I have been putting this off for a while now despite it being one of the main reasons I wanted to start a film blog in the first place. I have an abundance of free time at the moment so here goes.
George Lucas is a visionary genius. No other person in the history of film has come close to matching his achievements and through him we have the cinema we take for granted today. He inspires many. Take Peter Jackson, who's earlier work was very Sam Raimi influenced, who created his own make up and special effects company much like Lucas. He single handedly created MERCHANDISING with the Star Wars toy range and is a pioneer in sound design (THX), special effects (ILM) and Pixar was an early Lucasfilm experiment which gave the world CG animation.
I don't think a single child growing up in the Star Wars era has not felt George Lucas' mark on them. Much as kids today, even if not into the Star Wars saga, are still effected by the films and tv shows that were influenced by Lucas.
The reason I was hesitant to write this blog is simple - it's going to be a long one. I am going to write about MY connection to George Lucas' work and lead up to the later works and my defence of them. So please sit back, get cosy and read about one man and his love of George Lucas.
1977 - the year I was born. A year made popular by the release of Star Wars. My Dad was a huge fan and I remember being bought the action figures from a young age. I can't remember first seeing the movie but remember wishing I was Han Solo. The story is simple - farm boy saves the world - but as a kid I wouldn't have understood the influences Lucas used in his creation of the film. I had NO clue who Kurosawa was and the idea of a Space Western was beyond me. What was creative was how George took old mythology and all these differing influences and put them together in a new and fresh way. I often wonder how he came up with Lightsabres - the single greatest sci-fi creation ever and how all the names of planets and characters were developed. To create such a diverse universe is an incredible feat.
The Empire Strikes Back followed and extended the mythology and the universe. The cliffhanger ending and Darth Vader's bombshell must have been great to see at a young age. I lament that I cannot remember and was probably too young for it to do anything for me as it would be great to have that hit you in the face. The film was praised for it's darker tone and more grown up feel. There is a reason it is a favourite among film-goers and that is that it doesn't force anything at you - it just flows, dragging you into the story. The single best example of this is Yoda. By the time Luke lands on Dagobah you are already suckered in and then, suddenly, there appears a puppet... and you don't realise. Watch any other Star Wars film and you see puppet like moments that break the reality a little. In Empire it was perfect.
Return Of The Jedi was a bit lacklustre. After perfection it is difficult to get rallied into a sequel that starts very slow and very boring and never quite picks up the pace. Oddly ROTJ features the best moments in the saga, namely the Sarlacc Pit sequence and the final race to the Death Star core. I guess that is something that bothered me - a second Death Star just seemed like they had nowhere else to go. How dumb would the Empire be to say "Let's build another. Lightning never strikes twice in the...." BOOOMMM!
Now I'm going to jump ahead a bit and zip straight to The Phantom Menace. I was a wreck when this film was released in 99. A girl I loved had left me and I was living alone in a crummy flat. I had started drinking heavily and whenever someone mentioned Episode 1 I would just stare back and say "It's only a movie for god's sake!" as I sat in my own misery.
I almost didn't get a ticket for the first night showing until a friend said he'd already got me one. So I picked myself up and went along to see the film I had waited years to see but didn't care about. And then a couple of hours later I left the cinema renewed with a smile on my face and a sense of giddiness about the future. The experience started when the opening blurb - A long time ago etc - popped onto the screen and the entire cinema ripped up in applause. It was a perfect moment with a couple of hundred other people all excited to see this film, something I haven't felt since. As for the movie? I liked it and I have watched it a few more times. It isn't like it was with the original trilogy especially as I am not a kid anymore. If this film had been released in 77 I would have loved it as much then as I do the originals but sadly not many others shared my feelings. Kids turn into adults and don't realise that the things we loved as kids are not the same. Anyone who has watched an old 80's genre show thinking I can't believe I used to watch this crap knows this. As a filmgoer The Phantom Menace was a great film but as a Star Wars fan it could never equate to the classics... nothing could. As I sit here now I haven't watched Star Wars in years... they just don't bother me anymore. The saddest thing I ever started hearing was "George Lucas raped my childhood". It was a pathetic display that if a movie can ruin your youth then maybe you WERE raped in your childhood and your love of Star Wars helped block the memories.
