PT [Prequels]/[1138]

"How feel you?" "Cold sir"-TPM

"The council and their infinite wisdom" THX 1138

"We are asked are we happy? Are we happy and effective?"-ROTS

THX by design was and is, a romantic and poetic algorithm for the prequel trilogy. It's blatant and quite cohesive.

 

Revenge of the Sith THX

one starts with a T, the other ends with a T near the end.

Anakin is starting a new path and ending an old one but is not near the end yet.

H is where Sith ends and so does THX.

X is death. Anakin will die at the end of his journey.

1138

11

II

Episode II and the 11 are representing Anakin at the middle of his journey. A recap of previous events.

3 is self explanatory.

8. ROTS is the 8th official Live action SW film after the Ewok films.

 

What the ****

Ahem. I mean. I think it's about symbolism relating to GL's other works or something?

 

I believe Quantum/Ezon is prompting people to discuss links between "THX 1138", Lucas' first movie, and the prequels, especially ROTS, his last.

Thematic links, visual links, structural links, etc.

There is obviously a distrust of councils and organizing "bodies" in Lucas' work.

Note how there is one Jar Jar-coloured individual in the THX image and one (the Jedi Council member far-left) in the prequel image.

Plus, ghosts, orbs, blue hazes, grids, bifurcations, seats, slats, and council members gazing to the right.

 

I did. Had a decently sized post..

However, my internet died out, adding to the fact that my house ran out of power and lost all of my writing. I will attempt to rewrite it soon once I get back home from my appointment.

Cryogenic The allusions were to the PT trilogy and THX 1138, yes. Not only of visual images, but in themes. To give an accurate example; The forbidding expression of intimate love is a similar trait both movies share. More so with AOTC and ROTS. The construct of both moralities of intimacy is seemingly striking, and the sole reason is peace and order. Lucas takes of what THX alludes to in it's subplots and makes them into a seamless main plot points.

Another example is something you alluded to a little while ago;

"Machines making Machines"

"Something you're robotics cannot sense"-DEX

 

I love all these films deeply and I think there are a number of connections -- perhaps not always overt but similar themes -- between THX 1138 and the prequels.

It seems that a recurring fascination, a recurring motif for Lucas in all of his films is the idea of self-belief and the idea of self-created and self-fulfilling prophecies. Along with this is the investigation of the conflict between breaking from the 'norm' of those around you and becoming your own person vs. staying in line and following what others say and do. It could be argued every one of his film efforts is deeply rooted in essentially the issue of leaving home and becoming an adult, becoming who you are going to be.

On the bit of self-belief, self-fulfilling prophecies -- THX has a lot of things in it that are clues to Lucas' own views of a lot of issues. I think that is the film that comes out the most raw from Lucas and it shows his interests, quirkiness, views, and personality on full display, with almost no 'tidying-it-up' for mass consumption. As such, the film is instrumental to understanding all of his later works, in my view.

In THX we find a society that has defined its limits for itself, to the point of total conformity, yet we discover that these limits exist simply in the social pressure and the minds of those who believe it. THX-1138 can walk right out if he wants to. And he does. The film hammers this point home several times and it's interesting how there seems to be no central, domineering authority in this society. As Lucas says in the commentary, there is no boss, there is no villain, there is no big-bad. The society itself is what is limiting itself. The mindset itself is the limiting factor. And in ROTS, the penultimate line -- "This is how liberty dies -- with thunderous applause." -- the tremendous dangers of flawed self-belief and self-delusion, where everyone agrees but the answer is wrong. In this way, by social pressure and beliefs about oneself, a dystopian culture is eventually created that no one questions, and therefore nothing changes, and therefore nothing grows. That's a key: no one questions it. It's a strong theme of THX. And that motif will come in strong in the prequels.

Even if we look at American Graffiti we can see this as well. Go to college or not? Be who you want to be or stay home chasing cars? What to do, what to do. Are there any serious limits locking these people into their paths? No. It's their minds, the self-belief and the social pressure that is the influence there.

In Star Wars, we find a young man who lives on a farm. He wants more out of life but he's not sure if that life is really for him. "That's your uncle talking." The idea of the self-belief of others, carrying over to you and becoming your own self-limiting beliefs. Can you leave the farm? Can you become a Jedi? Can you be yourself? These central questions lie at the heart of Lucas' oeuvre.

Even in Lucas' early student film Freiheit we see this. The voice-over: A life without freedom is hardly a life. Freedom is definitely worth dying for. It's the only thing worth dying for. A statement of principle, but stated as on screen we see a man is being shot to death trying to escape from an unknown assailant and failing. In this scene there is an uplift but a pull-down. A hope and a caution, a warning. We must remember: Lucas is a product of the 60s, of the counterculture, and that is a big part of his origin. He remembers the 50s, and part of him loves it, but part of him seems wary -- almost like: everyone is enjoying themselves, how great! Oh wait. Everyone is enjoying themselves. Everything and everyone is the same. Nothing changes. Conformity. Something is wrong... And these themes lie at the heart of THX.

