The Problem with Star Wars

[Umbran]

I have not so confused the meaning of the word incompetent. Features such as dialogue, pacing and tension are subjective, yes, but not completely so. The prequel trilogy shows a noticable level of incompetence in those areas.

Hm. I think you guys may be the first ones I've ever heard using incompetence to come in "levels". To most folk, the word implies an absolute, complete lack of ability, not a gradiation. I betcha you'd have bypassed a lot of argument if, rather than claim he's incompetent, you instead said that you felt he was less competent than many other filmmakers.

He's belatedly said that the movies were always for children (which I think is patently untrue of the original trilogy,

I said "younger audience", not "children". I think 13 to 16 year olds are a less sophisticated audience. And, back in the late 70s, they were even less sophisticated than they are now. Whatever he may have said (everyone lies in public statements when marketing is on the line) I expect the teens were the real intended audience for the films.

As for them not being for kids - I dunno. I was in single-digit age when the first movie came out, and the violence did not bother me. Nor did it bug my parents, nor the parents of any of my friends at the time. The whole "violence is not for kids" is an invention more recent than Star Wars.

That's relatively recent. Jedi was released in theaters in 1983.

Right. It's still two decades ago. You wanna call that "recent", go right ahead. But don't make it soudn like Lucas made it up after Episode 1 came out.

Back in the documentaries that were aired during the actual initial run of the movies, I don't recall him mentioning much of Joseph Campbell, but rather serials like Buster Crabbe's Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

Yes, and back at that time, nobody outside of academic circles knew who Campbell was. If you're making a documentary for mass consumption, you don't start talking about socio-mythological theories from a man knobody's heard of.

Lucas held Campbell in such high regard that he opened up his studios for the filming of "The Power of Myth". Campbell himself stated that the original movies were a nigh-perfect modern execution of his theories. What more do you want?

 

[Desdichado]

Can I call you "Sugarplum"?

Yes. But only you.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Then why, J-dawg(I'm sorry, I had to), is The Serge allowed to say they are NOT the same thing? My comments were directed to him after he said that they were NOT successful.

I know what the subject of conversation is. I've even agreed multiple times that the prequels are not as good as the OT. That's not a point that very many people will debate anyway. The problem I have is when Lucas is called imcompetent and inept at storytelling. If he WAS so incompetent, the movies would NOT be as successful as they have been. People wouldn't keep seeing them and they wouldn't keep making so much money.

 

[Desdichado]

Hm. I think you guys may be the first ones I've ever heard using incompetence to come in "levels". To most folk, the word implies an absolute, complete lack of ability, not a gradiation. I betcha you'd have bypassed a lot of argument if, rather than claim he's incompetent, you instead said that you felt he was less competent than many other filmmakers.

Whoever said competence was a binary on or off condition? In my daily conversation, "how competent is this person at this job" is a very common phrase. I've never heard competence used as anything other than a spectrum.

I said "younger audience", not "children". I think 13 to 16 year olds are a less sophisticated audience. And, back in the late 70s, they were even less sophisticated than they are now. Whatever he may have said (everyone lies in public statements when marketing is on the line) I expect the teens were the real intended audience for the films.

I wasn't talking about what you said so much as I was talking about what Lucas said. And there were some pretty sophisticated movies being made long before Star Wars; in fact, Star Wars helped paved the way for less sophisticated summer blockbusters. I don't know why audiences were less sophisticated in the 70s if the movies weren't. Unless that's your evidence that the target audience was younger than merely adults.

As for them not being for kids - I dunno. I was in single-digit age when the first movie came out, and the violence did not bother me. Nor did it bug my parents, nor the parents of any of my friends at the time. The whole "violence is not for kids" is an invention more recent than Star Wars.

Didn't bother me either. Doesn't mean it was marketed to me. The violence in Captain Blood didn't bother me either, but that doesn't mean it was targetted at children who were 7 or however old I was when I first saw the film. I'd disagree that "violence is not for kids" is a more recent invention than Star Wars. I feeling may have intensified recently, but it's been there pretty much forever. After all, the MPAA was founded in 1922 largely to promote the film industry by maintaining audience controls; i.e., ratings that kept children out of movies that were deemed inappropriate.

