The Last Jedi: first impressions.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi was a mess. 

The atmosphere at 4AM in Screen 7 of the Cabots Circus Showcase was subdued. Not Phantom Menace subdued ("I piss on the evil of that film”) but still subdued. We had almost definitely seen something mostly very good; but there was a lingering sense of disappointment. Of having been cheated. 

I kept hearing expressions like “mad” and “crazy”. 

Some people are already comparing this film with the Empire Strikes Back. It’s the middle volume of the trilogy, don’t you know. And it’s about the Rebels, strike that, Resistance falling back and trying not to be annihilated, and an ice planet, and walkers, and the main character spends most of the film isolated from the action and learning the ways of the Force from an incredibly irritating Jedi Master. 

Sad thing is; I agree with them. The last time I felt this way was in the Leicester Square Odeon one afternoon in 1980. Yes, the walkers were great, and yes, the green muppet Jedi was great, and yes, the fight on the bridge was great, and yes, the Bounty Hunters, and yes the big reveal at the end, so why am I feeling this overwhelming sense of disappointment? 

I have always been an apologist for the Prequels. No, there is no need to list their deficits again; I know them and I largely agree with you. But I can see what Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith are doing and I think it is largely what they ought to have been doing even though I wish that they had been doing it better. 

I am not sure what The Last Jedi was trying to do. I am far from sure that whatever it was trying to do was what the eighth Star Wars movie ought to have been doing. But I am in no doubt at all that it did it very well. 

I assume that there must be someone who signs off on new Star Wars movies — if not George Lucas any more than some Franchise Runner? It cannot surely be that in a universe this size and a franchise this expensive very big decisions about which major characters live and which major characters die and who turns out to be who’s cousin are decided on a case by case basis by whoever happens to be producing this episode? 

Surely the final fate of Luke Skywalker —  and wild horses would not make me reveal what his final fate is, although irritating sparkly goats might persuade me to hint that it is not actually anything terribly interesting — surely the final fate of Luke Skywalker is decided by someone with an over-arching plan? Someone who knows where the Saga is headed? Surely after forty years and nine movies it doesn’t come down to someone called Johnson deciding, about six months ago, what might make a cool scene?

The Last Jedi doesn’t feel like a sequel to The Force Awakens: it feels like a repudiation of it: as if Rian Johnson has his own quite different vision of what a Star Wars film should be and takes on J.J Abrams’ characters only reluctantly.

The Force Awakens ends with Rey offering Anakin’s lightsaber — by now a literal holy relic — to Luke. The question left hanging is “will he take it, or not.” The Last Jedi begins with Luke taking the lightsaber.., and throwing it in the sea. (It is rescued by penguins. They are not referred to as Porgs anywhere in the film, but then, neither were the Ewoks.) This raises a laugh from the audience. It doesn’t feel to me as if Abrams set up a joke and Johnson delivered the punchline two years later. It feels to me as if Abrams left the story at a great big dramatic crux and Johnson chose to undercut it. 

There is nothing wrong with a Star Wars movie making the audience laugh. But this humour is too meta-textual: too dependent on shifts of register and gentle pushes at the fourth wall. This feels quite wrong. For Luke to have discovered a small cache of foundational Jedi texts is one thing; for him to realize that these dry old manuscripts do not contain the truth he is seeking is another; but for a character — I won’t tell you who, but they were a major supporting character in the old films and we weren’t necessarily expecting them to crop up here — to say “Page-turners they are not” is something else again. 

It’s the wrong sort of humour. Ewoks and Gungans to this undercutting of the material prefer I do. 

And, at risk of being incredibly geeky: anyone who has ever played the Star Wars RPG knows that there is no paper in the Star Wars universe. This is not, of course, a very big deal: but if you are always being reminded that bar-tenders use portable computers to tell you what your bill is and that messages are sent by hologram, not carrier pigeon, then you can’t forget that this is an alien galaxy, very different from our own. (Of course, Luke could have explained to Rey that these are strange ancient things called books made of a substance called paper. But he didn’t.) 

