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The older [fans] are loyal to the first three films I made, and they are the ones in control of the media. The films that these people don’t like—which are the first two prequels—are fanatically adored by the under 25s. They are always at each other’s throats about it.
George Lucas at Cannes News Conference, May 2005
I’ve had it, George. We’re through. You can only push me so far, and I’ll be damned if I won’t push back. So I’m disloyal if I don’t “adore” the first two flops in your Star Wars prequel trilogy? Well, let this be the final missive in this Star Wars fan’s critical portfolio. I’m not in love with you and your special universe anymore. You’ve let me down and now, you’ve insulted my intelligence.
Even before Star Wars, I was quite the movie buff. I saw everything and anything: I was one of the few kids I knew who had seen The Exorcist. And when That’s Entertainment played for months, I saw it at least once a week. To me, movies were larger than life experiences.
The day Star Wars opened, I rode my bike to the Countryside Six Theaters in Clearwater, Florida, stood in line with a few dozen others, and took a seat. A little less than three hours later, my cinematic aesthetic was altered irrevocably. In part, it followed up on the change brought by Jaws, which inaugurated the whole film “event” idea. But it was more than that. It was epic.
From then on, movies were crucial. I skipped classes on the morning that Close Encounters of the Third Kind opened, bought books about film by Pauline Kael, and read Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel religiously. I worked at loving movies, past and present. By the time you offered the first “sequel” The Empire Strikes Back, I was ready. And you delivered. You reset the benchmark and, proving that a sequel could be bigger, and dare I say better, than the original.
I was so smitten that Return of the Jedi didn’t dissuade me from your vision, hook, line, and Ewok. And you swore that was it. Sure, you said there were supposed to be nine movies total, but you also said we’d probably never ever see the rest of them on the big screen. Sixteen years later, you returned to Star Wars. Had I been paying attention back in ‘83, I might have expected what was coming: the dumbed-down scripts, the cutesy characters, the endless product tie-ins. But I still believed—beyond Radioland Murders, Howard the Duck, and Captain EO (thought I forgot about that one, huh?). I believed you never would screw over the fans who made you a myth before VHS made your stinking rich.
But, you did. First, you fucked up the original trilogy by turning it into an excuse to work out some of the technological kinks in your CGI software. The resulting Special Editions were far from exceptional. Like colorizing a classic black and white movie, you destroyed the iconoclastic image we first fans had. Not only destroyed it, mind you, but complained that we even suggested you should preserve the non-augmented originals. I know, I know. They’re yours. You felt they were incomplete. And now that you’ve made the prettied up versions, you say the originals no longer exist. And you know what, George? They no longer exist to me either.
And then you had to deliver that sermon about trade pacts, treaty violations, and political intrigue called The Phantom Menace. But while Jar-Jar Binks was certainly a problem for the Star Wars faithful, the betrayal runs deeper than what amounts to a stupid racial slur. The real trouble is that you went too far back, starting Darth Vader off as a snot-nosed, towheaded brat. Why not go back even further, say, to Star Wars: The Phantom Weaning?
To make matters worse, you turned that aggravating sprite into Hayden Christensen, a no-talent pretty boy with about as much screen presence as those increasingly phony digital cityscapes you keep hurling at us. More and more, the Star Wars world is bogged down in the visual, in special effects and set piece spectacles, avoiding the one thing that worked so brilliantly before. The first trilogy was an experiment in mythmaking, but the prequels are more like experiments in marketing, in creating a new generation of Star Wars fans, so you can explore the realms of the digital process.
But for all their advanced technology, the prequels are not about cinema, but about hype. Or better, they’re your chance to see if you still have it, after years of seeing your limelight usurped by other, more impressive science fiction and fantasy extravaganzas. It must really chafe that Peter Jackson, some pissant unknown from New Zealand, ran friggin’ Rings around your prequels, even earning what you couldn’t in five turns at bat, namely, a Best Picture Oscar. Or that B-movie maven Sam Raimi and those fanboy Wachowskis now make the sort of formal leaps you once mastered in your sleep.
As if to underline the competition, Revenge of the Sith arrives in theaters heralded by a blitz of interviews, commercials, and more-than-mass merchandising. You can’t walk through a grocery store, make a cell phone call, or eat a Whooper without being reminded of Vader and his fellow varmints. What’s next? Padmé Panty Shields? The train seems unstoppable. Though you claim this movie is “the end,” you’ve already announced a Star Wars animated series (oh goodie, more Clone Wars), as well as the fact that all six films will be re-released, in 3-D, no less.
Sadly, your assessment in Cannes shows how little you understand what you’ve wrought. Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, you inspired a unified group of fans, individuals upon whose backs you built your empire. We watched abysmal TV shows (even the Wookie Christmas mess), bought toys, and pawed over authorized and unauthorized novelizations. And this is how you thank us, by saying we’re stuck in the past, unable to appreciate your current wizardry.
Some reviews are suggesting Revenge of the Sith is a return to form. Frankly, it should be. The previous prequels were warm-up, anyway: since they didn’t give us any indication of what makes Obi-Wan tick, why Mace Windu is so important to the Jedis or how Yoda became the smallest badass in the galaxy, they were only passing time before the big payoff.
The saddest part is that I will be there. Not on opening day, as my advanced middle age has me doing menial things like earning a living. Kind of cramps your waiting-in-line-for-summer-blockbusters style. But just like I did for Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, I will pay for my ticket, find a comfortable stadium seat, and adjust my expectations. They can’t get much lower. And besides, if I don’t like it, I’ll be just another old school Star Wars fan. Thank god.
