Let me state it up front: I'm not a prequel apologist, but for the most part I enjoy them. I know that a lot of people regard them as borderline sacrilegious. My wife, for one, refuses to watch them and finds the original films inviolable -- she doesn't even acknowledge the Episode IV, V, and VI designations. But a few years ago, we went to a concert featuring the music of all six films. It was narrated live by Anthony Daniels himself, and played by a full orchestra under a giant screen that played appropriate montages from the movies. On the way to the concert, just to give her some context, I summarized the story of the prequels for her, and was surprised that the story actually sounded better when summarized than shown in the films themselves. That's when it hit me that Lucas is a fantastic storyteller as far as subtext goes, but when he has to put character action and dialogue on top of it, that's when he falls down.
Ever since then, I keep turning back to the prequels, trying to appreciate them on a deeper level. I find that beyond all the silly side characters, lack of compelling new environments, wonky physics (using sound waves in space to break up asteroids?!?), and clunky dialogue, the underlying story not only holds up, but is shockingly subversive, especially the way the very concept of "good guys" and "bad guys" completely flips around with the execution of Order 66.
I actually feel bad for George Lucas. In his shoes, what would you think? You make movies that not only earn colossal amounts of money, but make incredible impacts on pop culture and society in general. At the same time, you are also barraged by both critics and fans saying that they're immature crap. I think that what Lucas tried to do with the Star Wars prequels was to give everyone everything that they thought they wanted. He simultaneously tried to tell the story he wanted to tell, and also wanted everyone to like it, in an almost openly insecure way. So it comes as no surprise that he didn't entirely succeed.
Let me clear a common misconception out of the way immediately -- Lucas didn't make the prequels for money. In the mid-90s, he didn't need to think about returning to the Star Wars well ever again. That was even more true than in the seventies; he had only been able to make the original film off the goodwill he had garnered from American Graffiti, he financed The Empire Strikes Back himself, and even Return of the Jedi being a blockbuster was hardly a sure thing when he was working through production complications -- it could have been ended up being directed by David Lynch and having Billy Dee Williams fully replacing Harrison Ford. If anything, it was the conversion of the towering Wookiees to the diminutive Ewoks (even the name is a reversal!) that was the most blatant merchandising cash grab. Plus, we're talking about one of the most philanthropic members of the entertainment industry. So saying that the prequels were fueled by any measure of greed just isn't true.
No, the reason Lucas went back, I think, is that he had been living with one of the iconic villains of cinema in his psyche for twenty years, and now thought to himself, "But how did Darth Vader get that way? *Why* is he so evil?" Honestly, it's a question that someone *should* ask themselves at fifty that they didn't think to ask at thirty... And so he tried his best to answer. At their heart, the prequel trilogy is a meditation on the nature of evil -- How does one decide to be evil? Do all villains truly believe they are doing the right thing?
One of the main complaints about the Star Wars prequels is that, in the sixteen years between trilogies, the fans had built the Expanded Universe (the overall canon composed of ancillary books, comics, and video games) that was much more adult and serious in tone than Lucas ever intended it to be. He's maintained since the beginning that the target audience of his movies is ten years old, and I'm sure he felt that he was just staying true to his original vision. Most of us, though, just thought -- somewhat unfairly -- that we were taking his creation more seriously than he was, and could "do" Star Wars better than he could.
Case in point: I recently read a debate about what the best order watch the movies when introduce newcomers to the series -- and fans with young kids think about this more than you'd think. Despite the fact that Lucas has voiced his intention that the films should be watched in "episode order"... first prequels, then the original films, I've often thought that I'd like to expose my daughter to them in the chronological order that I was... original trilogy, then prequels.
But the best solution I've heard is called The Machete Order, created by SW fan Rod Hilton. I assume he took that name from the fact that it omits Episode 1 entirely, a point that I'll talk about in a minute. The Machete Order runs thusly: the original Star Wars (aka A New Hope), The Empire Strikes Back, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, Return of the Jedi. Taken this way, you get two films about Luke, two films about Anakin, and the final chapter that concludes both their stories. It's kind of shaping a new super-size trilogy out of the six, plus it preserves the best of the plot twists -- the true identity of Luke's father gets held suspended for over five hours of screen time! Plus, I personally love the revelation of who Yoda is in ESB, even though that ship has probably sailed for most kids. The Machete Order even adds extra drama, because right after seeing Anakin's fall to the dark side, you realize how much Luke looks and acts like he's doing the same thing at the beginning of ROTJ, all dressed in black and apparently willing to sacrifice his friends to further his own plans. The more I think about it, the more brilliant it gets.
It's the exclusion of Episode I that seems most radical, and actually makes the most sense. There's not a lot of plot carryover from that film into the rest of the prequel trilogy, and Lucas course-corrected based on fan reaction to the first movie by barely mentioning either midichlorians or Jar Jar Binks in the subsequent films. Not only that, but Anakin's jarring transition from innocent kid to surly, power-hungry teen is taken away. (And I never cared for the way that both Anakin and Jar Jar independently blunder their way into saving the day at the end.) Without Episode I the prequels are darker, full of ominous premonitions, death, and Anakin's awareness of his own power fueling his mounting fury at a universe that he can't wield control over.
Most of all, it takes care of the corner that Lucas had painted himself into with the prequels, which was that he had married himself to the idea of a trilogy right from the start. He didn't have enough story to stretch across them, so he was forced to throw droid factories and pod races at them until they filled out the needed time.
I think I've already made up my mind about how I'm going to show the movies to my daughter. The Machete Order it is! Episodes IV, V, II, III, then VI. And I think I'm going to go with the "non-Special Edition" of the original movie. Han should shoot first, and you shouldn't see Jabba the Hutt until his reveal in Return of the Jedi. But it will definitely be Special Editions for the others. Cloud City should look super-awesome instead of just regular awesome, and the Sarlacc should have a huge toothy beak. I'll even trade in "Lapti Nek" for "Jedi Rocks" if that means I don't have to sit through that horrible "Yub Nub" song that originally closed out the entire series. Yikes.
It seems that Star Wars is so deeply ingrained in our collective philosophy that we don't even understand what it means to us until it's presented imperfectly. The reason no one liked the idea of midichlorians is that it took away the possibility that *anyone* could become a Jedi with the right training. Heck, as a kid in the seventies, I half-believed that no matter how small or unassuming I seemed, I could lift an X-wing out of a swamp with my mind if I tried hard enough. Saying that Jedi were born special took that away, and Lucas was right to backpedal. He's always used the inherent power of myth to make compelling stories, and I think he's learning along with the rest of us that Star Wars is really a collective story. We know on an instinctive level what we want it to be, even if we don't immediately know how to articulate it. My hope is that he is training the next generation of storytellers what he's learned, and we'll continue to be enchanted for many years to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment