Taking a break from my series on watching the SW saga backwards ... I wrote this bit as a thread on Twitter and got enough positive response on it that I figured I'd post it here too. The context is the contention by some in fandom that Palpatine's return in The Rise of Skywalker ruins Anakin's fulfillment (in Return of the Jedi) of the Prequel-era prophecy of the Chosen One.
The importance of the Chosen One prophecy in the PT is that the Jedi simultaneously place too much importance on it and don't take it seriously enough. That exactly parallels how a lot of fans treat the prophecy.
The Jedi believe in the prophecy, but instead of saying, "We're going to trust in this prophecy and see where it goes," they say, "The boy is too old," and "He's too dangerous to be trained." Instead of trusting their Chosen One's instincts to be right, they tell him to repress his emotional attachments and ignore his awful premonitions. They train him and tell him he's incredibly important, but they refuse to trust him. And that leads to their downfall. Their fear leads to his anger and hatred, which leads to mass suffering.
It's the same with fans. They seize upon Anakin's importance, but they refuse to have enough faith in that importance to trust the Sequels and look for all the ways the ST provides closure to the prophecy.
The balance needed by the Force was never about defeating a particular bad guy. It was always about undoing the misguided Jedi insistence on repressing certain emotions. As guardians of the Force, the Jedi had decided that they should avoid mistakes at all costs ... even at the cost of shutting themselves off from normal human relationships. Luke's triumph in ROTJ showed that they were wrong about the Dark Side being a path from which one could never return. But his training still focused on fear and anger being emotions one should avoid.
It took the hard lesson of losing Ben Solo and retreating into ineffective solitude for Luke to understand the truth that he conveys to Rey in her final lesson in TROS: Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi. Not avoiding or suppressing it, but facing it and recognizing that through mistakes, we grow -- if we choose to learn from them.
The people who cling to Anakin being the Chosen One as a key message of the PT/OT sequence miss the point entirely, because in our daily lives, we don't have a Chosen One walking around doing stuff. There's no lesson in that aspect of the narrative for us to learn from. But we *can* learn to confront our fears, forgive our mistakes and the mistakes of others, and grow as people by taking in the lessons of those mistakes.
That's what Star Wars is about. That's why it's important.
Not because some fictional Chosen One prophecy was or wasn't completely fulfilled when a hero tossed a villain over a guard-rail.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong and there's somebody out there who has been in that precise circumstance and, thanks to Return of the Jedi, was able to voluntarily disarm themselves so their dad would chuck an evil emperor down a hole.
Saturday, July 25, 2020
Saturday, July 18, 2020
Old Data
Holy *bleep*, how has it taken me 43 years to realize that when Artoo shows Luke that part of Leia's message it's not an accidental glitch? He deliberately baits the poor sap with just the most enticing part of the recording to trick him into removing the restraining bolt.
I've finally gotten to Episode IV in my reverse-chronology viewing of the Star Wars films, and wow, there's so much to see here.
Of course, since Artoo's memory was never wiped, he knows exactly where he is when the Jawas drop the droids off at the Lars homestead. So he uses the message both to tempt Luke into freeing him and to name-drop Obi-wan Kenobi in hopes of gaining more information on how to find him. Luke helpfully tells him Obi-wan lives out beyond the Dune Sea, so Artoo heads that direction the instant he's able to, which explains why Old Ben is so close when Luke catches up and encounters the sandpeople.
Somewhat more sinisterly ... Artoo tells Luke and Threepio about the life forms approaching from the south, doesn't object when Luke goes to investigate, and doesn't warn Luke about how close one of those life forms is getting. Is he deliberately setting Luke up in order to get back to business? Or does he simply hang back out of easy warning range because he thinks Luke is doing something foolish that might endanger his mission? Hmm.
People have made a lot out of the fact that Ben doesn't acknowledge Artoo even though he surely would have recognized Anakin's faithful droid, but there's an easy explanation for that: admitting he has a history with Artoo would open Ben up to questions about that history from Luke -- or even from Artoo, through Threepio -- and it's extremely obvious from the ensuing dialogue that Ben wants to tightly control what Luke knows about the Jedi, his father, and what happened between them twenty years earlier.
