A galaxy of high expectations
The epic that began 28 years ago with Part IV finally fills in the gaps with
Part III, the sixth film to be made. Simon Pegg can scarcely contain himself
BY SIMON PEGG
It's possible that future historians will refer to the great cultural shift of the late 20th century in terms of "Before Star Wars" (BSW) and "After Star Wars" (ASW). BSW, America was plagued by a darkening sense of moral uncertainty. For close to 20 years the country had suffered repeated blows to its self-esteem. Civil rights activity, assassinations, recession and Vietnam affected the mood of a nation once certain of its unassailable righteousness. By the 1970s, this social schizophrenia dominated the country's cinematic output. Films such as Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, The Exorcist, The Godfather, even Spielberg's crowd-pleaser Jaws, all addressed the notion of moral corruption from within.
In 1977, George Lucas, a geeky USC film school graduate, prepared to launch his third cinematic effort on an unsuspecting world, a grand adventure set in space. Lucas's track record was small but impressive. THX 1138 (1971), was a high-concept, sci-fi expansion of an earlier student film that played well to art-house crowds. Two years later Lucas gave us American Graffiti, a nostalgia piece about 1950s American teenagers. The film was an enormous success, eventually grossing $140 million worldwide, hinting strongly at the audience's desire to escape to simpler worlds. Despite unenthusiastic support from his peers, a depressingly tough shoot and the necessity to continually break technical ground, Lucas's third film was eventually released onto 21 screens in the United States on May 25, 1977.
Within a month it was playing at nearly 400 screens and had taken in excess of $20 million. Star Wars (the subtitle, Episode IV: A New Hope, came a year later) immediately began to soothe the psychological desire for positive affirmation. The populace embraced its cosmic simplicity as a means of infant regression. Its clear moral parameters offered escape from reality's ambiguous truths. The good guys were young American and attractive, their alien allies, faithful and subordinate. The bad guys were uniformed, posturing and insidious, representing an older order; despots, foreigners, parents. The fantasy of Star Wars was not simply generic, it was sociopolitical and it appealed enormously to a people disenfranchised by self-doubt. The enthusiastic reaction was not simply reserved for the States. The world soon followed, inevitably inspired by the sudden cultural mood-swing from a country that had for so long sulked ominously in the corner.
The success of Star Wars can be attributed to more than its effect as a national morale booster. Lucas's film was a benchmark in visual effects techniques, offering us a whole new palette of aesthetic tools. Lucas created a unique context for his classic tale of good vs. evil. The Star Wars universe was unlike anything we had seen before. Whereas most science fiction had previously dealt with futuristic hypotheses of own world, Star Wars immediately confounded us with a setting both alien and ancient. "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far way..." - it was that simple but perplexing open-ended sentence at the very beginning of the film that pricked my seven-year-old imagination; and 121 minutes later I burst into the brightness of an ASW afternoon, brandishing my freshly-rolled poster like a lightsabre. At that age, I wasn't aware of a national or even global sense of doom and confusion in need of dispelling.
For me the film was about robots and lasers; about the furry guy and the princess with the funny hair. It was about seeing the closest thing to my own imaginings, realised on a cinema screen. Science fiction was supposed to be a clean and angular domain, full of perfection and highly polished futurism. Star Wars provided a wonderfully weathered envir-onment, where hi-tech gadgetry seemed antiquated and unreliable. This context alone propelled the simple story into a hitherto unfamiliar realm.
The Star Wars juggernaut continued to gather momentum, and in 1980 a much- anticipated sequel arrived. If the first film was a celebration of optimism and moral superiority, The Empire Strikes Back is a cautionary tale about over-confidence and betrayal as our heroes suffer a number of tragic setbacks. Despite a slight drop in box-office returns, The Empire Strikes Back is widely regarded as the best of the now six-strong series. More adult, adept and adroit, the film's deeper sophistication secured the saga's credibility enough to sustain three lesser outings.
