Redstate

I suppose I should admit that I will go see Star Wars 3 next weekend.

What George Lucas thinks about politics?  I've never completely understoond the weird conservative fetish about getting worked up about what entertainment industry figures blather on about.

Also, just to point out, Lucas said Star Wars was written during the Nixon administration, and the end of the Vietnam war.  That logically would probably entail a different time period than its release in '77.  Plus, I think he had to shop the story around for awhile, given that the studios thought it was going to be a dog.

For the record, I've been disappointed by the last two movies, but I too will see the third.

I never expected I would defend George Lucas anywhere, but a couple things - actually they aren't corrections really, because I don't claim to know the facts involved. Just take caution everyone and don't assume you know all the facts:

1) You mentioned that this Lucas quote: "'When I wrote it, Iraq (the U.S.-led war) didn't exist... but the parallels of what we did in Vietnam and Iraq are unbelievable'" made no sense because the 1st movie came out in 1977, after Vietnam ended. In other news reports though, I have seen that Lucas claims he wrote the new movie back in 1971. If that is true (I don't know if it is), the time frame is right.

2)On this newspaper quote "Although he didn't mention Bush by name, Lucas took what sounded like another dig while explaining the transformation of the once-good Anakin Skywalker to the very bad Darth Vader. `Most bad people think they're good people,' he said." You reacted assuming that Lucas was talking about Bush, but all we know here is that the NEWSPAPER suggests he was talking about Bush (maybe he WAS, maybe he WASN'T, but I used to work for a newspaper, and they put words in people's mouths like this all the time.

1)  I don't know when Lucas wrote the original drafts of his stories, but it doesn't much matter seeing as how the films didn't go into production untill 1977, which means that the actual script would have been written somewhere in the 1976 to 1977 timeframe.  

Moreover, if anyone besides Lucas watched the original trilogy and thought "Vietnam" I haven't met him.  From the beginning everyone (and I mean everyone) who saw the films thought that the evil galactic empire was the real-life Evil Empire of the 1980s.  Some people even thought Reagan stole the concept.

2) The article came from Japan Today.  I don't know much about Japan Today's political leanings, but since it is neither American nor European, I suspect they don't have much motivation to put anti-Bush propaganda into George Lucas's mouth.  Besides, it was clearly Lucas who brought up the Iraq analogy.

Who cares what he thinks?  He's not much of a filmmaker as a marketer and special effects guy.  And he's always got that super-smug doofus look on his face, like he's sooo better than you.  Well you know what?  I saw THX-1138 and it was DUMB.  What other successes has he had other than Star Wars?  If you don't count the Raiders trilogy (which has got Spielberg written all over it) Lucas has had nada.  Zip.  Zilch.  

Lucas isn't that impressive.  Did you hear that wretched dialogue in Episode 2?  It was so bad it was embarrasing.  Lucas has all the romance of a paper clip.  And how about that silly "The Force" blood test in Episode 1?  No wonder Liam Neeson said he'd never make a movie again!  Sheesh, who is writing this crap?

Let him speak out on his nonsense liberal ideas.  He only brings more credit to us.  Besides he looks like Michael Moore's clean-cut older brother.

Because Lucas has always kind of struck me as Hollywood's Steve Jobs.  Just my impression.

But I've heard him talk about "cool" stuff in documentaries and I think he's got his own kind of reality distortion field that envelops him -- that encourages a lot of people to do really unbelievable work in the service of his projects.  He's very spare with his words, almost childlike if you've ever watched him talk.  As far as I know he's never given a "deep" explanation of his films.  And that, somehow, is part of his pull and part of his charm.  

Now, if I could just do that with the girls, too.  Life would be good.

For people who have attempted a "deep" interpretation of Lucas' films, in spite of their pop-culture frivolity, you can always read Mark Crispin Miller's Seeing Through Movies.

You'll read all about the Sarlaac Pit in the Empire Strikes Back as the Vagina Dentata, you'll find out all you ever wanted to know (and more!) about the Carrie Fisher's boobs not bouncing in space, and you'll learn perhaps way too much about the Ewok-Vietcong Connection, and much, much more.  It's really a much more interesting story than the story itself is.

I'm sure Crispin Miller is having a good time laughing about all this right about now.  Lucas is a dreamer, and Crispin Miller is one of those intellectuals who actually took him seriously.

Um, and let's also remember very carefully here:  Crispin Miller is NOT, from anything I remember after meeting him, a Republican.  Tail Wags Dog.

And to a certain extent I and II.  I apologize for the nitpicking.  But the issue here is "when democracies become dictatorships."  That is pretty much the plot structure of Episode III, and much of I and II are the set up for that.   Episodes I-III (as well as V and VI) were written in the early 1970's, and then not touched until way later.     The question isn't whether people thought of Vietnam or Nixon when Episode IV came out in 1977.   Virtually no one knew about the broader story arc and speicifically the plot of Episode III in 1977.   As I've always understood it, the original phenomenon was like a national, much-needed retreat from politics and reality and flight into fancy where the good guys won and the bad guys lost.   Lucas always got a lot of crap from teh left wing hollywood elites for turning movies away from real world politics and causes and towards make believe and escapism.

The point is what makes the sextet work is its reliance on near-universal themes plucked from high and low culture, and one of those is how delicate the trust of a democracy can be, and how easily that can be maniuplated in a climate of war and paranoia.  

As long as I've known about the plotline of the whole sextet, I've always assumed Episode III was an allegory of the Weimar Republic, if anything.

