The Force Has Left Us

You can blow up a Death Star twice, but you better have a good reason. The first Star Wars trilogy, uneven as it might be, at least developed a story that grew and widened with each sequel. When Darth Vader bent to pick up the Emperor, taking a posture unprecedented in the previous movies, the meaningfulness of that moment rested on Vader's character development, which had been unfurled and complicated over the length of three feature films. It is this sort of meaningfulness that Star Wars: Episode I lacks. Instead of real character development, it relies on name recognition. At every level, even in staging and special effects, Lucas relies on superficial quoting of the originals, forgetting to make a good movie in the process.

The Star Wars universe is not so far away anymore, and certainly not long ago. The new Star Wars movie takes place a few years ago, in the un-mysterious period that came before childhood. Many of us were not born when the first Star Wars movie came out and don't remember seeing any of them for the first time. Instead of behaving like a normal media product, the original movies function as a story from prehistoric childhood, like Sunday School or the songs that mother sang.

The movies have been viewed so many times that they have come to be treated as projections of a generation's still-fragile heritage, not as a trilogy of George Lucas movies. Since those movies came out, a generation of Americans have made them an almost-religious touchstone, and in the last decade the Star Wars franchise has generated a canon of Star Wars trivia, coming in the form of trashy novels and pretentious "technical manuals." This new movie, then, comes as a banal realization of rumors that have been circulating for 20 years.

Doomed not to live up to the demands of its audience, unaided by the originality and historical position of the originals, Episode I still had a chance to be at least a good movie. But instead, the only satisfaction it can provide is eye-candy and the fulfillment of trivial "fan" curiosity.

It is hard to criticize a movie that comes with so much baggage. The eight-year-old's who see Episode 1 and are today taken with its action may grow up to imbue it with as much meaning as our generation has found in the original movies. Some scenes have the potential to become psycho-emotional monuments in our cultural memory: just as Han Solo rocketed out of nowhere to send Darth Vader hurtling through empty space in Star Wars, so does Anakin Skywalker throw his racing pod into a breathless ascent and flame-out half-way through Episode I.

Unfortunately, whenever the new movie offers such a scene, bad editing or poor acting cancels its effect. Watching the movie, one aches for a certain glory, but the camera never seems to linger long enough, and the awe and agony that pervaded the original movies never registers in the faces of Ewan McGregor or Liam Neeson. When those actors, respectively playing Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon, "swim" into an underwater metropolis at the start of the movie, one feels a tinge of wonder, but it is immediately muddled by over-done special effects. Often, the music is off (John Williams' score seems affixed, chopped up by Lucas' manic pace). And of course, one expects a lot from a Star Wars.

Lucas obviously did not set out to make a smarter Star Wars. His characters troop along to a Jedi-like tripartite climax, one battle in space, another on the ground and a third between lightsabers. This is not a movie that shows 20 years of maturation; it is not innovative, it is not artistically brave; there are no rowdy droids rambling on to a techno beat, no wary characterization that plays to the audience that has grown up since Return of the Jedi.

Indeed, Episode I uses its legacy as a crutch. In the midst of an eye-popping "pod race" scene on Tatooine, just as the action promises to run away with the audience, Lucas dribbles in gratuitous allusions to the action-figure world he begat in his youth: Jawas cheer "Utidi!" and sand people fire on the racers like juvenile delinquents. Jabba the Hutt rolls out to preside over the race, as if Lucas' faith in his audience did not extend beyond their vulgar appreciation for references to the previous movies.

Elsewhere, Lucas uses the old movies with less trite but equally lame intent. Qui-Gon needs to appear wise; thus, Lucas puts him in the back of a sea-pod cockpit, murmuring confident wisdom ("There's always a bigger fish.") just as Kenobi once presided behind Han Solo's pilot seat. Jabba's dancing girls return as masseuse-extras in a Tatooine hanger, once again serving to sprinkle Lucas' archetypal myth with just enough sexiness to be annoying.

Dependency on the originals extends far beyond decorative quoting: it informs the structure of Lucas' script so that Episode I gets lost in a world of juicy but ultimately soulless revelation. Every five minutes a new character makes its incredibly propitious entrance into the Star Wars saga--R2-D2 is the droid that saves the queen's ship from destruction and C-3PO was Darth Vader's boyhood engineering hobby--Tatooine just happens to be the most convenient planet for a pit stop.

Just as in Jedi Lucas plays with his characters without developing them--Luke's last meeting with Yoda was quick, getting to the meat of the story and leaving, thus making the meat rather dry--the plot of Episode I runs along, too busy with explanation of the originals to tell a good story this time around. Or perhaps the first movies were lucky--perhaps Lucas is a naive savant who has lost his "savant."

Ultimately, Episode 1 fails because of a dramatic fallacy inherent in the idea of a prequel. Where the original Star Wars told a moving, visceral story, Episode I indulges curiosity.

Fans are essentially interested in Lucas' imaginary universe, but because the magic of that universe depends on the richness of Lucas' imagination, Lucas has to do more than just make up more "stuff." Unfortunately, the point of a prequel is to explain a story already told; it relies on the inertia of another story. It is simply more "stuff." It does not truly enlarge the Star Wars universe.

Lucas needed to continue the feeling of Star Wars. He needed to complicate the dimensions of the story, as he did with each of the original movies. This new movie may be a prequel, but that is no reason for Lucas' storytelling art to backpedal--in fact, his material was richer than ever before.

When this new trilogy begins to climax, what will that climax be? Will Yoda retreat to Dagobah, will Ben Kenobi pick up Darth Vader's old lightsaber, so he can someday give it to Luke? Such cloyingly nostalgiac satisfactions pale compared to Luke's arcanely scored hatred for Vader and to Han's martyr-ship in the carbonite chamber! The satisfactions of a prequel turn the the Star Wars universe into an introvert, a narcissus.

Not only does the project of a prequel seduce Lucas into gossiping about his own characters, but his merchandising franchise brings his universe even lower: the army of laserbolt statistics and shallow Silmarillion-esque histories that he has spawned have chanined and tempted him into lame storytelling. The entire franchise now seems to bend over backwards, ugly and vacuous, in order to provide all these salivating "fans" with satisfaction.

At least, Episode 1 does offer a few new mysteries, presenting new races, worlds and a ridiculous new rabbit-like character, Jar-Jar, but these originalities are few and flaccid compared to the rich detail of the first movies. More often, Lucas simply resorts to twisting the plot which is mandated by the originals. Anakin has to marry someone in order to be Luke's father, thus in _Episode1_ he develops a budding affection for a queen, but she's twice his age. That--and new spaceships--is Lucas' current creativity.

The original Star Wars can be viewed with a kind of willed-ignorance, so that one always feels the dynamic impact of Vader's statement "I am your father" reverberate through the preceding first and a half movies. What will be the great plot twist of this trilogy, and will one be able to appreciate its dramatic movements just as one appreciates the old films on the 50th viewing?

Probably not. Just as science fiction or horror camp does not request suspension of disbelief from the viewer, neither does this sort of prequel ask for surprise or wonder at its revelations. Instead, it tries to evoke satisfaction as it confirms rumors. The prequels have come forward somehow to prove or embody the faith of Star Wars fans, but it is a gesture that hardly satisfies anyone with taste or with a real appreciation of the originals. Lucas gives us mind- and eye-candy. Give us instead a good movie: we would know what to do with it.