{"id":321,"date":"2012-11-26T11:40:39","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T15:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=321"},"modified":"2012-11-26T11:44:31","modified_gmt":"2012-11-26T15:44:31","slug":"i-have-a-bad-feeling-about-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=321","title":{"rendered":"I Have a Bad Feeling About This"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, I\u2019m a movie fan and there are a lot of people who know I\u2019m a Star Wars <\/em>fan.\u00a0 Sort of.\u00a0 A former Star Wars <\/em>fan. \u00a0Well, a fan of Episodes 4, 5, and part of 6.<\/p>\n

I remember when Star Wars <\/em>came out in 1977, before it said A New Hope<\/em>, before anyone knew anything about it.\u00a0 (And trust me, doubters, on the original release date, it did not <\/em>say A New Hope<\/em>.\u00a0 This is why Episode IV will always be called Star Wars <\/em>to me, because that\u2019s the way it was originally billed.)<\/p>\n

And then Episode V came out, The Empire Strikes Back<\/em>.\u00a0 I was not as impressed with that one initially, but this is a film that holds up very well on repeated viewings.\u00a0 There may be some slow spots in it here and there, but overall, this is a great film.<\/p>\n

And then Episode VI came out.\u00a0 Half of it was great.\u00a0 The stuff with Luke and the Emperor.\u00a0 Good stuff.\u00a0 The stuff with Jabba the Hutt in the intro was pretty good.\u00a0 But the Ewoks.\u00a0 Oh, the Ewoks.\u00a0 They were obnoxiously cute, in a cloying 4-year-old way.\u00a0 That\u2019s exactly what they were intended to be, because Lucas himself had sold out to the Dark Side.\u00a0 In this case, it\u2019s not the Sith, but much darker: Merchandising.<\/p>\n

(By the way, I\u2019m going on 30+ years of reading about this franchise here.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to source this.\u00a0 It would take days, and I\u2019m not being paid.\u00a0 I\u2019ll stand by what I said.\u00a0 If you think I\u2019m an idiot, then so be it!\u00a0 Hi, Tom!) The original plan for Return of the Jedi <\/em>was to have a planet of the Wookiees instead of the Ewoks, which dramatically tied things together better.\u00a0 But Wookiees aren\u2019t as cute as Ewoks: Ewoks look like little teddy bears. \u00a0Ewoks sell better.<\/p>\n

So Lucas made more money from merchandising than he would have otherwise.\u00a0 It was a calculated move.\u00a0 The movie suffers for it.\u00a0 Jedi <\/em>reeks of cute for two full reels, and it stalls the story.<\/p>\n

Then we have another problem.\u00a0 Like it or not, Star Wars <\/em>is an epic.\u00a0 It\u2019s structured like an epic.\u00a0 Epics have themes.\u00a0 The theme of Star Wars <\/em>is \u201csometimes good people must die in order to forward a worthy cause.\u201d\u00a0 This is why Ben Kenobi dies in Episode IV.\u00a0 No one major dies in Episode V, but Han\u2019s death is up in the air.<\/p>\n

Harrison Ford has said many times that he felt that Han Solo should have died in Return of the Jedi<\/em>.\u00a0 From a dramatic and structural standpoint, he was right.\u00a0 Han Solo really has nothing to do in the story.\u00a0 Apparently, different drafts of the script had him dying either in the pit on Tattooine or the raid on the uncompleted Death Star.\u00a0 Lucas told Ford that there was no money in \u201cdead Han\u201d dolls, and that was the end of it.<\/p>\n

The movie suffers for it.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the problem: yes, it would have been sad to see Han go, just as it was sad to see Ben go, but for the sake of the story, and for the structure of the story, it was important.\u00a0 You might have been upset the first time you saw it, but it would make more sense to you as you thought about it.<\/p>\n

