Bantha Fodder

Last week while plotting our U2 concert doings my old roommate gave me the business over the phone for being one of those nuts who thinks well of the Star Wars prequels and accused me of being soft on them critically speaking, and my pal further declared himself as standing behind those beliefs before the show Friday night at City Grille over beers. I of course stand by my beliefs too, and will hereby defend myself and explain where I stand on matters where some Star Wars fans like myself and Steve O diverge dramatically:

Jar Jar Binks: Episode I was a kids movie and Jar Jar is George's Bullwinkle- get over it folks. Yes many wanted I to feature an already evil Darth Vader, and they too need to get over it. Lucas wanted I – III to be about how and why Darth Vader became evil, and to do that he needed to be super good to start with, and he totally accomplished that by going with Jar Jar, the teen queen heroine, primary colors, Darth Maul, and kid Vader the kid hero. And it all balances out in III.

Hayden Christiansen: Lucas went with another unknown for a pivotal role and in my opinion he worked- I have it on good authority that the ladies loved him in II (the romance that follows I the comedy), all dark and handsome and tempestuous and ludicrously in love, Romeo and James Dean (he also whines a lot like Luke in IV). In III he conveys the rage, passion and confusion that contribute to his tragic fall into darkness, and by the end his Anakin is ready to become the Darth Vader we remember from IV & V and redeemed in VI.

The acting in general: these movies are of a piece, and the originals weren’t necessarily Shakespeare or profound either dialogue or acting wise. These are Saturday popcorn movies (more specifically, the Saturday matinee serials) for the Planet Earth that also happens to be pop mythology for the world, and as this it works as a whole. And for the record, Natalie Portman totally channeled Carrie Fisher’s willfulness, Ewan McGregor was excellent in all three- the reincarnation of Alec Guiness as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Sam Jackson’s Mace Windu was serene and totally against type, Liam Neeson was awesome as the sage mentor in I, and Yoda was great in all three.

Darth Vader wasn’t evil enough: Personally I thought betraying the Jedi and slaughtering Jedi tots made Vader in III plenty evil, but hey, that’s just me. The key is that by Lucas’s thinking Vader is evil because of his decisions and actions, not because he’s EVIL; this is of course the moral fable component of the Star Wars saga, hell it’s the moral component of fables and myths period. Nobody is born evil. I guess you can be raised evil, but that doesn’t really happen a whole lot. Most times people become evil out of choice, as a result of their actions and how they choose to live their life; and through literature and art we measure ourselves against these mirrors and parables of the human condition. Come on now, the dude chooses power over justice and what is right, kills junior Jedi, attacks his pregnant wife out of jealousy, and tries to kill his mentor-brother-father- trust me, Darth Vader is a bad guy.

On digital vs analog technology (Steve and I didn’t disagree on this point- this is more for the haters in cyberspace): I like George Lucas unleashed and unfettered, and I like the fact that digital technology was there to meet his vision of the “more civilized” era that existed before the oppressive Empire, and I for one loved the fact that I – III was Star Wars on acid, or rather, jazz riffs in the Star Wars idiom that deconstructs (constructs) the Star Wars mythology we knew: the magnificent scale and grandeur of galaxy shaking events that set up IV – VI the precise inverse of the scale of the original films we know and love, about fathers and kids and generations interacting forcefully with one another in the name of saving the galaxy.

Also, after watching I to VI on DVD they do match up with the 1997 special editions, and really that’s all that should matter anyway. The saga has finally been told, and I for one am glad.