Star Wars And Star-Warsiness

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope is an objectively bad film: the dialogue is risible, the characters one-dimensional, the acting patchy at best, the effects -though they have dated well- have dated. The only undeniably great thing about it is the production design.

And yet I love it.

And not just love it like I love other movies. I was genuinely angry at the prequels. They felt like a boot in the face of my childhood. In contrast I was sanguine when I saw Crystal Skull. I love the first three Indiana Jones movies in the same sense that I love chocolate biscuits. I love Star Wars in the same sense that I love my mum.

Similarly, while I have issues with both Force Awakens and Rogue One, the latter is a muddle, the former astonishingly derivative, I had such a blast in the cinema that I don't care. They felt like Star Wars in the way the prequels never did.

I am, of course, not alone in any of this. Star Wars is roundly loved (if mostly in a chocolate biscuit sense) and the prequels roundly hated. But why - if it is objectively bad? And given that, what is so much worse about the prequels? Is there some mysterious property that makes it enjoyable even when it's not very good? Something that Force Awakens achieved but Phantom Menace did not?

I think there is. I am going to call it Star-Warsiness n the quality of being Star wars.

"Don’t get cocky."

I don't want to be too hard on George Lucas here, but I don't buy the idea he's any kind of master storyteller who lost his mojo when he got rich. It was something we invented when we were students and reappraising our childhood (I'm reappraising that reappraisal now if you can't tell). Star Wars was enduring, and fun, and we loved it, so it also had to be artistically worthwhile. We seized on the wipe-transitions and the bits ripped off Kurosawa as evidence, but these only demonstrate a familiarity with samurai movies and some panache in the editing suite.

Consider the ways in which New Hope is not a well constructed story: Luke and Vader never meet face to face. Peter Cushing, so evil he blew up a planet, does not get a death scene. The empire has an emperor (he's mentioned once) but we never see him. The film makes a huge deal of light-sabers, introducing them early and stressing their importance (and they were presumably a big lump off the effects budget) and then drops them entirely. They do not appear again after Kenobi dies.

You might say that Lucas was planning ahead for the sequels but I don't think that excuses it. The script famously went through hundreds of drafts and if you've ever read one of the early ones you'll know it changed a lot, but for all that work it does not look at all well honed. The impression is not of a master filmmaker laying the foundations for a trilogy, the impression is of an overactive imagination throwing ideas against the wall until enough of them stuck.

In any case: Howard The Duck (the prosecution rests m'lud).

"I find your lack of faith disturbing."

Lets get this bit over with quick. Phantom Menace is crap (and it's the high point of the prequels in my opinion), but it would still be just as wrong if it was better. Why do you hate Jar Jar Binks? Because he's annoying? Useless? Based on an offensive stereotype? All these complaints describe C-3PO equally well. You can argue the charm of Anthony Daniels' performance (on set in a suit) makes up for a lot, while a talking CGI frog compounds the injury, and you'd be right, but you would have conceded the point that we are only discussing degrees of crapness. All of it is crap. Phantom Menace is both crap and wrong.

"She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts."

I said that the production design was the only undeniably great aspect of New Hope but I do not think they just lucked out with some good designers, in fact it falls out from the story.

One of the remarkable things about Star Wars is how resolutely blue-collar it is. From Luke eating unappetising mush on a remote farmstead, to Han forever trying to keep one step ahead of his creditors, to Ben Kenobi eking out an existence in a cave (selling moonshine to Sandpeople no doubt), to the over-crowded Rebel situation room (not like the conference rooms on the Death Star or the vast flight decks of Star Destroyers), to Yoda in his swamp, to Lando only just getting by in Cloud City, to Rey scavenging for junk, to Han and Chewie hauling monsters about the universe in a glorified cattle truck, to Jyn Erso rotting on a grim prison planet. These are all, with the exception of the retired Jedi, characters who work for a living. Even Princess Leia does her bit for the rebellion.