So I had mixed feelings about Episode VI, until I saw Episode I.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t tell you how much I hated The Phantom Menace<\/em>.\u00a0 I really, really, really hated it.\u00a0 There was nothing good about it.\u00a0 When a great actor like Liam Neeson turns in a bad performance, you know that something is wrong.\u00a0 I also knew that when we had the climactic chariot race from Ben Hur <\/em>in the middle <\/em>of The Phantom Menace<\/em>, that something was dead wrong.\u00a0 It\u2019s just called the pod race in Phantom<\/em>, but trust me, it\u2019s the same thing.\u00a0 (As a side note, Phantom Menace <\/em>was an early all-digital film, and I remember thinking that the trailers for it were out-of-focus.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t.\u00a0 It just looked like that.)<\/p>\n

Ultimately, I hated The Phantom Menace <\/em>so much that I wouldn\u2019t even see the next two entries in the series.\u00a0 I still haven\u2019t seen them.\u00a0 As a kid, I\u2019d loved the Star Wars <\/em>films, but these were lousy.\u00a0 I wondered for years how George Lucas had changed so much over the years to make such horrible films.\u00a0 I read various things.<\/p>\n

I came to one clear conclusion: George Lucas never changed.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t either.<\/p>\n

I read an interview with Martin Scorsese in which he recounts a screening of New York, New York<\/em>.\u00a0 Lucas told Scorsese that the movie would make a lot more money if Liza Minnelli and Robert DeNiro would end up together at the end.\u00a0 Scorsese countered that the movie wouldn\u2019t make any sense if that happened, and Lucas said, \u201cYeah, but it would make more money.\u201d<\/p>\n

That sums it up.\u00a0 The entire history of movies has been the struggle of Art vs. Commerce.\u00a0 Repetition and sameness are deadly for art, but they are the heart and soul of commerce.\u00a0 We go to McDonald\u2019s at midnight because we know that the Big Mac that we are buying is just the same as the one we had in Pittsburgh last week.\u00a0 They count on that.\u00a0 On the other hand, if you go to an art show and all the pictures are the same, you feel pretty cheated.\u00a0 Art is supposed to be unpredictable.\u00a0 The movies have always been about balancing those two forces.<\/p>\n

Scorsese is about Art.<\/p>\n

Lucas is about Commerce.<\/p>\n

If we look very carefully, Star Wars <\/em>(Episode IV) isn\u2019t a very good film.\u00a0 It has moments that are classic, and it has two performances that elevate it into something it wouldn\u2019t have been otherwise.\u00a0 Dramatically speaking, it\u2019s not anything great, with creaky dialogue and several problems with pacing that should have been addressed.<\/p>\n

(OK, don’t beat me up here. \u00a0Star Wars Episode 4\u00a0<\/em>changed the world of movies, and I know that. \u00a0What I’m saying is that it doesn’t hold up on repeated viewings and has a lot of script problems, just like Lucas’ other productions. \u00a0It’s got some good actors who put the script across and enough spectacle to help gloss over the problems that the script has.)<\/p>\n

Most importantly, What Star Wars <\/em>had going for it was that it was the first commercial film to capture the fun of the 1930s movie serials and combine it with the groundbreaking special effects that 2001<\/em> had started.\u00a0 The opening shot was mind-blowing for audiences in 1977.\u00a0 We\u2019d never seen anything like that.\u00a0 We were used to sci-fi epics looking desperately fake, like\u00a0Logan\u2019s Run<\/em>, which had come out the year before.\u00a0 This looked very convincing.<\/p>\n

Harrison Ford had terrible troubles with the dialogue in the film.\u00a0 “George, you can type this s***, but you sure as hell can’t say it.” \u00a0 Mark Hamill remembers Ford making notes in his script, desperately trying to make sense of the lines, trying to find a context in them that would make the character work.\u00a0 He succeeded.\u00a0 Ford\u2019s performance, paired with that of Alec Guinness, are the dramatic saving graces of the film.\u00a0 If we add in Peter Cushing, who makes great use of a brief part, and James Earl Jones, who is unseen as Vader but adds an immeasurable presence to the film, we have a movie that is pretty well acted.<\/p>\n

Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher acquit themselves less admirably, but both have gone on to do other things well.\u00a0 I think this was simply a case of not being able to transcend the material.\u00a0 Perhaps Ford was only able to do so because his part was better written in the first place.<\/p>\n

Alec Guinness was at the preview and complained that the last battle sequence at the Death Star was about five minutes too long.\u00a0 Bravo, Alec!\u00a0 He\u2019s absolutely right.\u00a0 In reissues of the film. I often watch audiences during this scene and they get bored about halfway through.\u00a0 As spellbinding as this was in 1977, it doesn\u2019t hold up today.\u00a0 Lucas is too in love with that cool shot of diving into the canyon in the Death Star.\u00a0 It\u2019s overused; the whole thing is too long.<\/p>\n

In addition, there\u2019s a bit of the ending that\u2019s too short!\u00a0 (Potential spoiler, although not much of one…)\u00a0 When Han decides at the last minute to join the battle and help rescue Luke, we don\u2019t really know he\u2019s going to do it.\u00a0 It\u2019s a surprise and it\u2019s cut in at the last second with no establishing shot at all.\u00a0 It\u2019s jarring to first-time viewers.\u00a0 Where\u2019s Han?\u00a0 Where did he come from?\u00a0 If we\u2019d had a few more shots of Han thinking and one of him trying to get there at the last second, it would have been more dramatic but less surprising.<\/p>\n

Lucas was grilled by many critics at the weakness of his script.\u00a0 To counter this, he brought in Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan for Empire Strikes Back<\/em>.\u00a0 This makes the script immensely stronger, even though Empire <\/em>is really the second part in a three-part epic, the part that\u2019s always the least interesting.\u00a0 The first part has all the setup, the third part has all the resolution, and the second part just gets all the characters in trouble.<\/p>\n

That said, Empire<\/em> is full of suspense, action and great dialogue.\u00a0 Lucas hated it.\u00a0 He resolved to take over more the reins on Jedi<\/em>, and we saw what that got us.<\/p>\n

We note that Lucas made the Indiana Jones <\/em>films, too.\u00a0 Well, except that Lawrence Kasdan wrote the first one, and Lucas is said not to have liked the script too much.\u00a0 His buddies Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz wrote the second one, more to his specifications, and it\u2019s not very good.\u00a0 The third one was kind of a piecemeal effort and is largely saved by the brilliant performance of Sean Connery.\u00a0 The less said about the last one, the better.<\/p>\n

We also note that when left entirely to his own devices, Lucas can\u2019t really come up with a good epic… I submit Willow <\/em>(1988) as evidence.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a great film, and the last reel might as well be the last reel of Return of the Jedi <\/em>with Jean Marsh substituting for the Emperor.\u00a0 Reliables like Val Kilmer and Marsh are wasted.\u00a0 Ron Howard, a variable but often talented director, doesn\u2019t save it.<\/p>\n

I can only come to the conclusion that Lucas is, as he has often said, a film cutter at heart.\u00a0 He does make a mean action sequence. They\u2019re always cool, even if sometimes too long.\u00a0 He\u2019s not much of a storyteller, and I say that with a big caveat.<\/p>\n

Lucas is excellent at creating a story and a universe.\u00a0 He studied the art of epics and how to structure them.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t follow through on it, cuts corners, and can\u2019t make the guts of it, the dialogue and character motivation, work.<\/p>\n

And that brings us up to today.\u00a0 Disney has purchased Lucasfilm.\u00a0 What\u2019s my reaction?<\/p>\n

Well, initially, I had a bad feeling about it (hence the title and hence my quote from the films.)\u00a0 My initial reaction was that Disney would cute the series up even worse than Lucas had, and I made a video of it. (This was the first video that made it on YouTube as a response to the sale. Gotta be proud of that!)<\/p>\n