A LETTER TO J.J. ABRAMS (PART 1)

This post is about Star Wars. What's this doing as the first post on a Star Trek-themed blog, you ask? Well, just to clear things up, the theme means nothing. I'm a fan of Star Trek, but I'm certainly not a trekkie, have never been a trekkie, and am not even sure if "trekkie" is the correct term anymore. This blog will be about many things, and sure, Star Trek may be one of them, but it is certainly not the focus. Granted in case there is a connection, but it's a weak one. If the title doesn't give it away, well, I'll explain soon.

This essay is not a letter in the strictest sense but more of an attempt to analyze the Star Wars franchise - and of course its new director -  as a whole. But since one could quite literally write a masters thesis on the subject (and no I have not read that whole thing, did you see how long that is?), I have chosen to focus my analysis and break it up into just 3 parts. That's right, just 3. Part 1 will be a preface and selection of one of the films to analyze, Part 2 an exploration of why that film is good or bad as a story and how it might have been better, and Part 3 an explanation of why I'm afraid for the future of Star Wars. Buckle in.

Preface

Let's be clear that I am a human with opinions, and by no means purport to have the best or most right opinion, because what follows is not meant to be a list of opinions. I say this not to exempt myself from criticism, but in hopes to situate this conversation - and that's what it will hopefully be - within the realm of semi-scholarly analysis, for the simple reason that one's opinion of some thing need not line up with one's reasoned judgement of that same thing. Therefore, for the sake of productive discussion, this essay is only concerned with the latter. Furthermore, I am aware that much of this might come off as an attempt to "re-invent the wheel," but it's really meant to provide a backdrop from which to launch a more constructive and focused discussion.

As another preface, I did not grow up with the original Star Wars trilogy. I grew up with the prequels, and I loved them at the time...when I was 11. But with age comes a deeper understanding, and after immersing myself in film studies throughout college and graduate school I have certainly come to one. But instead of declaring my younger self's opinion bad, I want to touch on why it was right for me at the time. To me this feels like a much more interesting angle, and I believe it's one that gets us closer to understanding how these films are so deceptive in their badness. And make no mistake, beneath all the attractive tangible details...

Like I said, attractive.

...are 3 very poorly constructed scripts. There is a lot of this going on in Hollywood right now, the prime example (no pun intended) being Transformers, and one need only look at the box-office numbers from those films to see that we as a moviegoing public can't help but fall for this type of trickery. We live in a time of "shit polishing" when it comes to filmic storytelling, and we shamelessly eat that shit up and oftentimes don't realize it's shit. We fall for the special effects, the high-concepts, the larger-than-life imagery, what-have-you. But while the prequels are deceptively bad for all of these reasons, I would argue that their most deceptive quality is, well, their Star Wars-ness. The new Trek films, too, benefit a great deal from their them-ness. But I'll get to that.

So what makes a script bad? Because it's not enough to say something is bad and move on. The "why" is critical, and a surprising amount of the time it goes unasked. The average viewer's idea of what's bad usually stems from an innate sense that something was just not right, something is just rubbed them the wrong way, but they are seldom equipped with the analytical tools necessary to articulate their opinion clearly and effectively. Therefore the "why" is generally avoided in favor of a more simple, time-saving approach, which frequently begets more opinion shouting and misplaced anger (see: definition of Internet). On top of this there is just so much going on within this series to distract from the real problems. Now, I admit that I am guilty of this critical blasphemy from time to time, and by no means profess to be or particularly literate or articulate (see: that unfortunate rhyme), I just enjoy writing about this stuff. If you want easily-digestible yet thorough-as-heck essays on film semiotics and theory, check out the phenomenal essays of Film Crit Hulk or any critic, really. Roger Ebert's pretty great.

