What's in There?

Discussion on the ever-entertaining Star Wars Minute Listener's Society page on Facebook recently turned to J.J. Abrams' Ted Talk about the "Mystery Box." Consensus seemed to be that the talk exemplified a problematic side of Abrams as a filmmaker -- an emphasis on mystery over substance and a habitual technique of keeping the audience in the dark without providing payoff for the many unknowns he introduces to hook the viewer's curiosity.

I certainly have occasional nits to pick with most of Abrams' work, and his Revolution show was an abomination of television. However, I love The Force Awakens, really enjoyed Lost and Super 8, and felt he had a 50-50 record with Star Trek. And the elements I have disliked in his work had nothing to do with mysteries and everything to do with good old-fashioned dumbness. So I figured I'd better check out this Mystery Box talk and see what everyone was going on about.

(SPOILERS! Hereafter, I give away pretty much the whole Ted Talk, so you might want to view it first.)

In a nutshell, Abrams presents the Ted audience with a box from a magic shop he and his grandfather used to frequent. It's a "Mystery Box" purportedly containing over $50 of magic for only $15. He's kept it all these years as a reminder of his grandfather, and has never opened it. He likes the sense of design of the box and enjoys having it around, but if he opened it, the mystery would be gone.

The takeaway for most people on SWMLS seemed to be that Abrams was saying that what's inside a creative work isn't important. Rather, having a cool exterior and a sense of mystery is sufficient.

It seems like a really terrible analogy for storytelling, if one has any respect for the audience and for art as a means of expressing truths.

Another criticism of the talk was that it just kind of rambled along and never really went anywhere. Abrams never brought the analogy to a clear moment of focus, never explained exactly what he meant by it. He just put it out there and surrounded it with some clever anecdotes and funny jokes and talked a bit aimlessly about the creative process, storytelling, etc.

But here's the thing. J.J. Abrams' "Mystery Box" Ted Talk is itself a Mystery Box.

What do I mean by this? Well, Abrams is very direct about the fact that the actual contents of the box don't really matter. But he's also very direct about the fact that the box itself is tremendously meaningful to him. As a collection of objects, pieces put together by the magic shop owner, it's just a bunch of stuff. But in the context of his relationship with his grandfather, it becomes a quasi-religious relic for him, a symbol of great importance that he has invested with immense personal significance.

In other words, the Mystery Box is much more than the sum of its parts, because Abrams uses it to represent something deeply human and unattainable. His grandfather is dead -- there's no way to bring the man back. As a result, opening up the box and seeing the knick-knacks and tricks inside would only diminish the memories it stands for.

Creative work is the same way. Writing, filmmaking, art ... all of these consist of simple tricks and nonsense. Words. Special effects. Imagery that specifically creates a false sense of reality. The inside of the box may be a $50 value, but only from the perspective of the retail customer. Wholesale, it must have cost less than the $15 price, and since the shop owner probably couldn't move that particular merchandise otherwise, he was actually losing money by keeping it on his shelves. But dressed up in mystery, it took on greater value.

More importantly, J.J. Abrams' act of buying the box as a means of paying tribute to his grandfather gives it far more than $50 worth of value.

And sharing the humanity of that act with his Ted Talk audience spreads this deeper meaning farther still.

This is what creative people do. We take words and objects and make them into things with human meaning beyond what they previously possessed. Abrams' meaning of remembering his grandfather is far more substantial than the shopkeeper's meaning of increasing store revenues. But he wouldn't have had that meaning without the shopkeeper's earlier creative act of repackaging excess stock.

So why didn't Abrams come out and explain these aspects of his analogy?

Because his job as a creator isn't to tell us what to think. It's to give us the opportunity to find meaning in the world, beauty that we can translate into personal value.

His presentation was itself a Mystery Box. If he opened it up for us, he'd be doing the exact opposite of what he was talking about.

A Bit of an Acquired Taste

Maybe this will clarify things about prequel "apologists" or maybe it will just get me more derision, but here are a couple of stories that I think bear light on the subject.

Not long out of college, I read a couple of books by Gene Wolfe: Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete. The first one amazed me -- brilliant, literate, and highly entertaining all at once. But the sequel just plain baffled my brain. I found it a total chore to get through, a maze of mythological allusions and deep dives into what I think was the history of the Peloponnesian Wars. The ending made no sense at all, and I finished the book thoroughly dissatisfied. Not long after, I got into a debate about the book on GEnie (yeah, this was pre-WWW for me) with a guy who said SoA was just as good as SotM, if not better. You just had to be willing to work at it more, he claimed. I pretty much blew him off, arguing that Wolfe had managed to make the first book not just comprehensible, but gripping, and that he should have done the same thing with the second one.