I think to put this thread back on a firmer intellectual footing, back where it actually belongs, we should hold a contest:

Who is your favorite Star Wars Character?

Mine is Chewbacca.  He's big, he's hairy, and nobody understands him.  He can rip your arms off, and he's totally asexual as far as we can tell, but he does like to hang 'round with a big ol' bandolier across his torso.  He also loyal and supremely devoted to Han Solo, and he's an incredible whiz when it comes to being a technician on the Millenium Falcon.  He's a crack shot and also does a good job pretending he's a captive, when he needs to, then cutting loose and cracking skulls at exactly the right moment.  He's kinda like McGuyver, because he can fix anything, but he can't tell you how he did it, or he'd have to kill you.

Please, more suggestions in this thread.  Let's put the Star Wars saga back on the intellectual level it belongs.

...the poor dork plugs the data jack into power sockets and gets shot up on a semi-regular basis, but he keeps going.

Artoo is a survivor.  He gets electrocuted, blown to pieces, submerged in all kinds of slime all the time, and let's never forget:  He contained Princess Leia's message to the Rebel Alliance and kept it safe even while he was in the clutches of the Jawas.  All around, he's a pretty good droid.

A bit player who survived all three pictures in almost-but-not-quite-heroic fashion.  Begged out at the last moment on the assault on the Death Star.  Found Han and Luke on Hoth, but only after they nearly froze to death.  Kinda led the assault on the second Death Star, but ultimately deferred to Lando.  Got fatter with each succeeding installment of the trilogy.

An inspiration to us all.  

is one of the great characters Lucas created.  His lines are classic, for example:

Princess Leia to Han Solo:  I love you.

Han Solo before he gets frozen: I know.

He predicted the "I just don't dig you" response by almost an entire generation.  ;-)

Please, keep 'em coming.

But who could forget Jabba the Hutt?

This guy is the epitome of the corruption of partriarchy.  I think he was the prototype for Halliburton crossed with Donald Trump.  He's just huge, fat and bald, and he keeps poor Leia chained up like a wench and drags her all over the place and disgusts her with his bad breath.

He also runs a house of gambling and ill-repute, everyone is a sleepy decadent drug addict or lackey, and Artoo is made to carry drinks to the sleaze who enjoy his stripshow barge, and down in the depths underneath his lair, he keeps a ravenous, colossally frightening but misunderstood and abused beast the size of a hundred men.  He sends out his bounty hunters and commands respect but is ultimately blown to bits on his barge after Han partially regains his freedom and escapes from the Vagina Dentata with the help of a few well-placed Blaster shots and some nifty light-saber battling.

he's just such a bada##

Which "reference" are we talking about? Lucas's reference to Vietnam and Iraq in the Japan Today article?

No question! And it has nothing to do with Lucas's writing ability, or the intrinsic merits of the character himself. No, I loved Obi Wan for the man who played him: Sir Alec Guinness.

Any way you slice it Sir Alec was a rock star, and unlike the aging British rock stars of today, Guiness earned his knighthood fair and square by helping to make British cinema the equal of American films during the mid-twentieth century.  We're talking about a man who made great movies for four decades, starting with "Great Expectations" (1946) and "Oliver Twist" (1948) in the immediate post-war period.  This is a man who won an Oscar for his role in "Bridge over the River Kwai" (1957) and FOLLOWED it up with "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) and "Dr. Zhivago" (1965).

I truly believe that if it were not for Guiness no one would remember Lucas or Star Wars.  Lucas had a compelling story worked out, no question, but he needed someone in that film with the depth of talent and emotional gravitas to anchor a film that could easily have spun out into an far away galaxy of frivolity and nonsense. Sir Alec may have been the one actor in that movie capable of making that drivel Lucas called dialogue sound ancient, world-weary, and wise. Without him, what would you be left with? Mark Hamill?  Please.

Exactly. Bush isn't a chancellor, but Hitler was. Bush has never asked for, nor been granted emergency powers, and then used them to dissolve the legislature, but Hitler was and did just that. "Stormtroopers" were actually the SA, the Nazi Brownshirts (remember Al Gore?), who eventually were purged by the SS in the "Night of Liong Knives". Finally, who can look at Imperial uniforms and not think "Nazis!" That whole grey tunic thing has been done before.

In my humble opinion, Lucas is merely trying to suck up to the anti-American crowd at Cannes and in Hollywood by changing the oringinal meaning of his story with a few added lines in Episode III. It's sad to see such moral weakness, but such is life. I'm still seeing the movie regardless.

Prediction: E3 will be slightly better than E1 and E2, but will still be a mediocre film.

That point makes a lot of sense, all my other frivolity here aside.  Bringing Guiness in for the role of Obi-Wan was arguably the best casting decision in the entire saga.  I remember being much more impressed with Obi-Wan than with Luke, even though I had every other reason to identify with Luke when I saw Star Wars as a kid.  

In fact, it's very interesting -- I saw the original SW for the first time with my dad, and HE didn't like Hamill as Luke very much either.  "California beach boy" or something like that was what he quipped at the time, so there was a kind of conduit running between Guinness and my father, at least for me, the first five times I saw the movie. ;)

Because contrary to their usual approach, Common Dreams is not deconstructing Lucas' new movie.  Instead, they're celebrating it.

And so is the Washington Post! but they're being much lighter about the whole thing, which will inevitably lead to Common Dreams saying how the WaPo is part of the "Corporate Media" which will lead to new ads on Common Dreams, which will lead to...