Still Mulling The Star Wars Thing...

[shadowkat]

Perhaps it's because the work day was incredibly slow or maybe I'm just stressed about my up-coming plane trip down to my parents abode (first plane trip since that Xmas fiasco), but I've been mulling over Lucas' Star Wars films in my mind. Rolling them over in my head. Mulling over what worked in the prequels and what didn't. And thinking about the postings on my flist, in area newspapers, and the New Yorker regarding them.

This weekend I re-read the_red_shoes rant on the whole movie phenomena, as well as a lengthy thread in masqthephlsphr's journal. What's notable about both of these entries - is neither person has seen Revenge of the Sith. Red Shoes has no interest in it. Masquethephilosopher fully intends on seeing it, but wants to re-watch the prequels, and Clone Wars first. The two entries do however agree on two things:1)the prequels are no where near as good as the originals, and 2)Why did Lucas fiddle with the originals to begin with?

In case you haven't figured it out by now, Star Wars was my first media obsession. Well, after Kimba, but I barely remember Kimba, since I was only 3 at the time. Prior to Star Wars, science fiction to my child's mind seemed to be a place filled with scarey monsters that popped out of closets and from under my bed. I'm not sure anyone under the age of 35 can truly understand what a phenomena Star Wars was in the late 1970s - a period where there weren't many children's films that appealed to adults. Disney sort of owned the market. Star Wars was a child's movie that adult's could love, it spanned generations, no one was too young or too old for this film. But it was meant as a child's movie. One of the few that my parents could take me and my younger brother to - we were respectively 11 and 8.



If Star Wars was the child's film. Empire Strikes Back appealed to the adolescent. I was 14 going on 15 when this film emerged. It was darker than the first one, grittier, and different than anything I'd seen. I believe I saw it before my parents mistakenly took my brother and I to Excalibre (our first R rated film, which embarrassed the hell out of my parents). You have to understand - we did not have cable in those days, there weren't VCRs or DVDs. If you did not see a film in the movie theaters you waited two years for some broadcast network to show it, sliced to death with commercials. This was also before video games, which came out around the same time, maybe a year afterwards. And - being the first kid in your class to see a movie was a big deal, since people were horrible about spoiling you for it.

I'd never seen anything like Empire. I knew the ending of course - having purchased the novelization of the movie prior to seeing it. Heck, I even had a book by Richard Dean Forster(?) called Splinter in the Mind's Eye which dealt with the characters, Han, Leia, Luke and Vader. So I wasn't shocked by what happened in Empire. But what appeared on screen blew me away. We saw it in the big megaplex in Kansas City. A 100 foot screen with surround sound. And afterwards received action figures for Xmas. An ongoing joke around my house was what happened to the Princess Leia action figure? Oh our siamese cat, Simon, had kidnapped her and dumped her in his water dish. For some reason, we couldn't decipher, that cat had a thing against Princess Leia. I think my mother still has the figure. In the three years between Empire and Jedi, I played out scenes in my head of Luke and Leia rescuing Han. I ached for spoilers. Read everything I could find on it. Then finally Jedi came out...again, we purchased the novelization first. The novelization in this case was better - yet, I still enjoyed Jedi for what it was. After Jedi, rumblings began of what Lucas would do next. Rumor had it he was working on the prequels. And in my head, I played out those scenes.

For me, Star Wars was a nostaligic piece of my youth. When I first fell deeply and irrevocably in love with film or how a movie could come alive on screen. Entering that brand new world.

After Jedi, I did not expect much from the prequels to be honest. And as an adult, I see the cracks and flaws in the films I adored once upon a time in my movie-going innocence. That said - I still adore them. They still hold a place in my heart and they certainly influenced my storytelling.

When I read Masq's posts on why she refused to watch Lucas' tinkering with the original works - I found myself nodding my head in agreement. Yet also understand the temptation to do so. Who amongst us hasn't gone back to a journal entry that we've re-read and tried to edit it? Or an essay we've written? Or a story? Unsatisified with a typographical error or unsatisfied with the content or the formatting or an icon? I know today I considered re-writing a portion of my Revenge of the Sith review, cutting a portion of it, correcting several typos, making certain sentences just a tad clearer, adding new things. But I stopped myself. What good is a journal entry, I asked myself, if you don't let it alone? Let it be that emotional outburst or analytical thought you had at that precise moment in time, flaws intact? Same with all those essays I wrote on TV, if I changed them - would they lose something in the process?