The design feeds right into this: the spaceships look like they drip oil, and they rattle and complain when they are pushed too hard. They are maintained by the people who fly them, often as they are flying them. While Tie-Fighters look mass produced (they even come out of a Tie-Fighter dispenser in Force Awakens), you know that Luke's X-Wing is Luke's X-Wing and he wouldn't let anyone else fly it. It breaks Han's heart to let Lando fly the Millennium Falcon. The Lars' farm is little more than a hole in the ground (but clean and always with food on the table). Mos Eisley looks like a bunch of temporary buildings that never got replaced. The rebel base on Yavin is occupying an abandoned stone temple. The Rebel Base on Hoth is carved from the ice. Rey's dwelling at Niima Outpost is tiny but cosy and obviously loved, packed full of worthless treasures she has collected.

Contrast all this with the prequels. While Princess Leia only wears a plain white dress and some simple jewellery on prize day, Queen Amidala can barely move she is so laden with finery. The Jedi Temple on Couruscant is huge and luxurious with commanding views over the city, and the Jedi just seem to laze about in it all day. Jar Jar Binks, unlike a protocol droid, is a bum living in a forest. The filmmakers achieve the correct look and sound for the spaceships but it does not work because the characters do not have the same relationship with their machines. The beautiful sleek Naboo Spacecraft in Phantom Menace is flown by a professional pilot, paid to fly it. You know that Obi-Wan's and Anakin's fighters in the second and third movies have come from a Jedi spaceship pool where they are maintained by a team of mechanics employed by the Jedi temple's administrative department. If one broke down they'd just requisition a new one.

Even the Pod Racers, which recapture the muscle-car aesthetics of X-Wings and Luke's speeder, have no value. Anakin builds that fastest one ever out of scrap parts in his evenings off from being a slave, and then never bats an eyelid when Qui-Gon sells it without asking. You might point out that being a slave is about as working class an existence as is possible, but Anakin is lifted out of this just a couple days after meeting Qui-Gon and we don't see his mum again till the next movie (talking of which, why didn't he go back and get her? He was best mates with a queen, surely she could have lent him the money).

How important is all this? Maybe not very, but it adds to a sense of ordinary people fighting against an oppressive power. The heroes of the prequels were not persecuted and fighting for their freedom, they were pampered and stupid, blind to what was happening in front of them.

"Never tell me the odds."

A lot of stuff gets shoved under the science fiction label, but you could, if you wanted, rank it on a scale between Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov at the one end, speculative fiction based on current cutting edge science, and space-sheriffs walking into space-bars and drinking space-beers at the other.

Star Wars is very firmly at the latter end of the scale. Luke was going to Toshi station to pick up some power converters. What are power converters? Who cares! Certainly not the audience. How does a hyperdrive work? How does a lightsaber work? What is Uncle Owen farming in the desert? Why can only some droids speak? Why is there only ever one or two of each type of alien on any given planet. None of this matters a jot.

Where the first trilogy is basically just space nazis vs space samurai with little attempt to explain either, the prequels takes ages constructing a creditable republic, with a senate and a constitution and votes and politics. It is trying, badly, to be Foundation.

How do you dissolve the last remnants of the old republic? Who cares! How do you transform a republic into an empire? Well you first propose a motion in the senate granting emergency powers to the chancellor, and then...

"Aren't you a little short to be a stormtrooper."

But this leads me to Ursula Le Guin and her marvelous essay From Elfland To Poughkeepsie. In it she plays a self confessed 'dirty trick' and transforms a piece of fantasy dialogue between a duke and a warrior-magician into modern day Capitol Hill politicking by changing just four words, and then makes the point that the trick would not work on true fantasy, on Tolkien or Dunsany.

OBI-WAN : Yes, Master...how do you think the trade viceroy will deal with the chancellor's demands?
QUI-GON : These Federation types are cowards. The negotiations will be short.

You'd only have to change one!

Many people complain of the long winded trade discussions in Phantom Menace. I don't actually think they take up much screen time (I'm not bloody watching it again) but the way in which they are discussed robs the characters of heroism.

