OK, a bit more on Revenge et al
OK, I lied. I WILL write a bit more about Star Wars. A couple of things that occured to me last night are worth talking to myself about.
The names. Tatooine, Wookie, Mos Eisley, Bantha - nouns from early films somehow 'fit' their settings, comparable to Tolkein. But now - Greivous? Dooku? Just babytalk, and it's pure laziness.
Continuity. This is very, very good. All the loose ends get tied up, like why C3PO doesn't remember any of his former life in Episode IV onwards. As does the justification for Kenobi flumphing into nothingness when Darth sabres him in IV. But better is Lucas' sense of responsibility to the fans. Vader's reason for wearing a bucket on his head isn't explained in earlier films, yet the duel with Kenobi involving molten lava is a well-known part of the backstory - and in 'Sith' we see it. And the last scenes induced a shiver, with the Star Destroyer (is that REALLY a young Peter Cushing cgi'd onto the bridge?) and the Skywalker Farm totally faithful to 1977. Redeemed at last.
Dialogue. Enough said. Literally. It's every bit as bad as I and II.
Storytelling. I was really panicking right at the start, when the scrolling backstory gets - well, a bit complicated!!! But the sense of scale is awesome. A universe where people travel between star systems in single-seat runabouts without even taking a packed lunch? Yoda heads off to Planet Wookie at the drop of a hat, with the noble aim of giving a young Chewbacca a cameo? In the earlier trilogy the storytelling was more human; characters ate and slept and got cranky. Here, everyone's a superhuman.
Suspension of disbelief. Thanks to the incredible craft, it's easy to believe Ewan McGregor really is riding a big gecko and that the droid guy can handle four lightsabres. The disbelief creeps in from basic plotting leaps - Hayden's spending all his spare time round Natalie's place, and only Ewan twigs he might have something to do with her bun in the oven? (He's even kissing her round the back of the pillars of the Jedi Temple! Hyperspace drive, yet no CCTV?) Time and again, you want to tap on the screen and slap the characters on their foreheads.
Cleanliness. There's no dirt in this trilogy, and it's the poorer for it. (Was it deliberate, to show that the Republic had grace and art and the later Empire didn't?) Natalie Portman's flat looks like a serviced apartment. Even the homagey rubbish chute looks antiseptic. The 70s trilogy had machines breaking down, dust in the corners, and you got the feeling the characters would have liked a shower after a lightsabre fight.
Money. Wouldn't it be nice to occasionally see someone grappling with real problems, like paying for things? I mean, practically nobody has a proper job, and even if they did, government salaries surely wouldn't pay for day-long jaunts through hyperspace to planets lightyears away. And how are the Jedi actually funded? I can appreciate their selfless nature might keep their salary demands down, but the Jedi temple looks like a really costly piece of real estate. No film's grappled with this since Blade III.
Amateur critics. Of course, none of the above matters a damn. Do we expect a filmmaker to make the same films in his 60s as he did as a young man of 30? Or capture the same rawness with an unlimited budget and colossal expectations? Lucas even takes a few sly digs at his critics, with an 'only evil deals in absolutes' line. (Ironic, since the Star Wars universe rarely deals in anything but absolutes - good guys are really good, which gives you a license to steal money, hypnotise people etc., and bad guys have no redeeming features at all.)
But overall - despite the craft overwhelming art, the appalling dialogue, the bad acting - the second trilogy is redeemed, and the arc's finally complete. It was worthwhile... just. The best line I can give is that it finally made me want to buy the DVDs.
The names. Tatooine, Wookie, Mos Eisley, Bantha - nouns from early films somehow 'fit' their settings, comparable to Tolkein. But now - Greivous? Dooku? Just babytalk, and it's pure laziness.
Continuity. This is very, very good. All the loose ends get tied up, like why C3PO doesn't remember any of his former life in Episode IV onwards. As does the justification for Kenobi flumphing into nothingness when Darth sabres him in IV. But better is Lucas' sense of responsibility to the fans. Vader's reason for wearing a bucket on his head isn't explained in earlier films, yet the duel with Kenobi involving molten lava is a well-known part of the backstory - and in 'Sith' we see it. And the last scenes induced a shiver, with the Star Destroyer (is that REALLY a young Peter Cushing cgi'd onto the bridge?) and the Skywalker Farm totally faithful to 1977. Redeemed at last.
Dialogue. Enough said. Literally. It's every bit as bad as I and II.
Storytelling. I was really panicking right at the start, when the scrolling backstory gets - well, a bit complicated!!! But the sense of scale is awesome. A universe where people travel between star systems in single-seat runabouts without even taking a packed lunch? Yoda heads off to Planet Wookie at the drop of a hat, with the noble aim of giving a young Chewbacca a cameo? In the earlier trilogy the storytelling was more human; characters ate and slept and got cranky. Here, everyone's a superhuman.
Suspension of disbelief. Thanks to the incredible craft, it's easy to believe Ewan McGregor really is riding a big gecko and that the droid guy can handle four lightsabres. The disbelief creeps in from basic plotting leaps - Hayden's spending all his spare time round Natalie's place, and only Ewan twigs he might have something to do with her bun in the oven? (He's even kissing her round the back of the pillars of the Jedi Temple! Hyperspace drive, yet no CCTV?) Time and again, you want to tap on the screen and slap the characters on their foreheads.
Cleanliness. There's no dirt in this trilogy, and it's the poorer for it. (Was it deliberate, to show that the Republic had grace and art and the later Empire didn't?) Natalie Portman's flat looks like a serviced apartment. Even the homagey rubbish chute looks antiseptic. The 70s trilogy had machines breaking down, dust in the corners, and you got the feeling the characters would have liked a shower after a lightsabre fight.
Money. Wouldn't it be nice to occasionally see someone grappling with real problems, like paying for things? I mean, practically nobody has a proper job, and even if they did, government salaries surely wouldn't pay for day-long jaunts through hyperspace to planets lightyears away. And how are the Jedi actually funded? I can appreciate their selfless nature might keep their salary demands down, but the Jedi temple looks like a really costly piece of real estate. No film's grappled with this since Blade III.
Amateur critics. Of course, none of the above matters a damn. Do we expect a filmmaker to make the same films in his 60s as he did as a young man of 30? Or capture the same rawness with an unlimited budget and colossal expectations? Lucas even takes a few sly digs at his critics, with an 'only evil deals in absolutes' line. (Ironic, since the Star Wars universe rarely deals in anything but absolutes - good guys are really good, which gives you a license to steal money, hypnotise people etc., and bad guys have no redeeming features at all.)
But overall - despite the craft overwhelming art, the appalling dialogue, the bad acting - the second trilogy is redeemed, and the arc's finally complete. It was worthwhile... just. The best line I can give is that it finally made me want to buy the DVDs.
posted by chrisworth at 9:32 AM
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