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| Pictured: The poster for an obscure independent drama you may have heard of. |
Note: I originally published a version of the following essay as a Facebook note, which you can find here, on December 17, two days before I saw "Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens." After spending many years thinking about "Star Wars," and wondering whether J.J. Abrams and his team could recapture the magic, I thought it appropriate and necessary to put down a pre-release marker of sorts--call it a "preaction"--articulating my thoughts about "Star Wars" generally and my quality predictions about "The Force Awakens" specifically. I shall follow this post with a review of the movie to reveal whether it met my expectations.
This post is about Star Wars. But my (perhaps doomed) quest to insulate myself from any sort of spoilers or reviews about The Force Awakens in the days before I see it has me thinking about another pop culture artifact of my childhood: “Recess.” Specifically, I am thinking of the episode in which the gang tries to keep one of their friends, new to their school, clean for his first school picture. The catch is that school pictures are done in ascending age order by grade, and the tradition is for each of the lower grades to get themselves and everyone else as dirty as possible after their pictures are done, resulting in a quasi-Hobbesian nightmare of messiness.
As “The Force Awakens” approaches release—with the fact that we’re getting another "Star Wars" movie at all lending the movie’s approach the same sort of incredulous awe that the gigantic motherships in “Independence Day” inspired—many critics have already seen it, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid spoilers or reviews of any kind, especially now that what the UK Guardian calls “spoiler jihadis” are going out of their way to give them out. Indeed, at work today, much to my chagrin, I accidentally overheard a colleague reveal the film’s critical score on RottenTomatoes. As intel about the new movie increasingly creeps into my typical Internet viewing habits, I have accidentally already chanced upon it, giving me an “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” level of cinematic paranoia that has decreased the amount of websites I can safely visit and forced me to find other means by which to pass the time, as much of my typical Internet browsing is film- and pop-culture-related. (I shall withhold this intel from the reader in case he or she similarly wishes to view the movie pure.) I didn’t have this problem back in 2005, because I saw “Revenge of the Sith”—which, remember, everyone thought would be the last-ever "Star Wars" movie—a week before it came out. But I did have a different difficulty. Assuming I would receive three advance tickets (including my own), I invited two friends to see the movie with me, when in fact I received only two tickets. Faced with the unfortunate prospect of having to choose which friend meant more to me, my sixth grade self made the Solomonesque decision to stiff both of those friends and invite a third (sorry guys). As painful as that was for me back then, I would almost rather face that dilemma again than have to go now to such lengths to avoid spoilers from those, critics and non-critics alike, who have seen and will see the movie before I do (and acting like spoiled gradeschool brats by ruining it for everyone else because of it).Yet why am I going to such lengths? Why is "Star Wars" such a big deal to me?
I suppose you could say I am a "Star Wars" fan. It was certainly a part of my childhood. One of the first movies I remember seeing—indeed, my earliest cinematic memory is either watching “Toy Story” or watching two robots approach a tall palace in the desert—is “Return of the Jedi” (which, oddly, I saw before any other “Star Wars” movie). I saw “The Phantom Menace” in theaters not long after it came out in May 1999, at five years old, and recall being excited for and enjoying it immensely—the pod race, Darth Maul, and the concluding lightsaber fight were particular highlights to my young self—just as I eagerly anticipated and enjoyed “Pokemon: The First Movie” that November. And after seeing “The Phantom Menace” for the first time, I remember leaving a showing of “Tarzan,” which came out that June, and peeking through a set of theater doors at Lebanon’s Colony Square theaters just to catch the scene in “The Phantom Menace” when Qui-Gonn first presents a young Anakin to the Jedi Council and they test his Force sensitivity. I remember how excited I was to go over to a friend’s house and watch “The Phantom Menace” with him on VHS (it was one of the last movies that most families of my generation would own mostly on VHS). I remember how happy I was to receive the computer game “Star Wars: Pit Droids” for Christmas that December. And I remember spending many hours in dark suburban basements playing “Star Wars: Battlefront,” and then going back to watch the movies feeling like an expert. And I remember even more hours spent on Wookiepedia, about which one best not inquire if one does not already know.