Also not long after college, I re-read The Lord of the Rings. I'd first read it in seventh grade and found it absolutely tedious. Having devoured The Hobbit multiple times and knowing that everybody and his dog loved LotR, I expected the trilogy to be wonderful, and instead it put me to sleep. I spent all of high school and most of college thinking its popularity just represented people jumping on a bandwagon without knowing what fantasy ought to be like. But a friend of mine insisted I must have been too young to appreciate Tolkien's opus, and I respected his opinion enough to give it another try. And ... I still thought it was boring and overblown, full of cardboard characters and melodrama. But in my early thirties, yet another friend I respected let me know in no uncertain terms that I was wrong, so I tried it again. And finally, I saw what everybody else saw -- a phenomenally rich fantasy world layered with brilliant allegory on what it means to be alive and human.

In retrospect, I'm positive the Soldier of Arete fan knew what he was talking about. If I'd put the effort in, I would have found that book extremely rewarding. But here's the thing: I didn't want to put that much effort into it, and I still don't want to. Gene Wolfe is a genius. I've read a bunch of his books, and the man is on a whole other plane. But I don't get most of his stuff. I just don't get it, and I don't want to put in the effort that I know it will take for me to get it.

I'm not saying George Lucas is another J.R.R. Tolkien or Gene Wolfe. But when tons of smart people are able to speak passionately about the intricate elements of a fictional world and the meaning they find in that world's characters, it probably means there's something there. I was wrong to look down my nose at all the Lord of the Rings fans in high school. I was wrong to assume that the guy on GEnie was just full of himself.

And you're wrong to scoff and sneer at prequel supporters. You're simply wrong. It's fine that you dislike the movies. It's fine that they don't click for you. It's fine that you don't want to devote any brainpower to analyzing the films in search of things that might make you like them better.

But it's not fine for you to ridicule people who find something deeper in these movies. They're right. There IS something deeper there. You're wrong to tell them that they're mistaken.

There are millions of people around the world who have no business ever trying to read The Lord of the Rings. That's not because they're dumb or ignorant, but because the reward they'll get out of it is far less than the effort it will take for them to finish it. It's just not a book for everyone.

The prequels aren't for everyone. But they are for some people. Hate them however much you want, but at least try to acknowledge that you dislike them because their flaws make them indigestible to you personally, not because they lack any inherent value or aesthetic accomplishment.

I am a Slow Learner

He Has Too Much of His Father in Him

Recently, I've seen people complaining variously that The Force Awakens wasn't true to the Star Wars "feel" because some scenes were too much like Guardians of the Galaxy or too much like Firefly.

Am I the only one who thought Guardians of the Galaxy and Firefly were the way they were because they were trying to be like Star Wars? James Gunn explicitly said as much in interviews about Guardians of the Galaxy, even.

People find the most ironic things to complain about.

From a Certain Point of View

I recently ran across this article purporting to describe all the ways the prequel trilogy "forgot" about the version of Anakin Skywalker established in the original movies. The author's contention is that the OT films lay out certain concrete story elements related to Luke and Leia's father, and that by ignoring those elements, the prequels gave us a less interesting story.

Now, there's no argument that much better scripts could have been written for Episodes I - III. And I don't think there's much argument that all of us old-school fans would have been less annoyed by the prequels if they'd followed our expectations.

But if you assume that the story of the prequels leads to the story of the OT, most of the inconsistencies raised in the article disappear with just a little examination. For example, the article's author wonders why Owen and Beru talk as though they knew Anakin, even though they basically met him only once in their lives. But the answer to this is simple: Owen and Beru both lived with Shmi Skywalker for some period of time -- months or years in Beru's case, and almost certainly years in Own's case. So Shmi would have told them all about Anakin ... probably more often and in more detail than they wanted to know. It doesn't take any reaching or straining to get to that conclusion. Anakin was Shmi's entire life. He was everything to her. There's absolutely no way she didn't brag about him and wonder aloud how he was doing and where he was in his adventures while the Lars family worked and lived around the moisture farm. 

