Has Empire Messed Up the Meaning of 'Star Wars'?

You're exactly right that the REAL story doesnt start until ANH, but the political story inherent in the prequel trilogy had to be told, captivating or not.

Speaking of foreshadowing, I'm sure a lot of people are referring to the scenes surrounding the incident with the sand people. I think his brief trip towards lunacy is done very well (SOMEDAY I WILL BE THE MOST POWERFUL), and aside from a musical cue which doesnt mean anything to anybody who hasnt seen the OT, its not foreshadowing so much as it is part of Anakin's emotional teenage roller coaster.

The other complaint I often see is that the turn is too sudden. But the turn doesnt happen out of nowhere. In the movies he's always motivated to help others. He destroyed the Jedi for the sake of the Republic. He never believed in democracy, and being "the chosen one", I'm sure he's long considered being a dictator himself. Maybe whats so confusing the fall is that Anakin's turn isn't cut and dry. While Mace Windu did not have mercy for Palpatine, Anakin did, and all righteousness aside, he lashed out against the aggressor. This is the conflict inside Darth Vader, his love for others, and the guilt he carries by hurting them.

So maybe the fall just isnt what people had in mind? sorry if im just ranting.

 

May 21, 1980. Official time of death of the saga being all about Luke:
[image=http://bristle.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/titlesw5-tesb.jpg]

 

So, the prequels should have been three films about Luke Skywalker? Am I hearing you right? Luke gets his milk teeth, Luke loses his milk teeth, Luke cleans the vaporators, Luke learns to drive, Luke whines about power converters. Yeah, that wouldn't have been dramatically or cinematically inert. Star Wars fans.

"The Silmarillion" is not a good example. You shouldn't keep bringing that up. There is no analog for it in cinema, with the possible exception of Walt Disney's "Fantasia". Conceptually, you are totally off-base. The prequels are a serialised continuation, crystallization and consolidation of a specific type of pre-established cinematic dramaturgy, not a corpus of myth and folklore, compiled and published posthumously by an artist's offspring. There's a world of difference (pardon the pun) between the two.

I'm not sure, if you haven't seen the originals, that you wouldn't be surprised watching the prequels. On a first viewing, there is plenty of ambiguity to chew on. Rather, Anakin's fall is telegraphed for anyone who is familiar with his fate, which rewards re-watches because a viewer is able to appreciate certain cinematic (visual, aural, narratological and emotional) beats that play differently in the light of new information. Simply, knowledge of Anakin's final destination is its own reward: the PT's construction as "Greek Tragedy" becomes that much more obvious, and its scope and mood pervasively ominous, to say nothing of how satisfyingly its various intellectual implications emerge, in retrospect. If Lucas had merely approached the films as family fodder, with the idea of maintaining dramatic suspense as his guiding principle, he would have made a series of relatively pro forma movies, superficially palatable and all-too-easily digestible and forgettable; fast food for the mind. Instead, he made something that still perplexes and enrages many fans. To me, that is far more interesting. The flame of interest is kept burning. Watching the PT, unlike the OT, one is encouraged to be an active participant in the language of the films, and to consider what things happen and why.

 

Think bigger, Cryo.

Episode I: The Phantom Vagina Dentata

Episode II: Attack of Binary Sunset Longing

Episode III: Revenge of the Womprats

 

I never thought a SW discussion would play host to the concept of "vagina dentata". You're a sick man, drg. A very sick man.

 

Not the first time I've seen the concept brought up in relation to SW. One word - Sarlacc.

 

To the discussion at hand - I'm not sure what Keiran's getting at, wasn't the concept of the PT as Episodes I-III invented for the very purpose of telling the story of Obi-Wan Kenobi & his apprentice, Anakin Skywalker? Slapping the new title of 'Episode IV: A New Hope' on The Film Previously Known As Star Wars wasn't just an arbitrary decision.

Prior to 1978, stories in the Star Wars series set before SW/ANH (potentially the young days of Ben Kenobi, formation of the Jedi Order) would simply be additional episodes - according to Gary Kurtz at a press conference, the Star Wars series would not necessarily follow chronological order. With the addition of specific episode numbers to the existing films (episode numbers that did not simply follow the order of their production) came, at the very least, a vague plan of what was meant to happen in the stories preceding those we'd seen.