When Finn and a new character whose name I didn’t catch run off on what can only be described as a side quest to an alien casino we see aliens being served drinks in martini glasses and tea in cups and saucers. Is that the best we can come up with to indicate wealth and sophistication – Martini and Tea? Back in ‘76 one of the cool things about Star Wars was the blue milk. Milk just happens to be blue and no-one comments and nothing follows because we aren’t in Kansas any more. 

Does Johnson basically not get Star Wars? Did the keeper of the holocron never take him to one side and quietly explain it to him? 

The Force Awakens was criticized for being a little too safe and conservative, so it is perhaps unfair to criticize The Last Jedi for veering a little too far towards the unexpected. But we have reasonable expectations about what should happen in a Star Wars movie — obligatory scenes — and leaving those scenes out seems borderline sinful. If you’ve cast Mark Hamil and Carrie Fisher in the same movie than for George’s sake give them some screen time together. If a Major Character got killed off in the last film, then spend some time showing us how it affected his big furry companion. (Until next years ill-advised Han Solo movie comes out we aren’t going to know if the “Wookie Life Debt” thing is canon: but I would like it not to have been quite so much taken for granted that now Han is dead Chewie automatically stays with the rebel humans.) 

I suppose the original sin was committed in the opening seconds of Episode VII. What we want — what we need — is to see Luke in the Obi Wan Kenobi role: as the wise old man accompanying the kids on their adventures. But Abrams decision to make him the McGuffin of the first movie pretty much guarantees that he can’t be anything other than the Yoda of this one. He’s detached from the action, having very little dialogue with anyone apart from Rey. His major plot arc (which I don’t buy for one second) takes place in a few isolated flashbacks, which have the distinct look of having been added at quite a late stage in the proceedings. 

I know I am going to get punched for saying this: but I kept thinking of the Lone Ranger. This is not quite as rude as it may sound: I didn’t hate the Lone Ranger nearly as much as you presumably did. But both movies have the same feeling of vast, expansive splurging; of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks; of arguments between creatives and studios that were never quite resolved; of changes of direction part way through; the absence of a singular vision of what kind of a movie this is meant to be. Several times characters are on the point of laying down their lives nobly to save their friends when they unexpectedly get rescued, or turn out to be less dead then we thought, in ways that don’t give the impression that our hero has affected a dramatic hairsbreadth cliffhanger escape, so much as the impression that one writer wanted to kill them off and another writer overruled him at the last moment. 

We know what we want from a new Star Wars movie. We want the chance to play Star Wars one more time — to pretend to pilot and X-Wing, to pretend to be in the Rebel Alliance, to see all the great big ships crash together and explode. But we also want it to be the next chapter of the Saga, the unfolding of some more of the history of the Skywalker clan, revelations about who is who’s father which raise even deeper questions. What does the title mean? Who is the last Jedi? And why? But while it’s doing those things, it also has to be a good film: a film which hangs together and makes structural sense. 

The Last Jedi unequivocally succeeds in the first area. It’s the most visually exciting Star Wars movie we’ve so far seen. Po Dameron is basically what happens when Luke Skywalker and Han Solo get smashed together: the charming rogue whose also a hot young fighter pilot. The opening scene, in which Po takes on a Star Destroyer with a single X-Wing is fun in the way that the Death Star Run was fun in 1977. (It also feels like the kind of stunt which a player character with too many Force Points might have pulled.) 

I would say that the film pretty much crashes and burns in the second department. The Force Awakens left us with a series of big, interesting questions; and fans have spent two years coming up with more or less interesting answers for them. Johnson doesn’t merely fail to answer the questions – he seems actively uninterested in them. No, madam: I do not in fact think that The Last Jedi ought to have included long disputations about the fuel to speed ratio of the Millennium Falcon. There are, indeed, some things which are of interest to fans but of no interest to the general viewer. But I do think questions like “Who is Snoke? Why is he so powerful?” would occur both to fans and to people who have never owned a single Star Wars action figure.

