Author: Phil RedBeard

May the 4th Be With You! On this international day of Star Wars, I am working the entire day on SWD: Revenge of the Sith. “Hold on to your butts!” – Lando Calrissian.

A note of apology: my last post had incorrect time codes. They are correct in this one.

This section of Revenge covers a bit of elevator slap stick action and a bit of lightsaber slap stick action. Both are mostly deplorable action scenes, but the character moments in both are even worse. I’ll give George Lucas credit, though, he is trying desperately to recreate scenes from his earlier successes, but as he doesn’t understand why or how scenes work, he gets them mostly wrong.

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This section begins with the audience’s first look at Grievous. He appears to be some sort of cyborg, and is coughing. I can only surmise that the coughing is a foreshadowing of Darth Vader’s machine regulated breathing, but whereas the latter makes sense, the former does not. There is no reason for a cyborg to cough. At this point it is obvious that the Jedi were expected, or rather “predicted”, by Count Dooku and that Grievous is under orders to not interfere with their rescue attempt (00.08.50).

After checking in with Grievous, the scene shifts back to the Jedi in an homage to the Phantom Menace. I wonder how often destroyer droids approach Jedi and back them against walls. At least Kenobi and Skywalker retreat into the elevator instead of running like Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan did earlier. Also, I wonder why the droids would even approach when it appears Grievous is under orders to let the Jedi get to Count Dooku. Actually, the two Jedi, and Artoo, run into quite a few droids in the ship that seem to be on automatic “attack” mode. My guess is that Dooku/Grievous don’t mind harassing the Jedi a little (either that, or Lucas didn’t think through this scene).

For some reason after that the elevator stops working for no reason whatsoever. It is fairly obvious that this scene is mirroring a similar scene from A New Hope in which Han, Luke, Leia, and Chewie are about to be crushed to death in a trash compactor and they are desperately trying to get C3P0’s attention so that he can tell R2-D2 to shut it down, only this scene has none of the tension of imminent and squishy death. This scene is rather extraneous, boring, and more than a little “oh, come on!” It is sort of obvious that some pesky outside force (which I will suddenly decide to call….George) is screwing with the screenplay trying to be funny, and you just wish he would stop and let the Jedi get on with their “desperate mission to rescue the Chancellor”.

Oh, and “always on the move” makes me want to scream (00.10.01) but not as much as the “no loose wire jokes” exchange (00.11.11). This ridiculous banter is, again, supposed to show that Skywalker and Kenobi have a bantery, witty, buddy cop relationship, but the jokes and one liners are so stupid and elementary as to make them sound like little kids. Furthermore, Hayden Christensen is completely overacting his “hidden” Darth Vader in progress, so everything he says is said with a glower and that totally kills any comedic value in his lines.

Finally, however, the Jedi make it to the top of the spire and to where Chancellor Palpatine is relaxing while enjoying the space battle outside being held prisoner. I like how Kenobi bows respectfully to Palpatine and Anakin inquires about his health, but neither take a few seconds to release him from his bonds so that, I don’t know, he might try to run away while they distract Count Dooku. The devil is in the details, isn’t it? Those darn pesky little details.

Dooku makes a pointless little flip over the railing (seriously, the trope of Jedi and the Sith wantonly using the Force for pointless little CGI flips and jumps really is overused in this film).

“Chancellor Palpatine, Sith Lords are our speciality” (00.12.17). Since when are Jedi arrogant? Since when do they make light of the fight between good and evil? In the Original Trilogy this whole battle between dark and light is portrayed as serious, fraught with danger and meaning, and perilous to navigate. In Revenge, and the other prequels, it is a flippant thing.

I may be picking on something that isn’t that big of a deal, but there is a complete and fundamental change in the way the Force is portrayed in the prequels versus the originals, the end result of which is that the two trilogies are no longer linked in any real sense, thematically. That bothers me most because George Lucas is the creator of the mythology in the first place, and it really seems like he simply did not bother to stay consistent within himself about the way his universe works. I could be another fanboy whining about continuity, but more than that, I am concerned about the integrity of the work itself and the work’s author: it is shabby craftsmanship.

The lightsaber battle that follows is ridiculous (Kenobi’s hair flip, anyone?), full of stupid lines, and is comprised of laughable attacks and force moves. The CGI stand-ins for Dooku and Kenobi look like a clowns, things happen too slowly to be plausible, and really, are we supposed to believe that bulkhead didn’t completely pulverize Kenobi’s legs? What the heck?! To top it off, every time the action cuts to Palpatine’s reactions, he looks like he is constipated. I wish I was making up how bad this fight is, but I really am not. It is deplorable.