There's also a richer context for Ben telling Luke that his uncle didn't hold with his father's ideals and thought he "should have stayed here." If we think of Anakin as the teenage Jedi whom Owen met in Episode II, the quote doesn't make sense -- why would Owen think some guy he'd never seen before ought to stay on Tatooine? But if we consider that Owen knew Shmi Skywalker for years and understood how important her son was to her, along with how hard it was for her when he left, the picture becomes totally different. If Anakin had stayed, Owen might literally have had him for a brother while growing up, and his step-mother would certainly have been much happier in all the years he knew her.
It's worth noting as well how deliberately restrained Obi-wan is in this film, and how intensely Alec Guinness's expressions imply that there's a greater context to virtually everything he sees in and says to Luke. In the wake of the prequels, I found Obi-wan's character much darker in A New Hope -- an idealistic but now somewhat bitter man who's been in hiding for decades and seems perhaps a bit out-of touch and over-zealous when he says, "You must learn the ways of the Force, if you are to come with me to Alderaan." But with the much wider view of his character as portrayed in The Clone Wars and Rebels, his devotion to Anakin and to Luke brightens those expressions with more of their long-ago nobility for me. And it's now clear that he learned a lesson about trying too hard to dictate to Anakin how a Jedi should behave and what the right path was.
As for the original movie's place in the nine-episode arc, now that it's complete ... I think my key takeaway is that Star Wars was always, from the very start, a story about people much more than a story about war amongst the stars. Despite the much flashier special effects of the space battles in subsequent movies (even just one movie later in ESB), the attack on the Death Star in A New Hope remains riveting because everything about it focuses on making the participants feel real. The scene of the Rebels preparing their ships for takeoff is a masterpiece of staging, composition, and editing that immerses the viewer in the intricate mechanics of the effort these people are going through, and the pilots' actions within their cockpits, especially as they start experiencing malfunctions and damage to their fighters, makes it clear that flying one of these contraptions is really hard. The whole movie works like crazy to make its people feel real, even the least-important of the extras, and the result is a film that we as human beings can connect to on a level science fiction rarely achieves.
I've finally gotten to Episode IV in my reverse-chronology viewing of the Star Wars films, and wow, there's so much to see here.
Of course, since Artoo's memory was never wiped, he knows exactly where he is when the Jawas drop the droids off at the Lars homestead. So he uses the message both to tempt Luke into freeing him and to name-drop Obi-wan Kenobi in hopes of gaining more information on how to find him. Luke helpfully tells him Obi-wan lives out beyond the Dune Sea, so Artoo heads that direction the instant he's able to, which explains why Old Ben is so close when Luke catches up and encounters the sandpeople.
Somewhat more sinisterly ... Artoo tells Luke and Threepio about the life forms approaching from the south, doesn't object when Luke goes to investigate, and doesn't warn Luke about how close one of those life forms is getting. Is he deliberately setting Luke up in order to get back to business? Or does he simply hang back out of easy warning range because he thinks Luke is doing something foolish that might endanger his mission? Hmm.
People have made a lot out of the fact that Ben doesn't acknowledge Artoo even though he surely would have recognized Anakin's faithful droid, but there's an easy explanation for that: admitting he has a history with Artoo would open Ben up to questions about that history from Luke -- or even from Artoo, through Threepio -- and it's extremely obvious from the ensuing dialogue that Ben wants to tightly control what Luke knows about the Jedi, his father, and what happened between them twenty years earlier.
There's also a richer context for Ben telling Luke that his uncle didn't hold with his father's ideals and thought he "should have stayed here." If we think of Anakin as the teenage Jedi whom Owen met in Episode II, the quote doesn't make sense -- why would Owen think some guy he'd never seen before ought to stay on Tatooine? But if we consider that Owen knew Shmi Skywalker for years and understood how important her son was to her, along with how hard it was for her when he left, the picture becomes totally different. If Anakin had stayed, Owen might literally have had him for a brother while growing up, and his step-mother would certainly have been much happier in all the years he knew her.
It's worth noting as well how deliberately restrained Obi-wan is in this film, and how intensely Alec Guinness's expressions imply that there's a greater context to virtually everything he sees in and says to Luke. In the wake of the prequels, I found Obi-wan's character much darker in A New Hope -- an idealistic but now somewhat bitter man who's been in hiding for decades and seems perhaps a bit out-of touch and over-zealous when he says, "You must learn the ways of the Force, if you are to come with me to Alderaan." But with the much wider view of his character as portrayed in The Clone Wars and Rebels, his devotion to Anakin and to Luke brightens those expressions with more of their long-ago nobility for me. And it's now clear that he learned a lesson about trying too hard to dictate to Anakin how a Jedi should behave and what the right path was.