At this point I started becoming very disillusioned with fandom. The nerds were attacking this film like crazy and Simon Pegg even dedicated a whole episode of Spaced to the one joke of "Phantom Menace sucked". I didn't understand and, once agin, I found myself in a minority of fans. This got worse with the announcement of Attack Of The Clones where everybody who complained about Episode 1 dragged up the old, tired criticisms and laid them on the announcement. "Will Jar Jar ruin this one?", "Let's hope George isn't directing.." among others. This new culture of Internerds were scathing and viscious attacking, not only the film, but Lucas himself. The attacks were personal and professional even going as far as to mock his appearance. It was shameful, cowardly and horrific to read some of the posts at the time. Hopefully Attack Of The Clones would put this to bed....
It didn't. The movie was attacked again. These 2 films took a fortune at the Box Office and sold millions of action figures and toys so it was obvious kids liked them. Maybe I was just a big kid but I liked them too. Clones has some impressive moments and watching Anakin's attack on the Sandpeople is sooo shocking. It seems a line was added to the DVD release after the attack where Anakin states "I'm a Jedi. I'm supposed to be better than this", which struck me at the time. He can't control his anger but knows it's wrong - something I could relate to in my life.
I remember vividly getting to the Yoda fight scene. The entire cinema felt a collected nervous twinge as we knew what was about to happen. Then a sigh of relief when it turned out to be awesome. The sound design in the asteroid scene was also a personal highlight where all sound dropped at the moment the bombs exploded to be followed by a loud TWANG!! sound.
None of the fans held out hope for Revenge of the Sith. They again began hate campaigning against Lucas and the new Star Wars trilogy. Fans would write "He doesn't listen to us, he doesn't care for the fans", well would you? If my fan base were a bunch of petty, whining little brats I would switch them off.
George Lucas is a creator - THE creator of the SW saga and therefore is entitled to do whatever he wants with his franchise. When he announced the re-release of the original films with updated effects and sound I was interested to see what would be done. Like I said the original trilogy has sat around stagnant in my film collection and, honestly, could use something in there to pep them up a bit. New dynamic effects shots and some very crafty background additions really sold me back into these films. The fans hated it. I loved it. Typical.
Then George tinkered with them again for the DVD release and, once more, added a few additional touches. At some point I will list the changes in a blog and why I like them but I'll leave it at this for now.
So Revenge of the Sith was released and actually got some pretty good critical acclaim. People said that the film was an improvement on the previous films but many still had some issues. I was no exception - dying of a broken heart? However, this and a couple of other very small things didn't take away from the film. I cried at the end when Obi-Wan leaves his friend to burn - it was well written and superbly acted. The final fight leading up to it was a showstopper too. A flurry of blades in a climactic showdown we'd been waiting to see forever.
Plus with the release of this film - the saga was finished. I rewatched all the movies and realised something special. The entire Star Wars saga is the story of redemption of ONE MAN'S SOUL! How monumentally mind-blowingly awesome is that!
Everything in the entire trilogy was about Anakin Skywalker. The political maschinations of The Phantom Menace to the (NOW) tragic sacrifice for his son in Return Of The Jedi were all there to serve the story. SO The Phantom Menace is now THE ONLY WAY to have started the saga and all those who criticised it were wrong. George Lucas wanted to write this tale and did so with aplomb but the only problem was people liked it TOO MUCH!!
So who is the real villain in this piece? Not George Lucas but a group of nerds who couldn't see the saga for what it was: a 12 hour, almost Shakespearean in effort, tale of a man who does wrong beyond his control, pays the price and, almost too late, realises he must fulfill the destiny he was born for.
That is the reason cinema was created... and why George Lucas must be thanked for recreating it.
NEXT UP: Part 2 - Indiana Jones and the Whining Critics of Doom
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