With the soon-to-be arrival of Episode VII: The Force Awakens, one Star Wars fan cannot help but reflect on the last time a new batch of Star Wars movies were coming to theaters.
I can set the stage perfectly, as I remember it like yesterday. It was May, 1999. I was 13 and my brother was 8 and we were (and are) Star Wars fanatics. We saw ALL the previews, ALL the hype, and ALL the Pepsi cans with Star Wars characters on them, and we were ALL in. We got the Darth Maul action figure and lost our minds at the thought of a double-sided lightsaber! We could not wait to see this movie!
There we were, in line at Cinemark. I didn’t want any popcorn or anything to eat and drink for that matter. I wanted my full focus on the movie. I wanted to study it, to immerse myself in it, to let it take me away to “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” We entered the movie and something unexpected happened. It changed the way I look at things. Could something I love betray me this way? I felt like my intelligence was insulted.
It’s the first time I needed to separate my feelings for a single movie versus the entire epic. I had to respect it for the story it told but hate it for the way it told the story. It changed me because it was the first time anything associated with Star Wars had let me down. At that time, all I could say is how much I loved the movie.
We left the theater so excited. Too excited to even really understand what we just saw. To say such things that just don’t hold up and aren’t true. Were we saying these things out of fear? We did not want to admit, even at that age, that what we saw was…..a high budget children’s movie with little substance.
Remember, I was 13 and my brother was 8…and I remember saying things like:
“Jar Jar Binks was so funny!”
“That pod race was the coolest!”
“Natalie Portman is so hot!”
It wasn’t until years later I could come to terms with and admit that The Phantom Menace was not only the worst Star Wars film but one of the worst films period. Yes, it had one of the best lightsaber sequences. Yes, we finally got to see Coruscant. Yes, we finally saw the Jedi Temple and the Galactic Senate. Things we heard about and dreamed of seeing before our eyes, but at what cost?
The original trilogy had one thing in common. Character development and substance. We felt with those characters, they were real. Luke’s struggles with where he fits into the Galaxy. Han’s battle between selfish desire and selfless heroism. Leia displaying true grit in a male dominated Galaxy. These characteristics were not just given to us in bad dialogue or unnecessary action sequences. We had to watch, listen, understand, and discuss. That is the beauty of Star Wars. The Phantom Menace gave us so little to discuss.
For those maybe not following my meaning, let me give an example:
The Boonta Eve Pod Race on Tatooine. What was the point of that race? The point was to give us a separate narrative into Anakin’s power at this young point of his life. Especially with no formal Jedi training. The point was to display Anakin’s gifts of being a Force-sensitive, thus beginning the Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader story arc. The problem is the way this narrative worked. It focused on all the wrong parts. The whole idea would have been far better if the focus was him training for the race. This would show us how he developed and honed his Force-abilities. We would have gotten a deeper look into his not yet polished skills with the Force. We would be able to infer that his skills in the Force are what made him an apt pod-racer.
Instead we got a sub-story of a poorly explained rivalry between Anakin and a douche-bag Dug. Then we get repeatedly spoon-fed that Anakin is “the only human that can Pod Race.” So the movie had to come out and tell us what they were trying to tell us rather than just show us and allow for audience inference. No room for discussion, thought, or interpretation. If I wanted to see a movie with special effects and an obvious storyline I would watch any Michael Bay film.
The point I’m making is this: this next trilogy, I want a Star Wars trilogy. I want to walk out of the theater and actually say and mean, “that was better than Empire.”
I plead to Mr. Abrams….give me depth. Give me lore and give me dialogue. Give me pieces of what these characters went through 30 years after the battle of Endor. Let my brain and countless debates with friends fill in the rest. I plead to you!
I’m cautiously optimistic though. J.J. Abrams is a Star Wars fan. He knows what we collectively went through with the prequel trilogy. By all accounts of what I have heard, so far, so good. Real sets, real action, and a good story. I guess we will see December 18th when Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens opens.
Until then all we can do is hope that the partnership between Abrams and Disney will give us a movie that will let us believe in “some damn-fool crusade.”
~Rocco Vasta