Yes, in theory, Episodes I-III could have been set a hundred years before (or thousands), portraying a golden age of the Jedi & the Republic, & just referenced the OT with prophecies & vague hints. They could also have been set a year or two before ANH to give the audience a bit more of Vader's dirty work or to flesh out other characters like Han & Lando.

Point is, they weren't. Eps I-III, when they were 'created' as being Episodes One, Two And Three Of The Star Wars Saga, were always meant to follow the story of Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi & the fall of his apprentice Anakin Skywalker, set against the backdrop of the fall of the Galactic Republic & its reformation as the Galactic Empire. If GL had wanted to make features following Han, Lando, Jabba, Fett or whoever, he would have stuck with his original non-chronological structure & not come up with the more restrictive trilogy of trilogies format.

The Silmarillion/Hobbit/LOTR analogy, while not irrelevant to this debate, in terms of what a prequel can or should be, isn't a direct analogy. The Hobbit was originally devised as a totally unrelated story to the evolving Silmarillion. LOTR began as a sequel to the Hobbit & nothing more, until Tolkien began incorporating elements from the earlier stories that would make up the Silmarillion & the scope of the story changed from a fairytale to a mythological saga.
This might sound similar to the way the SW saga evolved, except that the backstory of SW was only developed as a story unto itself (the PT) after & as a result of the OT. The tales which make up the Silmarillion weren't devised as backstory to anything, they were stories Tolkien came up with as a type of simulated mythology, long before the Hobbit or LOTR were even vague ideas.

 

GOOD POINT!

More castration-anxiety imagery! Ah!

 

All very good points... Cryogenic's too.

I'll just add that the audience as a whole would have been quite confused and even angered to get three prequel movies that did not show them young Kenobi and his apprentice, the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire, and of course, the situation that led to Anakin becoming Darth Vader. He's only one of the most famous and iconic characters in film history, after all. Of course, none of that means that the prequels had to be about those things, but to make them about other topics instead would border on absurd when those things are being omitted. And it isn't just George making the movies cover the topics people wanted to see... the OT naturally set up the prequels to cover the themes we saw them cover.

 

Excellent discussion as always.

'Messed up the meaning'? No.

'Forever changed the meaning'? Yes.

Pre-ESB, Star Wars was a fun, loving pastiche of Saturday Matinee space opera with a sprinkling of samurai-esque mythology on the side. Despite its dark moments, the film's tone was bright, optimistic and lighteharted, in keeping with the general tone and style of the serials which had so inspired Lucas as a boy.

Fast forward to the release of The Empire Strikes Back - all of a sudden, layers of depth are being added to the characters, the setting and the mythology as a whole. We have parallels, foreshadowing (Han rescuing Luke from freezing to death foreshadowing the latter's failure to rescue the former from carbon freezing)... an altogether richer, more literary, almost deconstructionist version of the space opera. And then the bombshell. Well, bombshells. The obvious symbolism in the Dagobah cave scene which also serves as foreshadowing for the revelation of Luke's parentage. And the reveal itself.

'No, I am your father'.

Five words was all it took to forever change this space-age fairytale of a farmboy fighting an evil Empire into something much deeper - despite the melodramatic fashion in which it is delivered, the very revelation of Darth Vader as Luke Skywalker's father has more in common with the Oedipus myth than Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe.

Comedy had become tragedy. Things would never be the same. From a writing point of view, as a direct result of the revelation, Lucas and co could not return wholly to the exuberance and innocence of ANH. Perhaps more than Lucas intended, 'I am your father' dominated the next film, arguably contributing to an uneven tone in a movie that saw fit to juxtapose scenes of the most evil man of the universe with waddling, hooded teddy bears doing battle. Anakin Skywalker's story had to be addressed on the one hand, but on the other, the trilogy had to go out with an optimistic bang with lighthearted fun for all the family. Balancing such deep tragedy with swashbuckling action and (in places) low comedy is a tricky feat to say the least.