Right, so a bad script. For the sake of this discussion, let's just say that a bad script is one with a plot that does not follow a cause & effect structure (more in terms of character logic than anything else, although general believability matters too), and contains poorly defined, often contradictory characters, or characters who essentially become slaves to the demands of the story. While this is by no means extensive, I think we can all agree that films which make these mistakes are generally pretty bad. In any case, when talking about Star Wars this definition, which is more of a distinction, is all we need. And all we really need to demonstrate it is one relationship within one film in the prequel trilogy. After all, they were all made by the same guy, a guy who for all intents and purposes can be considered an auteur. So let's extrapolate. And also compare with the original trilogy, which most agree contains solid, classical, effective storytelling, except for a few moments I'm not going to go near. It connected with people, whereas the prequels, individually and as a whole, did not. And as far as films are concerned, it's my humble yet by no means unique opinion that this is the only difference that really matters. Focusing on anything else would be as hollow an endeavor as George Lucas's endless tampering with his old films. It would just miss the point.

These are not the points you're looking for.

With all that crap in mind, let's dive in. I've chosen to examine Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (ROTS) and focus on the relationship between the titular characters Obi-Wan and Anakin. Within this discussion, I hope to explain why it doesn't work, how it could have worked, and how J.J. might get it all right but still fuck up. If all this just seems tedious, don't worry, I plan to get into specifics. Real specifics.

So Why ROTS?

Simply put, ROTS is the moment where all the mistakes from the previous two films come together to form one giant impossible-to-fix clusterfuck. All narrative threads intersect and all questions are answered (for better and worse).  It is also supposed to be the most dramatic and cathartic installment in the series. By all accounts it should be epic and fantastic, Instead, it is mind-bogglingly dull and collapses under it's own weight. More to the point, this glaring evidence of "shit, we really didn't think this through well enough, did we?" is symptomatic of the series as a whole. Poor George just makes it up as he goes along, and his movies pay the price.

So what happens in ROTS? Despite what I just said up there, not a whole heck of a lot goes on. The covered-ground is mostly at the character-level, and whooo-boy is there a lot of it, and it's all within one character: Anakin. Just for a quick summary, we have the Jedi going after General Grievous, Anakin getting prophetic visions of Padme dying while giving birth to their child, Anakin being seduced by the Dark Side via Chancellor Palpatine and the promise of preventing Padme's death, Obi-Wan fighting General Grievous, the Jedi-order being exterminated by its own Clone Army, Yoda fighting the Emperor, Obi-Wan fighting Anakin, and Anakin becoming Darth Vader. That may sound like a lot, but it all revolves around one thing: Anakin going from very good Jedi to very bad Sith Lord more or less solely within ROTS's 2-and-a-half hour running time. Really, everything else is just filler and ultimately inconsequential. Here's the problem: when your movie hinges on one character's very large dramatic arc, it's going to be unstable, and when that arc is executed poorly, or in such a way that it doesn't ring true, well, then you have yourself this fucking movie.

And some things you can't un-see.

So why doesn't it work, smarty-pants, and how do you propose it could have been better? Well, I'm glad you asked! But in order to continue, to yourself a favor and watch these videos (Episode I, Episode II).

All done? Good. Because what follows is more or less an offshoot of those videos, which I'm not alone in thinking are very well made. Regardless of whether or not you agree with their specific direction, the sentiment, I believe, is right on the money. You'll notice that this guy hasn't made a "What if Episode III were good?" video yet, and hopefully you understand why: since he basically re-wrote Episode II, he has to re-create Episode III from scratch. I don't even have to try (even though I'm going to) to know that's no easy task. He gets a lot of flack for not following up for the simple reason that many people outside the business of storytelling underestimate how soul-crushingly hard it is to tell even a simple story, not to mention the third freakin' Star Wars prequel, one of the biggest films ever made. Even though it was the least expensive of the prequels, the stakes were so damn high, within the film and in real life. If he could write it that quickly he would be off making his own films. And he probably is anyways. Because what good does it do to dwell on the past? To try to fix the unfixable? Fiddle-sticks, what am I doing here again?

Whatever. Engage!

TO BE CONTINUED...