The one moment during the entire farce in which it seems like anyone was even trying comes when Skywalker and Dooku saber lock and Dooku says “I sense great fear in you, Skywalker. You have hate; you have anger, but you don’t use them.” (00.13.42). This echoes the Vader vs Luke fight on Cloud City, but where Vader was using his insights to taunt Luke in order to get him to lose control, here it simply seems like Dooku is making an off-hand observation, despite Christopher Lee’s incredible delivery. I wish that Lucas had picked up Lee for a character 30 years ago for the Original Trilogy because the man is one of the best villains I’ve ever seen, and that oozes out here. But, all that happens as a result of the one good line in the opening gambit is that Anakin seems offended by Dooku’s statement and he sulks by way of lightsaber fighting.

Shortly thereafter, the fight is over and Dooku is handless and I wonder what is with the hand removal fetish of the prequels. Luke lost a hand in Empire because Vader needed to seem completely heartless and to advance the conceit that Luke was becoming Vader which was payed off in Jedi when Luke cuts off Vader’s hand and fully realizes that he has indeed become his father. It was a thematic element, and part of the beautiful writing of the Original Trilogy. The cutting off of the hands in the prequels happens so often that it seems like somewhere someone decided it would be funny to have people constantly losing their hands (and or lightsabers) and that person would be George Lucas. (btw: Not funny, George.)

Anyway, Palpatine betrays Dooku by having Anakin kill him in the culmination of the most obvious attempt by a screenwriter to get rid of an inconvenient character ever. Grievous has been newly minted as the villain, but as the film already had a villain, Dooku needed to be taken care of, so Anakin does it here. So much build up, so little payoff.

Anakin whines about “not the Jedi way” but when he murders anyway, he just seems like a shallow, hypocritical killer, and not at all someone that anyone wants to care about or feel any emotion for other than contempt (00.14.46). Palpatine brings up Anakin’s previous slaughter of the Sand People, and all that does is reinforce the idea that Anakin is a murderer and already Darth Vader and even less worthy to be revered.

Allow me a side track here: I recently read, and forgive me, I don’t remember where, that a mother had decided not to show her kids the prequels or the Clone Wars cartoons because the “hero” of new Star Wars is a murdering, psychopathic teenager who turns evil, and, really, is that the kind of person you want your child to emulate? Back in the day we had Luke who, as a young man, took responsibility, beat back evil, and redeemed and loved his hitleresque father. Which would you choose to set before your kids as a good role model?

Food for thought.

Palpatine, having been “rescued”, now tries to find a way to leave his death-trap trap.

(00.15.05)

I should mention, before I really get going here, that the novelization of Revenge of the Sith, written by Matthew Stover, is a valiant attempt to reconstruct Revenge of the Sith in such a way that things sort of make sense and are the logical result of humans being humans (in most cases: some of the characters are not human, obviously). Stover completely ignores some events in the movie, and totally reinterprets others, and, if given the choice, I would rather read the novel than watch the film because the novel is endurable and, dare I say, enjoyable. The reason why? Good writing.

The film, however, is full of bad writing, and so I begin…

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As it is almost two minutes before there is any dialogue, I will take these moments of eye candy to wonder what the heck is happening. According to the opening crawl which just faded into the stars, General Grievous has “swept” into Coruscant and kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine. It is strongly suggested later that Palpatine orchestrated this entire event simply to have Anakin Skywalker recalled from the front lines so that he could kill Count Dooku and be ripe for the turning to the Dark Side.

While this sounds good in theory, there are simply too many places where such a cunning scheme could go wrong for the Chancellor. Security would have to be told not to fight back, ships would have to be rerouted, and the Jedi would have to be kept out of the loop and somehow out of the fighting. Put this in terms of WWII and England. If Sir Winston Churchill were actually in league with Adolf Hitler and wanted to orchestrate a plan in which an elite team of Nazi soldiers kidnapped him and tried to make it across the channel, I highly doubt he would succeed without his connection to Nazi Germany being discovered, given the intense security around Churchill and the British Army stationed around England for the purpose of repelling any invasion force.

Furthermore, the recall of Kenobi and Skywalker, and their entire battle group, apparently, would be like Churchill recalling a battle group from the South China Sea. Unanswerable questions would be asked and the gambit would fail. The plausibility of Palpatine’s actions here are very much in question, especially given that at this point he hasn’t yet tried to give orders to the Jedi Council, who seem to be running the war, and it is they who would have to recall Kenobi’s battle group. I wonder if his was the closest most convenient group to recall, especially since there should have been defenses in place already.

