Posted on 05/16/2005 1:18:49 PM PDT by Destro
Zero Stars For Star Wars VI
May 16, 2005
This column was written by John Podhoretz.
The final Star Wars is, as writer-director George Lucas promised, a tragedy -- but it's not the tragedy Lucas thinks it is.
Ever since he began making his second set of Star Wars movies a decade ago, Lucas said that Episode III: Revenge of the Sith would be the unvarnished story of the young knight Anakin Skywalker's degeneration and conversion into the black-helmeted, black-outfitted Darth Vader, the villain of the first three films. The tale of woe it really tells is that of George Lucas himself, the final chapter in the sad degeneration of a vital, vivid, and highly amusing moviemaker into a dull, solipsistic, and humorless incompetent.
Lucas had more than a quarter of a century to figure out why Anakin Skywalker went bad. And here's what he came up with: Anakin is afraid of losing his wife Padmé in childbirth. Padmé tries to reassure him: "I promise you I won't die in childbirth," she says, offering a touching expression of her faith in the range of health-care services that were available a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. That over-deliberate line of dialogue is typical of Revenge of the Sith, which joins its immediate predecessor Attack of the Clones on a very short list of films that deserve to compete for the Worst Script Ever Written.
"Hold me, Anakin!" Padmé tells her husband. "Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo!"
No performer living or dead could pronounce the word "Naboo" without sounding like a moron, and Lucas matches that authorial infelicity with dozens of others. One of the movie's villains is named "Dooku," and it's a pity that Lucas didn't arrange for Dooku to visit Naboo, because that could have generated a truly memorable piece of dialogue, like "You should never have come to Naboo, Dooku!"
Later in the film, Vader's mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Padmé that her hubby has murdered some children: "He killed younglings at the Jedi temple!" She storms off and confronts him: "Obi-Wan says you killed younglings!"
Padmé's anger and shock seem a mite surprising, since in Attack of the Clones her then-boyfriend Anakin had told her about another occasion on which he had killed some kids. This is spoken in a soliloquy that suggests what Macbeth might have been like if it had been written by George Lucas: "I killed them! I killed them all! They're dead, every single one of them! And not just the men, but the women and the children, too!! I slaughtered them like animals! I HATE THEM!"
But I digress, because that speech isn't in the film under review -- and there are plenty of other hilarious examples of bad writing on display in Revenge of the Sith.
For example: Obi-Wan uncovers the killing of the younglings by checking out some hidden video at the Jedi Temple. The wise old creature Yoda, who may be the most intelligent person in the universe, but seems to have learned English by reading old Time magazines, warns him: "Obi-Wan, watch the surveillance tapes you should not!"
Yoda has just returned from a diplomatic mission to a planet inhabited by bipedal gorillas because, as he explains in the rounded tones of an opponent of the John Bolton nomination, "Good relations with the Wookiees I have." Later, a defeated Yoda sighs: "Into exile I must go." You half-expect him to be followed by six other dwarves chanting, "Hi ho, hi ho / Into exile we will go . . . "
Anakin is invited to attend the theater as a guest of the president of the republic (a scene that allows Lucas to let us know that the favored form of entertainment in the highly advanced Star Wars galaxy is a Cirque du Soleil show performed inside a blob of translucent Jell-O). The president tells him about the Dark Side of the Force, and how it can be used to bring people back from the dead. Anakin decides he wants in. To which the only possible response is: That's it? The entire universe is thrown out of balance and evil defeats good all because one petulant and whiny guy doesn't want Natalie Portman to buy the farm?
"Dialogue is not my thing," Lucas has said. "I don't like writing, and I don't like scripts." But there is a whole lot more to a script than just the dialogue. There are also small matters such as plot, motivation, and character development. How is it possible that Lucas could have satisfied himself with the notion that the destruction of the galactic democracy and the triumph of evil over good could all have sprung from a single lousy pregnancy? Granted, Mrs. Darth Vader wears some very fetching beaded outfits -- plus, she's a senator just like Hillary Clinton, only decades younger and way better looking. Even so, this is astoundingly thin gruel on which to hang six movies made over a period of 28 years.
Back in 1977, we were told in the original Star Wars that Darth Vader "was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force" -- that Vader had become a villain because he had been consumed by a lust for power, so that he could boss people around, blow up planets, and, generally speaking, control the universe. Like all great villains, the Darth Vader we saw in the first Star Wars actually loved being a bad guy. He enjoyed being able to choke annoying underlings by pinching his thumb and forefinger together. He relished his swordfight with his old mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi. He didn't even mind slicing his own son's hand off (in the second film) just to prove a point.
But the Darth Vader we see at the end of Revenge of the Sith hasn't been seduced. He's been tricked. He's not a villain. He's a schmuck.
And what of George Lucas? He is, by leagues, the most commercially successful moviemaker in history. Forget the billion-plus dollars he has earned from the Star Wars movies. Industrial Light & Magic, the special-effects firm he began with his Star Wars profits, grosses $1 billion per year.
