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Last weekend, at about this time, Eric and I went to see Star Wars, Episode III--Revenge of the Sith. So many words have been wasted on this movie that I probably shouldn't bother to review it. However, I had a few thoughts that haven't really emerged in the media commentary on the film. I may as well set them down here.
The reviewers were right about one thing: "Revenge" was a much better movie than either Episode I or Episode II. As always, the planetary scenery, the warships and the robots were great and the space battles were spectacular. The dialogue still stank, but there was at least less of it. Mystifyingly, though, the acting was noticeably better. Eric commented after the movie that the one thing that surprised him about it was that Hayden Christensen turned in a halfway decent performance as the tormented young Anakin Skywalker finally deciding to turn to the Dark Side. Not only was Eric right about Christensen, but Natalie Portman did a better job too, despite having much less screen time than in either of the previous two movies.
That started me thinking. Why should Christensen be so much more convincing going off to the Jedi Temple to murder kids with high midichlorian counts than he was in Episode II, pitching woo to a beautiful woman in a postcard perfect meadow? It made no sense.
Previously, in discussing Episodes I and II with friends, Eric and I bemoaned the fact that "Lucas has forgotten how to tell stories." But after watching Episode III, it occurred to me that the problem may not be that Lucas has forgotten how to tell stories in general, but that he's only ever known how to tell one particular kind of story: the epic battle between good and evil.
Think about the movies this way. "A New Hope," the first movie he made in the Star Wars universe, showed the Evil Empire in full swing, with only a handful of beleaguered heroes (Leia, Solo, Luke, Obi-Wan) to try to defeat it. There was little dialogue, and lots of action, and not much time to focus on the characters or their motivations. Of course they'd go out and fight the bad guys! They had to! As Leia's hologram says, "Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope."
The second movie, "The Empire Strikes Back" (a clunker of a title, in retrospect) still did not have a lot of dialogue, and most of the dialogue they had was pretty forgettable. (If you're thinking of disputing this, remember that one of the scenes in question is the long, boring one where Yoda does the Zen Master number on Luke by way of attempting to teach him to use the Force.) The action continued into the third movie, "Return of the Jedi", which ends with some trite dialogue between Leia and her brother and a short, stiff ceremonial scene where Leia, now restored to her rightful place, honors our heroes. Harrison Ford, a virtual unknown in 1977 who ended up making it big as a result of the original movie, dominated most of the scenes in all three pictures, and the chemistry among him and the other leads helped make the movies memorable.
Unfortunately, Lucas decided to press on with the saga by filming another trilogy to show the backstory. By definition, Episodes I and II could not be action pictures, since they had to explain how the conflicts that led up to all the action began. For that matter, he couldn't use Harrison Ford or Carrie Fisher, either. Leia wasn't born when the action of Episode I started, Solo would have been too young to play a significant role, and Harrison Ford was now a well-known star who was just about too old to play an action hero even if there was room for an action hero in Episode I.
So Lucas had to struggle along, and he made a pretty mess of it. As a result, the only watchable parts of Episodes I and II were the action sequences, of which there were necessarily many fewer than in the previous movies.
Worse still, because Episodes I and II were prequels, certain events had to take place in them in order to advance the plot. Anakin needed to fall in love with Padme, needed to lose his mother and try to take revenge, and so on. So Lucas left himself little room to manuever. Where he did have room to manuever, room to invent developments or details that might advance the plot, he inevitably blew it. Did the world really need the scene where Obi-Wan explains midichlorians? Did Lucas really have to make the Jedi Council so clueless and shortsighted to set up Anakin's defection? No. But apparently Lucas didn't have enough imagination to handle backstory when no action sequences were involved.
Now, with Episode III, we come around to the beginning. Palpatine's machinations have finally led to a full-blown war--and by now Lucas has a full-grown protagonist ready to take the field once again. As a result, we're back in action movie country, with almost no dialogue. Sure enough, the fun resumes. Lucas wisely does not use a lot of screen real estate getting the newborn Luke and Leia packed off to Tattooine and the Organas' estate, respectively. He focuses instead on the action--and on the dialogues Anakin has with Palpatine. Since Palpatine is simply a dyed-in-the-wool Evil Overlord type, Lucas understood the role and didn't misdirect Ian McDiarmid as he appears to have misdirected Christensen and Portman. And as a number of the critics have noted, the feel of Episode III is much more like that of the early movies.
