Star Wars - The Force Awakens

Let’s get one thing clear straight off the bat: I am under no illusions that anything I say is going to have one iota of influence on whether you go and see The Force Awakens or not. Here’s the thing: There are three kinds of people in the world right now; those who have seen The Force Awakens within the last 48 hours, those that will be seeing The Force Awakens within the next few weeks, and those that are dead inside. I could tell you that every single character in The Force Awakens is the unholy result of Jar Jar Binks molesting an Ewok harem, and you’d still go and see it, right? I’m also acutely aware of the fact that only an absolute monster would reveal any salient details about the film. So, not only does none of this matter, I’m going to say virtually nothing about the film anyway. However, the fact remains that I went to the midnight showing of The Force Awakens at Cinema City this morning, and I’ve got to write something, so how’s about you and I pass the time with a little chat about Star Wars? Yeah? We’ll talk about why the originals are so good, why the prequels are so bad, and then I’ll tell you where I think TFA lies within that spectrum and why. Deal? Cool…

Thirty-eight years ago in a city 135 miles away… my stepfather took me to see Star Wars. I was four at the time, and remember absolutely nothing about the experience other than the queue, which snaked from the Odeon on York’s Blossom Street up to Micklegate Bar and around the corner towards the railway station. Google maps is telling me that, in local terms, that’s pretty much the entire length of Prince of Wales Road. It wasn’t until some years later, when it was shown on TV at Christmas and folks had hulking great VCRs sitting under their tellies, that it really hit me. I don’t remember how many times I watched it, but I remember being impatient with the amount of time it took to rewind the tape.

Since then, a lot has been written about the enduring appeal of Star Wars and the near-hysterical devotion it instils in its hardcore fanbase, and I doubt I can add anything to that conversation here. But I’m very excited, so I’ll have a bash: Some of that appeal must surely be due to the archetypal nature of the characters and situations that form the core of Star Wars. There are two elements to this. Star Wars is a fairy tale: An orphaned farm-boy embarks on a quest to rescue a beautiful Princess aided by a charming, roguish smuggler, along the way becoming a knight, and finding himself instrumental in the outcome of a battle between Good and Evil. The second – and darker – aspect of the story is pure Greek tragedy: a broken father seeks to corrupt his good-hearted son, who, through his resistance, shows the father the error of his ways. The father finds redemption by defending his son from a greater evil at the cost of his life. These stories are as old as the hills, but Lucas told them with ground-breaking SFX, extraordinary action sequences, lightsaber duels, just the right amount of comic relief, and that score. The whole is much more than the sum of its parts, and the overall result is profoundly affecting, whatever your age.

And let’s not forget the twists. It’s easy to forget that, for about three years, we didn’t know that Vader is Luke’s father. Imagine that. Imagine not knowing that, and seeing it for the first time in a cinema. Now imagine being told that Vader is Luke’s father by one of the older kids in the school playground who wanted to spoil it for you. Motherfucker. And his dad had bought him the Millennium Falcon. Anyway, I digress, but, suffice to say, spoilers are not a new thing. We would eventually learn, though, that the Vader twist was just the first jab in a double-whammy. Another three years later, upon the release of Jedi…, we discovered that Leia is Luke’s sister. Imagine. For six whole years the world didn’t know that Leia is Luke’s sister. These moments were pivotal; a heroic dynasty coalescing over six years like some epic opera. And huge numbers of us were re-enacting and improvising scenes from it with crappy little plastic toys.

Of course, Star Wars isn’t perfect, but, like anything you love, its imperfections become part of its charm. Sure, the dialogue is sometimes a little clunky, the acting sometimes a little hammy, and the background players sometimes a little wooden. Sometimes people say things that don’t make any real sense, and sometimes it spends 40 minutes of a two-hour film showing you how Han gets rescued from Jabba before the good stuff kicks in. And then there’re the Ewoks. But, like I said, all part of its charm. If you put any seven hours of late-70’s/early-80’s cinema under the microscope, you’ll find holes. However, put Star Wars alongside any comparable film from the same era (Battlestar Galactica, anyone?), and it’s parsecs ahead.

Okay. By now you may be thinking, “This guy is just wallowing in the goo from his own nostalgia-wank. I know he pointed out at the top of the piece that its futility is intrinsic, but COME ON, for fuck’s sake.” And there may be some truth in that. But bear with me. I’ll be coming back to all this later.

Wipe transition to 1999. I’m queueing at Norwich’s ABC cinema on Prince of Wales Road (now Mercy) having just been handed a certificate confirming that I will be seeing The Phantom Menace on its opening night (note to self: see if the certificate is worth anything). I take my seat, about to watch the first new Star Wars film in almost 20 years.

After a long, long time the lights go down. Cyan lettering sets a familiar scene: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” A five second pause, then… BLAM! A fanfare that could level Jericho and “STAR WARS” written in yellow letters so fucking important that they can’t fully fit on the screen. It’s intoxicating. It’s Proust’s madeleine. The logo languidly retreats, making room for the scene-setting scroll. “Episode 1” crawls up and away from us. Yes! “THE PHANTOM MENACE” follows. YES! “Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.” Um… Okaaay?

The Phantom Menace. Jesus. So overwhelmed was I by the cultural and personal relevance of its release that it took me a good few months to realise just how unsatisfying it was. Its problems are manifold: An overreliance on CGI that already looks dated, an utterly underwhelming baddie in Darth Maul, and a plot so convoluted as to be virtually nonsensical on first watch. These issues are cosmetic, however, compared to the fundamental bollock that The Phantom Menace dropped: It’s a prequel. I mean, why? WHY? If you start a story at Episode 4 and tell it through Episode 6, and everyone in the world loves that story, KEEP TELLING THAT STORY. It may have been Lucas’s vanity or single-minded commitment to his vision that compelled him to fill those early blanks, but the fact remains that the prequels are little more than Darth Vader’s origin story stretched over three films. (Boba Fett? Gimme a break. He facelessly blurts fewer than 10 lines throughout the entire original trilogy and then dies by slipping on a banana skin and falling into the Sarlacc pit. No one gives a shit about Boba Fett.) We already knew what was going to happen to the characters we cared about. There was no danger. No tension. No shocks.

And then there was Jar Jar Binks. Or, to give him his full title, Jar Jar fucking Binks.

I realise that there was “a new generation of Star Wars fans to introduce to the franchise”, but we’d already done that for you, George. Every mum or dad, every older brother or sister, every geeky cousin, has sat a youngling in front of a screen and said “check this out.” Not just because it’s great to pass on something joyful that you love to someone you love, but also because you get to watch it again. There was no need to gild the lily with a lanky, twat-lipped buffoon.

But wait! The prequels did do something interesting: Through their grinding attention to the machinations behind the formation of the Empire, they developed the franchise’s potential for political allegory. Again, I’ll be coming back to this later.