Right. It's still two decades ago. You wanna call that "recent", go right ahead. But don't make it soudn like Lucas made it up after Episode 1 came out.

Which no one ever claimed. However, it's still relatively recent. It was quite a while after the original movies had long been history.

Yes, and back at that time, nobody outside of academic circles knew who Campbell was. If you're amking adocumentary for mass consumption, you don't start talking about socio-mythological theories from a man knobody's heard of.

You do if he's the leading authority. Haven't you seen a documentary recently? They're always quoting experts no one has heard of.

Lucas held Campbell in such high regard that he opened up his studios for the filming of "The Power of Myth". Campbell himself stated that the original movies were a nigh-perfect modern execution of his theories. What more do you want?

Which is when Lucas started jumping on that himself. I mean, c'mon. It was a win-win for both Campbell and Lucas to be associated together. Campbell got a lot of visibility by associating his theories with the most popular movies ever made (at that point) and Lucas legitimized his movies by associating them with a professor who had a theory that could map relatively well to his creation. I'm not saying that Lucas wasn't already familiar with Campbell, or base his movies on them, but I think it's pretty suspicous that he didn't make any such claims until after the fact. Quite a while after the fact, for that matter, and rather, he is on record as equating his stories with a much more low-brow entertainment in the old Flash Gordon serials.

 

[Desdichado]

Then why, J-dawg(I'm sorry, I had to), is The Serge allowed to say they are NOT the same thing? My comments were directed to him after he said that they were NOT successful.

Because his posts are longer and specific phrases get lost in them. To be honest with you, I hadn't noticed it, but if that's what he said, that's a similarly empty statement.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Which is when Lucas started jumping on that himself. I mean, c'mon. It was a win-win for both Campbell and Lucas to be associated together. Campbell got a lot of visibility by associating his theories with the most popular movies ever made (at that point) and Lucas legitimized his movies by associating them with a professor who had a theory that could map relatively well to his creation. I'm not saying that Lucas wasn't already familiar with Campbell, or base his movies on them, but I think it's pretty suspicous that he didn't make any such claims until after the fact. Quite a while after the fact, for that matter, and rather, he is on record as equating his stories with a much more low-brow entertainment in the old Flash Gordon serials.

I may disagree with you on some things, J-Dawg, but this has had me curious since the recent DVDs came out. It seemed that up until then, pretty much all that was said was that they were Flash Gordon-esque movies. Sure, they touched on major archetypes, but the Campbell thing wasn't touted all that much at all until recently.

But now that I think about it, has Lucas actually said anything like that? Thinking about the Empire of Dreams documentary, I can't remember Lucas really saying anything about Campbell other than a "Yes I was influenced by him." It seems like it was more the other people interviewed that talked about the Campbell influences.

 

[Flyspeck23]

It's pretty hard to measure the quality of a film, commercial success notwithstanding.

Prior to this year's Oscars I've heard some people say (as they were being interviewed on TV) that this year's Oscar for best movie should go to "Alien vs Predator". So for them AvP had everything that makes a good movie...

Anyway, I watched tPM again yesterday, and it didn't suck - imagine my surprise.

Although that flies in the face of the logic on the success of Harry Potter, though.

There's a catch: The Potter novels go to great length to show a means to escape the real (miserable? ordinary?) life - kids can relate to that. They can't relate to a pod-racing kid living on a desert world.

I have 7 and 9 year old boys. They devour books about kids and small animals as heros, not books about grown ups being heros.

And that's not necessarily the age I'm talking about - although 9 is pretty close. I was thinking 10-12, give or take a few years (and at a later age most kids will think of themselves as adults ). And it might work if the kids in the story are older than the kids reading the story.
(Animals are a totally different matter, but I'll stop now, as we're rapidly approaching off-topic.)

 

[Desdichado]

But now that I think about it, has Lucas actually said anything like that? Thinking about the Empire of Dreams documentary, I can't remember Lucas really saying anything about Campbell other than a "Yes I was influenced by him." It seems like it was more the other people interviewed that talked about the Campbell influences.

Oh, yeah. I bought the last re-release of the OT trilogy before the Special Edition came out (on VHS, naturally, since that's all they were release as.) There was a three part interview with Leonard Maltin where he mentioned that several times.

