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Time of Endings: Star Wars
01/07/2005 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 
Last issue Mark discussed the end of Star Trek series of series. This month he would like to talk about his take on the Star Wars series, also coming to an end. Buy Star Wars in the USA - or Buy Star Wars in the UK  In the mid-1970s I loved the science fiction film, but it really did not love me back. Science fiction cinema really had taken a rather glum turning. The notable films were pieces like SOYLENT GREEN and SILENT RUNNING, both superficial and dour. There had been only two science fiction films in the previous ten years that I considered actually to be good. One was QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (as *nobody* who knows me will be surprised) and the other was PHASE IV. Both had gone almost unnoticed in the United States. The crescendo of the weak science fiction was LOGAN'S RUN which didn't even make sense as a story and had very silly visual effects people floating on wires. I felt like I was starving for a science fiction film with some real imagination.
At the MidAmericon World Science Fiction Convention the guy who had made AMERICAN GRAFFITI had rented a room and was showing off the costumes for his new science fiction film. The storyline on the handout sounded like a comic book plot, but the production paintings looked very nice. They were nothing like anything that could really be done on film, but they looked creative. A costume science fiction film like LOGAN'S RUN with sets that were built to look like these might at least be watchable. They should use these paintings in the advertising, I thought, even if they don't get the film to look like that. The paintings might get people at least imagining what is going on in the background.
By the time the film was released I had seen a trailer that led me to believe this was going to be at least an interesting science fiction film. It happened to be released the same weekend as what I expected to be the big special effects film of the summer, SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER, which featured special effects by the great Ray Harryhausen. Last Wednesday was the 28th anniversary of the original opening. As it happens that was a Wednesday also. (Actually I could not see the film until Thursday and early reports just told me I definitely should see this film.) Watching this film I can actually say I was agog. But then so was the rest of the audience. A lot of science fiction fans remember that particular weekend. Much of the world's film industry also remembers that weekend.
Last week we saw the completion of the series. In six chapters we get the story of one man's life. The series has been a test- bed for a lot of different ideas. Frequently the experiments have been to the detriment of the series's popularity, but I think that was expected. Some innovations go down smoothly with the fans and some that do not. One that generally goes down well is the pioneering use of computers for the expression of visual imagination. I don't think one can fault the series for its imagination or for how well it is translated to the screen. It heralded a new start for the science fiction film. A lot of films with bad plots whose only virtue was the visual component were made by other filmmakers using Lucas's innovations. I have heard George Lucas blamed for that, but I don't agree.
The complaint has been made that the story told in the six chapters is shallow. For me that is not really a problem. I think of the story much more as myth, and it was intentionally so. But few myths do develop their characters well. Perseus who slew the Medusa is not a three-dimensional person who shed light on the human condition. He is a mythic hero.
Another complaint is the George Lucas years later went back and revising his earlier films in the series. I admit I would love to have on DVD the original release version of STAR WARS. But I think I also understand the need for the revisions. Quite simply Lucas was not making six films; he was making a single film in six parts. There were six releases over a course of twenty-eight years. But I think he was telling one story that he wants it to be watchable in one seamless stretch. For the effects style not to seem wildly uneven, the earlier films have to be revised to look like 2005 films. I doubt there will be any further revisions, at least not once the films are uniform in style.
Another experiment is to shoot his series out of chronological order. This causes its own set of problems, but Lucas has kept them manageable. He intended that the Indiana Jones films would be made in reverse chronological order and found the problems were insuperable. But telling this story in two trilogies made the odd order much easier.
Lucas has certainly made some mistakes along the way. He wanted to see if pure CGI characters could be included in the story and could be major characters. Jar-Jar Binks proved the concept, though many found the character obnoxious and irritating. He provoked outright hostility from some quarters. But Peter Jackson built on Lucas's concept and gave us his Gollum, a much more interesting CGI character. That might not have been possible without Lucas taking the lead.
Lucas's episodes were somewhat uneven. Starting with RETURN OF THE JEDI he seemed to be aiming at a younger audience or at least to be more aware of their presence. The Ewoks of RETURN OF THE JEDI were entirely too cute. So was the pod-race sequence of THE PHANTOM MENAGE. Seen as a six-film series with cuter and more serious elements, the style seems to me a little more even. After all Shakespeare put comic relief into his most dour tragedies.
George Lucas has been blamed for negative changes in the film industry, many of which can be seen as being a direct result of filmmakers mimicking the "Star Wars" phenomenon. To me this makes as much sense as saying that if CITIZEN KANE had been followed by a bunch of poor semi-biographical-films then Orson Welles would be at fault for having made KANE. Much of the film industry learned how to be more profitable by mimicking Lucas, but I do not blame Lucas for that.
Lucas was also the catalyst for science fiction and fantasy to become much more central to the American film business. Again I neither credit nor blame Lucas. In both his success was the catalyst.
Science fiction is about imagination and the movies to a large part are about suspension of disbelief. Lucas gave the industry the tools it needed for that where they clearly were missing in films before STAR WARS. Even if the films he made were terrible, and I would argue they are actually fairly good now that we can see the the entire story, he should be thanked for creating the tools to make the science fiction look real.
Where I do credit Lucas is in demonstrating that what the imagination can picture the screen can show. In FORBIDDEN PLANET there is a machine that makes mental images and allows them to be shown to others. George Lucas made his own machine and gave it to the world. His six-chapter life story of Anakin Skywalker (a.k.a. Darth Vader) is more than the sum of its parts. I am both sorry and happy to see the story complete.
Had George Lucas not made STAR WARS, no doubt eventually someone else would have applied computerized image creation. And there are many who think that this emphasis on the transferring mental images to the screen is a bad thing. But the series and Lucas have affected every imaginative film since STAR WARS, if not directly, by creating a market. For better or for worse--and I think for the better--his films have been a real milestone in the history of cinema.
Mark R. Leeper
(c) Mark R. Leeper 2005
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