Another complaint is that Ben speaks as though it was his idea to train Anakin, whereas the prequels reveal that the burden of doing so was thrust upon him by the death of Qui-Gon Jinn. How do we reconcile this? Well, the prequels also reveal that Obi-Wan idolized Qui-Gon and blamed himself for Anakin's fall, explicitly saying, "I have failed you, Anakin." We, the audience, don't put a lot of stock in Kenobi's announcement of his own culpability -- it's obvious to us that the entire Jedi order failed Anakin, starting with Qui-Gon. But Obi-Wan isn't the kind of person to point fingers at friends and colleagues, and he took the role of teacher to Anakin's padawan learner very seriously. Rather than admit that his mentor made a mistake by thrusting this responsibility on Obi-Wan when he wasn't ready, and rather than admit that he spent his life in service to an order that got so many things wrong, Kenobi bends over backwards to assume blame himself. He has a compelling subconscious reason to do so, above and beyond the fact that he's a stand-up kind of guy: if Qui-Gon blew it, and if the Jedi blew it, then Obi-Wan's entire life has been spent in service to futility.

The fact is, the great majority of our OT Anakin knowledge comes from Ben ... and Ben explicitly acknowledges that the things he has told Luke have only been true "From a certain point of view." Once we understand that Obi-Wan failed Anakin -- and KNEW he had failed him -- it becomes clear that Kenobi has spent 20 years struggling with his guilt and trying to find some way to reconcile his Jedi beliefs with the seduction of his friend. The idealized version of Anakin that emerges from this inner conflict is his solution: blame the Dark Side for the corruption of this terrific guy, and keep telling yourself that once the Dark Side seduces someone, it's game over, with nothing else to be done. In this way, he can preserve his faith in the Jedi order and his friends, and he can absolve himself of the responsibility to track Darth Vader down and attempt to bring him back to the light.

The prequels undoubtedly would have been much more adventurous and enjoyable if the Anakin we imagined from Ben's descriptions had been real. But that doesn't mean the prequels forgot about the OT Anakin. It just means what we already knew from Ben's dialogue in Jedi: the Anakin of ANH was a sugar-coated version of reality. We simply didn't know the degree of sugar-coating until we saw the prequels.

Now let's circle around to the other part of the article's thesis: that our OT-inspired expectations of Anakin Skywalker would have yielded a more interesting story than the story in the prequels. Frankly, I think this is bunk. A fair chunk of Star Wars fandom dismisses The Force Awakens as a mere retread of A New Hope. But I've yet to hear anyone say that TFA was as badly written and acted as the prequels are always accused of being. Even detractors generally admit that J.J. Abrams delivered some good popcorn-flick dialogue and managed to draw good-to-excellent performances out of his cast. So why don't we take a moment and imagine what the reaction would have been if Episode VII had featured the same clunky dialogue as the prequels, delivered with the same flat quality of performances. Imagine that all the practical effects had been obvious CGI instead.

Abrams would have been crucified, right?

And if we flip it on its head, how would people have responded to the prequels if they'd been full of snappy dialogue and compelling performances? The love story from Attack of the Clones is usually cited as the abominable nadir of Star Wars filmmaking, but what if it had been delivered with fantastic chemistry between the two leads and every line written to perfection? Jar Jar's annoying omnipresence and intolerable, offensive accent aren't elements of the prequels' storyline. They're bad choices in presentation. Remove them and replace them with genuinely clever dialogue, and there's no way he would be remotely as hated.

In the end, some people try to find fault in every aspect of the prequels that they can. But in truth, the story these movies tell is solid, consistent with the original trilogy, and much more subtle and socially relevant than the story we all expected.

Lucas just told the story in highly problematic, inaccessible ways, and ultimately, that's the crux of it: the prequels were badly directed.

We really don't have to go any farther than that.

You're Free!

If, unlike Pete the Retailer, you like fantasy books, my novel The Last Tragedy is free from May 14 to 18!

It's Not a Story the Jedi Would Have Told You

So ... not too long ago, someone on Star Wars Minute Listeners Society Facebook page wondered if Pete and Alex might be the first people to finally unravel the "labyrinthine" plot of Attack of the Clones, once SWM gets to AOTC in the fall.

Of course, the answer is, "No," because the plot of Episode 2 is actually fully comprehensible if you just do a little literary interpretation.

Here we go:

In the ten years or so since The Phantom Menace, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious has been hard at work setting up the doom of the Galactic Republic. His game-plan is simple -- stir up a war so that the Senate will give emergency powers to the Supreme Chancellor, enabling him to transform the democratic government into a totalitarian one. It needs to be a war that will seem to put the Republic in genuine danger, but it can't be a war that the Republic might lose.

To this end, Sidious recruits Count Dooku, who marshals a faction opposed to the Republic, the Separatists. Simultaneously, he arranges the creation of a clone army for the Republic, so that when the full-scale war breaks out, the Supreme Chancellor's side will be positioned to win -- especially since he effectively controls the leadership of both sides.

