I should probably start out by saying that I love the Star Wars movies. How could I not? I was born in 1975. The original 'Star Wars' practically rewrote the entirety of pop culture during the most formative period of my life. I'm always going to be a Star Wars fan, and there is nothing that George Lucas can do to wreck it. That said, I am not one of those people who believes that Lucas Can Do No Wrong. He made lots of mistakes in crafting the six films that make up the Star Wars saga--Jar Jar Binks, having Boba Fett get beaten by a blind guy with a stick, abruptly changing the inspiration for the Jedi fighting style from samurai movies to wuxia films, the whole "having the Trade Federation guys talk like Thai busboys", failing to explain who the Sith are and what they want revenge for, failing to explain what the prophecy about "bringing balance to the Force" was and whether the Jedi were for it or against it, the entire podrace sequence...
But he only made one big mistake. George Lucas made one key mistake in the Star Wars films, one that affected the entire perception of the story for generations of fans. Specifically, he made the Jedi too awesome. (Especially Yoda.)
Because the point of the whole Star Wars saga is that the Jedi are no better than the Sith. Sure, the Sith establish the Empire, crushing the Jedi and ruling the galaxy with an iron fist...but the Jedi establish the Republic, and it sure does seem like all the alien races immune to the Jedi mind-control powers wind up stuck on the arse end of the galaxy with a chip on their shoulder, doesn't it? The Jedi don't believe in love. They take away children and raise them to believe that it's bad to love their parents, it's bad to form attachments to other human beings, and the only thing that's important is "the greater good". (And notice that we never see any failed Jedi? Plenty in the Expanded Universe, sure, but we've seen lots of evidence that the Expanded Universe doesn't represent Lucas' vision. In the Lucas-helmed Star Wars films, we're left to wonder.) The Jedi philosophy is sterile, cold, repressed and joyless, and they're the enforcers of the peace in the Republic. Does that sound like a fun place to live? Everyone pointed to the line "Only a Sth thinks in absolutes" as an accidental irony, but there's no accident to it.
And Yoda, the exemplar of the Jedi philosophy, is wrong about everything. Literally everything. He tells Luke that there's no such thing as redemption--"once you start down the path of the Dark Side, forever will it dominate your destiny." He says that love always leads to fear and pain and loss, that if Luke tries to save Vader that he will die and his cause will be lost, and that Anakin's only path to redemption is to give up on his love of Padme and stand by and watch her die. His inflexible, blinkered philosophy is directly responsible for Anakin's fall as much as Palpatine's influence. When Luke says, "I am a Jedi, like my father before me," it's not just a repudiation of the Emperor, it's a repudiation of Yoda as well. The implication is clear. Anakin was a true Jedi; before he failed the order, the order first failed him.
But all that gets lost in the sheer awesomeness of the Jedi. The signal-to-noise ratio is too high--Yoda is a cool Wise Old Master with all the good bits in Episode Five, Qui-Gon Jinn is played by Liam Neeson and Mace Windu is Samuel Freaking Jackson, and the lightsaber is the coolest weapon in the history of film. Everyone takes Yoda's words at face value--even the authorized sequels, which show Luke trying to re-establish the Jedi in the image of the old order. Everyone assumes that Luke narrowly won his struggle with the Dark Side at the end, but in fact, he did exactly what people do every day. He got upset, he channeled his anger constructively, and then he calmed down. Only the Manichean nutbags who run the Jedi and the Sith think that this is some kind of near-impossible achievement. The Jedi aren't the heroes of the film, Luke is, for realizing that there's something more than the false duality that trapped and ultimately destroyed his father.
That's the message of the Star Wars films, and it's a shame that Lucas made it so hard for people to notice.
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Wow. Do you think this was all intentional subtext on George Lucas's part?
I kinda doubt it was - sometimes a story has a way of taking on a life of its own. I wouldn't know what Lucas' intentions were when he first embarked on all this, but part of what I enjoy about Star Wars is the subtext that the events of the movies manages to create, whether intentional or not.
When I watch the prequels, I love watching the ways the Jedi fail Anakin, Anakin's need for a father to the point of starvation (compare Anakin in Episode 2: "You've been like a FATHER to me." to Obi-Wan in Episode 3: "We were BROTHERS!" or Palpatine in Episode 3: "I need your help, SON." Imagine if Qui Gonn survived the fight w/ Darth Maul?) We get just enough reason for why Obi Wan Kenobi should be considered among the greatest of the Jedi (the first Sith Lord any Jedi has faced in over a thousand years and he slices the dude CLEAN in half!) I like watching Count Dooku in action, fully unaware of how much of a patsy he truly is.
