Star Wars Day

Yeah, no thanks. This has been an atrocious year for Star Wars. If Disney announces that Kathleen Kennedy has been let go for Star Wars day, I still wouldn't be interested. The reality is that the problem isn't Kathleen Kennedy. She just reflects Disney corporate culture all too well. Feige has been jealous of all of the negative attention Star Wars has been recieving with the fans and is desperate to bring Marvel up to speed, for instance. It's done.

Maybe it wasn't really ever all that great to begin with. I quote part of Jeffro's commentary on Star Wars, which was kind of off-hand because it's really commentary on John Carter of Mars. But he makes a perfectly salient and good point.

[...] that iconic Star Wars movie poster by Tom Jung; I’m sure you recall it. Luke is raising his light saber in an exquisite combination of triumph and rage, his robes spilling open to reveal a perfectly chiseled chest, his left foot on the top of a hill of some alien Iwo Jima, a maelstrom of space battle erupting in the sky above him. The two robots practically cower behind him. Leia cocks her chest to one side affording a more pronounced view of her cleavage, one hand on her hip and with a slit going up her dress that will not quit. There is a brazenness to her pose, to be sure, but also something else. I think every great gangster knows this on some level, but by her standing with Luke, aligning herself with him with him like that, and being as alluring and provocative as she is, she multiplies Luke’s intimidation factor even as she subtly upstages him. It is a dynamite combination that positively sizzles.

Unfortunately, it presents a forceful, epic tone that is not at all to be found in the movie itself. You see, it wasn’t until George Lucas realized that he couldn’t do Flash Gordon that he even cast his gaze upon Burroughs’s influential Mars series. When he finally came across them, he was so smitten with the Frank Frazetta covers that he actually wanted to hire him to make the poster. The resemblance is no accident and it invites comparison. In a sense, Star Wars comes in the exact same packaging as the John Carter series, but it’s clear that Lucas was unable to fully translate the content of those books into cinematic form.

Because Lucas was a hopeless beta; the kind of stereotypical kid who read science fiction in the 50s-60s, sadly. He was never able to understand "red science fiction" as Daddy Warpig calls it, even though he loved it. It was fundamentally for a more alpha, macho type of personality than him. Here's some more. It's even more obvious, as I discovered when I re-read the novelization of the first film for the first time since I was in middle school myself a couple of years ago. Luke is a dweeb. He's not an everyman, or rather, he only manages to credibly become one because they cut his worst crap out in editing.

Luke is smitten with a pint sized hologram of Leia. It’s kind of sappy for him to want to play her message over and over just so he can keep on ogling her. He’s almost as bad as Lionel Richie in his music video for Hello. When Luke risks incomprehensible levels of danger to save her from her scheduled execution, her first words to him are sarcastic put down: Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper? This is not the sort of situation that any young man would seriously aspire to be in. I’ve always identified with Luke and even wanted to be Luke when I was a kid, but he retains his “best buddy” status for the duration of the film franchise and never truly graduates to anything resembling a true leading man. Maybe I could never quite put my finger on the problem back in the day, but this is as frustrating as it is disappointing.

Granted, Lucas put together a fantastic cast that had great chemistry together and whoever did the editing made sure everything ended up punchy and entertaining, but Burroughs knew how much more credible a romantic arc can be if it’s established early on that the hero has passed over plenty of chances to settle down. [...] While it’s perfectly reasonable for a farm boy on a backwater world to be smitten with the first space princess to come along, the whole scenario in the film decidedly less awe inspiring than what’s implied by the movie posters. Edgar Rice Burroughs again provides the better deal. He doesn’t drop the ball as the romantic stakes grow ever higher, either. After John Carter’s close shave with death, the space princess inadvertently reveals her true feelings for him.

Only a guy like Lucas would write an epic where the hero gets friendzoned and still think that that's cool. Jeffro summarizes the litany of issues as such.

But it’s clear that John Carter’s military and diplomatic accomplishments rival those of Tolkien’s Aragorn: "Never before had an armed body of green warriors entered the gates of Helium, and that they came now as friends and allies filled the red men with rejoicing."  (Chapter XXVI) That really nails down why Star Wars pales in comparison to this science fiction classic. Edgar Rice Burroughs not only gives us a space princess of unsurpassed quality, but he also shows us a man that is worthy of her. Lucas either fails to grasp the concept or else doesn’t even try.

Now I love Star Wars, I really do. I grew up with the movies and treasured my Kenner action figures and their Darth Vader carrying case as much as any other boy my age. But I would have been much better served had some kindhearted adult known to introduce me to the John Carter series at some point. But I have to confess I’d probably feel somewhat more kindly towards the massively popular film franchise if not for the appropriation of Frank Frazetta’s style and the many people making strongly worded claims of its mythic potency.

Seriously, though: what kind of epic myth is it where the guy doesn’t get the girl in the end? Much better, in my opinion, is The Lord of The Rings, in which not only does Arwen Evenstar give up her immortality for a man of renown, but even the humble Samwise Hamfast can settle down in Hobbiton as mayor-for-life with Rosie to keep him company and Elanor to sit on his knee. Edgar Rice Burroughs is practically on the same page as J. R. R. Tolkien here and as far as happy endings go, they’re light years ahead of a big party with the ewoks. Honestly, I don’t know what my expectations were going in here, but I’m fairly certain that Star Wars has lost more than a little of its luster for me as a result of my having read A Princess of Mars.

