Hitchhiking past Lucas

Episode III is nigh, which means the time comes to find who among us has the fortitude to not reward George Lucas. After the manure-splattered wreck that was Episode One, I was through with paying full movie ticket price, and there was no way I was going to buy a DVD for what boiled down to three minutes of decent fight choreography. So I took my sweet time in getting around to seeing Episode II -- paying matinee price -- and despite those measures I'm still pretty sure I overpaid again.

You can tell that my relationship with Star Wars is one that evolved from interest, to passion, to restraining orders: nowadays there are a lot of rules involved. So let's be clear about my rules regarding Episode III. As before, I will not pay full ticket price. I will not wait in line to see it. I will not suffer a crowded showing. I will not inconvenience myself in any significant way to see this film. In this way, I might possibly get some small measure of satisfaction from the last installment of a once-admirable franchise.

Oh sure, the preview looked good. But they always look good. Obviously, the editors who splice the previews together remember some things about what made Star Wars so impressive. The previews focus on action and imagery, which are Star Wars' strong suits. Then eventually you see the actual film and find yourself wincing at tortured dialog and glancing at your watch, wondering when the characters will wind up hitting the inevitable plot milestones that everybody knows are coming, and which will arrive with no attendant surprises whatsoever. Perhaps you even reflexively turn away from the screen once or twice out of a vague notion that actually being visually engaged with a story so ineptly executed could be chipping away at your soul.

There are as many fan theories on Where It All Went Wrong as there are dunes on Tatooine, but my sense is that at some point Lucas became more interested in marketing to the viewer than in telling the viewer a story. How can I stay enthralled to a film if every twenty minutes I'm roused by unmistakable cues signaling "that last sequence will be packaged into a video game," or, "that character is a transparent hook to sell children's toys"? Characters both major and minor are afflicted with names that seem inspired by playground taunts or nursery school banter: Dooku, Jar Jar, Watto, Yaddle, Poof, etc.

I'm sure that hope springs eternal in some fans' hearts, and more than a few have convinced themselves that Lucas has managed to escape from his grandiose hackery for one final hurrah. There's just so little evidence to warrant optimism that positive outlooks like this sound like Battered Fan Syndrome. "Of course George still loves me. It's just that sometimes he has difficulty showing it." Consider for example the ultimate transformation of Anakin into Vader. We've known for years that Anakin gets horribly disfigured by falling into a volcano, molten pit, or some such. I have no idea where that plot item originated and how it was disseminated, but that's been the skinny for some time. Ask yourself though: how will Lucas choose to frame Anakin's fall? Will it be on a world (or a moon) that happens to have some lava on it? Or, rather, will it be a lava planet?

"Oh, Jujj!" you chortle. "A lava planet indeed!" But let us review Lucas' track record of constructing subtle, nuanced worlds blessed with depth and complexity. Tatooine (desert planet). Endor (forest moon). Dagobah (swamp planet). Coruscant (urban planet). If we're lucky, the name of the inevitable lava planet might avoid sounding like it was transcribed from the wall tile in a bathroom stall.

Ah, but it's all part of a grand vision, worked out flawlessly years in advance. Only when we see the totality of the completed project can we then appreciate the perfection of the individual episodes. Of course, nobody with any sense still believes this, with Episodes I & II having torn storyline holes big enough to drive a Star Destroyer through. True believers have tied themselves in knots trying to explain why the principal droid characters are in Episode I and yet lurch around the very same planet in Episode IV like they've never seen it before, with everyone professing to not recognize them either. Far more sensible to pick up Occam's razor and conclude, "Lucas doesn't care, and he certainly doesn't respect us."

My own pet counterpoint to the Grand Vision theory is the Queen Amidala character. In Episode I, she's quite simply a Queen. Fine. But in Episode II, Lucas suddenly remembers that he wanted the devolution from Republic to Empire to have some import, so the characters and their offices must be retrofit to fetishize representative government. Thus the position of Queen for the first time ever in reality or literature is transformed into elected office, albeit one with a spectacular wardrobe and staff allowance that seems to persist even after the supposed elective term is over. The scripts positively ooze with this ad hoc slapdashery.

It's not that there aren't directors who can tell a story. Heck, Sin City managed three good stories in two hours. And I'd wager fifty bucks that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy delivers strong imagery while still respecting the intelligence of its audience. Surely that puts both these films head and shoulders above Episode III, and more deserving of your entertainment dollar.