Star Wars -- Revenge of the Sith

You know you want to see it. Damn it, Lucas has reeled me in again. After the so-so RETURN OF THE JEDI, the abysmal PHANTOM MENACE (any film that can make Liam Neeson look like a stiff is a kind of dark miracle!) and the occasionally thrilling ATTACK OF THE CLONES, one would think that we’d had enough. But darn it, the initial whispers about ROTS have actually been exceptional. I now know the complete story, have seen considerable stills and footage, have heard the rumors that a major theatrical writer did an uncredited polish on the script…and I’m excited. I think this puppy may actually play, that Lucas can pull off his thirty-year Science-Fantasy cycle, and I for one am delighted.
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Back in the 70’s, when STAR WARS came out, there had simply never been anything like it. The clarity of effects had been matched in 2001, but with static camera angles and relatively staid ship motion. NOTHING like the zooming, sweeping, incredibly dramatic motion of the ships in Star Wars. Then there was the story telling, an application of the Hero’s Journey that literally created a myth for our times from whole cloth. Wow! And it hit down into those mythic levels, too. Touched us on the same fibers that the best SF, Fantasy, and yes, religious fables touch us. Remember my comment that one fo the reasons there are so few black and Asian writers in the field of SF is that it is New Myth, Creation myth, and those always relate to the origins of the group that create them? And that racial identity looms high in that core identity? Well, when Chip Delaney, then a columnist for (I believe) Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine dared to write a review of Star Wars in which, amid the lavish praise, he mentioned the lack of non-white faces, he got a stack of hate mail like he couldn’t believe. How DARE he suggest that blacks or Asians intrude into THEIR story. In retrospect, it is easy to understand how the fanboys felt. At the time, it hurt like hell.
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Bless Lucas for grasping that he had made a perfectly natural, and unconscious mistake. The natural tendency of any group is to “norm” themselves, to believe that they are all that there is. Note the crowd background scenes in any animation series made before, say, 1980. All white people. 100%. Bedrock of the Flintstones. The world of the Jetsons (up to and including the Jetsons theatrical film!). This isn’t hatred. It’s subconscious wish fulfillment: “I wish the world was filled with the best part of me, the part I am comfortable with.” “Others”, especially those others identified by racial differences, are where we project our own fears, inadequacies, guilts, and blame. We don’t want to deal. So it was natural for the casting office for Fox and Lucas to ignore the racial make-up of the target audience, or of the acting pool from which even Extras were pulled—and create a universe consisting only of (as I have cynically said in the past)—white people and their imaginary friends.
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Lucas immediately corrected this with Lando Calrissian, and the Star Wars myth was on its way to being the universal human story it was intended to be. When Luke Skywalker flew down the trench in the Death Star, John Williams’ music pumping and the speed of those images and effects so overwhelming that your forebrain had simply surrendered to the moment, and Obi-Wan Kenobi whispered in his spiritual ear to “Trust your feelings, Luke” he was speaking to ALL of us. The heart is not stupid. It is the wisest aspect of us. It needs to be properly taught (note the vital importance of strenuous teaching sequences in the films—intuition alone will get you killed! Head, heart, and body must work together) but it is the source of true wisdom, as well as the doorway to higher mental and spiritual powers.
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The Force.
“Try not. Do, or Do not. There is no try.” Anyone who has ever broken a board or a cinder block has heard this from his teacher. It is a core truth. To access your deeper abilities, you must act with no doubt. Doubt before. Doubt afterwards. But when acting, act with confidence. It was amusing to hear critics lambaste Lucas for his “faux philosophy.” Yeah, right. Listen, people—ANYONE who succeeds at a massive level has insights into the nature of reality that go beyond the norm. Yeah, they can be as confused and tangled as poor Michael Jackson’s (who didn’t lose his virginity until 32. Hmmmm. Anyone want to say: “imbalance” here? He had career. He had physical skills at a phenomenal level. But his personal life was a zero. And there, beyond the edge of the reality map, the dragons hissed and coiled.) So the wisdom was expressed by a little green muppet. Wisdom it remained. Prana. Ki. Chi. Pneuma. Num. The Force. Terms for the intrinsic human energy exist in all cultures, in all times and places. Using breakthrough special effects and simple story telling, Lucas gave us a graphic image of the power of the human heart, one that has thrilled a billion people worldwide, and created the most powerful myth of the 20th Century.
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He took a long break after the mediocre wrap-up of “Return of the Jedi” (you could smell the exhaustion. This was the only time I met Lucas, at the wrap party. He and his then-wife Marcia were there, still presenting a unified front. He seemed a decent, friendly, tired man.) And came back with “the Phantom Menace”. Man, you could feel the ring rust. It was like watching Ali come back into the game after all those months in exile. Just not the same man. He didn’t have his act together, and by concentrating on the technological aspects, he missed the heart. The fun. Jar-Jar Binks was supposed to be the new Chewbacca, but the audience had evolved so much in the intervening decades that what I believe to have been a harmless cowardly lion archetype was considered by many to be racist and mean-spirited. Nonsense. Lucas had given us Lando, at a time when he could easily have just said “screw you guys, it’s my universe.” Besides, now he gave us Samuel Jackson as Mace Windu, who, as we saw at the Battle of Geonosis, was one of the world’s truly great bad-asses. Jar Jar Binks was just bad judgement, not bad intentions, guys. And fans went to see “Phantom” and pretended not to notice that the thrill was gone. Maybe if we just pretend, the next one will be better…
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And it was. Not hugely, but noticeably. As if the Master was awakening from a long, deep slumber. Ah, the battle twixt Christopher Lee and Yoda. Can you REALLY tell me that didn’t blow your mind? Folks, for those of us who remember Lee in his younger days, as the personification of evil (screw Lugosi’s Dracula. Lee WAS that Transylvanian count. And many, many more memorable characters than poor second-rate Bela could ever have dreamed of). And to see him in his evil glory (“it is clear that this will not be decided by our mastery of the Force, but with our skills with a Light Saber…” Yow!!!) and Yoda rise to the challenge…Ever, in cinematic history, had an audience waited 20 years to see a character rise to his full powers as Yoda did there? Ever? I say that was a unique moment, and they pulled it off. And we just flat loved it.
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Star Wars, at its best, speaks to what is powerful and decent in us. And also cautions against ego and anger and hatred. Lucas has been accused of over-commercialization. I suspect that is the money people around him. If he could, I think he would make those movies and give away the tickets. Or just make them so that he himself and his buddies could watch them. If it was about money, he could easily have hired someone else to write and direct them. Every writer I know thinks they could have improved those scripts. But as with Cameron’s Titanic, not one of them could have created the films. Not one. The Star Wars sage is is something very special. Singular. Not “the best.” Just unique, and worthy of our respect. Lucas is a giant, and when giants pass, we should note them with respect. An epic is coming to a close. Sure, he might end up making, or letting someone else make, more Star Wars films. ILM and LucasFilm are gigantic entities now, with their own appetites. But the saga he envisioned three decades ago is about to come to a close. For goodness sake—let’s put our cynicism away, and enjoy it for what it is: some of the best popcorn ever popped. Either in this world, or a galaxy far, far away.