Are Sifo-Dyas (who the Kaminoans say commissioned the army) and Tyranus (who Jango Fett says hired him) the same person? Evidently not, if you check the Wookieepedia article. But the details don't really matter. One way or another, Palpatine's maneuvering has resulted in a clone army, with the genetic source for the clones being hand-picked by Tyranus/Dooku.

Of course, the only way to arrange this two-sided charade is for Sidious to have a charismatic and highly capable ally maintaining tight control over the Separatists -- and of course, any charismatic, highly capable wartime leader is going to be ambitious as well. So Sidious knows that eventually Dooku will attempt a coup of his own. This means Sidious needs a replacement apprentice to deal with Tyranus once the latter has served his purpose.

Thus, we begin Episode II after ten years of Dooku consolidating his power among the Separatists, Palpatine in full control of the Senate, and Anakin already well under the wing of his future master. Anakin's discussions with Padme are littered with hints that Palpatine is mentoring him and planting the seeds of discontent in him, like the notion that Anakin is "ahead of" Obi-Wan in many ways.

What happens, then, during the film?

First, Padme's ship gets blown up in an attempt on her life. Is this a real attempt, or just a way to manipulate Padme's actions? The answer is that either Padme's death or her seclusion from Senatorial affairs suits the Chancellor's purposes perfectly well. If she dies, it means one voice fewer in the Senate speaking for peace and reconciliation. If she lives and is forced into hiding, he has the chance to arrange things so that she and Anakin end up in close proximity, which he has undoubtedly Force-foreseen as a situation likely to lead to Anakin being more vulnerable to corruption.

Next, another attempt on Padme's life occurs ... utilizing a weapon (deadly centipedes) that the Jedi are easily capable of defeating. Jango Fett provides the centipedes to an assassin who is much less competent than he is himself. He then tracks or trails the speeder chase that results in order to be in a position to kill the assassin with a distinctive dart that points toward Kamino.

What's up with this? If the drone can cut holes in the window for the centipedes to enter through, why doesn't it just fill the room with poisonous gas or napalm? Because by this time, events have made it clear to Sidious that the Anakin/Padme connection is likely to be fruitful. Additionally, Sidious wants the Jedi to find the clone army on Kamino, because he needs the Republic to be aware of this resource when the moment comes to activate it. So it's no slip-up that Jango uses a Kaminoan dart.

With the second attempt on her life such a near miss, Padme has clearly had her safety compromised, and Palpatine is able to encourage her sequestration in the company of Anakin. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan goes to investigate the dart, also according to the Sith Lord's plan.

On the trip and after arrival on Naboo, Anakin presses his courtship of Padme. She goes from dismissive to resistant to conflicted under his steady stream of manipulation. Is this a natural response? Maybe. But it's equally likely that Anakin is not just psychologically manipulating her, but consciously or subconsciously projecting his romantic desires into her with the Force. We see him explicitly and admittedly abusing his Force powers to entertain Padme, so clearly he isn't tightly restricting his use of the Force to the very limited rules of engagement laid out by the Jedi Code. And the intensity of his obsession with her makes it clear that he is at or beyond the limits of his own personal restraint.

Obi-Wan heads to Kamino, where he discovers the clone army and encounters Jango Fett. Jango takes Obi-Wan's arrival as a cue to immediately depart and head for Geonosis. Has he been instructed to do so by Dooku? Or does he react this way on his own? Given how cool-headed he is throughout the film, the latter is doubtful. Jango is an immaculate professional operating as part of a meticulous plan. If he's been left unaware of the fact that a Jedi is going to show up on Kamino sooner or later, it's either because the conspirators want him to be captured and eliminated, or because they want him to be unsettled and make a quick dash to his superiors. Since Dooku has clearly provided Jango with knowledge of where the Separatist leadership is gathering, it again seems likely that this move must be according to plan.

Anakin's every attempt to wear Padme down comes to naught on Naboo. They reach an impasse at which Padme acknowledges having the emotions Anakin wants her to have, but still refuses to act on them. For the relationship to move forward as Sidious doubtless wants it to, something needs to happen. And then something does -- a particularly bad dream about Anakin's mother compels him to go to Tatooine. Is this coincidence? The will of the Force? Sidious using the Force to somehow implant these dreams in Anakin? That's hard to say. But once the dream occurs, the young Jedi doesn't hesitate to use it as a means of milking Padme's sympathy and taking out of her comfort zone on Naboo into his own home territory.

Obi-Wan makes it to Geonosis and proceeds to spy on the Separatists. It's difficult to tell whether he accomplishes this on his own talents, or if he's allowed to do it ... but it does turn out later to play into the plans of Darth Sidious.

