Over the past ten days, I have rewatched every Star Wars film in anticipation of the
release of Episode IX: The Last Star War
Until the Next One. I have written one mini-essay per film (which was also
one mini-essay per day). They’re going to seem a bit negative at first, but I’m
starting with Episode I, so that’s inevitable. Stick with me.
Episode I: The Phantom
Menace (32 BBY[1])
A Google Books Ngrams search reveals that usage of the word
“problematic” spiked dramatically at the end of the twentieth century.
Coincidentally, The Phantom Menace
was released in 1999.
The lightsaber fights are still very fun to watch.
Episode II: Attack of
the Clones (22 BBY)
Yoda and Yaddle have more sexual chemistry than Hayden
Christiansen and Natalie Portman. “I don’t like sand” is, of course, the
infamous moment, but two things really jumped out at me in this viewing.
First, there is the scene where Padme talks about a boy she
dated way back when she attended the “Legislative Youth Academy.” I’m no
science fiction expert, but it seems to me that if you want to engross your audience
in a legendary galaxy of heroism and intrigue, you don’t have your romantic leads
tell stories about this one time at band camp.
Second, Anakin’s horniness from jump street is really
something to behold in this movie. Very early in the film, during an elevator
ride where he tells Obi-Wan how excited he is to see Padme for the first time
in a decade, Anakin is what my students five years ago would have called “thirsty
af.” He knew Padme when he was like eight. That’s way too long to have a crush
on your babysitter.
Episode III: Revenge
of the Sith (19 BBY)
It’s fun to dunk all over the prequels. Indeed, you might
have noticed me doing so for the previous 200 or so words. But one thing that
I’ve always genuinely admired is Ewan McGregor’s speech at the end of Obi-Wan’s
climactic duel with Anakin/Vader. I find it as moving as anything in Star Wars outside of the original
trilogy. That McGregor is the best part of the prequels has frequently been
stated, and it’s true. Most of that is just down to the fact that he’s the only
actor who seems to be having any fun at all, but he also deserves credit for
the work he does when he’s given a scene with more emotional weight. Given how
much everyone makes fun of everything from these movies, you would think that
lines as self-serious as “You were my brother...I loved you!” or “My allegiance
is to the Republic...to democracy!” would catch a lot of hell. But McGregor
sells it. God love him, he even does as much as he can with “I have the high
ground.”
Solo: A Star Wars
Story (10 BBY)
I honestly don’t get the hate for this movie. Yes, some of
the jokes are corny, and no, Adrian Ehrenreich is not as charismatic as
Harrison Ford. But on the other hand, Donald Glover is as charismatic as Billy
Dee Williams, there’s a bunch of fun spaceship stuff, Lando has a whole room
for capes, the droid rebellion takes the idea of sentient willful servant
robots to a logical if hyperbolic conclusion, there’s an ass-kicking femme who
proves quite fatale, Woody Harrelson plays himself, and Chewbacca fucks up a
lot of people. I recall reviews proclaiming variations of, “why do we need a
story that just fills in a bunch of background?” Well, by that logic, why did
we need Paradise Lost or The Godfather: Part Two? If you claim to
like Star Wars but didn’t have some fun with this silly
little low-stakes summer-release ramble through the back alleys and dive bars
of the outer rim, consider the possibility that the problem is you.
Rogue One: A Star Wars
Story (0 BBY)
I’ve watched this movie a couple more times since I saw it
in the theater, and it’s only strengthened my opinion that this is the
third-best Star Wars movie. Felicity
Jones is effortless in conveying the “tough but vulnerable” thing that’s been
at the heart of a lot of the best performances in these movies, going all the
way back to Ford and Carrie Fisher. The story starts a bit slow, but once the
big heist starts, the film really cooks all the way through the third act, and
the tension is heightened by the fact that, unlike in other Star Wars films, the characters are
entirely bereft of plot armor. Indeed, it’s pretty impressive that Rogue One is as tense as it is given
that we know the mission to steal the Death Star plans has to be successful.
There is one particular frame of this film that really
sticks with me: the Death Star rising like a moon over the horizon of Scarif.
