PT Little Shop of Jedi

I may be a few decades late on this, but I recently saw Little Shop of Horrors, but the stage musical and the film. It's not a Star Wars film of course, but it is Star Wars adjacent, being directed by Frank Oz. Also worth pointing out is that the film's lead actor, Rick Moranis, did play Dark Helmet in Spaceballs, and the female lead, Ellen Greene, played Natalie Portman's mother in Leon: The Professional.

While the musical makes several changes to the 1960 film it's based on, the musical film makes a few slight alterations as well, including one in particular that may have started as an homage to the original, but severely changed the feel of one of the musical's key scenes.

For those who didn't know, the stage musical and the film musical have very different endings, largely due to two negative test screenings, resulting in a complete reshoot of the final scenes with a happy ending. It has been argued, as I will do here, that those changes made to the script even before changing the ending, altered how that ending was received. I also think the logic at play here could could applied to the prequels as well.

Bear with me, and spoilers do follow.

In the stage musical, Seymour Krelborn finds a "strange and unusual plant" during an eclipse, and brings it back to his place of work, Mr. Mushnik's Skid Row Flower Shop. He names it Audrey II after his co-worker and crush, who is herself in an abusive relationship with a leather-jacket wearing, motorcycle riding, sadistic dentist. The plant's strange appearance begins to attract customers to the once-struggling shop, but the plant will only consume human blood. The sudden success of the store earns Seymour Audrey's respect, and even some grudging respect from Mr. Mushnik, who offers to adopt Seymour. Once the plant's pod has grown several feet in height, it demonstrates that it can speak, and demands dead human bodies to eat, in exchange for the continued success of the flower shop.

Seymour finally agrees and begins with Audrey's abusive boyfriend. Fortunately for him, he doesn't have to lift a finger to kill him, as the dentist asphyxiates to death on his own nitrous oxide. However, he sloppily disposes of much of the evidence (except for the body), leading both the police (who find a baseball cap and flower shop bag at the surgery) and Mushnik (who has seen drops of blood in the shop and a dentist's uniform in a nearby trashcan) to be suspicious. Mushnik confronts Seymour, and Seymour lures him into the plant, killing him as well. Riddled with guilt, Seymour tries to avoid feeding the plant anymore, and once Audrey admits she would love him anyway, he determines he will kill the plant once his most lucrative interview is concluded. That night, however, concerned with Seymour's erratic behavior, Audrey comes into the shop and the plant lures her close enough to begin eating it. Seymour rescues her but is too late, she is mortally wounded, and as her final wish, asks to be fed to the plant so that she will always be with Seymour. After she dies, Seymour tearfully complies. The next morning a travelling salesman offers to sell leaf cuttings of Audrey II. Seymour, realizing what this would mean, tries to kill the plant, but ends up getting eaten himself.

The film largely followed that plot, although certain songs were omitted, and the confrontation with Mushnik largely rewritten. The audience loved it until Audrey and Seymour died. These viewers loved the characters too much to see their tragic fates play out. Importantly, they didn't blame Seymour for the two deaths that helped feed the plant. The dentist was, after all, abusive and sadistic, and one could easily rationalize killing him. ("It's the Gas," a song in which Seymour rationalizes doing nothing to help him out of his gasmask, is omitted, so Seymour looks like a coward instead of a man who hardened his heart because he has too much to gain from a man's death.)

Mushnik, on the other hand, is a different story. Instead of confronting Seymour with circumstantial evidence and begging him to talk to the police, Mushnik in the film saw Seymour chopping up the dentist's body, and attempts a citizen's arrest of Seymour at gunpoint. Then, at the last minute, he offers Seymour a way out, which is really much more like blackmail: he will let Seymour escape (so he says) if Seymour will tell him how to take care of the plant. These two changes paint Mushnik in a much more villainous light, and audiences therefore couldn't blame Seymour for feeding him to the plant. The song "Mushnik and Son" is also omitted, so Seymour doesn't seem to be betraying a paternal relationship in disposing of him.

Seymour no longer takes an active role in these deaths, and in fact is a fairly passive character throughout, so audiences didn't feel he had done enough to deserve having his love and life taken from him.

Where does this relate to Star Wars? Well, Anakin, like Seymour, makes a pact with an evil creature for his own personal benefit, including a romantic relationship he pines for. Both pacts end up causing the death of the woman the hero loves, and the murders he commits drive him deeper and deeper into evil.