Return of the Jedi is the least good of the first three films (but by no means the whole series). Shadows of Lucas's future revisionism can be detected in retrospect, as the film-maker rehashes ideas from his first two films. Indeed, Lucas went on to readdress the entire trilogy in the mid-1990s with his Star Wars: Special Editions. The trilogy returned to the cinemas in 1997, complete with digital augmentations designed to bring the older films in line with the aesthetics of the impending prequels. However, it was worrying that Lucas took the opportunity to alter his films in terms of character detail and plot. In a key scene from the first film, the space-pirate and all-round scoundrel Han Solo saves himself from a murderous bounty hunter with a preemptive, under-the-table laser-bolt. In the special edition, Lucas digitises an initial blast from the bad guy, rendering Solo's once sneaky potshot a retaliation.
With infuriating disregard, the film-maker displays a complete misconception of his own material. Solo's original action immediately defines him as a ruthless self-preservationist. His decision to come to Luke Skywalker's rescue at the end of Star Wars is thus seen as a glorious redemption for the character. Without the set-up, the drama of the moment is lost. Together with Lucas's decision to delete the original versions, the special editions were ominous evidence of the disappointment about to ensue.
Twenty-three years after his first Star Wars film changed the world, The Phantom Menace, his fourth installment, appeared to almost unanimous dismay. Across the world, faithful Star Wars fans stumbled dazed from cinemas, dragging their posters listlessly behind them. It just wasn't very good. Airless and pedestrian, no amount of digital wizardry and hype could elevate it to the level of its predecessors. Apologists will argue that its original fan-base had grown too old and cynical for pure escapism and that the film's true audience were children. This might be true to some degree, but the strength and success of the originals lay in the unification of adults and children.
With his new films Lucas seemed to misinterpret the appeal of the originals. It was not the packaging that had thrilled the audience, it was the story, the characters coupled in equal measure with the fantastic context. Lucas had created a meticulously detailed background, then thoroughly diminished it with characters who seemed no more than an afterthought.
Attack of the Clones arrived in 2002 and marked a slight improvement. Lucas had clearly listened to the grumblings and created a film devoid of simpering children and dubious CGI comic relief. Instead we got to see crowd-pleasing Jedi action and real evidence that these new films might have something to do with the beloved originals. However, it soon became apparent that the film was simply a quick-fix antidote to the previous effort and left the same familiar sense of hollow disappointment.
So Revenge of the Sith arrives with a galaxy's weight of expectation on its black-clad shoulders. It is the last chance for Lucas to redeem himself. Millions of bruised Star Wars fans like myself will line up, fully aware that our patience may result in another painful blow. With the driving social context of the original trilogy replaced by the inconsequential paranoia of a billionaire tycoon, the first two prequels were bound to disappoint.
As an audience, we had no personal investment or identification with the plight of the protagonists in Menace or Clones, but with Revenge of the Sith, things are different. At a time when America seems to be intensifying its conservatism and extending its influence across the globe, the film deals with the consolidation of power and the rule of a single movement across the collective.
Thankfully, it succeeds. Revenge of the Sith is very nearly everything I had hoped for. The script is better, the acting has improved and, for the first time in a long while, it means something. Lucas seems finally to have remembered what made his first films so appealing. It's not perfect by any means, but the gripes evaporate in the face of the sheer enthusiasm with which the story is told. It's still essentially a jumped-up firework display of a toy advert, but adverts can be fun and there is enough of the spirit of the original to bring a nostalgic tear to the eyes of the faithful, a contingent Lucas finally seems to have recognised again.
At the end of its cinematic life, the evolution of the Star Wars saga resembles that of Darth Vader himself. From youthful innocence to adolescent broodiness; precocious adventure to a worrying fall from grace; before a final last-minute redemption and return to the good side. Who knows? Maybe George planned it all along. Then again, maybe I'm talking out of my ASW.
'Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith' opens on Thursday.