I suppose it could be argued that the Republic cruisers we see actually are the orbital defense group and that just Kenobi and Skywalker were recalled, in their Jedi starfighters, to infiltrate Grievous’ ship, but why? Mace Windu and at least one other Jedi Knight are already on Coruscant and available to fly up into the melee, so why recall anyone from outside the system? This entire chain of events makes no sense at all. But, it is what exists, so assuming the extremely unlikely, Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi finally quit their pointless acrobatics and are staring down the gullet of spacial chaos at Grievous’ ship.

I must say, apart from being slightly overwhelming, this space battle is very well done, from a technical point of view. It is many things that the comparable battle in Return of the Jedi was, with a few homages to the attack on the first Death Star thrown in (ie Kenobi being Red Leader, and the early X-wing like fighters). It is clear this sort of chaos and setup is what Lucas wished he could have achieved for Jedi because he recreates it so well, down to the Emperor being seated in a throne on a ship with the battle raging behind him and a duel of the fates being fought in front of him. I’ll say this for Lucas: he never stops trying to perfect his films that were, in his mind, incomplete due to rudimentary special effects. That single minded pursuit of perfection is a good trait, for the most part, and one I can respect.

Anyway, at this point Kenobi’s squadron is under attack and a few of their disposable clone pilots are being blown up. For some reason Anakin wants to “go help them out” (00.04.04). Kenobi has to remind him to do his job: rescue the Chancellor. I think this is thrown in here to emphasize the trouble Anakin has letting people in his life die, but it doesn’t work because 1) Anakin has been fighting a war for three years with troops he has come to think of as disposable and 2) given the way he thinks about Palpatine throughout the rest of the film, one would think the Chancellor would rate as slightly more important.

Also going on here is a little banter between Kenobi and Skywalker. it sounds a little forced and superficial, and no doubt was added because, after Attack of the Clones, some audience members had trouble believing that Anakin and Obi-Wan were in fact friends. I’ve got no trouble with the banter, per se, as it isn’t really any worse than any other horrible prequel dialogue, but I point it out as one more thing added to revise what has come before, which is a direct result of failing to plan and write well in the first place.

Anyway, there is some drama with some missiles and buzz droids, and for some reason one of the best star pilots in the galaxy thinks it is a good idea to fire on his master’s fighter and/or physically bump into it. Other than that, I like the idea of the buzz droids because someone was thinking about the infinite options available with an army of droids. Why shoot a normal missile when you can shoot a missile full of droids that create havoc?

Finally the Jedi manage to land in the main hanger bay, and while they chop up some useless droids, Artoo finds the Chancellor. The Jedi immediately sense Count Dooku (and somehow not the evil Darth Sidious) and rightly figure it is a trap and decide to go anyway. Artoo naturally wants in on the fun, but is told to “go back” because Anakin needs him to “stay with the ship” (00.08.00). Um, why? Are they really planning on leaving in one and a half starfighters with three men? Wouldn’t Artoo prove useful? I understand that practically the droid would get in the way of all the running and fighting and madcap elevator fun, but there had to be a better way of getting the droid out of the way, like having him be separated from Skywalker and Kenobi like he got separated from Luke on Cloud City, or something. And then Kenobi tosses him a communicator as if a droid of Artoo’s specs doesn’t have one built in. (How else does Skywalker talk to him while he is sitting in the starfighter wing?)

Anyway, the Jedi go to spring the trap, and Artoo goes to pout about being left out of the action.

(00.08.05)

I am jumping into it with both feet, by which I mean that Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith does have its moments. Like Leia says, “Not many of them, but you do have them.” But, sadly, I also mean that Revenge of the Sith is bad, and not just bad, but atrocious. I begin, as always, with the opening crawl.

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The crawl of Revenge runs until one minute and fifty seconds into the movie. Rather than reference time codes as I normally do, I refer you to the StarWars.com page that includes the entire text and will reference line numbers, as if this were poetry (but horribly bad poetry).

“War!” it begins (1). I suppose that Lucas felt, perhaps rightly so, that Star Wars had become As the Star Turns, or All My Squabbling Delegates, or Jedi Of Our Lives, or whatever clever soap opera title one wants to adapt to accurately describe the degeneration of the saga. Star Wars had gone from a stirring space opera to a lethargic soap opera in space. There was no real war in the Phantom Menace, just a few battles. There was no real war in Attack of the Clones, just a pointless, unjustified attack on a backwater planet that was not part of the Republic. Lucas, rather deftly, actually, manages to skip almost the entire war that should have been what Star Wars: the Prequels was all about: The Clone Wars. The Clone wars were alluded to in A New Hope with mystery and weight and feeling, as if it were World War II and women married the men that came home because they came home and there wasn’t anyone else. Lucas, for whatever incomprehensible reason, allotted the Clone Wars to the dark gap between movies and is now giving it the kiddy treatment over on Cartoon Network (and doing a bad job of it). So I suppose that Lucas wanted to remind people that his saga was about a galaxy spanning war, after all.