But given the incredible market saturation of Star Wars, I think it’s fair to say I had a fairly average, even below average, exposure. Everyone saw “The Phantom Menace”; everyone had at least one "Star Wars" toy or video game. As for “Pit Droids” and “Battlefront”: I could never figure out what the former was about, and realize now I wasted too much time on the latter (“Battlefront II” was way better anyway, but, alas I never owned it). So I’m not sure I was ever a real fan (“The Lord of the Rings,” on the other hand...)
If one considers "Star Wars" fandom a religion (and it is one of the most popular faiths in the United Kingdom), then I was “born again” in college. But not in the traditional way. Only once in the years 2011-2015 have I watched a "Star Wars" movie all the way through (which may make me recall the events of previous "Star Wars" films as appropriately dimly as the characters in “The Force Awakens, which is set some 30 years after “Return of the Jedi”). It was “The Phantom Menace,” which I saw when it got a 3D re-release in 2012 (again, before anyone knew we would get more Star Wars). I came again to "Star Wars” through the revisionist Internet literature that had grown up from the shock of people who saw the original "Star Wars" movies as children, loved them, and suddenly blamed Lucas for “ruining their childhood” by making the prequels suck, and—even worse—applying their aesthetic to the originals retroactively through CGI-laden “special editions” (the best examples: BelatedMedia, RedLetterMedia, and Auralnauts).
And they have a point. Somehow, Lucas lost something. Though my young self enjoyed the prequels, and my older self somewhat regrets having lost that innocent affection to angry Internet commenters, the prequels are indeed inferior to the original movies. The overarching explanation for this that I find most convincing is that, in the original movies, George Lucas had something to prove, and could still be questioned, still be unsure of himself, and still accept criticism and feedback from others. But when the prequels came around, he was the Emperor of the "Star Wars" universe, and undertook complete creative control, when in reality the genius of the original movies came from Lucas finding the right collaborators. (Interestingly, it recently emerged that Lucas did not want to direct the prequels, and asked Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, and Ron Howard to do it instead; all turned him down, saying he should do it.) The first draft of what would become “Star Wars” was pretty bad. Han Solo was a green alien. The whole thing was narrated by “the Whills,” the mysterious, ancient alien race to which Yoda belonged. The main character’s name was “Starkiller.” Etc. But studio pressure, collaborators, and the vicissitudes of life (the Force?) forced Lucas to revise, revise, and revise not only “A New Hope,” but also “The Empire Strikes Back,” and “Return of the Jedi” (in an early draft of the latter film, Obi-Wan Kenobi comes back to life). But nobody really did this for Lucas in the prequels. Thus, the movies we got were essentially the first drafts of what could have become great movies, but were still just first drafts. And you don’t have to be an English teacher to know what that means. This is why they lack the personal intimacy and natural character interaction and development to ground their epic story, and why that epic story sometimes makes no sense. (One of my biggest sticking points is how Obi-Wan defeated Anakin in “Revenge of the Sith” because he “had the high ground,” yet this didn’t matter in “The Phantom Menace” whenObi-Wan defeated the high-ground-holding Darth Maul. It’s one of many instances in the prequels in which Obi-Wan basically loses a battle, but doesn’t die because of the plot armor that already being in the original trilogy gives him.) It’s also why Jar Jar Binks—the main reason I apologized to my father for seeing the movie with me in 1999 after I saw it again in 2012—ended up in the film (unless the “Darth Jar Jar” theory is right). So the prequel-haters are somewhat correct, even if they overexaggerate their trauma.
