How I Would Have Done the Star Wars Prequels

Way back when, before I grew my first beard or (truth be told) dated my first girl or had my very first job, George Lucas gave me a wonderful gift.  Star Wars.  My siblings and I insisted our parents go this flick.  They didn't much care for science fiction, but came back with grins on their faces.

Good times.  Good times.

So maybe you can imagine how thrilled my soul felt as word came out that after years and  years a brand new Star Wars trilogy was on the way.  To the left is the first poster I ever saw.  Oh, the pathos of that image--an innocent little boy with that darkness in his future...

Words cannot express my disappointment with the final result.  I saw The Phantom Menace at a discount price and felt myself robbed.  Never again did I dole out any of my hard-earned money to see the rest of the prequels.  In time, I rented them.  Reluctantly.  Okay, they proved better than Episode I, but really isn't that as low a bar as one can imagine?

Rather than whine about what's wrong with these movies (which has been done in a far more funny, scathing and exhaustive manner elsewhere) but rather suggest how I might have done it differently.

Which makes for pretty good evidence of my arrogance.  A fair cop.  Mea culpa and all that.

Let us start with a threat to the Galactic Republic, namely the return of the Dark Lords of the Sith after a thousand years' absence.  If Jedi are mystic Knights supposed to be cool, calm and collected then how about the Sith acting as their polar opposites?  Passionate, intense, hot-blooded and fierce.  Consider though--these hardly make someone evil in and of themselves.  One thing that immediately pops into my mind is that two Sith be the center of an incredible love story.

So let me begin with an original character, Darth Shado.  Imagine a seer of the Dark Side, one not very popular among his fellow Sith because he doesn't hate the Jedi, merely disapproves of them.  He sees them as an order of eunuchs increasingly shaping the galaxy in their own image--sterile, cold, rigid.  A classic conflict between Dionysian and Apollonian forces.  Amid some military campaign in which the Sith and their allies seeks come coup against the Republic, Shado confronts a very able Jedi Knight named Gideah Lann.  Okay, just for fun let's cast them shall we?  Jonathan Rhys Myers as Darth Shado, with Kate Beckinsale as Gideah Lann, who starts off as the perfect Jedi--coolly efficient, ever-in-control, seeing things from a broad perspective only--and disapproving of the interest some other Jedi are taking in romance, in personal relationships.  Like Yoda and others, she approves of the super-ascetic lifestyle that has evolved over the millennia--until she meets and falls in love with someone who's had visions of her since the Force awoke in him.  Yep.  Darth Shado.  I'd build a chunk of the prequels around their love story, in a dark parallel with Princess Leia/Han Solo.  Each would actually try to persuade each other to defect, with their growing love a sign that each side has a point.

Clearly I'm tossing aside the whole "Only Two Sith" bit, in favor of a more diverse and interesting enemy.  Since Palpatine is canon, we must show him as the Sith hiding in plain sight, a Senator who rises in political power amidst the conflict of the Clone Wars.  But rather than a stupid war between clones and robots, I'd have a conflict between people--perhaps several more aggressive races using cloning to vastly increase their numbers, threatening the stability of the Republic.  Attempting to intervene, the Jedi (including Gideah Lann and the young Obi Wan Kenobi) only set off the conflict earlier than anyone expected.

This sets up a need for more warriors trained in the Force.  Obi Wan meets the fighter pilot Annakin Skywalker mid-battle.  In time they become great friends, and the Jedi starts to train his great pal in the ways of the Force.  But what we see is a tragic mismatch of teacher and student.  Annakin has questions (the same questions that Darth Shadow asks Gideah) but Obi Wan lacks satisfying answers.  In the heat of battle, Annakin turns to the Dark Side, to his rage and hatred in order to survive.

In the end, Shado and Gideah begin to see eye-to-eye, perhaps believing they can find a way to work together, offering a possibility of ending the age-old dispute between Sith and Jedi.  But they are destroyed along with most of a world in a massive use of weaponry led by now-Admiral Skywalker, commanding elite troops under the direct control of Senate Lord President Palpatine.  Kenobi tries to stop him, and in the end wounds his once-great friend so terribly he ends up in that black suit.

Many Jedi and Sith are now dead.  Palpatine notes the Jedi are now actively intervening with the war effort and demands they swear loyalty to the Lord President.  Few agree, and are outlawed.  Kenobi and Yoda receive a last recorded message from Gideah, a Force Vision of what they must do (actually from Darth Shado).  They meet Annakin's wife, who believes her husband dead.  She is returning to her home world of Alderaan, deeply sorry her husband never knew she was expecting their child.  Kenobi accompanies her while Yoda heeds the Vision and goes to Dagobah.

All around them, the war continues, now one of conquest.  Lord President Palpatine has been declared Emperor, and outlawed the Jedi Order.  News of a new and terrifying warrior named Darth Vader hunting down the Jedi reaches Obi Wan and the widow Skywalker.  He assures her things will change.  They always do.  We must have hope.

The End.  For now.

Any commentary is more than welcome.  Just glad to get that off my chest.

Manhood and Science Fiction

I only recently became aware of this debate going on, pretty much captured in The War on Science Fiction and Marvin Minsky, a blog entry that also writes glowingly of Dirk Benedict's essay Lt. Starbuck...Lost in Castration. Essentially, both are complaining (and using the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica as a prime example) that science fiction is becoming less masculine and more female-oriented. Interestingly, this is regarded as a "bad thing".