As to the question of whether it is a good film or not… Well, I come back to where I started. The Last Jedi is a mess. Some of the material is good (the Great Big Space Battles) some of it is rather disappointing the entire Luke/Rey plot) and some of it – the whole Casino sequence – makes you drop your jaw and ask “Did I go to sleep and wake up in an entirely different movie?” I think that there is so much action and plot movement and aliens and jokes that the non-action-figure-purchasing community will like it very much indeed. But I think that a very large number of fans – people with an element of buy-in to the Star Wars milieu – are going to say “Yes...but wait a minute… what?” 

We have asked the question “What is the difference between fan fiction and any other kind of fiction?” several times in the past. In the end, it is (I am truly sorry) a question of canon. You are quite free to imagine in your head what should have happened to Luke Skywalker after The Return of the Jedi; and I am quite free to imagine it in mine. But what the Last Jedi imagines happens to Luke Skywalker after Return of the Jedi will now effect every Star Wars film comic book and novel for as long as they carry on making Star Wars films, comic books and novels. And it doesn’t seem to realize this; or spot why it matters. 

I think that history may show that The Last Jedi has damaged the integrity of the Star Wars saga much more irrevocably than Phantom Menace ever did.

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-315

Jan 14: New comic launched

This comic is called, very pointedly Star Wars #1. It is the first Star Wars comic. You may remember other Star Wars comics, but they didn't happen. For the next few weeks, you have in your hands all the Star Wars comics there have ever been. 

It is set after Star Wars but before Empire Strikes Back. There used to be hundreds of Marvel Comics set after Star Wars but before Empire Strikes Back. (Splinter of the Minds Eye is what would have happened after Star Wars if Empires Strikes Back had not happened.) Neither Roy Thomas nor Alan Dean Foster nor George Lucas knew, at that point, what was going to happen. Han Solo meeting bugs bunny and incestuous snogging was as good a guess as any. But none of that happened any more, and this new comic is written with the Benefit of Hindsight. We know big stuff that the character's don't, like who is who's sister and who is who's dad.

Are stories transparent, or opaque? Are we looking at this comic, or looking through it? Is it an attempt to imagine an artifact that never existed, but might conceivably have done: "Star Wars 2" as it might have looked in 1978? Or is it just a window into THER STAR WARS UNIVERSE, informing us of events which must, logically, have happened between the Death Star blowing up and everyone arriving on Hoth. There is quite a bit of time in between: time enough for Han Solo to have gone to a place called Ord Mantell and run into some bounty hunters there.

The thing which made me smile, the one thing that really made me smile, was the opening pages:

p 2 "A Long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." (blue on black)

p3 "Star Wars" (yellow on black)

p4 "Book 1 - Skywalker Strikes" (yellow on black, crawl shaped.) 

p 5 A bottom-up view of a big space ship flying over the "camera".

That gets me on side straight away. The first 5 pages of the comics looking as much like the first 5 minutes of a hypothetical movie as it is possible for a comic to look.  

The olden days comics didn't try to be film-like; not in that way. They weren't icons back then; they were only movies. Neither the original comic nor the original novel included the phrase "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...". The book said "another galaxy, another time...": the comic's small print said "long ago, in a galaxy far away..." George considered having the "crawl" -- the slanty story-so-far introduction -- for Empire Strikes Back roll over the icy landscape of Hoth. This would have made it even more like Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe. If he had done that, then "scrolly text against a starry backdrop would not be one of the irreducible things which makes Star Wars Star Wars.

Then the ship flies across a big industrial landscape, and the shuttle lands, and Han Solo gets his Big Entrance. This follows, which is to say prefigures, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi in which the characters are introduced in reverse order of importance. 

The Big Industrial Landscape is not really like anything in Star Wars, but the notion of a whole planet that consists of nothing but weapons factories (with, as it will turn out, a huge rubbish dump all around it) is the sort of thing  we feel that a Star Wars sequel ought to be offering us: desert planet, ice planet, forest planet, factory planet. John Cassaday is the artist and he has the young Harrison Ford's face roughly right. Writer Jason Aaron  has the dialogue spot-on. When Han confronts the Imperial Customs Officers, you can hear the voice he uses on Cloud City pretty much perfectly: 

"We wouldn't want negotiations to start on a sour note, would we?" 

"No...we wouldn't want that."

Later on, Leia asks Han directly why he is still working with the rebellion. It's done as a sort of homage to the Han / Leia love scenes from Empire Strikes Back (which haven't happened yet) right down to Han's facial expressions and there being an interruption just as they are coming to the point. But obviously, this kind of thing can't be developed or resolved without overwriting the movie its quoting from. It is nice to drift back to 1977 and not feel quite sure whether or not we can trust Han Solo.

"Han Shot First" has become a rallying cry for those of us who think that Lucas should have left the Star Wars text intact. But it also, I think, encodes a problem with the whole Saga: that Han is cool when we meet him, because he is dangerous, and becomes progressively less cool as the series goes on, until by Return of the Jedi he's no-one, just a pilot in a snazzy uniform. 

Lucas was, of course, quite free to incorporate the older work, Star Wars, into the newer work Star Wars Episodes I - VI. "The fix up", the novel made of short stories, is a venerable science fictional form. Doc Smith pasted unrelated science fiction stories onto his "Lensemen" canvass; Dune was several novellas before it became one huge novel. Tolkien, mighty Tolkien had to go back and change parts of the Hobbit once he realized that it was part of the huge epic known as the Silmarillion. We don't object to Star Wars being part of the new, bigger work. What we object to is his saying that we shouldn't still be able to watch Star Wars as well. 

They are doing a plan, which involves infiltrating an Imperial weapons factory. We see Han and the others (we don't know who the others are yet, but they are wearing bounty hunter masks like the one Leia and Lando wore/will wear in Return of the Jedi, so we do really) walk past rows of TIE fighters that robots are working on. This is proper fan boy stuff. It made me smile again.  

There have been any number of ships in Star Wars but they are mostly all just hardware, cool, or not so cool. Even the Millenium Falcon is mostly just cool hardware, but then I suppose the point about the Millenium Falcon is her relatively, ordinary-ness. Not looking like much but having it where it counts is the point of her. I wish there had been more Millenium Falcon. We spend, what, six minutes with her ? It's all in that funny little scene with 3PO and Chewbaca playing chess and Luke learning to use the Force, the point at which our heroes pause for breath and we see them as a family. I wish they had stayed like that forever. I wish there had been five 26 part TV series which started each week with our heroes at home on the Millennium Falcon before they were sent off on some thrilling adventure. But more than lightsabers and Alec Guiness and the Millennium Falcon and golden robots is TIE fighters, ball shaped cockpits with funny hexagonal sails, and X Wings, WWII spitfires with wings that snap into an X shape. I have never been able to explain why the moment when the wings clip from wing shape to X shapes is cool but its the coolest thing in twelve hours of cool things.

They have a plan. "I have a very good feeling about this", say 3PO, and by this point, so do I.

Luke doesn't get as good an entrance as Han. He unmasks with Leia on page 14 when Han reveals his hand; he's squeezed off to the left of the frame, squashed by the next panel. But seeing the three of them together is cool: the first moment when the audience bursts into spontaneous applause. We mentally clap again a few page later; Han and Luke and Leia hiding from the Stormtroopers, guns drawn. (Star Wars was all about Han and Luke and Leia: the sequels seemed deliberately to seperate them.) Note that when Leia punches the Imperial officer, spit and teeth come out of his mouth. That's not a movie moment; not U rated movie moment. That's comic book violence. Alec Guiness told Parky that Star Wars violence was play violence, someone said "bang" and someone else fell over. (He also told he that warned told James Dean to leave his car at home on Sep 30 1955.)

We see Luke repeating Ben Kenobi lines under his breath, and "telepathically" hearing a cry for help from a group of alien slaves. He still looks like Star Wars Luke: if anything, more boyish. Chubby, even. From comics to cereal packets, Mark Hamill's face was always the hardest to capture. He decides to free the slaves, which is the sort of thing you probably do if you are the Last of the Jedi. The partial close up of the lightsaber (page 18) is the sort of thing I would have killed for when I was a nipper.

