"In Milford, Eliot told the writers that he wished they would learn more about sex and economics and style, but he supposed that people dealing with really big issues didn't have much time for such things.
And it occurred to him that a really good science-fiction book had never been written about money."--Kurt Vonnegut, around page 30 of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
I have this really terrific theory that you may or may not buy. It's based on two propositions. FIRST, that all the literature of the twentieth century, no matter what people say about it, is basically, all precedents and permutations accounted, all science fiction. Everything, from Hemingway to Hallmark, from R. Crumb to R. Kelly, from Sinclair to Sony, from Ezra Pound to Better Than Ezra, could appropriately be filed with the Noel Wein Library's little spine stamp that depicts a spaceship and a moon.
Ergo the SECOND, if you buy the FIRST, is that what's passed and billed as science fiction is really just a very simple form of social realism. Ergo sci fi has really very little to do with fantasy or the future but is, in fact, quite boring at its core, which goes a long way towards explaining why devotees of the medium are often those for whom day-to-day reality is at best a fantasy or the future. Thus I plead ignorance in trying to suggest to you whether George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy is an Orphic cultural touchstone/mongo licensing supernova or an indistinguished piece of gush that wont transcend the next century's terse cyberdelia.
And certainly it would be pointless. Lucas doesn't need me for publicity. It's not as if you're not going to see the movies.
The rerelease of the films as the Star Wars: Special Edition Trilogy means different things to different people. It's easy to forget, in all the hubbub, how different each of the movies is from the others, or that, however we may be invited to think of them in terms of a cultural event, how each of the films belongs to a specific era all its own. Have you noticed how 80s nostalgia seems to have stagnated since 1995? Or how nostalgia is rapidly attaining a marketing stature all its own? People could learn a lesson from last year's Bealtes blitz and this year's rising Star Wars ballyhoo. The lesson is that retro is king. On the other hand, you could also say it's just a case of America following in the footsteps of Rome/the 70s. Which just goes to show you.
In any event, the films themselves hold up more or less as the gems they were publicized to be, and while Star Wars definitely shows its age (with all the attendant drawbacks and guilty pleasures), The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi still seem remarkably fresh. The enhancements of the special edition are a mixed bag of successes and failures. The space battles stand out as the badass jawdropping granddaddy that still makes current kings of the hill such as Star Trek: First Contact or FOX's "Babylon 5" look like pansy-ass no-shows. The years of time and artistry put into the special effects at a time when the requisite technology was still being invented, in many cases by Lucasfilm's people, stand up well in a time of ubiquitous CGI- and Video Toaster-dependency.
That Lucasfilm has used computer effects so successfully merely demonstrates that there's no substitute for hard work, a vision, and a shrewd marketing strategy. The special editions overflow with more ships, droids, and creatures, and it all looks sleeker, cleaner, and more authentic than ever before. With some exceptions, naturally. Seeing Jabba the Hutt in Jedi, for instance, in all his vomitous glory, renders weak and nonsensical an added sequence from Star Wars, wherein a much thinner Jabba gives Han Solo a hard time about the debt that eventually puts him on ice. The scene is a cute suggestion of how Lucas might have interpreted The Godfather (also out on rerelease), complete with a Brando caracature, but it hardly deserved inclusion. We dont get to see Yoda walking freely around either, but the emotion and range of the latex costuming puts the current crop of computer animation to shame.
The editing is probably the single greatest weakness of the rereleases. All the films clock in longer than their originals. Almost all of the added footage that works is entirely new, while some of the most interesting unseen footage, such as the reputed scene from Jedi where Darth Vader strangles one of the red-cloaked Imperial Guards, remains on the cutting room floor. Also left cut was a scene from Star Wars where Luke has a conversation with his friend Biggs. Since we DO get to see a later scene in which Luke runs into Biggs as a Rebel pilot, the cut is haphazard.
Strangely enough, the film that still holds up the best is Empire. It may just be a critic's quixotic peccadillos (Empire was the first movie I saw, seventeen years ago in this very same theater), but this film relies least on its enhancements and the most on its characters. While Star Wars seems dated and Jedi reeks of Disneyfication, the dark, underrated second chapter of the saga reinforces the depressing=good axiom and still packs the most punch. The main addition to Empire is a newly generated glance at Cloud City. With its Art Deco spires and domes, suggesting the Utopian futurism of the 50s and the titanic architecture of the German new wave, it is Lucas' most loving tribute to the futures of the past.
Jedi's reburbishings flow more smoothly than its two siblings. The sequence in Jabba's palace gains greatly from the new song and dance number, and I truly enjoyed seeing Boba Fett get swallowed by the Sarlacc pit, even if it now looks like Audrey Two from Little Shop of Horrors. I even found the Ewok scenes slightly more tolerable although I should note that I was using cough medication at the time. I still don't buy that a bunch of overgrown chipmunks could overthrow guys in power armor wielding high powered blasters. And how did they know to have those logs there? And why does it take five stormtroopers to chase down one Ewok on a speeder bike? The Emperor's best troops you say? Still, the end sequences that show celebrations in other parts of the galaxy are welcome additions. They give the final chapter a sense of denoument and hint at the Star Wars movies yet to come.
I can't credit the movies for being anything more than pure entertainment (on the plus side) and (on the minus side) a bunch of fluff. Still, the deal-maker for me is that I can't imagine my sense of the world today without the influence these movies have had on things. I dont know if that's bad or good, but that's the way it is. And, like everyone else, I just want to see how it all works out. Which means, come the next big thing, I'll be at the theater, waiting for the show, just like you.
©1997 Sundown Stauffer
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