EPISODE III, or, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY THIS MOVIE

I saw Episode III last Wednesday night/Thursday morning, which made me one of the first non-insiders to experience this putative generational event. (In all truthfulness, I've never been more than a casual fan of the series.) On the cab out of there — not home, but to my office building to crash on the couch for a few hours — I finally read John Podhoretz's much talked about early negative review. It did not sway me from my initial reaction, which was that I liked Episode III so much better than "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones" that I (mostly) forgave it for its many failings.

To begin with, Podhoretz's is a spoiler-filled rant of a preview. I'm not afraid of including spoilers in this post because, at this point, many (many) more people than film reviewers and industry types have now seen it for themselves. But that didn't stop JPod from trying to ruin the film and dissuade others from seeing it in the process. Besides, his tack was, for most of the article, to quote its hackneyed dialogue as if this was some shocking development. There's no point in rebutting this. Rather, I ask: Is this the first Star Wars film Podhoretz has seen? He quotes that awful Natalie Portman line: "Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo!" and comments: "No performer living or dead could pronounce the word 'Naboo' without sounding like a moron..." If Podhoretz doesn't get into science fiction or fantasy movies, perhaps he should have declined to review this film? The line is dumb, and Portman never figured out how to fit into this series. But "Naboo" is no less weird than "Tatooine," yet somehow an entire generation of filmgoers got past that.

But of course he has a point, even though he misses some of the worst dialogue, including this apparently anti-Bush exchange:

Anakin/Darth: "If you're not with me, you're my enemy!"
Obi-Wan: "Only the Sith deals in absolutes!"

As plenty of others have noted by now, of course Jedis deal in absolutes. The whole series is about good versus evil. Even the morally ambiguous characters are forced to choose sides: Anakin goes dark, Han and Lando (who were never that bad to begin with) choose light. Did Lucas, while writing this film, recall a bit of dialogue he wrote more than twenty years ago?:

Darth Vader: "When I met you I was but the learner. Now, I am the master."
Obi-Wan: "Only a master of evil, Darth."

And these are the same two characters!

This actually isn't the only appropriation of a Bush quote from the early days of the war on terrorism. There is also Chancellor-cum-Emperor Palpatine's line before the soon-to-be-defunct Senate declaring, "our resolve has never been stronger!" If you've forgotten, this echoes President Bush's opening line in his 2002 State of the Union speech.

There is only one problem. If you want to cast Palpatine as Bush and the Empire as the United States, then you have to see the Jedi Council as al Qaeda and the Jedi Temple as the Middle Eastern madrassas. (I was quoted on Beltway Buzz making this point last week.) Somehow, I don't think Lucas intended that.

Then there are his comments on the movie at Cannes. It's been quickly forgotten that Lucas was asked a truly moronic question: "Is George Bush's America the Evil Empire?"

So perhaps Lucas' moronic response about Nixon and Vietnam being the real beginning of an "Evil Empire" can be forgiven. But not entirely. Lucas forgets (as many do) that Nixon did not begin Vietnam; he ended it, even if badly. He added that Nixon wanted to run for a third term ... which is curious, considering he had to remove himself from office halfway through his second. And, oh yeah, didn't Ronald Reagan famously apply the "EE" epithet to the actually-evil Soviet Union? But whatever. Canada's National Post was one of the few outlets to point out that Lucas concluded on a slightly more sane note, saying the political issues in the film were "more about Caesar, Napoleon and Hitler than it is about anything here."

And anyway, even if he'd wanted to make this film a statement about American foreign policy, Podhoretz is onto something: the clunky dialogue obscures any clarity Lucas might have intended.

So, you might be asking, what did I like about this movie?

I liked Ewan McGregor. Always have in this series. About twenty minutes in, I said to myself: Oh yeah, it's Renton from "Trainspotting" — and then I went back to enjoying his performance as Obi-Wan. I liked Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine. I liked watching Hayden Christensen — much better in this than the last one — wrestle with his existential dilemma and then realize the horrific path he's taken. I liked looking at Natalie Portman, acting difficulties notwithstanding. I liked the Wookie (what, "Wookiee"?) planet and their battle with the droids, even if it was too short. I liked General Greivous, even if his four lightsabers really underscored just how much more lightsaber Lucas thinks he needs to show to keep people interested.

I liked the second hour better than the first. To paraphrase a musician character from an entirely different sort of science fiction film, the second half of "Revenge of the Sith" really cooked. I liked seeing, to the extent that Lucas could muster continuity, the prequels move toward the original trilogy. I liked the slaughter of the Jedis, plenty. Very dark. I enjoyed watching the Republic fall apart, much as I enjoyed watching the Titanic sink, the world end in The Stand and, most importantly, the rebellion's nadir in The Empire Strikes Back. It's true there's nothing as morbidly satisfying in this movie as Han Solo being lowered into the carbonite freeze, nor Luke choosing to fall to his expected death rather than join Darth Vader in ruling the galaxy, but it was close enough.

I'll have to see this again, and perhaps my opinion of the film will decline upon second viewing. For the time being, I'll agree with pretty much everything written by Vodkapundit's Will Collier. And as Collier later quoted from science fiction author Orson Scott Card:

[T]he story itself, the epic that had so inspired Young Mr. Lucas, does have grandeur in it that his own ineptness was unable to destroy. There is power in the sheer ambition of it.

One last thought: Just as Lucas has gone back and re-edited his movies to hew closer to his claimed original vision of the films, the true irony will be if — nay, when — the fans of Lucas' films go back and re-edit all six to create two trilogies of movies that we would rather see. Some need more work than others, and the project has already begun with the much-acclaimed "Phantom Edit." Perhaps other enterprising fans can re-shoot bits from the first trilogy and use emerging (and emergingly more affordable) technologies to recapture the vision that George Lucas lost sight of. At the risk of sounding like a total geek — too late, I'm afraid — may the force be with them.

P.S. — For an almost completely opposite, but totally defensible reaction, check out my old friend Chase Melendez's post at his blog. The permalinks don't seem to be working, so check out "The Long Slow Death of my Inner Youngling"

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posted by WWB at 9:33 PM |