The entirety of the first paragraph of the crawl reads like it was written by a five year old. Descriptions are cliche and the sentences are as simple as those one reads in kindergarten: “See Vader run. Vader runs fast. Evil is everywhere. The Republic is crumbling. There are heroes. Padme is sad.” It is dreadful. Each of the next paragraphs is a single sentence, so why is this one four sentences long? And, my beef is not just with the structure of paragraph one, it is with the content as well. Apparently the war is being run by the “ruthless Count Dooku” (2-3). All well and good, except that we haven’t seen him be particularly ruthless, more gentlemanly and only slightly evil. And, as far as that goes, he captured a whole 20 minutes of screen time in Attack of the Clones and will have even less in Revenge of the Sith. The next two sentences are contradictory: “There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere.” (4-5). To whom is the “ruthless” Count Dooku a hero? The thousands of star systems that think the Republic is corrupt and just want to secede? I doubt they would condone his “ruthless” actions. The council of toadies that are his financial backers? In my experience those who are out only for profit and career advancement only make heroes of themselves or their bank accounts, not some “ruthless” political figurehead. And, evil, by definition, is not heroic. It is craven. It isn’t courageous, it isn’t bold, it slinks and it snarls, and nothing about that is heroic. This is non-sequitarian.

Finally, however, we move beyond the sort of general plot that Lucas has been stringing loosely together over the past half a movie, and into the direct set up for this movie, and we learn that a “fiendish droid leader, General Grievous” has kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine (7-8). Again, this does not fit at all with “heroes on both sides” as someone who is “fiendish” is not heroic.

Furthermore, who is this guy? Up until now, it has seemed that Count Dooku is running the war. He seemed to be the ringleader or kingpin in Clones, and this first paragraph has told us that the attacks which are crumbling the Republic are “by….Count Dooku”. I understand that Grievous could be the commander and Dooku could be the chief, but that has to be established and documented otherwise the audience becomes confused. In the Original Trilogy, we knew there was an Emperor who ruled the galaxy, and that Vader was his right hand man running the war. We didn’t get the Emperor for part of two movies and then suddenly get Vader for half a movie and be expected to make the jump. But, not to worry, because I actually do know why Grievous is suddenly introduced here when he, perhaps, should have been around since Episode One. The reason for Grievous is this: Lucas had a brilliant idea two movies too late. General Grievous is a direct analogue to Darth Vader (Lucas has said this several times in interviews, forgive me, as I don’t have references handy). Both are “more machine than man” and both are “twisted and evil” and both are “trained in…Jedi arts” and the list goes on. Lucas had a brilliant idea to foreshadow Vader with Grievous, but if that were the case, the main villain from the beginning should have been Grievous and he should have been a blend of Dooku and the General. A force wielding mostly machine Sith hunting down the Chosen One would have been fantastic, especially since we know the formula works, and when Darth Grievous dies unredeemed, it would give much more credence to Kenobi’s belief that Vader is unredeemable.

But, because Lucas did not bother to stop and think anything through or work with more than one draft, he thought of Grievous two movies too late, quickly inserted him into the thick of things and killed him too quickly for anyone to really get it. This is an argument I have been making since Phantom Menace and Darth Maul: too many guys who are not really that bad. The Original Trilogy had exactly one: Vader. It was always and only Darth Vader. He fired first, he strangled second, he dismembered third, he trapped fourth, he taunted fifth, and he never ever showed any hint of goodness until the very end. Darth Maul said nothing, but was a bad ass animal. Darth Tyrannus/ Count Dooku seemed like a good, misguided gentleman and wasn’t particularly scary or bad ass. Greivous is so over the top and cliche that he is boring. There is no one to care enough about to hate as a villain, and a space opera, heck, even a soap opera, needs an obviously evil villain. You know, the guy who is trying to kill the kids who don’t actually belong to their parents but are actually twins, and are actually the heroes’ twins who everyone thought was dead but who has been alive all this time and is really the bad guy himself! *gasp* Or something. Point is: clear villain.

Lastly, the film begins with a “desperate mission to rescue the captive chancellor” (16-17) and, in addition to the massive star fleet, the Republic sends exactly “two Jedi Knights” on this desperate mission (15). And, we learn later, they apparently had to recall Kenobi and Skywalker from the Outer Rim. What?? What about Mace Windu and Yoda and the (it looks like hundreds of) Jedi right there on the planet from which Palpatine is being kidnapped?