Frankly, I have trouble taking Mr. Benedict very seriously when it comes to understanding what makes a good story. In the 1980s he performed the lead in Hamlet in NYC, and I had the...experience...of seeing that show as well as reading his disparaging comments about other productions. His costume rather resembled that of Flash Gordon, and his delivery indicated no hint of what people like Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Kenneth Branaugh and Kevin Kline (my personal favorite) saw in the role or the script. The sword fight was great, though. And (not coincidentally, I think) the Ghost was done as a special effect, with lights shining around the theatre and a voice booming from the sound system.

But I digress. Both writers make what seems like a very curious set of arguments -- about gender roles, about science fiction and about story-telling in general. Please feel free to read them via the above links, but in a nutshell here seem to be their main points:

• To be truly masculine in a desirable way, men must be macho. What this apparently entails is stereotypical stuff like womanizing, unbending emotional self-control (save maybe in the case of righteous rage), and a taste for violence.
• It is for some reason bad or undesirable for women to be in positions of authority, most especially if they are giving orders to men.
• Homosexuality really shouldn't be a subject matter in science fiction, nor should the blurring of sexual roles.
• All of the above is indicative of an anti-male bias (Question--is the opposite an anti-female bias?) to be judged harshly as such.
• Science fiction, by becoming in some sense "feminized" has also turned against hope and all things positive in favor of a voyeuristic delight in negativity.

No one should be too surprised to read I question pretty much all of the above premises. A lot.

One level it is really too easy to tear apart these ideas. For example, any viewer of the new BSG would be hard-pressed to call Commander Adama anything but a very strong man in pretty much every single way. But I'm more concerned with two specific ideas that run like currents in both the above posts.

Let us deal with the more hidden idea. My own experience and study has led me to believe most people who give any thoughts to art tend to see its purpose in one of two ways. J.R.R.Tolkien spoke of such when he wrote of preferring "history" to "allegory", a remark many have used with which to compare Lord of the Rings with the works of his friend C.S.Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia. My own preference is to compare Shakespeare with his contemporary Johnson on this matter. For lack of better terms, I call one the Givers of Answers and the other the Askers of Questions. Another way (perhaps more accurate) is to note one approach is to view art as propaganda, the other seeing it as an experience. One poses questions only to feed you the answer. The other poses questions but gives responsibility for finding the answer in your own hands.

Good fiction needn't belong to only one of these two schools. The storyteller can even be a little heavy-handed and achieve considerable quality. Case in point (and returning to science fiction), Blade Runner. The story posits a terrible injustice (not coincidentally, at least IMHO, one similar to the very heart of the new Galactica), namely that mankind has created synthetic people -- with feelings, thoughts, free will -- and made of them slaves. Ultimately, there is little ambiguity here. The Replicants (as they're called) are victims of an insidious evil. Even if you consider every violent act they commit totally unjustified, it takes someone strangely dense not to see them as wronged (the only person I've ever met who didn't "get" that was an engineer -- make of that what you will). Decker, the title character, is a murderer many times over. What makes the story so compelling (apart from fine acting, a dizzying production design, etc.) is that we see him learn better. It is the story of a leopard who changes his spots, not in a remotely saccharine manner (he doesn't let a bunch of dangerous and violent Replicants simply get away) but by falling in love with one. The Director's Cut underscores this even more.

Now, examine the same idea but without taking it seriously. In Star Wars two of the most popular characters are R2D2 and his golden companion C3PO. Yet how much is made of the fact that both of them are exactly as much slaves as the Replicants? Both film trilogies are supposed to be epic struggles to defend/restore freedom to the galaxy -- yet not for droids. Machines don't count, no matter how kind or intelligent or even loved. It doesn't even occur to anyone in any of the six films that mechanical life should perhaps have a choice -- not even to the machines themselves.

Those who want to see simple morals in their stories too often end up demanding simplistic ones. In efforts to find ethical answers, they cheat on the test. One can go at great length (and many have) about the weird moral implications given by George Lucas -- and such is justified due to his explicit efforts to present a fable. It comprises a major, oft-repeated criticism of the films. I've read published books on the subject. Critics of Blade Runner, on the other hand, often complain about some of the very things which defined the re-imagined Galactica. It is too dark. The hero doesn't have clean hands. It it depressing. The end doesn't see what is wrong with the world corrected.

Here is my take. Those complaints are about the real world. Life is breathtaking in its beauty, and mind-bogglingly horrible in its ugliness. Not one or the other. Both. Individual people contain wisdom and stupidity, compassion and cruelty, bravery and cowardice. Want a story that involves us on many levels? Capture that dichotomy. Take an idea, and explore it seriously. Yeah, make it a ripping yarn but remember every video store in the world is full of formulaic action films that couldn't sell tickets.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf is a simple, easy-to-comprehend tale with an important lesson. Aesop remains a classic precisely because he knew how to tell a fable well. But no one equates Aesop with Sophocles. It isn't somehow manly to act like the world is a video game. It is only boyish -- embarassing to see in a grown man. Boys think everything can be fixed with right gizmo, that girls are yucky, that an explosion equals excitement and that tears are something of which to be ashamed. Men have grown beyond all that -- and as a result, do far more good and experience far more joys than boys ever can.

Boys also whine when they don't get what they want. Let us be fair -- so do girls. Men and women learn better.

Revisiting childhood can be loads of fun. The journey and vacation can be therapeutic. Living there full-time is a tragedy. Even for Flash Gordon or Luke Skywalker.

Or Lieutenant Starbuck.