The effect of 'I am your father' was not limited to Return of the Jedi, but caused a chain reaction that necessitated the prequels focus on Anakin's story in order to mine the dramatic potential of the saga as a whole. While it is still up for debate whether or not Lucas and company entirely succeeded in sustaining an enthralling portrayal of the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker for the duration of the prequel trilogy, it cannot be reasonably denied that the Empire Strikes Back, for better or worse, changed the meaning, and even the intent, of the entire Star Wars saga. Post-Empire, the Star Wars saga is not simply bubblegum space fantasy. It's not simply thrilling chases, mystical wizards, monsters and dogfights and gunfights and swordfights. It's all that and more. It's the story of a family whose rise, fall and redemption mirrors that of the galaxy they inhabit and influence, and it zips along by ship and by speeder, all guns blazing, lightsabers a-chopping.

What's not to like?

 

Of course, Lucas would have been popularly savaged for not showing these things. Once again he's being criticized for doing the right thing, which shows that he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

 

Not in any lasting, significant way, not if the movies were good.

TESB was criticized upon release for its "downer" ending, but in the end the quality of the film itself won out.

One could argue, using much the same logic as has been used to claim the the prequels "had" to be about Anakin's fall, that the sequels to SW "had" to consummate the romance between Luke and Leia. The hacky sibling reveal in RotJ notwithstanding, Lucas did the "wrong" thing in TESB by pairing Han and Leia, and was lauded for it.

And as far as the audience being upset at not seeing what they wanted to see, it's important to remember that what the audience really WANTED from 1983 on wasn't prequels at all, but rather more sequels following the adventures of Luke & co. I also remember how disappointing and coolly-received "There's going to be a 20-year gap between III and IV" was. But ultimately audiences dealt with it, because in the end what really mattered was simply whether or not the movies were good. The prequels were already so far removed from what most people wanted from "New Star Wars" that I doubt exploring one of the other story possibilities would've been a deal-breaker.

 

By the same token, if the prequels were 'good' (like 'em myself, but I don't love them like the OT), nobody would have minded that they were dominated by Anakin's fall.

Which means any problems are not due to the 'Anakin falls' arc so much as Lucas' execution, which is another matter entirely.

Though that's possible but for the Vader revelation in TESB, and you seem to be posting that in the spirit of reducto absurdum, I don't see how the relatively slight and understated love triangle would facilitate the action and adventure the trilogy was trying to create. The loose threads of the love triangle were never going to interest the audience more than the fact that Darth Vader, one of the most popular screen villains of all time, survived ANH to fight in future sequels.

The Empire Strikes Back did not have to be introduce the concept of Anakin's fall - but Vader's revelation cast a shadow across the rest of the series, including the prequels. Whether or not Lucas' reach exceeds his grasp, Lucas is genuinely interested in the dramatic potential of the series as a whole in addition to the razzle-dazzle visual effects and fast-paced action.

Going into the prequels, then, the biggest dramatic loose end at that point was Anakin's revelation and redemption - yet the audience had not seen his fall from grace, nor his rise to power. One could make the argument that these things are essentially backstory which the audience does not necessarily need to see in order to understand the work. But, frankly, if you start at Episode IV, tell the story of a boy named Luke Skywalker, whose father is revealed as one of the biggest threats to the fictional galaxy and is also one of the audience's favourite villains ever, then decide to make prequels to this story... Well, firstly, you'll want to tell a cohesive story so that it makes sense if you actually watch the series in episode order. From a writing point of view, it becomes very difficult to write a cohesive story tying the two trilogies together, unless you use and manipulate some of the plot elements described above.

Puts me in the mind of this Cracked article, which contains strong language and whose link I am consequently not entirely sure I am allowed to post.

Who knows?

Personally, idiosyncratic release-order notwithstanding, I feel it would be extremely strange to have Episodes I-III set, say, hundreds of years before Episode IV-VI, with absolutely no connections to any characters or events seen in the latter trilogy. It would be like making a Godfa

 

I normally enjoy Cracked's SW articles, but that one was just plain dumb. It conveniently focuses on just a couple examples of post-RotJ EU to claim that the whole notion is a bad one. Somewhat conveniently, they ignore the works of Zahn and Stackpole. It's kind of like having an article called "Why Steven Spielberg is a worse director than Ed Wood" and only discussing 1941 and Always.