It’s breathtaking, uncanny, and frightening all at once. Hollywood action
blockbusters often strive toward and almost always cheapen the Burkean sublime,
and the Star Wars franchise in
particular has been guilty of this. But this one image is simultaneously
beautiful and eerie, and the effect is achieved simply because someone thought
to ask, “what would a Death Star-rise look like if you were a lowly little
human standing on a planetary surface?” It’s that terrestrial vantage point
that lets the image embody what the entire movie is about. Luke Skywalker will
soon get to zip triumphantly towards a well-lit Death Star in the cockpit of a
souped-up starfighter, but the Rogue One
characters are relatively ordinary people who will only ever see this
superweapon half-obscured in the sky, awesomely huge and unassailable. Their
heroism is inseparable from their insignificance.
Episode IV: A New Hope
(0 BBY)
Way back when I was in college and the Special Editions came
out, like all the other Star Wars
dorks I was horrified that George Lucas altered the Greedo-Han cantina scene.
As the decades have passed, though, my tune has changed a bit, and now whenever
the old movies come out in a new format I look forward to learning what crazy
shit old George has gotten up to this time.
I hope George Lucas lives forever, and that every three or
four years, something else gets added to the Han-Greedo showdown, so that
future generations can enjoy these alterations as their forebears have. Here is
my humble submission for the next edition of A New Hope.
INT. MOS EISLEY CANTINA
Everything happens as usual. Then, once all the usual
dialogue is over:
GREEDO
Maclunkey!
Greedo and Han shoot their guns simultaneously. Greedo’s
shot goes ten feet wide, but Han shoots and kills the Rodian. Han stands up.
HAN
Maclunkey? More like
M’clunk thee.
Han pauses, looks at the Bartender, and flips him a coin.
The Bartender takes in the scene, then chuckles. The Bartender’s chuckle slowly
evolves into a full-throated laugh. Han looks back, and tries to keep a
straight face, but he then too starts to laugh. Both men continue in
ever-escalating peels of head-tilted-back laughter, until Han shakes his head
and, still laughing, exits the bar, turning to point at the bartender as he
leaves. The bartender smiles and points back. A big lizard walks through the
door. Wipe to next scene.
Episode V: The Empire
Strikes Back (3 ABY)
This is one of two Star
Wars movies that I think are better than the movie that won the Oscar for
Best Picture in the year they came out. Ordinary
People is good, but Empire is
better (though Raging Bull, which
somehow didn’t win that year, is better than both of them). The other Star Wars film that is definitely better
than the Best Picture winner from its year is Revenge of the Sith, but that’s only because every movie that came
out in 2005 is better than Crash.
On this viewing of Empire,
I was struck by how dependent the film is on reaction shots of Carrie Fisher.
Repeatedly, moments of serious emotional weight are punctuated by wordless
close-ups of Princess Leia’s reactions: Luke and Han not returning to Echo Base
before nightfall; Han going into the carbon freezing chamber; Boba Fett
escaping with Han; Luke in danger and communicating with Leia via the force. When
you watch Empire after watching A New Hope the previous night, you see
how much Fisher had grown as an actor from her “six different accents in twenty
minutes” days. In Empire, every
single one of those close-ups works, particularly the shot of her watching Boba
Fett fly away with Han, where in one second she conveys despair, terror, and
pure shock that for once the Rebels didn’t find a way out of a jam. It’s not an
accident that the sequel trilogy staged several similar reaction shots for
Fisher.
There’s obviously something gendered about Empire’s tendency to focus on a woman’s
emotional response to things men are doing. But it’s important to note that
Leia is anything but a passive watcher: she also commands armies, flies a
spaceship, and shoots stormtroopers. Those reaction close-ups are essential to
the arc the film has designed for Leia, wherein we see that she is a badass
do-it-all leader who presumably suppresses her emotions because women leaders
run the risk of undermining their authority if they are perceived as being
emotional, but she has to balance that against the fact that she is a deeply feeling
person in an emotionally taxing situation. In this way, Empire is one of the first “working woman/can she have it all”
films of the 1980’s (it’s interesting to think of it alongside Broadcast News especially, but also 9 to 5 or Working Girl). To be clear, I’m not claiming that The Empire Strikes Back is some profound
feminist statement—the film is far too okay with Han ignoring the word “stop”
for that to be the case—but it is at least framing the problem of how
complicated it is to be an ambitious woman in a man’s galaxy. I doubt Leia’s
arc would have worked if the movie had been directed by someone as unsubtle as
Lucas, and I definitely doubt it would have worked if so many of the film’s key
emotional moments had not centered on a performer as on-her-game and inherently
likable as Fisher.
Episode VI: Return of
the Jedi (4 ABY)
These movies were imprinted on my brain at such an early age
that now I often want to say the following words in a Darth Vader voice:
“power”; “Luke”; “master”; “feelings”; “sister”; “what!?”; “no”; “complete.”