Sure, the mission is desperate, but only because the Jedi are total morons.

(00.01.50)

After a two month hiatus, during which I pondered the meaning of life and the worth of continuing this blog series, Star Wars: Deconstructed is back!

After I finished deconstructing the Phantom Menace, I was actually excited and energized to continue into Attack of the Clones, but I found that about halfway through Clones I became overwhelmed by the sheer amount of bad writing, thoughtlessness, poor planning, and half-hearted work that had become Star Wars: The Prequel Trilogy. The more I thought about the films and tried to comprehend the bizarre characters, strange plots, and haphazard story elements the more I just could not find a coherent line of reasoning or a reason to continue. I was forced to come to the decision that no one had really cared enough about the story to actually make sure that it was a decent one, much less a good one.

If George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, could not be bothered to imagine a good story, I wondered what exactly it was I thought I was doing when I was deconstructing his films. Was I wasting my time? Was I wasting effort on something that was/is irrelevant? Perhaps.

But then I took a miniature vacation while my wife was sent away on a business trip. It was a very early flight, and the airport was mostly deserted. I walked right up to the ticket counter and began the usual handing over of my ID so that my reservation could be called up, and hefting my bag onto the scale so that it could be tagged for the flight. The woman who was assisting me was probably in her mid thirties (about 10 years older than me) and I really didn’t pay much attention to her. I’ve flown many times in my life, and the process is so routine that I can go through it pretty much on auto-pilot (no pun intended). Anyway, I had to pay for my checked bag, and I pulled out my wallet and handed over my Mastercard, which has a picture of Darth Vader on it. (This fact really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, and actually this was my first credit card which I applied for through StarWars.com….also not surprising.)

Over the years that I have used this card, it is either ignored, or I get a “hey, cool card!” but this time the woman behind the counter glanced at my card, then at me, then said “I just let my son see that movie for the first time last night. I thought he was finally old enough, so I showed him the original Star Wars. My husband and I had a hard time deciding whether we should show him the old ones or the new ones first.” Just like that, without preamble or introductory remarks. So, me being me, while she finished the transaction on the computer, printed out boarding passes, and tagged my bag, I engaged in a brief conversation with her about why it was a good decision to start with the Original Trilogy and why it was an even better decision to think seriously about ignoring the Prequel Trilogy completely. The airport was still empty, and I had enough lead time before my flight, that I actually stood at the check-in counter for a few more minutes rounding out the discussion. She had as much to say to me as I had to say to her, and in those few minutes, I realized why this blog series was so important:

Connections.

Shakespeare’s plays, the Bible, and the earliest stories told by man are not really about the characters, the plot, or the story lines. The stories are about connections. They are about one human connecting with another human, and about how and why both react to that connection as they do. This is true: it is impossible to encounter another human being without having some reaction. Even willful ignorance of someone is a reaction. Therefore, in understanding and deconstructing exactly how the connections in Star Wars are or are not flawed is another step in honing the ability to understand the connections of every day, real life. Literature has always been a lens through which writers and readers understand the world around them. In the 21st century, film and television is our literature, just as books, and campfire stories were once the dominant “literature” of their eras (not that oral stories or written stories are passe, just not so dominant).

And, by having an understanding of something as hugely popular as Star Wars, I have an immediate connection point to other people, and a way to meaningfully interact with them, even if it is through a picture on a credit card and a ten minute conversation about children and Star Wars and a minor discussion over “correct viewing order”.

As is often the case, the people who helm the check in counter are usually the same people who take your boarding pass, and in my case, the very same same woman was also a flight attendant on my flight. I knew her, however superficially, and when I saw her later at the gate, and later still on the plane, we were able to share a smile, and a connection. That was important to me, and I would like to imagine that it was important to her as well. I was happier that morning and had a smoother flight than I think I would have ordinarily. Extrapolating to a larger scale, I know that that was an important connection, irregardless of the minuteness of it, because humans are social animals, and we live and grow through the connections we have with other people. Even a small interaction can produce positive feelings of confidence, belonging, and success, and those feelings can go a long way towards how a day, or a life, turns out, at least mentally and emotionally.

With that in mind, I continue my deconstruction of Star Wars, not only to analyze them as literature on an intellectual level, but also to evaluate them as tools with which to understand the connections around me, and to evaluate them as schemas through which to view the world (or not, depending on how badly Star Wars is or is not written). I hope that as you read these blog entries, perhaps some of what I write can enrich you, even if it is just a tiny bit, like a brief conversation at a check-in counter.

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