I may as well just quote Le Guin:

And greatness of soul shows when a man speaks... In life we expect lapses. In naturalistic fiction, too, we expect lapses, and laugh at an “overheroic” hero. But in fantasy... we need not compromise.

Heroes don't prejudge people as cowards. Heroes don't worry how long the negotiations are going take like they have plans to play golf at the weekend! Heroes run away from their uncle's farm to save the princess.

When, in Force Awakens, Han says: "Okay, How do we blow it up? There's always a way to do that," he may be committing the most egregious act of plot fast-forwarding since John Wyndham died, but he's definitely speaking like a hero.

Lucas knew all this when he wrote the first movies. He understood that he was creating a fantasy, a fairy-tale, where a farm-boy who is secretly the son of the evil king is given a magic sword and rescues a princess. He comes unstuck in the prequels. His hero is his villain and he can't make it work anymore. In fact he doesn't want to. You can imagine how he could structured them so that Anakin's becoming Vader was a final act of self-sacrifice to save others, a cursed king being transformed into a beast, but he's too interested in galactic politics to bother with any of that.

"A lot of simple tricks and nonsense."

And this is why midichlorians grate so bad. Star Wars is fantasy, not sci-fi, so technobabble has little place (Rogue One just about gets away with Kyber Crystals because they're no more than a plot MacGuffin, they don't really tell us anything about light-sabers or death-stars), and definitely not for the Force. The Force is not just magic, it is a moral magic. Giving it an explanation robs it of its morality.

The Force is like nothing so much as Kung-Fu in classic Kung-Fu movies. Young pupils learn it from wise masters, it takes discipline and strength of will, it is as much a state of mind achieved through meditation as a practiced skill. And like Kung-Fu, using it for evil robs you of something of yourself. The good Shaolin Master always defeats the evil Tiger Style Master not because he happens to be better, but because his spiritual purity gives him a strength his opponent will always lack.

This concept is fragile. Like Tolkien's wizards it is something other than the world. Like Kung-Fu it is something that comes from within the individual. A blaster is as much fantasy to us as the Force is, but not to Han Solo. To Han the blaster is just a tool but the Force is a hokey magic. A Jedi might wield it but he cannot make more of it. He cannot control it, but lets it controls him. Make the Force the effect of some mechanism within the world and it is ruined. Midichlorians reduce the Force to just another blaster.

"You can’t win, Darth."

So Star Wars is high fantasy, not sci-fi, and it's fantasy elements must be accepted, not explained; its heroes are fantasy heroes, and must be heroic; it is a tale of ordinary folk and, like hobbits, it is in their ordinariness that their strength lies; and it is a tale of good triumphing over evil, and good must triumph because it is good, not because it happens to be stronger on the day.

Could you make a checklist of these items, apply them to a script, and become a toy licensing billionaire like George? I doubt it. There is always something more.

Lucas may be a miserable dialogue stylist but in his day he was a genius at the tone of a film, and the characters that achieve that tone, Just read the famous story conference devising Raiders Of The Lost Ark.  Indiana Jones is not an easy character to get right and neither was the tone of that movie, a delicate balance of humour and genuine threat. Watch the 1985 King Solomon's Mines, a blatant attempt to ape Raiders' success, to see how easily it can go wrong. There was a lot of work by a lot of very talented people to make that film what it was.

Neither was Star Wars an easy note to hit (somewhere between Buck Rogers and Where Eagles Dare) yet they get it bang on. The tone, from Luke mournfully watching two suns set over the desert, to the thrillingly kinetic space battles, is perfect. This all comes out of the characters. Luke is sad at that point in the film because he's a boy with big ambitions trapped on his uncle's farm, and he is nearly as excited during the space battles -screaming "I got one! I got one!" when he bags a tie-fighter- as eight year old me was watching them.