While I can understand, Lucas' desire to make his earlier films fit the gist of his later ones, his desire to correct technical flaws and enhance certain features - much like a writer may go back to a story and fix a typo or the re-format the words, I think he may be hurting his work by doing so. After mulling over it quite a bit today, I've come to the conclusion that we are not necessarily the best judges of our own work. As a child, my mother used to grab my paintings away from me - before I turned them into mud - I kept wanting to add new things, they never felt quite right to me, so I'd inadvertently ruine them by tinkering. Letting go of a work of art, letting it stand on its own, away from you and interact with others is akin to a parent letting go of their child. And in Lucas' case, we are talking about a work of art that was a collaborative effort, that took over 1000 people to create. It would be one thing if the films weren't released, had never been distributed, but they have been. They were done. Plus, did his tinkering really help the story? A case in point - Han Solo shooting Greedo first in the bar scene. This is an important plot point. It shows us that Solo is opportunistic, possibly dangerous, not necessarily trustworthy, and possibly a bit of a coward who will shoot first or run away from a fight. The charming rogue. A necessary view - if his actions through the movie are to be at all surprising. If Greedo shoots first, its really not all that surprising that Han comes back to save Luke at the end of Star Wars, is it? It's equally important that we do not know much about the Bounty on Han's head and have never seen JAbba - because it gives Han an air of mystery - the pov in the film remains always with Luke. It's why the film works. Stories seem to be fragile things, regardless of the medium, if you pull the wrong thread...you risk unraveling them. I say this from experience, I wrote a book - or rather kept rewriting the same book for ten years, resulting in possibly five different books with basically the same characters none very good. Instead of figuring out what didn't work, I kept tinkering and complicating the plot. Kept adding things. I see Lucas doing the same things with his prequels and with the originals - adding things, complicating them. Being a complicator by nature, myself, I see the danger in it and am working on avoiding it in my own future writing. I've finally let go of that book I kept rewriting. Started something new, untouched. Simpler.

My stories were like Lucas's - ambitious attempts to meld the tragic heros (or in my case heroine) journey with machiavellian political maneuvering. Very difficult thing to do. Whedon tries a little of it with the First Evil in S7 and ends up with so many characters and ideas that the final season of BTVS seems a tad muddled in comparison to the simpler plot arcs of the earlier seasons. The only author I've seen accomplish this may have been Dorothy Dunnett, except her hero wasn't a tragic one. Shakespeare also accomplishes it with MacBeth, Hamlet, and Corianlus. But they do it by not tinkering too much, not adding too many unnecessary elements, sticking with the lead.

Also like Lucas, I wrote my story for myself. I saw a review online - or rather a rant, about how Lucas was making these films for himself and if you didn't like it, boo hoo. This got me to thinking - while it is wonderful to write or creat for oneself, and let's face it we all do to one or extent or another - we still obviously want/yearn to communicate our work to others? So to what extent, if any should we cater to our audience's wants and needs? Possibly none. No, wait, that's not it. It's not wants and needs of the audience we need to satisfy - no, this gets back to an excellent point masq makes in her posting thread - the audience should understand what you are conveying to them. They should not have to read an essay to figure it out. In other words - if you want someone who reads and speaks only in English to understand your book, it might help if you write it in English or find someone to translate it. Same goes with movies - if you want an audience to share what is in your head, to see it, it helps if you can find a way to communicate it to them clearly. Not overcomplicate or muddle it. I write this post for myself, sure, but I want you to read it - so I will do little things here and there to attempt to get your interest. What escapes me - is what it is that I'm doing that turns you on and what it is that I'm doing that turns you off? But I must, deep down inside, have an inkling or no one would read my posts. (Unlike Lucas - I haven't managed to get millions of people to read and enjoy and fight over my work. I envy him that. )

Not sure where I was going with this, if anywhere at all. Just mulling things over in my head I suppose. Pulling at them. Last night I watched a little of Clone Wars before Desperate Housewives and found myself thinking, now this wasn't such a bad movie, I sort of like Anakin's discussion with Padme after his slaughter of the sandpeople. Yet at the same time, it feels off somehow. I don't see the chemistry between Anakin and Padme. I don't feel the urgency of rescuing Obiwan, even though I appreciate the irony of Dooku's warning to Obiwan - a warning Dooku must know that Obiwan would ignore until it's too late and that by giving it, he manages to manipulate Obiwan to do what Palaptine wants him to. When watching Attack of the Clones, I find myself alternating between boredom and intrigue, quite similar to how I feel about my own life at the moment. Odd. That. A so-so movie as a metaphor for life. Perhaps that's why I can't quite let these films go, or more to the point my own anticipation for them - it's not the films themselves that I find myself obsessing over, but rather the potential of the story within them - the thread of that story hidden amongst all the glitter and roaring score, that I want to find and devour like one might a peice of chocolat in the middle of a glittery tasteless candy. The story I've been dreaming of since I was 15 years of age and first learned that Vader was Luke's father and that yes, our mentors no matter how kind, can tell white lies because they believe in doing so they can protect us and themselves from the truth. Not realizing that sometimes facing the truth is far better than living the lie. For me the prequels were supposed to be the truth that Obiwan wanted to sheild Luke and via Luke, himself from. They were also the adult companion to the fantasy stories of my childhood. And he came very close to pulling it off, I see it hidden within all the fancy sfx wrapping...I just want to tear off the wrapping is all.

Comments

Re: Beats me.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

That makes complete sense.