Where do the changes in the film relate to the prequels? Well I'll spell it out quite simply. Mushnik is the Jedi Order. The Mushnik of the stage musical is the Jedi Order we were told of in the original trilogy. The Mushnik of the 1986 film is the Jedi Order the prequels gave us. And what was the point of the changes made? To make a murderer more sympathetic by vilifying the character who acts heroically. It is, essentially, victim-blaming.

As much as I enjoyed the prequels, the vilification of the Jedi bothers me. Proponents of the prequels are quick to point out real-life corrupt institutions, without appearing to acknowledge that this is not what we were told originally. Also rarely if ever acknowledged is that there are in fact valid criticisms to be made of the prequels. It is dismissed as "prequel-hate," and never addressed on the level of the claim. One can make a tragic character sympathetic without completely reversing the roles of who's the hero and who's the villain.

 

Lucas didn't change the Jedi to make Anakin more sympathetic. In fact, Lucas goes out of his way to make it clear that Anakin is at fault.

"He turns into Darth Vader because he gets attached to things. He can’t let go of his mother; he can’t let go of his girlfriend. He can’t let go of things. It makes you greedy. And when you’re greedy, you are on the path to the dark side, because you fear you’re going to lose things, that you’re not going to have the power you need."

--George Lucas to Time Magazine April, 2002.

"Well, a lot of people got very upset, saying he should’ve been this little demon kid. But the story is not about a guy who was born a monster – it’s about a good boy who was loving and had exceptional powers, but how that eventually corrupted him and how he confused possessive love with compassionate love. That happens in Episode II: Regardless of how his mother died, Jedis are not supposed to take vengeance. And that’s why they say he was too old to be a Jedi, because he made his emotional connections. His undoing is that he loveth too much."

--George Lucas, Rolling Stone interview, 2005.

"The core issue, ultimately, is greed, possessiveness - the inability to let go. Not only to hold on to material things, which is greed, but to hold on to life, to the people you love - to not accept the reality of life’s passages and changes, which is to say things come, things go. Everything changes. Anakin becomes emotionally attached to things, his mother, his wife. That’s why he falls - because he does not have the ability to let go.

No human can let go. It’s very hard. Ultimately, we do let go because it’s inevitable; you do die, and you do lose your loved ones. But while you’re alive, you can’t be obsessed with holding on. As Yoda says in this one, [The scene in which Anakin seeks Yoda’s counsel] You must learn to let go of everything you’re afraid to let go of.’ Because holding on is in the same category and the precursor to greed. And that’s what a Sith is. A Sith is somebody that is absolutely obsessed with gaining more and more power - but for what? Nothing, except that it becomes an obsession to get more. The Jedi are trained to let go. They’re trained from birth, they’re not supposed to form attachments. They can love people- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can’t form attachments. So, what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death."

--George Lucas, The Making of Revenge of the Sith page 213, 2005.

"They (the Jedi) trained more than anything else to understand the transitional nature of life, that things are constantly changing and you can’t hold on to anything. You can love things but you can’t be attached to them, You must be willing to let the flow of life and the flow of the Force move through your life, move through you. So that you can be compassionate and loving and caring, but not be possessive and grabbing and holding on to things and trying to keep things the way they are. Letting go is the central theme of the film.”

--George Lucas, “Star Wars Archives 1999-2005” p. 72-73, 2020.

"Luke is faced with the same issues and practically the same scenes that Anakin is faced with. Anakin says yes, and Luke says no. (…) We have the scene when Anakin decides to save Palpatine and join him, so they could learn how to save Padmé. The equivalent scene in VI is when the Emperor’s trying to get Luke to kill his dad so he can save his sister.”

--George Lucas, “Star Wars Archives 1999-2005” p. 421 and p. 212, 2020.

"It’s pivotal that Luke doesn’t have patience. He doesn’t want to finish his training. He’s being succumbed by his emotional feelings for his friends rather than the practical feelings of “I’ve got to get this job done before I can actually save them. I can’t save them, really.” But he sort of takes the easy route, the arrogant route, the emotional but least practical route, which is to say, “I’m just going to go off and do this without thinking too much.” And the result is that he fails and doesn’t do well for Han Solo or himself. It’s the motif that needs to be in the picture, but it’s one of those things that just in terms of storytelling was very risky because basically he screws up, and everything turns bad. And it’s because of that decision that Luke made on [Dagobah] to say, “I know I’m not ready, but I’m going to go anyway.""

--George Lucas, Empire Strikes Back DVD commentary, 2008.

 

I may have wanted to be a dentist once upon a time