These same people were probably the most excited—and the most apprehensive—when, in December 2012, as part of a $4 billion acquisition of LucasFilm by Disney (the studio that, a few years ago, realized it was having trouble getting young males to watch its films, and now owns Marvel Studios and “Star Wars”), we would get a new "Star Wars" trilogy, with J.J. Abrams, of "Star Trek" reboot fame, directing, and much of the original cast returning. Since then, they and much of the rest of the world have watched nervously as the new film has come together, hoping not to be disappointed again. I have watched with them. I think we won’t be disappointed, for two reasons: It is consciously aping the trappings of the original; and Abrams knows what he’s doing.
On the first point, it is worth noting, to begin with, that Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels, and Ben Burtt (Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Chewbacca, C-3PO, and R2-D2, respectively) all return for this new film. That in itself may not guarantee its quality. Yet from what little I can tell, it does mean something good. Harrison Ford, perpetually a grumpy old man in most of his latest work, actually seems a believable, if older, version of his young, ironic self in the trailers for “The Force Awakens” (though we can tell little about the rest of the characters from what we have seen so far). The film returns, moreover, Lawrence Kasdan, the screenwriter of not only “The Empire Strikes Back” but also “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” two brilliantly-written movies that hearken back to an earlier era of Hollywood writing while also giving us something new.
And it also brings on J.J. Abrams as director. Now, some "Star Wars" fans are wary of this decision, and threaten forever to label Abrams “Jar Jar Abrams” if he screws up Star Wars. Their skepticism emerges largely from his treatment of the two new “Star Trek” films, the franchise he rebooted in 2009 and continued in 2013. In this, they echo a contingent of “Star Trek” fans (who, by the way, are real nerds for some reason, while "Star Wars" is a far more acceptable nerd passion, but I digress) who claim Abrams ruined “Star Trek.” Their arguments have merit...from a certain point of view. Abrams did certainly use the 2009 film to transform “Star Trek” into something far more action-oriented and excited than what "Star Trek" had usually been. In fact, he really just turned it into...“Star Wars.” This is apparent throughout—the changes to the "Star Trek" universe he effected turn Captain Kirk into a “chosen one” with a distant father, he gets into a fight at a bar with an older mentor figure who breaks it up, and, in the final action sequence, at the last minute another spaceship comes out of nowhere to rescue the lone fighter able to destroy an enemy vessel, allowing this lone fighter to succeed—and makes complete sense when one realizes that Abrams was never really a "Star Trek" fan. He has always been a "Star Wars" fan at heart. This doesn’t completely excuse the coy, winking strip-mining of the far-superior “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” that was “Star Trek Into Darkness,” but it does inspire confidence in Abrams’ ability not to disrespect the "Star Wars" canon similarly, about which he cares more anyway. The two “Star Trek” films were really just his audition for the “Star Wars” movie he wanted to make but likely suspected would never happen. And indeed, Abrams has already shown signs not only of realizing what made "Star Wars" great—reemphasizing, for example, both a commitment to practical effects over the green screens that George Lucas preferred, and a capacity for longer, well-blocked takes and lingering scenes (a la John Ford, Terrence Malick, Akira Kurosawa, or Francis Ford Coppola) rather than the rapid-fire cutting that largely dominates filmmaking today—but also of realizing what he did wrong in “Star Trek.” He has, for example, admitted an overfondness for lens flares, and confessed that he mishandled the Khan reveal in “Star Trek Into Darkness.”
All of this, in turn, emphasizes the main reason I’m confident Abrams hasn’t screwed this up: His failure would mean something. He has had successes—many of which, such as “LOST” and “Fringe,” I quite enjoyed—but he knows that his failure would mean something. This is why he claims he was nervous when screening the finished movie to Disney executives, and is now “terrified” to release it. If he did this wrong, then the “Jar Jar Abrams” moniker may stick forever. My suspicion is that, as a result, he approached the filmmaking process this time much as Lucas did when he made the originals: with relentless self-criticism and input and collaborations from others. And there is evidence this happened: One of the editors on set would, for example, chastise him with “These are not the lens flares you’re looking for” when he overindulged in his cinematic tic. Much as a slave would accompany conquering Roman generals in their victory parade whispering “remember, you are mortal,” the sheer enormity of the enterprise—if you’ll excuse the pun—likely kept Abrams grounded.
