Absinthe & Cookies (a bit bitter, a bit sweet)

More Star Wars Thoughts

Hey, it's a thing right now for me.

We were watching some of the extra stuff on the DVD last night, and I was reminded of all the grief Lucas took in making Star Wars, not to mention his experiences with the studios prior to that. I said to Nin that that might explain how bad I & II were, and well, III wasn't much better. If you figure he got the original three made -- and he didn't direct ESB or ROTJ -- and he was unimaginably successful, why on earth would he listen to anything anyone had to say when he started making the new ones? I mean, they'd never been right before. He was so close to it, the story was so intensely personal, that he couldn't see the forest for the trees. But he was "George Lucas" and it was his money, his vision, and no one could tell him that maybe he should rethink some of it.

And that leads me to this review by Orson Scott Card:

On the first Star Wars film he had help. He was not yet so powerful that no one would criticize his work and help him get rid of the most embarrassing clunkers. On the next two films, better writers helped him even more, so that, at least in The Empire Strikes Back, his saga matched his vision aurally as well as visually.

Then he went sixteen years without making a movie before returning to write the true beginning of his epic.

But by now he was a legend. Fans not only worshiped him, some actually believed in the Force and listed "Jedi" as their religion. In Hollywood, a land where the only signs of divinity are fame and money, he had so much of both that there was no one left who could say to him, "George, please, get some help on that scene, it's going to make people laugh in the theaters, and not the right way."

Instead, it was apparently all "Yes, Mr. Lucas" and "Wonderful, Mr. Lucas" and the result was two of the most successful wretched films in history.

Star Wars, the idea of Star Wars, will always be more for me than the memories of three disappointing movies. In the end, George Lucas was responsible for changing my life in ways that only now, looking back over all these years, can I really see. So I'll redo "Revenge of the Sith" in my head, pretty it up, and then I'll go see it again and mesh the two together. Somewhere along the way, the actual movie has come to mean less than the idea, the vision, the myth. And I'm okay with that.

Here's the strange thing. Even though that opening day audience largely understood how bad the writing was -- and laughed out loud and even cheered for the absolutely worst lines -- they still got a sense of fulfilment out of watching everything come together.

I'm glad I saw it.

And, incredibly enough, I will almost certainly see it again. And buy the DVD.

So many of us will do that, in fact, that Mr. Lucas will no doubt think that we think his movie was triumphantly good.

Well, that's one of the nice things about having supreme power over your own kingdom, as Mr. Lucas has: You can so easily convince yourself that the people love you.

There's always VII, VIII & IX!

A little later: my morning after review is here, and if you're a real geek, we're discussing "Splinter of the Minds Eye" here.

Posted by Ithildin at May 23, 2005 8:49 AM | PROCURE FINE OLD WORLD ABSINTHE