Episode VII: The Force
Awakens (34 ABY)
The best thing about The
Force Awakens is that the cast is charismatic and seems to be having a good
time, so it ends up being a fun, freewheeling confection of a movie. And to be
clear, that’s no small thing. The worst thing about The Force Awakens, as millions of voices have cried out, is that it
has virtually no new ideas. If you like movies where a ragtag group of misfits
blows up a big evil thing—and we know you do—you’ll probably like this.
Nowhere is this combination of fun and dumb more on display
than in the scene where the Resistance stands in a big circle and develops
their plan to blow up the Starkiller Base. This is an archetypal Star Wars scene—indeed, at least four
other movies in the franchise have a version of the planning/pep talk scene positioned
early in the third act (ANH, ROTJ, TPM,
R1). Some of the more memorable phrases in Star Wars have come from these scenes (“bullseye womp rats;” “many
Bothans died;” “rebellions are built on hope”). But the version of this scene
from The Force Awakens is mostly
memorable for how slapdash it is. Usually in these scenes, it is implied that
somewhere off-screen a team of robots and nerds has been crunching the data and
cooking up a scheme, and now the military brass are announcing the plan to the
cool kids so they can go be heroes. But in The
Force Awakens, we get to watch literally the entire planning process, which
boils down to, “Han and Chewie will land on the base, and there’s usually
something to blow up so they’ll blow it up, and then the spaceships will shoot at
this thing that is probably a weak spot that the enemy constructed for some
reason, and then we meet back at Leia’s for a kegger. This should work.” The entire
planning process takes a minute and 31 seconds. To put that in perspective, the
Leeroy Jenkins World of Warcraft group spends a minute and 24 seconds planning
their Waterloo. And I realize that Leeroy Jenkins is satire, but in this
specific scene, it feels a little like The
Force Awakens is too.
Episode VIII: The Last
Jedi (34 ABY)
Won’t lie: I’ve been dreading writing about this one. The
online discourse around The Last Jedi
has been so poisoned by rampaging hordes of Edgelords, Memestains, and
Twitquisitors that the movie is honestly not at all fun to talk about anymore.
That’s sad for me, since talking about Star
Wars movies has been one of my primary forms of recreation since I was in
kindergarten.
But here goes. I really love the Rey-Kylo plotline in this
film. Their scenes together are strange and riveting, and unlike anything else
we’ve seen in a Star Wars film. It’s
interesting to see a version of the attempted seduction to the darkside plot
involve a hint of actual seduction. The “kill the past” stuff is intriguing
(though I think it’s worth keeping in mind that the person who keeps saying it
is the villain). Their lightsaber fight with the red dudes in the red room is
very cool to watch. And I can’t imagine what is going through the heads people
who were angry that Snoke got killed. Snoke sucked. Kill him. I hope they bring
him back to life for five seconds in Episode IX so they can kill him again.
But beyond that, the movie is a mess. The casino planet
would be ludicrous even if it weren’t for the fact that the entire plan is
foiled because Finn is too cheap to park in a garage. The Oscar Isaac-Laura
Dern stuff is the most remarkable waste of acting talent achieved in a Star Wars film since Natalie Portman and
Samuel Jackson were apparently told “again, but stiffer this time.” Also, I’ve
watched nearly five hours of this trilogy at this point, and I still don’t know
what the First Order is. Say what you will about the prequels, but I at least
have some sense of what the Trade Federation wanted.[2]
In Conclusion
I’ve gone back and forth on whether to throw a ranking out
there. Star Wars fans hold their
personal rankings as closely as a nun holds her rosary beads, but I guess I’ll
put mine out there. Here’s how I’d rank them after my most recent binge. The
tiers are used to suggest groupings of similar quality. Hence, I’d consider #4
through #8 to be pretty close to a five-way tie. Here goes:
1. The Empire Strikes
Back
2. A New Hope
--tier break
3. Rogue One
--tier break
4. The Force Awakens
5. Revenge of the Sith
6. Return of the Jedi
7. Solo
8. The Last Jedi
--tier break
9. The Phantom Menace
--tier break
10. Attack of the
Clones
Thanks for reading. You may fire when ready.
[1]
“Before the Battle of Yavin.” ABY is “After the Battle of Yavin.” Don’t blame
me—this is the nomenclature.
[2]
Trade, presumably.
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