Lining up with the Zeitgeist

Or, Damn You, Lucas! DAMN YOU!




When the Star Wars Prequels were first released, I would hear negativity from no man (no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so) about the film's shortcomings. It was Star Wars, dash it all: it had the look, blasters, lightsabers, exotic animals, races, the Force, Yoda, all the elements. All the naysayers were obviously self-absorbed pseudo-intellectuals who couldn't stand the concept of a film becoming popular without the approval of the critics. The nagging doubts within my head took years and another mediocre prequel to release.


But, like I keep saying to the faux-nihilists who fondle themselves while watching Empire Strikes Back and whine about Return of the Jedi, it ain't all bad. As a matter of fact, there are a handful of SW-quality scenes in the prequels. To wit:


1) Underwater Passage to Theed. "There is always a bigger fish," is a great line, and it leads to a nice fun escape for the good guys marred only by the annoying robot with the "To Coruscant...that doesn't compute...Oh, yeah, your under arrest" schtick.


2) Darth Maul vs. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Good duel, good backing music, good death. As a matter of fact, any seen with Qui and Obi and lightsabers breathed life into the whole sordid business. The whole last half-hour was undone only by Jar-Jar and young Anakin's unfunny antics.


3) The Incredible Exploding Intro. It was a bit of a surprise that Lucas would choose to literally toss a bomb into what was otherwise a sedately normal space-to-land opening scene. Coming as Attack of the Clones did so soon after 9/11, I literally felt my guts twist. Too bad the intensity wasn't maintained.


4) Coruscant by Rush Hour. Admittedley, this sequence went on about a hair too long. But it still had some nice twists and turns and three-dimensional traffic-pattern action.


5) Obi-Wan and the Skinny People. Say what you will about Lucas, the guy knows how to put great shots together. A whole waterworld populated by ultramodern gray creatures who look like the offspring of Whitley Schreiber's aliens and Elastic Man. Obi-Wan's fight with Jango Fett is the only thing that keeps the early film from boring the audience to death with Anakin/Amidala "love" scenes that have all the smoldering passion of an elderly person with gout.


6) Don't Go Back to Tatooine. Finally, the family relation between the Lars and the Skywalkers is explained. Plus, Anakin kills sandpeople, which is something I've been wanting to see happen for a long time, and Shmi has a damn fine death rattle. The scene where Anakin confesses to his butchery almost doesn't suck either. Almost.


7) Obi-Wan's Retort to his now-captured Apprentice explaining that he'd come to rescue them. Just to underline the fact that as much as we may dislike the prequels, they'd be a thousand times worse were not Ewan McGregor gamely attempting to carry them on his shoulders. He's the only actor I've seen with a solid take on his part (in fairness, his is one of a few characters that are in all six movies, but Vader is a limited resource for portraying a before-the-fall Anakin, and Yoda is only voiced by a human, and Palpatine only has to pull his proverbial moustache).




There are other spots of non-suckage that time will not permit me to explore, but the point is that they are but blips in a vast sea of banal writing and utterly absent directing. Lucas' remaining skill is, as I said, creating great shots; his narrative skills have slipped and his dialogue, creaky at best, has become with a few exceptions howlingly bad.


And his actors get no support in working this material; even Samuel L. Jackson seems neutered by the things he has to say. Anakin Skywalker is supposed to be the main character in these movies, and it appears that Lucas has hardly given any thought to how they're supposed to be portrayed. Consequently, his Anakins range from borderline believable through insipid to downright annoying. And Lucas has managed a feat that, prior to 1999, no red-blooded American male would have thought possible: making Natalie Portman seem boring.




All of the above would be forgivable if Lucas hadn't decided to suck retroactively. Hell, most artist go through periods of mediocrity and drought, and sometimes those droughts are terminal: look what happened to that whiny turd Brando. But Lucas isn't content with tainting our memories, oh no: he's decided to erase them. And the method he's using is the DVD release of the original trilogy.


You see, it's the Special Edition, in which Lucas changes scenes to suit him, such as making Greedo shoot first. But more, it's the Special Special Edition, which brings the prequels into the originals, most notably by adding the hated Gungans to the galaxy-wide celebration at the end of ROTJ, and replacing ROTJ's Anakin, Sebastian Shaw, with the prequels Anakin, pretty-boy Hayden Christianson, in a move with calculations no doubt similar to bringing in N'Sync to play Jedi in AOTC.


Which means that there's no Letterbox way of watching Star Wars as we originally saw it. Which means I'll have to hang on to my VCR to watch the last THX version on VHS. Which means that, as much as I dislike to have to say it, that Lucas is on my list.