It is useful, in this regard, to compare “The Force Awakens” with “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” another modern sequel to an older Harrison Ford classic. Sure, that film also returned Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, and Steven Spielberg. But unlike “The Force Awakens,” it did not get rid of George Lucas, it did not fill out the rest of the cast with good actors in interesting roles (“The Force Awakens,” perhaps to ensure the franchise continues beyond this new trilogy, has been especially keen to cast talented if relatively unknown actors—actors, in other words, like Ford, Hamill, and Fisher when “A New Hope” first came out), and it did not create a story appropriate to the spirit of the originals (aliens—excuse me, “interdimensional beings”—were a bad idea). Even Spielberg, talented as he is, was probably more like prequel Lucas in directing the movie than like original series Lucas: would you tell STEVEN SPIELBERG if were doing something wrong? Which is how we ended up “nuking the fridge.” (interestingly, this idea originated in a draft of “Back to the Future” in which the time machine was a refrigerator and Doc and Marty went to an atomic bomb testing site in the 50s to return Marty to his present.) All of this is to say I am optimistic about the movie generally, but will make no predictions about its plot specifically, nor about how much money it will make (aside from my belief that its opening weekend will test the maximum capacity of North American movie theaters).
For, as interested as I am in seeing where the story goes next, I am just as interested, if not more so, in whether it can replicate the “Star Wars” “magic” (if there is any magic). It’s hard to explain, but to fans and even more casual viewers, "Star Wars" movies have a special look and feel to them that fully immerse the viewer in a world to which they want to return again and again. I am curious to see if J.J. Abrams can make “The Force Awakens” like George Miller made “Mad Max: Fury Road” earlier this year, or like Sylvester Stallone made “Rocky Balboa”—i.e., a much-delayed sequel that moves a story forward in the same contiguous universe (ever a rarity in our reboot-heavy day—for which we can partially blame Abrams) and feels like one of the old movies.
Will it do that? Will Abrams and co recapture the past? Can the past even be recaptured? I don’t know. I do know this: "Star Wars" is, in the end, just a movie series. Those who say the prequels “ruined their childhoods” either need to rethink their childhoods or just start being adults. But I still I want to see “The Force Awakens,” and to see it pure. By which I mean I want to see it as it is almost impossible to see a movie today: free of the perception of others, and actually surprised by what happens. The last time I had an experience like that in theaters was with the 2014 movie “Godzilla,” whose trailers were completely misleading but in the best possible way (incidentally, Gareth Edwards, its director, is currently directing a “Star Wars” film himself). That is why I am swearing off all technology that could possibly spoil the movie for me until I see it this Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Though I will see it with a friend, I am still hoping to form an opinion of the movie completely independent of all external influence.
What essence I am hoping to capture with this focus on purity is a mystery to me (as is, to some extent, why I am doing it; after all, as my high school Latin teacher tells me, the ancient Greeks always knew how the dramas they watched would end. They were interested in variations on the telling). For, in the end, "Star Wars" is just a clever repackaging of mythic arcs and tropes that have been with mankind since the beginning: the wise mentor, the hero’s journey, good vs. evil, etc. Is that why people find the movies so compelling? Do they speak to our inner, primal selves? Do they show us what we wish we could be and do? Do they provide us a world in which good always triumphs over evil as an escape from one in which we know it does not? Do they make those viewers who aren’t kids anymore feel like they are kids again? I don’t know. But whatever explains the appeal, we are at a moment in “Star Wars” history that has only happened once before, with the release of “The Phantom Menace” after a 16-year gap, and may never happen again. It is a unique moment. I don’t want the spoiler-jihadis to ruin it. May the force be with you if you aim to do the same.