Take too the Millennium Falcon. My heart leaped when I saw it again in Force Awakens, but why do I love this strange, unsymmetrical, ungainly spaceship so much. The design is cool but not that cool. It is because of the lifestyle it embodies. Zooming around the universe with your best friend the wookie watching your back. Engaging the hyperdrive and shooting off to another planet if things get too hot. Watching the startled faces aboard the big Corellian class Imperial Star Destroyers in your rear-view mirror as you leave them for dust like a street racer in a Bruce Springsteen song. I love the Millennium Falcon because of how I imagined Han Solo's life was before the first film even began. That's good character work.

"You can type this shit, George, but you can't say it."

I actually think the acting is better in the prequels than in the original trilogy, it just seems worse.

In New Hope Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher make a half-decent fist of it. Mark Hamill is limited. Peter Cushing and Alex Guinness phone it in, although both of them are good enough to still make that look impressive (Cushing in particular could play that sort of role in his sleep). What there is universally though is a lightness and a gameness: there's nothing arch about any of the performances, and nothing heavy either. None of them thought they making anything oscar-worthy so pitched it a Flash Gordon level of knockabout-fun and it works.

In the prequels, though, the (very strong) cast seem to try and recite Lucas' appalling tongue twisters like they are Shakespeare and the results are cringe worthy. Too many of the roles seem to have had Comic Relief For The Kids as a character description. The actors would mug and wink at the camera if they weren't just providing voices for CG beasties. Worse, Lucas takes his on-the-nose-so-hard-it-hurts style and applies to to romance. There isn't an actor alive who could do anything worthwhile with the result.

"Now let's blow this thing and go home."

Force Awakes and Rogue One throw off both the shackles of George Lucas' abysmal dialogue and the foolish portentousness he gained in later years. The dialogue is readable and witty in both and there can be little doubt that Disney set out to make movies that were, above everything else, fun. In doing so they took a big first step in the direction of Star-Warsiness.

Force Awakens, I think, gets the rest of the way by cluster bombing the target. It throws so many known factors into the mix: lonely young hero whisked away from desert planet, cute droid with a secret that must be protected, giant world destroying weapon, universe saved by rag-tag band of heroes, Chewbacca; that it would be dragged into Star-Warsiness even if it didn't know where it was going.

I think it does though. It's new characters are strong and dynamic and moral. Rey is skilled and works for a living. We meet her sticking out a shitty situation through a sense of trust and loyalty. We meet Finn in the act of taking a great risk to do what is right. It's best moment, when Kylo Ren kills his father in order to push himself into fully embracing the dark side, is pure fairy-tale.

Rogue One struggles more. It has the advantage of being set contemporaneous with New Hope, so can lift much of the look and feel without needing to adapt it to show the passing of time. It has the disadvantage of being a necessarily darker film. It is no coincidence that it is only in the last forty-five minutes that it really takes off. That is when the rag-tag gang of heroes are finally all moving in the same direction, with the same goal in mind. The good guys have set off against the bad guys and there is no worrying anymore about which side anybody is on.

Reportedly there were extensive reshoots to lighten the tone. I doubt we'll ever get a 'director's cut,' but I guess they were originally aiming for a gritty adventure and only when they got there did they find it was insufficiently Star-Warsy. If Jyn was too reluctant a hero, as was suggested by the trailer, that would not have been Star-Warsy. New Hope only got away with Han Solo because Luke was so naively enthusiastic. Similarly, if Saw Gererra (who seems to have had a whole backstory cut) , and perhaps Cassian, introduced too much moral complexity into the Rebellion that would not be Star-Warsy. Star Wars must be good triumphing over evil. Good must be good.

They are both, I think, objectively good films: the dialogue is sparky and witty and allows the story to tell itself; the characters are believable; the acting is strong (Daisy Ridley feels a little limited at points but always rises to the occasion when it matters); the effects are -of course- state of the art; and the production design is as good as ever, Rogue One in particular benefits from Gareth Edwards' fantastic eye for beauty in a digital effect. But ultimately none of that matters, because they both achieve Star-Warsiness, and that's all a Star Wars film needs to do.