Anakin tracks down his mother and reaches the Lars homestead. As he is about to set out on the hunt for the sandpeople, he has a parting conversation with Padme that is among the most wooden of their interactions -- and it is presented as a shadow-puppet play. Is this a hint that his Force manipulation of her is taking hold? It's interesting to note that when she is defending Obi-Wan earlier in the film ("that's what mentors are supposed to do"), and when she is warding off Anakin's advances on Naboo, her delivery of her dialogue is much more naturalistic than in any of the scenes where she gives in to these romantic impulses.

Finding his mother, only to have her die in his arms, Anakin goes berserk and slaughters the village of Tusken Raiders. Then he breaks down and admits this to Padme. Here, he pulls a deep and genuine sympathy from her. Is it because she's already attracted to him and empathizes with his suffering? Is it because his emotions are so wildly out of control that he's exuding his most powerful Force influence on her yet?

Obi-Wan is captured -- but not before he gets a message out to Anakin. Coincidence? Good luck on the part of the heroes? Maybe. But he doesn't actually acquire that much useful information -- certainly not the critical information that the Geonosans are planning to build a Death Star.

Anakin and Padme receive Obi-Wan's message. Suddenly, for the first time, instead of finding a way to wiggle around the specifics of his orders, Anakin acts as though there's nothing he can do to help Obi-Wan. It takes Padme's initiative to get him to attempt a rescue. Inconsistent behavior on Anakin's part? Or a subconscious understanding that with Obi-Wan out of the way, he has a much better chance of making things work with Padme and becoming a full-fledged Jedi instead of just a padawan -- or possibly of simply running away with the object of his heart's desire?

Dooku goes in to see his Jedi prisoner and makes a fairly heavy-handed attempt to lure Obi-Wan into his influence. Does he really expect this to work? It's probably in the "worth a shot" category for him, even though he knows Kenobi is likely to refuse. The two have known each other a long time, and their connection through Qui-Gon makes it plausible that Dooku might be able to entice Obi-Wan away from the Jedi. Certainly, if Kenobi could be convinced, he would make a fine apprentice for Tyranus, and one who might well be capable of helping dispatch Palpatine once Dooku is ready to make his move. And if not, he'll simply dispose of Kenobi in the arena.

The remainder of the film is really just the pieces falling into place. "Representative Binks" playing the part of the Supreme Chancellor's patsy and moving for the Senate to convey extraordinary powers on Palpatine. Anakin and Padme captured. Padme allowing their hopeless situation to break her resolve against telling Anakin her feelings. Arrival of the Jedi. Massed combat in the arena. The death of Jango Fett. All appearing to be lost. Miraculous cavalry-charge of the clone army.

Two important thematic moments appear amidst the high-action of the last act. We see young Boba Fett discover his father's head, and we see Anakin directing the clone troopers on how to target the weak points of the Federation starship. In Boba Fett's case, this is the moment in which he is orphaned, and goes from the obedient son of a meticulous bounty hunter to a boy on his own with lots of shiny equipment, a lot of anger, and no one to guide him. Is it any wonder that the adult Boba Fett is so scuffed and unkempt compared to his polished father? Any wonder he ends up in company so much more sordid than Jango Fett's employers? In Anakin's case, this is a key moment in his transition from maker to destroyer. Previously, he's used his mechanical talents to build things, to create. Now he's using them to tear apart and bring down.

The close proximity of these two coming-of-age moments underscores one of the main messages of the prequels: the importance of family and of healthy relationships in the development of individuals, especially those on the border between good and bad.

The Jedi confront Dooku. He defeats Anakin and Obi-wan, but has to flee from Yoda. Even so, this is only a defeat for Dooku -- not for his master. If he'd been able to kill Yoda, the Count might well have found the path to defeating Sidious as well, and taking his place as Emperor. But having been humbled here, he must stay in Palpatine's shadow. When they meet on Coruscant, it is clear that everything in the movie has gone according to plan. The schematics for the Death Star are in the Sith Lord's hands for future use. The war has been launched. And from the perspective of the Separatists, the initiation of the war is actually due to the Republic's military assault in response to the attempted execution of three spies.

The movie closes with:

 Yoda acknowledging that they've all been played, and that the war none of them wanted is now upon them.

Palpatine overseeing the military might that's been handed to him on a platter.

Anakin and Padme being married in a secret ceremony, to the tragic strains of their love theme, with Anakin's awkward metal hand emphasizing how unnatural the moment is.

As with The Phantom Menace before it and Revenge of the Sith after, Episode 2 is, ultimately, about the ascendance of evil due to the faulty vigilance of good.