Photo via Wookiepedia
George Lucas is a patron saint of pop culture. There is no denying that.
But much like Saint Patrick or Saint Valentine, or perhaps Saint Nicholas, he is a saint whose reputation has been largely removed from reality.
There are already enough commentaries around the world of people who now hate Saint Lucas for revising Star Wars or for writing those awful prequel movies, and I have no intention of adding to that pile because it unfairly demeans the man who initially created one of the greatest narrative epics ever told.
No, truth be told, the later problems with Star Wars were all our fault. We should've seen it coming.
Before I explain what I mean by that, let me first defend the errors themselves. See, restriction is the mother of brilliance. When Lucas and co. made Star Wars, the computer equipment and the budget didn't exist to do everything that Lucas imagined.
I'm sure the budget increased with the sequels, but the technology could only get so much better. Watching the documentaries and behind the scenes films of how they created those incredible visual effects is a real treat. The scale of the miniatures for the Death Star trench run is just amazing, along with the work that went in to making the space flights work.
When it came time to make the prequels, well, technology and computer effects had made an incredible leap forward since the early 80s. Independence Day holds the record for the most miniatures built (and destroyed), and that's a record that likely won't ever be broken as the trend since the mid-90s has been to build computer models rather than real ones.
So when Lucas was making the prequels, with a near unlimited budget and in a world that was capable of actually saying yes to whatever he wanted to do, Lucas had no reason to censor himself. Plus, he was given what ultimately amounted to full creative control of a movie being produced by his own company, so he could do whatever he wanted to do.
If restriction is the mother of brilliance, freedom is the weird step-uncle of excess. There was nobody to tell Lucas no, and all creatives need someone like that to filter out the bad ideas from the good ones. I don't care how much of a creative genius you are, you are going to have some bad ideas.
So I can forgive Lucas for making the prequels, and I can forgive him for editing the original trilogy, since he just didn't have someone to tell him no. It's still a mistake on his part, sure, because he never found that trusted voice.
But let's get past that. What I want to talk about right now is our own failure to see what was coming with the prequels.
The signs were always there. When Lucas wrote Star Wars and the Indiana Jones series, enough of his hidden personality got in there to warn us.
Perhaps the greatest sin that Lucas committed time and time again was the sin of over-origining. Everything has an origin story, everything has a history, and that history must be explored in detail.
You can't really blame Lucas for following the hero's journey format with Luke Skywalker's character, but it is his origin. That's an inoffensive thing, though, isn't it? Let's look at a much stranger origin where every single thing about an already established character is explained.
Tell me. What are some characteristics that you know about Indiana Jones? Starting with the physical, you know that he wears a leather jacket and a really cool hat. We know that he's afraid of snakes and that he loves ancient relics. We know that he relies pretty heavily on his whip.
What if I told you that every last one of those characteristics came about because of the single most impactful afternoon of Indy's young life?
In the opening scene to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, every thing about Indy gets explained and is given a history. An origin.
He sees an explorer wearing a leather jacket and a cool hat. He easily tosses aside a snake, but later in the day he falls into a cage full of snakes and he is traumatized for life. He steals an ancient relic and tries to turn it in to the proper authorities. Young Indy then goes to a nightclub and ODs on drugs (too soon?). He eventually picks up a bull whip to scare off a lion. Oh, and he cuts himself in the face when he misuses the whip and gives himself a scar.
An actual scar that Harrison Ford has had most of his life! Lucas even needed to explain one of Harrison Ford's very real physical features!
I don't hate the scene, I don't hate the movie. Last Crusade is an amazing movie and this particular scene somehow works really well. But do you mean to tell me that every single defining characteristic of this multifaceted and enigmatic explorer came about because of one fateful afternoon?
Better yet, why do we need to know where any of these particular traits came from? Is it not enough to just know that the man likes to use a whip and that he doesn't like snakes?
But because Lucas particularly enjoys giving everything an origin, he has to give everything a deep background, this scene was "essential" to the character.
When an actor takes on a role, especially a serious dramatic actor on the stage or in an Oscar-bait film, they are encouraged to come up with their character's backstory. They want to know everything they can about the character to better inform the small slice of the life that we see as the audience.
What those actors are not encouraged to do is to stand there and recite this entire made-up backstory for us to better understand the character.
The same is true for writers. I once heard a writer say that the writer should know the character's favorite cereal, but that doesn't mean the reader needs to know it.