I think all of these themes are so central to these films of his because they are central to who Lucas is. In his own words:

"When I was in college, a lot of the students would give up on things before they really had a chance to explore them, they would convince themselves that it was not possible. For me, it was the whole issue of getting to make movies, was a completely impossible idea, there was no even remote consideration that it could actually happen. But, I put my mind to it, and never considered any other possibility. It was through that, that eventually I did manage to do the impossible. It’s only by considering the impossible, that one can get to it. You can’t get to it by simply saying, “I’m going to try to get to it”, you have to say “I’m GOING to get to it."​

After a young Lucas had a near-fatal car accident, he said he considered every day afterwards "an extra day" and that his entire worldview was shaken by that experience -- that up till then he hadn't been a very good student and was sort of going along with what everyone else was doing. He wasn't being himself. It was only when a literal near-death experience almost obliterated him that he realized he needed to be himself and find his own path. But he faced some resistance, and his parents were highly skeptical to say the least about him achieving his dreams in film, as was almost everyone else. This seemed to affect Lucas but he had to overcome his trepidation to go his own way, to -- as Joseph Campbell might say -- "follow his bliss." And although that worked out for him, Lucas would seem to never forget the power of that revelation of his own selfhood, and the mindless conformity that preceded it. No one would be more aware of the power and danger of self-belief and influence of others than Lucas.

So this brings us back to Star Wars. In the prequels, we see a Jedi Order and Republic that is very convinced of its own wisdom and strength. They buy into their own story hook-line-and-sinker. Even in spite of the issues going on in the background. In the prequels, people become blind to the growing threats of things. "It all happened so slowly that most men failed to realize that anything had happened at all." -- from THX-1138 and it could just as equally apply to the prequels as well. I find it of no surprise that the Jedi who advocate a monk-like detachment and wear all very similar clothing has some resemblance to the emotionless worker-drone, identically dressed people of THX's world. In THX's film there is implied a very sharp criticism towards this type of mindless conformity, this emotionless existence. In the same way, the small town people of Graffiti and the boring farm life of Star Wars are equally critiqued. But what of the prequels? Well, I find it hard to believe Lucas would drop this whole attitude for the Jedi, and he doesn't. Although Jedi are not emotionless, it is heavily implied and even outright stated in AOTC that the Jedi's own ways had blinded them to the realities in front of them, made them arrogant. And in ROTS, they seem very out of touch with the problems of Anakin.

Anakin, like THX, tries to rebel from this situation and be an individual. The only difference is that, in THX, the dystopia is spared for the individual because the individual has freed himself from the chains of self-delusion. In a way, THX experiences enlightenment, which is what Luke also experiences in Return of the Jedi. But Anakin, by contrast, does not. In some respects, Anakin is the inversion of THX. Because unlike all of Lucas' other films, the Revenge of the Sith is a straight-up tragedy. Anakin does not free himself from the shackles of self-delusion and fear. He, like the society, is deeply implicated into a dark self-created prophecy. The same one that THX eventually woke himself up from, and that Luke spared Vader from in ROTJ ['once you go bad, you never come back' -- Jedi/Sith].

Sadly Anakin isn't able to spare himself from because Anakin -- rather than become a true individual, a liberating, risky experience, becomes scared. Anakin succumbs to fear in the way THX and Luke did not. Anakin goes in defense mode and tries to prevent life from getting him, rather than plunging into all the highs and lows of it with arms wide open. In a way, he takes the Jedi teaching [detachment from emotional connection to prevent darkness] and applies the same prevent strategy to his own situation, and we see that in the end it just doesn't work. It's why the Jedi, the Republic, and Anakin fail. All are on defensive. All are status-quo. There is no life-energy there. There is no transformation, just decay, resulting in blindness. And the same applies in THX-1138.

And this is where THX and Luke succeed. Rather than fall into fear, rather than fall into conformity and stagnation, and eventual blindness, they wake themselves up. They take the riskiest, most impossible option -- they walk right out into the unknown. They see the limits of the mental beliefs around them and decide to walk out. 'Can't leave?" I don't think so, says THX. "Redemption is impossible. You can never come back from the dark side. Your father is unreedemable." I don't think so, says Luke. And that is why they succeed, and in doing so, they become true individuals. They are given only so many options, and they decide to make their own option. An act of rebellion, of creativity, of selfhood.

THX's world and the prequel world are both slowly dying, but no one knows it. Everyone (except perhaps Padme, the moral voice of the prequels -- consider as well possible connections to LUH 3417) walks around in their lives and their duties as though it's all dandy (same as in THX), by rules they just think are the way that it is. The Jedi are a victim of that, and Anakin later acts out in a similar defensive manner.

But Luke and THX dare to buck the rules, and they go where others deem impossible. They follow their heart, listen to their emotions, and walk into the unknown, into the fire. And they succeed. And the reason this resonates is not only because it's a great message -- I happen to think it's also the story of Lucas' life. So, in the end, while I could go on forever about this -- yes. THX and the prequels have much tie together between them.

 

The stormtroopers have been compared to the police bots in THX1138, both are manufactured, faceless, and ruthlessly enforcers. In fact the battle droids in ROTS display more emotions than the clones do, much like the police bots acting more human than the real human workers. Of course both THX and Anakin have overheating problems with their craft. Also in both THX1138 and Star Wars, the hero is jumped by salvages, THX the weird bum and sandpeople for Luke. Then there is the Geo society where Geo drones build battle droids much like the human drones build police robots. Gungans and Geos use electroprod poles just like the police robots.