Thus, George Lucas has had his own revenge on us. We thought he was a great director. But it turns out that all he had was a gift for turning archetypes into action heroes. He was a one-trick pony all along, but until he tried to turn a classic trilogy into a series, it was possible to miss that.
The reviewers were right about one thing: "Revenge" was a much better movie than either Episode I or Episode II. As always, the planetary scenery, the warships and the robots were great and the space battles were spectacular. The dialogue still stank, but there was at least less of it. Mystifyingly, though, the acting was noticeably better. Eric commented after the movie that the one thing that surprised him about it was that Hayden Christensen turned in a halfway decent performance as the tormented young Anakin Skywalker finally deciding to turn to the Dark Side. Not only was Eric right about Christensen, but Natalie Portman did a better job too, despite having much less screen time than in either of the previous two movies.
That started me thinking. Why should Christensen be so much more convincing going off to the Jedi Temple to murder kids with high midichlorian counts than he was in Episode II, pitching woo to a beautiful woman in a postcard perfect meadow? It made no sense.
Previously, in discussing Episodes I and II with friends, Eric and I bemoaned the fact that "Lucas has forgotten how to tell stories." But after watching Episode III, it occurred to me that the problem may not be that Lucas has forgotten how to tell stories in general, but that he's only ever known how to tell one particular kind of story: the epic battle between good and evil.
Think about the movies this way. "A New Hope," the first movie he made in the Star Wars universe, showed the Evil Empire in full swing, with only a handful of beleaguered heroes (Leia, Solo, Luke, Obi-Wan) to try to defeat it. There was little dialogue, and lots of action, and not much time to focus on the characters or their motivations. Of course they'd go out and fight the bad guys! They had to! As Leia's hologram says, "Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope."
The second movie, "The Empire Strikes Back" (a clunker of a title, in retrospect) still did not have a lot of dialogue, and most of the dialogue they had was pretty forgettable. (If you're thinking of disputing this, remember that one of the scenes in question is the long, boring one where Yoda does the Zen Master number on Luke by way of attempting to teach him to use the Force.) The action continued into the third movie, "Return of the Jedi", which ends with some trite dialogue between Leia and her brother and a short, stiff ceremonial scene where Leia, now restored to her rightful place, honors our heroes. Harrison Ford, a virtual unknown in 1977 who ended up making it big as a result of the original movie, dominated most of the scenes in all three pictures, and the chemistry among him and the other leads helped make the movies memorable.
Unfortunately, Lucas decided to press on with the saga by filming another trilogy to show the backstory. By definition, Episodes I and II could not be action pictures, since they had to explain how the conflicts that led up to all the action began. For that matter, he couldn't use Harrison Ford or Carrie Fisher, either. Leia wasn't born when the action of Episode I started, Solo would have been too young to play a significant role, and Harrison Ford was now a well-known star who was just about too old to play an action hero even if there was room for an action hero in Episode I.
So Lucas had to struggle along, and he made a pretty mess of it. As a result, the only watchable parts of Episodes I and II were the action sequences, of which there were necessarily many fewer than in the previous movies.
Worse still, because Episodes I and II were prequels, certain events had to take place in them in order to advance the plot. Anakin needed to fall in love with Padme, needed to lose his mother and try to take revenge, and so on. So Lucas left himself little room to manuever. Where he did have room to manuever, room to invent developments or details that might advance the plot, he inevitably blew it. Did the world really need the scene where Obi-Wan explains midichlorians? Did Lucas really have to make the Jedi Council so clueless and shortsighted to set up Anakin's defection? No. But apparently Lucas didn't have enough imagination to handle backstory when no action sequences were involved.
Now, with Episode III, we come around to the beginning. Palpatine's machinations have finally led to a full-blown war--and by now Lucas has a full-grown protagonist ready to take the field once again. As a result, we're back in action movie country, with almost no dialogue. Sure enough, the fun resumes. Lucas wisely does not use a lot of screen real estate getting the newborn Luke and Leia packed off to Tattooine and the Organas' estate, respectively. He focuses instead on the action--and on the dialogues Anakin has with Palpatine. Since Palpatine is simply a dyed-in-the-wool Evil Overlord type, Lucas understood the role and didn't misdirect Ian McDiarmid as he appears to have misdirected Christensen and Portman. And as a number of the critics have noted, the feel of Episode III is much more like that of the early movies.
Thus, George Lucas has had his own revenge on us. We thought he was a great director. But it turns out that all he had was a gift for turning archetypes into action heroes. He was a one-trick pony all along, but until he tried to turn a classic trilogy into a series, it was possible to miss that.
contemplative
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