Tuesday, March 13, 2012

XIII


When you saw Star Wars, you honestly felt that you would give anything to find out what the Clone Wars were and to see Obi Wan Kenobi in the days when he was a hero and all the Jedi Knights had Swords and the Old Republic. 

But that "honestly feeling that you would give anything" is precisely the emotion that made Star Wars the Best Movie Ever, and actually telling you what the Clone War were like removes that "honestly feeling you would give anything" feeling and actually ruins Star Wars forever. Watching a lady not quite taking her clothes off is far more sexy than being on a beach where no one is wearing anything at all. 


The Star Wars prequels were just a very bad idea. As it was, they were a very bad idea  poorly executed but they would have been an equally bad idea even if they had been very well executed indeed. Their one redeeming feature is that they were George Lucas's really, really bad idea. It was George Lucas who created Star Wars to begin with. He didn't just dream it up: he actually thought up the characters and wrote the script and worked with the actors and model makers. So of course I was interested to find out our George Lucas imagined the Jedi Knights at the height of their powers and the Imperial Senate and the pre-lapserian Darth Vader because he created the whole idea of the Jedi Knights and Imperial Senates and Darth Vaders in the first place. If the movie had been made by Some Other Guy then it wouldn't even have had that excuse. I like the Jedi Council scenes because they tell me what George Lucas thinks the Jedi Council should look like. Some Other Guy's version would have exactly the same validity as the version of the Jedi Council that me and Jeffrey made up in the playground of East Barnet Lower school in 1978 with airfix spacemen and toy action figures. (Less. Less.) Even if the films had actually been really rather good. Especially if the films had been actually really rather good. Especially if the films had been actually really rather good and George had specifically said that he thought they were a really, really bad idea.


XIV

Whenever I re-read Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan's very tactful phallus reminds me of the  enormous anatomically correct cock in the movie. Something that I hardly noticed in the comic has become funny, or embarrassing, offensive or whatever the hell the socially approved way of reacting to an enormous blue willy is. 

The movie changed the comic. It did. It just did. 

Read Frankenstein without thinking of Boris Karloff. I dare you.

XV


Does DC comics appalling opportunistic piece of shit corporate Watchmen rip off really matter?

No. In the total scheme of things, of course it doesn't.   

3 comments:

Mike Taylor said...

When you saw Star Wars, you honestly felt that you would give anything to find out what the Clone Wars were and to see Obi Wan Kenobi in the days when he was a hero ... But that "honestly feeling that you would give anything" is precisely the emotion that made Star Wars the Best Movie Ever.

"The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting."

Or perhaps:

"All joy emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings."

Just sayin'.

Tim Ellis said...

The Star Wars prequels were just a very bad idea. As it was, they were a very bad idea poorly executed but they would have been an equally bad idea even if they had been very well executed indeed.

Were they always a very bad idea? IIRC George Lucas had announced that the (original) Star Wars Trilogy was the middle part of a 9 film series way back around the time of The Empire Strikes Back. I suspect we were all quite excited by the Idea back then. Would they have been a Bad Idea if they were released in 1986 rather than 1999?

Tom R said...

I'd say there's at least 3 different levels here...

(1) The author reveals something that s/he had in mind all along, and that makes sense of otherwise puzzling parts of the canon. I read one novelist - sorry, forget his name - who said that he decided when plotting his sprawling family saga that one of the older characters had once been a slave. He meant to reveal this gradually, later in the series, at the right time - but never actually got around to it. Then, at some large gathering of his fans, he mentioned in passing "As you know, X had been a slave..." and was astonished when his fans jaws dropped. But then they told him that this missing piece of the jigsaw made sense of a lot of things in the books. Finding out that Seinfeld's Kramer has the first name "Cosmo" is nearly the same.

2. Something the author adds later, that is neutral - that doesn't really change our experience retrospectively for good or bad. Eg, if Lucas announced at ComiCon one year that Palpatine's first name was "Tytos", say, or "Gulliver". The obsessive fans might pore over this for hidden meanings, but there isn't much beneath it. I'd put Rowling's "well, of course, Dumbledore was gay and he was secretly infatuated with Grindelwald" in the same basket. Doesn't nullify or spoil what went before, but also doesn't greatly clarify it.

3. A retcon that actually spoils what went before. See "Highlander II".