But notice: on page 18 we see five frames of Luke confronting the slave driver; long thin frames across the page. Frame 4, the close up of Luke, has no background: it's his face on a white space saying "I won't reach for my blaster". (He is going to reach for his lightsaber, of course.) And then on the next page we have six frames, tall thin frames, of the lightsaber blade and the slave drivers whip, and the slave drivers cut-off hand: no figures at all. This is intended to evoke the Obi-Wan chopping the pirates arm off in the Cantina scene — over so quickly that we don't realize what has happened until we see the arm. And then we turn the page and there's a full frame art shot of Luke holding the lightsaber: which is why he didn't get a big build up like Han did — this is his Moment. The opening pages — title crawls and space ships and what not — were pure slight of hand. The drama comes from some (pretty basic, but very competent) panel work.

It's a comic book moment, not a movie. Well. Duh. 

I think I am correct in saying that this is the first time Luke has used the lightsaber that was his father's as a weapon, as opposed to as a toy to practice with. (Of course I am right. There are no other comics.) Should he say: "Gee, I am finally acting like a Jedi: Ben would be proud?" Or is it a mistake to even be thinking like this. Luke is using his lightsaber because Luke is meant to use his lightsaber but the a lightsaber is what the Luke Skywalker action figure comes with? 

A fairly graphic bit of hand slicing, incidentally. Jedi like to chop bits off people, which is presumably why the villains in the prequels had to be robots. Obi-Wan chopped the pirates arm off in the Cantina; Darth Vader is due to chop Luke's hand off in the next movie. 

Speaking of whom...

I like the big build up given to "the negotiator". I honestly wish there had been a caption which said "Dah dah dah - dum da-dah - dum da-dah" when we first see the Imperial Shuttle. This is the Darth Vader of Empire Strikes Back, the Vader who is followed by Stormtroopers and Imperial Marches wherever he goes, not the Vader of Star Wars who is simply Tarkin's henchman. 

Chewbacca obeys Leia when she orders him to kill Darth Vader: as if he is more loyal to the rebellion than to Solo. I like the fact that wookie growls are too big for the speech balloons

In the canonical texts, the Wookie is Han's friend and co-pilot, and that is all we know. In the midrashic commentaries, Han saved Chewie's life, and that means that he has incurred a life-debt: he regards Han as a member of his family and a member of his tribe, forever. But in the prequels, Chewie is very actively a rebel, friends with Yoda, no less. This is an example of more being less: Han and Chewie were cooler when they were a pirate who just happened to have a big furry crewman than when they are quite important cogs in the big story of the rebellion. 

There is dialogue:

Leia: We're in trouble

Han: No, not yet, we can still...

FX: Alam goes off

Han: Now we're in trouble.

Star Wars is cheeky and swashbuckling. No-one is superpowered or superconfident; there is a sense of everyone hanging on by the skin of their bottoms. (Alan Foster gives the made up line "They were in the wrong place at the wrong time; naturally they became heroes" more prominence than the one about it all happening a long time ago.) But there is very little of this in the comic. We're mostly taking it all far too seriously. 

Han plans to escape by borrowing an AT-AT from the factory. When the AT-ATs come over the horizon in Empire Strikes Back they are big and terrible and almost indestructible. You can trip them up with harpoons, which is a bit like shooting a photon torpedo through the weak spot in the dragon's breast-place, but you can't shoot them. So it sort of spoils it if they are also the sort of thing you can just hitch a ride on, which Han knows how to fly. Lightsabers started out being a more elegant weapon from a more elegant age and end up being a really useful boy Scout knife. 

On the other hand, I REALLY want to find out if Han pulls it off.

Luke walks down a corridor and confronts Vader. Ben tells Luke to run. That's the main thing that Ben tells Luke to do. This is, by my counting, at least the fourth time that Luke and Vader have met face to face for the very first time. (But none of those happened. Well, only one of them did.)

I bet it turns out to be a dream. It's a really big deal in Empire Strikes Back that we're seeing Luke meet Vader for the first time, and it's pretty courageous of George to wait two movies before the hero meets the villain. I don't think a comic would be allowed to spoil that. (Anakin is not allowed to meet General Grievous in the Clone Wars cartoon because they meet for the first time Revenge of the Sith, although this is allowed to become a bit too much of a running gag.) 