Now, his influence by Kurosawa is perhaps more like what you describe, though -- it's mostly been other folks making comparisons other than him. In fact, some people go so far as to say that the first Star Wars is little more than a ripoff of The Hidden Fortress. Which is, if you've seen The Hidden Fortress, completely preposterous. There are a few superficial similarities, but there are some huge differences in terms of plot, character, theme, even and more.

 

[driver8]

Ebert's review of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.

Ebert's summed up pretty much of what I thought of Episode I and II (although this is his review for Episode I, and his Episode II review is... quite different.)

Dang mojo..you beat me too it.

I have to say..I have been prone to Lucas bashing myself..and Ive also got caught up in the hyperbole fueled attacks on rumors and second guessing that surrounds the prequels.

As Ebert says in his review, telling the story in the prequel is harder. We know how the story eventually ends. And we are now all familiar with the universe and its rules that have been established-theres less of a "wow" factor now. Lucas may not be John Ford or even Steven Spielberg when it comes to narrative or storytelling but...

Alot of the problem with the prequels is with us the fans.

We expect certain things. Star Wars is "ours" now. And when we dont get it(whatever that is), we're mad.

Is the prequel acting somewhat woody? Yea IMHO.
Does there seem to be less of an emotional center than the Original trilogy? Sure.

But there's still so much to me that was cool in these movies so far:

Seeing the Jedi Order in its late flowering.
Qui-Gon Jinn
The battle with Darth Maul.
The entire battle opening the Clone Wars in Ep II.


Anyways, Im hoping Ep III brings alot of holy crap moments and is more Empire Strikes Back in tone than Return of the Jedi. And I;ll be seeing it on opening night

 

[John Crichton]

I'm going to agree with you to a point. When I went back and watched AotC recently, it struck me that the period Lucas was showing in many ways mirrored our own history at the beginning of World War I. At that time, people believed that society as a whole was enlightened and striving towards great progress (the reality may not have reflected this, but idealistic socialites rarely concern themselves with the plight of the working folk who put money in their pockets). Industrialization was seen as a good thing, and no one even conceived of the horror that would be WWI, WWII, or the nuclear bomb. Going into WWI, people thought they would go out, fight their enemy, and be home by supper. It was the first modern war, and it was more terrible than anything they had ever seen before. There was a definite naivety on the part of almost everyone involved, and had they known that it would become an extremely costly war of attrition, both warring alliances would probably have worked out a peaceful solution. I think that there are some definite parallels between that period and the period in the prequels.

In addition to this, Lucas definitely wanted to show how Palpatine did not steal his power, it was willingly given to him. Its a commentary on how governments work, and how people are ruled. Lucas has a pretty good grasp of Machiavellian thought when it comes right down to it, and should serve as a cautionary allegory for what might happen in the free countries of the real world.

Wow, I never really saw it that way before. Good stuff.

While the political aspects of the story are not nearly as entertaining as the swashbuckling of the original trilogy, it does setup the back story upon which the original was built. Lucas himself said that the reason he started with IV, V, and VI was because he felt that they were more a entertaining story. Given that this is what he thought in the beginning, it should come as no surprise that the prequels aren't being received as well as they could be. He just isn't telling the same type of story.

Agreed, again.

Despite this, I agree that he could have done a better job with the directing, the pacing, and the characterizations. Jar Jar and pod racing ruined TPM for me (as if the title itself wasn't bad enough), and there were some story elements that probably should have been scrutinized a bit before being committed to film. All in all, they're OK movies that could have been better, but they also could have been far, far worse.

I've never liked Lucas the director. A New Hope is the exception that proves the rule, IMO. He is a wonderful storyteller and conceptualist and producer, however. He does need to stay away from the writing/directing duties. Although, I must admit that the man does know how to do action scenes. It's just the other stuff that I find lacking. I refer again to the novelization of tPM where his concepts were brought to life better than the movie.

On a final note, I really loved the pod race. Reminded me of the trench run in a few spots (close ups, zooms, pacing). It wasn't as good but it is certainly more watchable (sans announcer) than most of the Gungan stuff.