel Trilogy (PT) and its modeling of a liberal republic’s fall to
fascism, providing context and explanations for the state of that distant
galaxy leading to the events of the OT. As films, there are some aspects of the
PT I can appreciate despite shortcomings both technical (e.g. dialogue,
performances) and conceptual. The storyline spanning three films is more
cohesive and Lucas is generally effective at presenting a tragedy of
complacency, arrogance, and moral bankruptcy as the gateways for the corrupt
and destructive pursuit of power. If it weren’t for Hayden Christensen’s
unwatchable performances in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the
Sith, I might be open to rewatching the films despite the fact that I don’t
feel the PT is quite in continuity with the OT. (Given the skepticism expressed
by characters like Han Solo and Motti, my impression of the Force and Jedi
Knights in A New Hope is that for all that they might have been
guardians of peach and justice, they were less grandiose than their depiction
at the center of Republic power in the PT. But that’s just my impression.) In
any case, Anakin’s turn to the dark side and the Empire’s rise emerging from
systemic flaws in the Republic’s governance, combined with the critical failings
and misjudgments of a fossilized Jedi Order, makes the PT surprisingly bleak.
And bleak, of course, is quite tonally different from the jauntier OT,
especially when it stems from treating the subject matter with a greater
attention to realism.
We can draw
a line, then, from PT to Rogue One and, apparently, Andor. “One of
the things Andor is interested in is how people live under fascism, and how
fascism changes environments—natural, built, and social,” writes Abigail
Nussbaum at her Asking
the Wrong Questions blog. I’m inclined to wonder if – in addition to the
retcons, continuity fixes and rationalizations – the decision to start
exploring the workings of fascism is a sign that people don’t actually like the
OT very much. At the very least, the transition from fluffy adventure to
serious storytelling points to an identity crisis at the heart of what is,
fundamentally, military fiction. Torn between Lucas’ infantilized approach in
the OT, which strips the moral complexities and brutal realities to offer
kid-friendly fare, to the current impulse toward grittier, more complex
offerings, Star Wars is confused about its premise as a story of war and
violent conflict. Alan Dean Foster’s impression of Lucas offers some support to
this, as he
tells Yahoo Entertainment in response to his inclusion of a particular
gruesome massacre in Splinter of the Mind’s Eye: “George is a very
sensitive guy; I picked up on that from the moment I met him. That’s why, I
think, the Imperial troopers never take their helmets off [in the original
movies]. Because if you’re seeing people get shot all the time and their faces
are contorted in agony, it gives you a very different cinematic vibe than if
its just a figures in plastic helmets that all look the same. I don’t know
this, but I think that was a deliberate choice on George’s part to mitigate the
violence.”
This essential
confusion about depicting war raises cultural questions, such as: to what
extent is Star Wars an expression of Hollywood’s tendency to glamorize
war and repeat stories in which victory is achieved through the superior
application of violence? (How many people fantasize about being Jedi so they
can sit and meditate? Not nearly as many as those who dream of dueling with
lightsabers.)
Uncomfortable
moral questions aside, the tonal shift of later works, along with the attempt
to lean into thematic issues from a more adult perspective, points to a key
problem with franchise: the hijacking of an original creator’s story by other
people with their own ideas of how it should be told.
For my part,
then, I’m content with the Original Trilogy in all its B-movie glory. I can
excuse its lack of profundity on account of being simplified for the benefit of
younger viewers. I can also appreciate how the whole is more entertaining than
the superficial concepts of its parts. And when I really want a sequel,
especially in a franchise that’s become a choose-your-own-adventure, I can
always turn to the Dark Forces story, particularly the trilogy of
novellas by William C. Deitz based on the seminal game series. An excellent
example of how to do a sequel, Dark Forces works particularly well
because it introduces a new character, Kyle Katarn, whose journey only
marginally intersects with OT characters. After starting with a gift to fans, with
Katarn stealing the infamous Death Star plans, the plot takes off in its own direction,
backtracking to Katarn joining the Imperial Army under the belief his parents
were killed by the Rebellion, learning the truth about the Empire’s coverup, turning
Rebel-aligned mercenary, and eventually discovering his Jedi heritage while attempting
to stop a group of Dark Jedi from claiming a tremendous source of power. Aside
from being a snappy adventure, Dark Forces succeeds in justifying why the Jedi should
be perceived as forces for good, which is less about brute force but moral
perspective. Katarn proves to be a Jedi not because he’s better at violence
than his Dark Jedi opponent, but because for all his lifetime of cynicism he
can still bring compassion to bear in even the most difficult circumstances. The
clever way Dietz writes Katarn’s final duel with the Dark Jedi’s leader, Jerec,
for example, is an especially memorable demonstration that the light side of
the Force doesn’t have to be stronger than the dark in terms of raw power. It only
needs to approach the fight with an entirely different perspective in order to
win. And all without introducing new hand-waving mumbo-jumbo to magically solve
thorny plot points.
One Last,
and Very Important, Thing
So as Disney
churns out yet more Star Wars content, I have no regret about sitting on
the sidelines. The OT, Dark Forces – these are enough for me. But I will
end by pointing out an important topic I haven’t addressed: racism and the
challenge of diverse representation in Star Wars. There’s a lot to unpack
there, and I’d encourage you to read these articles from The
Playlist, Scientific
American and, especially, CHS
Globe Online.