FAITHFULNESS TO MOVIES, SUPERFICIAL: Nine out of ten.  I didn't spot any howlers. There were no moments when I wanted to say "That's JUST. NOT. STAR. WARS."

FAITHFULNESS TO MOVIES, ON A DEEPER LEVEL: Six out of ten. There is a lot of talk. Some of the violence is violent. There is little banter. Everyone is taking this seriously. No-one is having any fun. The thing it needed, and probably no-one has ever said this before, was Jar Jar Binks. 

If you enjoy this kind of thing, the best way of encouraging me to write more is to buy my book.

(The second best way is to buy the Kindle version)

12

There, still, we have magic adventures, more wonderful than any I have told you about; but now, when we wake up in the morning, they are gone before we can catch hold of them.
The House at Pooh Corner

A barely recognizable Han Solo and Chewie in a fire-fight in some ruins. The ground is yellow with some scrubs growing on it; suggesting that we are back on Tatooine. The sky is black and studied with stars, and about a quarter of the page is taken up with a small moon -- suggesting that, on the contrary, we’re far out in space, maybe on some asteroid. [*] Chewbacca is holding the body of a green humanoid with red eyes; behind them is a guy in a red uniform and vaguely fishy features. (Forty years of staring at the page gives me no clue as to what he is holding.) Someone is firing at Han and Chewie from out of shot. Han is crying “Grab a laser gun, Chewie!” to his partner.

This is the cover of Star Wars # 7 (Star Wars Weekly #14 in the UK): the first glimpse we'd had of the Star Wars universe since the lights went up at the end of what was definitely not called A New Hope. It was reproduced on the final page of the Star Wars Treasury Edition, and I longed for it as much as I longed for Star Wars 2 and a lightsaber of my very own.

Roy Thomas evidently doesn't care too much about Star Wars lore: even at this early date, he ought to have known that Han would have said blaster rather than laser gun. We could have been looking at the cover of any sci-fi comic of the previous 50 years: good guys fighting bad guys on a faraway planet. But one detail screamed “Star Wars” at me, and still does. “WANTED: Dead or Alive Han Solo and Chewbacca the Wookie” pinned to one of the walls.

There was nothing remotely original about setting a wild west story in space; and George Lucas would never have allowed something as unsubtle as a Wanted poster in the movie. (For one thing, there is no paper in the Star Wars universe.) [*]  But this, the very first image of the very first post-Star Wars Star Wars story, six months before Splinter of the Minds Eye, a year and a half before the Infamous Christmas Special, correctly identified the unique selling point. 

Star Wars is kinda like a cowboy movie in space.

Well, it is. One of the small flaws of Empire Strikes Back and the big flaws of Revenge of the Sith is that it all takes place far too close to the center of government. Not a low-life scumbag to be seen. 

Nowadays we’d call this comic a jumping on point: if you hadn’t seen what was still a relatively new movie and hadn’t read the comic book you’d have no difficulty working out what was going on. Indeed Thomas has a fairly good stab at capturing the multi-generic atmosphere of Star Wars. It's not done perfectly, but if you honestly hadn't seen the film, this comic would give you some good hints of what all the shouting was about.

So: straight after the destruction of the Death Star, Han and Chewie leave Yavin and head back to Tatooine to pay off Jabba the Hutt. Before they even made it to hyperspace, they are attacked by pirates, and only escape with their lives by handing over their reward money. 

Some bits jar. The Pirates are flying one of the Big Pointy Ships from the opening scene of Star Wars, but no-one knows to call it an Imperial Star Destroyer. When Han meets an alien priest, he momentarily forgets he is in a Galaxy Far Far Away and says that he regrets skipping Sunday School. And poor Chewbacca is still envisaged as a berserker ("as soon as he smells first blood his wookie nature manifests itself in its usual manner"). But there are also lots of quotes and call backs to the canon, all 120 minutes of it. The pirate ship positions itself about the Millennium Falcon and swallows it up, just like it swallowed the Small Square Ship at the beginning of the movie. A mob of pirates board the Falcon like the Stormtroopers boarded the rebels; their leader ("a man in black") confronts Han, who instantly recognizes him as the pirate Crimson Jack. Han has hidden his treasure in the same smuggling compartments that he and his passengers hid in on the Death Star. If there had been Space Pirates in the movie, they wouldn’t have had actual cutlasses and literal eye patches, but “pirates in space” is very much the kind of thing you ought to bump into on the way to pay off a gangster the morning after you saved the universe.