I've talked about this before too; Luke starts off as whiny and annoying, especially in the novelization or film as filmed before editing took out the worst of it. Here's some of my commentary on it from past posts:

Curiously, Luke is much more bitter and whiny in [the novelization] than comes out in film, which has the side effect of making him much less sympathetic or likable.  He also seems much more hapless; whereas in the movie, one gets the sense that although he doesn't want to stay and farm for another season, he does so at least partially out of a sense of duty to family and home.  Here, his relationship with Uncle Owen is more antagonistic, and Luke stays because he literally can't leave somehow.  Given that he's supposed to be twenty, one wonders why he doesn't just take his destiny into his own hands rather than whine so much about it.  There's a scene (which was actually filmed, although it never made the cut, even with restored footage, although it appears here in full) where Luke runs around in Tosche Station and nobody likes him (except Biggs) which, honestly, I can hardly blame them for not.  One wonders why these liberals always have this caricuturish view of their youth and the authority of their traditional families, small towns, etc. as so oppressive, and them so helpless about it until they finally run off to the big city where they are liberated.  Sigh.

But those elements are in the movie too; they're just a bit exaggerated here.  Luckily, the editors took much of the annoying parts of Luke's time on Tatooine right out, although probably not because it was annoying. 

In addressing what I wanted alt.Star Wars content to be, I said the following, which talks more about the subsequent movies, but it really goes all the way back to the beginning with Luke and his beta-ness, doesn't it? Which derives from the fact that George Lucas was himself a rather hapless beta and that's probably the only way he could relate to the world.

Star Wars without Obiwan Kenobi turning out to be a lying schemer.  Star Wars without Yoda who encourages Luke to hide and train like a putz rather than rescue his friends like a hero.  Star Wars without Luke who surrenders to the Emperor and refuses to fight and somehow thinks that that's winning.  Star Wars where the stormtroopers aren't stupid jokes who lose a battle to a handful of stone age Care Bears.  Star Wars where the heroes are heroic, the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and there's none of the murky moral ambiguity brought about by a creator who doesn't understand morality, heroism, or the nature of good.

And most especially, Star Wars where the characters aren't boring and stupid.  Where the demands of decivilizational "social" "justice" haven't completely ruined it all before it even starts.  The problems with Star Wars actually start very, very early—although they don't metastasize until the Prequels and other subsequent content.  If Luke is supposed to be the hero of the story, growing from immature and impulsive young teenager to champion of all that's right in the galaxy, why is he a sad sack loser who can't get the girl? (Don't even start.  Leia wasn't Luke's sister until that was ret-conned during the script development process of Return of the Jedi to close a potential plot hole. Later, Lucas didn't even worry about closing plot holes, so I guess maybe I should be thankful.)  If the Jedi are so wonderful, why do they have this bizarre zen dispassion and why do they feel like it's OK to run rough-shod over everybody they cross paths with ("aggressive negotiations?")  Why is Obiwan Kenobi a lying, manipulative weasel?  Why does Yoda discourage any kind of heroism or goodness in Luke; and then smile as if Luke didn't win in the end by completely defying everything that he told him to do?  For that matter; Yoda himself must be a lying, manipulative weasel himself—why did he tell Luke that his training wasn't complete in Empire and then when Luke came back to finish his training, tell him that he didn't have anything more that he needed to learn?  Why did Luke put up with being yanked around like that by Yoda and Obiwan, for that matter?  How in the world did Luke think that he was winning against the Emperor by not fighting him?  He deserved getting lightning bolted to death at the end there, quite honestly, for being the stupidest excuse for a "hero" that we'd seen in years.  Even as a little kid back in 1983 or whenever exactly it was that Jedi came out, I was both confused and disappointed in Luke's stupid passivity.  The Jedi are always passive exactly when they need to be brave and stand up to real evil, and then suddenly spring into action to enact tyranny when they should sit back and not interfere with the liberty of the people that they're dealing with.

Don't even get me started on how sideways this all went in the prequels.  It became obvious—although I still don't think that this was Lucas' intention; it was just a side-effect of his complete cluelessness about human nature, and the nature of good and evil—that the Jedi were actually the villains of the piece, and seeing them torn down was a blow for freedom.  Which, sadly, was enacted by the Sith who were even worse, but that's kinda how it works sometimes, isn't it?  And especially don't get me started on the ewoks and the Battle of Endor, and Han Solo pussying out at the end, and whatnot.  As much as I liked Return of the Jedi as a kid, I've come to really see it as the real beginning of the end, and it was just coasting on the virtue and cachet of the previous movies in most respects.

Ironic that back then I still wasn't willing to push back my perception of the problems to the very beginning. But Jeffro nailed it before I did.

Screw you, Star Wars. Yeah, you were like the great girlfriend that I had when I was young and we had a lot of good times together and all. But we've drifted too far apart. And now that we're broken up, when I check in because I'm curious about what might have been, without the rosy glasses of nostalgia, I realize quite clearly that we never really had all that much in common after all and I'm not 100% sure what I saw in you in the first place. What a trainwreck you've turned out to be, and the fact that we broke up turned out to be me dodging a bullet.

It makes me somewhat sad to have to come to this realization, especially at this point in my life many decades after the fact. But the reality is that decades ago, during the 90s, I should have seen the writing on the wall. And while I was young enough in the 80s to maybe excuse my blindness, the clues were certainly there all the way back in the 80s and even the 70s.

UPDATE: The only Star Wars content that I'd been consuming with any regularity was The Old Republic. As anyone glancing at my topics recently can  probably glean, I haven't done much of that lately; I just kinda hit saturation and didn't care anymore. I might get back into it at least enough to finish the class stories that I'm working on; I've got two that I need to finish, and two that I still need to start. My subscription expires in a little less than two weeks, and I'm trying to decide if I believe I'm going to be motivated enough to play, or should I just wait until I am really well motivated. I did log on to claim my new droid pet, though. And I believe there's a double XP thing going on for the next few weeks, making right now a good time to do it, at least.