As for the original movie's place in the nine-episode arc, now that it's complete ... I think my key takeaway is that Star Wars was always, from the very start, a story about people much more than a story about war amongst the stars. Despite the much flashier special effects of the space battles in subsequent movies (even just one movie later in ESB), the attack on the Death Star in A New Hope remains riveting because everything about it focuses on making the participants feel real. The scene of the Rebels preparing their ships for takeoff is a masterpiece of staging, composition, and editing that immerses the viewer in the intricate mechanics of the effort these people are going through, and the pilots' actions within their cockpits, especially as they start experiencing malfunctions and damage to their fighters, makes it clear that flying one of these contraptions is really hard. The whole movie works like crazy to make its people feel real, even the least-important of the extras, and the result is a film that we as human beings can connect to on a level science fiction rarely achieves.
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned
Number five in my reverse-order rewatch of all the Star Wars movies!
I'm not sure I actually have all that much to share about this one. For a very long time, Empire was my favorite movie and the asteroid field scene my favorite scene in all of cinema. It would sometimes switch places with A New Hope at the top of my SW rankings depending mostly on mood or whim, but as one of six films, it stood out pretty powerfully as the most successful combination of substance and entertainment in the saga.
The Disney era has undermined that to a certain extent -- not by presenting any singular film that achieves a greater degree of success, but by evolving Star Wars into hundreds of hours of richly varied storytelling with dozens of triumphant arcs that make it harder and harder for me to justify calling one particular chapter the best.
I will say that watching ESB right after ROTJ showcases Episode V's strengths a lot better than watching it as the follow-on to the chronological threesome of Solo, Rogue One, and ANH. Filmically, it's head-and-shoulders above ROTJ for me, whereas ANH has always been strong competition, and both Solo and Rogue One are so visually gorgeous that the more dated aspects of ESB's production values suffer in proximity.
Thematically, the biggest realization I had this time around is the need for Yoda to listen to his own messaging. He and Ben repeatedly tell Luke that there's no coming back from the Dark Side, both in this film and in ROTJ, and their insistence on that point is the perfect example of two of Yoda's best ESB quotes. One of them is the title for this post. The other is, "That is why you fail." As with his Episode II complaints about the Jedi becoming overconfident, these are powerful examples of Yoda being so close to the truth that the moment desperately needs, but not quite grasping it.
The contrast with his wonderful scene in TLJ, in which he pushes Luke to solve things not as the Jedi would have solved them, but by treading a path informed by their mistakes and his own, creates a terrific through-line stretching between all three middle-of-the-trilogy films.
I'm not sure I actually have all that much to share about this one. For a very long time, Empire was my favorite movie and the asteroid field scene my favorite scene in all of cinema. It would sometimes switch places with A New Hope at the top of my SW rankings depending mostly on mood or whim, but as one of six films, it stood out pretty powerfully as the most successful combination of substance and entertainment in the saga.
The Disney era has undermined that to a certain extent -- not by presenting any singular film that achieves a greater degree of success, but by evolving Star Wars into hundreds of hours of richly varied storytelling with dozens of triumphant arcs that make it harder and harder for me to justify calling one particular chapter the best.
I will say that watching ESB right after ROTJ showcases Episode V's strengths a lot better than watching it as the follow-on to the chronological threesome of Solo, Rogue One, and ANH. Filmically, it's head-and-shoulders above ROTJ for me, whereas ANH has always been strong competition, and both Solo and Rogue One are so visually gorgeous that the more dated aspects of ESB's production values suffer in proximity.
Thematically, the biggest realization I had this time around is the need for Yoda to listen to his own messaging. He and Ben repeatedly tell Luke that there's no coming back from the Dark Side, both in this film and in ROTJ, and their insistence on that point is the perfect example of two of Yoda's best ESB quotes. One of them is the title for this post. The other is, "That is why you fail." As with his Episode II complaints about the Jedi becoming overconfident, these are powerful examples of Yoda being so close to the truth that the moment desperately needs, but not quite grasping it.
The contrast with his wonderful scene in TLJ, in which he pushes Luke to solve things not as the Jedi would have solved them, but by treading a path informed by their mistakes and his own, creates a terrific through-line stretching between all three middle-of-the-trilogy films.
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