Look at that mood lighting. Oh, you just know he writes LiveJournal poetry. (Photo from LucasFilm)
I'm glad that Lucas has these detailed, deep ideas for character backstories, but the audience doesn't need to see them all. Unfortunately, we got three movies of backstory that turned one of the most fearsome villains ever created into a whiny teenager. So...
There's also Lucas' strange inclination towards non-chronological storytelling. I suppose this sin goes back to his need for developing backstory somehow. But why did we need to see movies four through six before one through three?
Was it just because he felt like he couldn't do the first three episodes justice with his given budget and restraint? Was it because he was inspired with the thought that he needed to start in the middle of the story during a fever-dream on one of those legendary trips to Hawaii with Steven Spielberg?
Do you remember Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? I will admit that it is my least favorite of the three Indiana Jones movies. What do you mean there are four? No, there's only three. Trust me. If there was a fourth, I would have spent money to go see it at midnight and would have surely left feeling joy and splendor rather than detestation and disgust.
There's only three.
Even though Temple of Doom is my least favorite, that doesn't mean it's without merit. It's a fine action-adventure movie that provides some really cool moments that are immortalized in pop culture. Most of them involve removing hearts from a living person's chest and chanting like the soundtrack to Friday the 13th.
But...why does it take place before Raiders of the Lost Ark?
The first Indiana Jones movie takes place in 1936. The third takes place in 1938. The second takes place in 1935.
Does that mean that Last Crusade is actually the first sequel to Raiders?
You know what? Who knows.
At this point, I'm just glad that Empire Strikes Back didn't take place 10 years before the first Star Wars movie and feature a young Han Solo making a name for himself (literally) in the galaxy. That would be weird.
But why did we need to see what happened right before we met Indy? Or better question, why was Lucas married to the idea that this story had to happen a year before the story we already knew? It couldn't have been right after?
"Hey! This idol is about the same size as those stones I found in India last year! Remember that?" (Photo from LucasFilm)
For one reason or another, Lucas believed that this story had to happen a year before the previous one. Maybe he had a reason that was imperative to the narrative, maybe he didn't. Who knows? It just came across as an oddity, I think.
The other problem with Temple of Doom is that it deviated so far from the sort of formula that you expected from an Indiana Jones movie. You can argue that this is an unfair point, perhaps it is, but Raiders is a great story about a man in the desert fighting Nazis. Then Temple of Doom comes around and it's a story about a man fighting strange cults on the Indian subcontinent. When Last Crusade comes out, well, a large portion of it once again deals with a man fighting Nazis in the desert.
I imagine that this narrative discrepancy wasn't a problem for contemporary audiences since they hadn't seen Last Crusade yet, obviously, but to us it makes Temple of Doom stand out like the sad 20-year old who failed a couple grades in high school and is still taking chemistry. He may belong, technically, but deep down he knows he shouldn't be there.
Almost like if they had made an Indiana Jones movie where he fought a Soviet psychic and then found some aliens. Can you imagine?
Then what was the big problem that everyone complained about with the Star Wars prequels? Instead of the Empire, we see the Jedi dealing with these weird goat-eyed people who are apparently really greedy about their commodities. It made us say...huh?
Again, I don't mind Lucas having these backstories or having a diverse set of villains to conquer, but this whole shindig boils down to a very simple rule of storytelling: not every facet of a story needs to be told.
We love to complain about the fact that Jack Bauer spends 24 hours hunting terrorists all without a bathroom break or a meal, but how awful would it be if we watched him spend a regular day at work with paperwork and meetings and phone calls to tackle?
"It's a good thing I got my full eight hours in last night because it's going to be a long day. You guys remember that?" (Photo from Fox)
Oh my stars, stab me in the eyes before you make me watch 24 episodes of that snooze fest. Literally. About six to eight episodes of that season would just be us watching Bauer sleep. Do you show him laying there, tossing and turning, snoring all night long? Do you hire a sleep expert to help Kiefer Sutherland really portray the stages of REM sleep?
We don't need to see that stuff. The job of a writer and a director is to figure out what aspects of a story need to be told.
Again, Lucas is not a bad storyteller or a bad filmmaker. He created Star Wars, for crying out loud, and we should thank the Whills for that! But he does seem to have some strange narrative tendencies that creep out from time to time. In bits and pieces, no big deal. They salt the meat and add a little flavor to the story.
But when he got free rein to do whatever, those demons came out in full force and produced one of the most regrettable follow-ups since Godfather III.
Thankfully Disney bought Star Wars and nobody was ever worried about out-of-order movies that focused on unnecessary stories again.