Intentional or no, it's like watching a Shakespearean tragedy at work. I often wondered if that were the reason for all the criticism levied at the prequel trilogy - damned things reminded too many people of high school english!
Some day ... and that day is not very far away ... enthusiasts will be able to use rendering on home computers to make their own Star Wars sequels (starring the original actors). On that day, I want to see your sequel.
And your Superman movie.
I've always thought that the revenge aluded to isn't about The entire Sith as a people. It is refering to one Sith--Vader. He wants revenge for the Jedi failing him and his wife. It's sorta like the word Fish, which can refer to one fish, or the entire species of Fish. But i think it is just refering to the one.
Oh, I absolutely think Lucas did it on purpose. I think it's the entire point of the prequel trilogy, but he got too addicted to the action set-pieces and the awesome bits to make it all come into focus.
(This is, I think, the big flaw of the prequels; without anyone to edit him, Lucas got used to being able to put whatever he wanted into the film. Things that a good producer would have forced him to leave on the cutting room floor because they were too expensive and didn't serve the overall story, Lucas got to put in because he was funding the movie himself and it made a profit before he even sold a single ticket.)
But you can see it in places. Watch the battle between Dooku and Anakin and the one between Luke and Vader; they're clearly designed to echo each other. Watch Yoda when he deals with Anakin afterwards; he's stern and unbending, giving him exactly the wrong advice. It's there, it's just not brought out well enough for people to notice.
But John...YOU noticed. That's what I enjoyed most of all about the prequels - they may not do the best job of laying it all out for the audience, but sometimes I don't WANT it all laid out for me. The most fun I had with the prequels was talking with friends about what we thought was going on between the lines...and spot on about Anakin vs. Dooku meant to mirror Luke vs. Vader. There are a coupla little moments like that here and there:
Episode One/Episode Four: The fall of a Jedi Master to a Sith blade, a lucky shot saves the day, the hope of the galaxy found on a backwoods planet...
Episode Two/Episode Four: a love story takes center stage and a Skywalker gets his first taste of the Dark Side before facing a Sith Lord well before he was ready...
Episode Three/Episode Six: A Skywalker's power comes from his emotions, and his one choice decides the fate of the entire galaxy...
Well, in fairness, we're not the typical movie-viewing public; we're the anal nerds who write/frequent blogs and generally think about these things beyond what is healthy.
But I would have to disagree that the subtext is intentional on Lucas' part; by the time of the prequels, Lucas is simply not capable of subtlety anymore. I'd say the recurring subtext comes more from Lucas purposefully holding to the same mythic archetypes as he'd drawn from for the first trilogy.
The difference tends to be academic, though; the result on the screen is the same.
That is what the STAR WARS prequels needed more than anything: someone editing Lucas down.
The pieces really do fit together, but Lucas goes off on tangents that take too long and say too little. The signal gets lost in the noise.
Take Jar Jar Binks. He serves a purpose. Padme trusts him from their experiences together and leaves him to be manipulated by Palpatine. However, Lucas gave him way too many scenes in the first film to achieve that. Also, he goes off on a long tangent about how the Queen is really democratically elected that undermines the effect of Padme appointing essentially a crony to a key position at a critical moment.
You might enjoy Bioware's upcoming MMO, The Old Republic. They seem to be raising many of those same points, particularly that crushing your emotions isn't particularly healthy.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99333-Are-The-Old-Republics-Sith-In-the-Right
The role playing Video game 'Knights of the Old Republic 2' probably my favourite thing related to Star Wars outside of the original movies, really explores this. It's a deep game which confronts the problems with the jedi and sith philosophies. If you haven't played it, I highly recommend it.
well f---kin said my friend. excellent commentary. i wonder - i really wonder what GL would say if asked directly what he really think of the Jedi after all this... are they really the same guys he thought they were when he made the OT ????
Probably you're right and he has a lot of mistakes in those films, however you have to admit that movies were not bad at all, and that probably another director hadn't had the same success George Lucas had.
in fact I totally disagreed with you, to me George Lucas don't made any mistake except for the mother .^%#&*((%#$ of Jar Jar, the rest of mistake that you mark are only thing that been explained in any other movie, for example you talk about the fighting style of the jedi, but in the first and original trilogy the only who fought was a pair of old men and Luke.
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"But he only made one big mistake. George Lucas made one key mistake in the Star Wars films, one that affected the entire perception of the story for generations of fans. Specifically, he made the Jedi too awesome. (Especially Yoda.)"
No, he didn't. The Jedi made mistakes in both trilogies - including Yoda. But many fans were too busy accepting Obi-Wan's idealized description of the Jedi to notice.
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