But what happened to the director who made the thrilling mood piece American Graffiti, that deceptively casual account of a bunch of teenagers in a California town in 1962 hanging out on the last summer night before the school year begins? What happened to the guy who revolutionized science fiction by making an outer-space adventure that managed to be cheerful, exciting, and lighthearted?
The tragedy of George Lucas is that he made billions of dollars, and all it did was turn him into a drag.
John Podhoretz is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.
In the context of the times (1970's), Anakin/Vader was the ultimate "Hard Hat"--and the perfect metaphor for the leader of the "silent majority," a la Richard Nixon, that represented the forceful (and, yes, sometimes angry) backlash against the so-called "Counterculture" (who were always a tiny minority made up of malcontents, mindless screamers, incipient terrorists, and other assorted scum) and their enthusiastic boosters in the mainstream liberal media.
Many of us understood this immediately, and instinctively, back in 1977 when that first massive Star Destroyer--spitting laser bolts and brooking no further argument--filled the screen and the magic commenced; that's why a good many of us rooted for the Stormtroopers. Underneath those white helmets, many of us accurately speculated, lurked the ghost of the kid down the street who'd done his duty in Vietnam and returned to be spit on by leftists; and those doing the spitting, we again accurately surmised, where the "heroes" of the "Rebellion": Lucas didn't fool us from the git-go. I, for one, groaned while others in the theater cheered when the first Death Star exploded in Episode IV. I didn't fully understand why, at the time. I do now.
But neither did we turn away from that magic; we just took the side that Lucas disdained in his epic, and have been cheering it ever since. This is the real reason Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back, was and remains the most popular film in the franchise to date. Art has a funny way of backfiring on its creators that way when the tale told is compelling and powerful, but the vision behind it is blurred.
Anyway, enough of this high falutin' talk; suffice it to say that I was the only kid in my middle school who went to his 1978 Halloween Party fitted out as an Imperial Stormtrooper--and that outfit got the loudest cheers and most intense attention among any of my peers, particularly from the girls I was keen to impress at the time...
Long Live the Empire.
The kid from the small town wanting to go to the military was Luke Skywalker - who was not a hippie nor was Han Solo a hippie nor was Obi Wan who kicked ass. The Jedis in fact are much like the Templar Knight warrior monks.
It is kind of funny to read your statement because it shows you have no conception of what it is to be in the spirit of the Founding Fathers who wanted a small standing army and hated militarisim like they found in their Hessian enemies.
What you are is in fact a Statist and what you mistake as patriotisim is in fact Statisim. That is not being a Conservative in the tradition of the Founding Fathers.
You need to repent and convert.
duh...watch Vaders death scene in Return of the Jedi and he realizes it himself
That was the worst remake ever. Mark Wahlberg in the role Charlton Heston immortalized. Pathetic. The original was spectacular and who could forget Heston's famed "Get your hands off me you damned, dirty ape."
Heston was and is a real actor. Wahlberg is just a wanna-be. The only good movie he did was "The Italian Job." Anyone else notice how he always seems out of breath in all his movies?
You have to be kidding Mars Attacks was one of the funniest movies ever. Any movie which takes Sarah Jessica Parker's head and puts it on a chihuahua and vice versa CAN'T be bad.
Only until George
gets feeling lonely or poor.
Then he will be back
to really finish --
episodes seven thru nine . . .
Just imagine those!
What could be funnier than a herd of flaming cows?
And as for that bit about "mistaking" patriotism for statism, I need no lectures in patriotism from a keyboard coward such as yourself, who probably never served a day in uniform in his pathetic, pasty-faced life.
and Hitler was a war hero.
If scripts are not Lucas' strong point, then I guess it showed in THX-1138.
Believe it or not, I really did like that movie.
"much more humorless, universe entirely."
well, the subtle humor has been replaced by fart/burp humor and slapstick visual pieces.
"There is no watering down of Vader."
This is fair...the issue IMHO is that lucas has grossly mishandled the first half of vaders story, from the casting of that kid onward, the petulant teenage after that, useless dialogue and acting, etc.
It may be the most spectacular dumbing down of one of the most successful franchises in movie history.
"it just didn't work out like everyone (in the fictional Star Wars world) thought it would. "
If you are referring to gross miscasting and mis-writing for those miscast to play anakin, then I agree wholeheartedly.
"Lucas Arts video games have more plot and better dialog than his second trilogy."
Maybe they plot out the video games first and then base the movie around those games?
"There's something else missing from the prequels, too: *humor*. The Original Trilogy had Han Solo - a non-boring, non-tedious, non-Jedi character. His charm and humor helped balance out the heavy, serious Jedi component"
Do you meant ADULT-oriented humor? The prequels have lots of humor - fart humor, jar jar antic humor, slapstick visuals humor, etc. If you have the mind of a 10 year old it is great.
I just watched the Triumph vs. Star Wars nerds again... that has got to be one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Any word on whether he'll be back for this flick?
Amen.
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