They end up on Aduba-3, a planet in all respects indistinguishable form Tatooine — sand, domed buildings, banthas (identifiable only by their curly horns); a cantina (not a saloon or a pub -- definitely a cantina) with alien customers and a curved bar. People on Tatooine were prejudiced against droids - round here it's "borgs" that they don't serve. Han helps a local priest bury a half-man half-robot spacer in the local boot hill; and then local peasants ask him to protect them from a gang of hover bike riding thugs led by a Dick Dastardly look alike called, and I promise I am not making this up, Serji X Arrogantus. In the first issue, it seems as if the peasants are going to be honolable lacial stelleyotypes, but that idea mercifully goes away by the beginning of issue #8. Han takes the mission, and assembles (stop me if you've heard this before) a group of seven mismatched heroes to help him. It could just be that Roy Thomas is taking the "space western" brief a little too literally.

It's all very perfunctory and half-hearted. But the more closely I look, the convinced I am that the fantasy world I inhabited from the afternoon I saw A New Hope to the evening three years later when Empire Strikes Back burst all my bubbles, owes more to these comics than to the movie itself. Thomas deconstructs the movie. He breaks it down into it's component parts. He doesn't care about the background or the story ark, but he is tried to work out what made Star Wars so special, and feed some of that back into his Magnificent Seven parody. And after all this time, his half-memory of the flavour reminds us what that flavour was and why we got addicted to it.

Everyone remembers the giant carnivorous Rabbit, Jaxxon.  Unlike, say, Rocket Raccoon, he’s mainly memorable for being a giant carnivorous Rabbit. There is also a giant cat like porcupine which can shoot spines at baddies. Not very much comes of him, either. But you can see what Thomas was trying to do. Star Wars is a universe where aliens are all over the place and perfectly normal. Chebacca is a giant, growling, furry creature, but he's not an alien or a monster; he's just a character. (I don’t think those of us who have seen the film 50 times and more always remember just how weird this is.)  "How can we possibly top a space ship with a furry monster as first mate?" you can hear him saying "I know: how about teaming Han up with a big green talking rabbit?"

The curious thing is that Marvel, spotting that aliens were another selling point of Star Wars, decided to create two half-arsed creatures of their own. You might have expected them to have plucked a couple of beings from the canonical Catina -- Hammerhead Guy and one of the Guys With Big Bald Heads and flesh them out. 

More interesting is “Jimm”, a local teenager who calls himself, er, The Starkiller Kid. He wears Luke's hat with Luke's goggles, and  Luke's "judo" robes; he strikes Luke-like poses, wants to get off this crummy planet, and has freckles. In one way, it's embarrassingly poorly done: more like something out of Star Wars sketch on Crackerjack than an adaptation of a high profile movie by a major publishing company. But what it's aiming for is exactly what it should be aiming for. We want more Luke Skywalker. But we don't want Luke Skywalker as he ended up; well behaved, uniformed, decorated, in a military uniform. We want farm boy Luke, Luke the dreamy teenager, Luke sulking in his garage, Luke looking out to the binary sunset. The Starkiller Kid is Luke frozen at the moment we first met him. He's a kid playing at being Luke Skywalker. Just like me.

Luke-lite has Threepio-lite, why wouldn't he. A robot who speaks (I am quite sure) with an Anthony Daniels voice and says things like “I, sir, am FE-9Q, familiarly known as Effie” and “I’m just a tractor robot, and not really programmed for this sort of thing.” A robot called 3P0 who is known as Threepio is kind of funny. A robot called FE but known as Effie is merely cute: the kind of cute you want to thump. It wouldn't be long before Lucas was creating cute characters who everyone wanted to thump of his very own. 

Most interestingly of all we have, and once again I have to reassure readers that I am not making this up, Don Wan Kihotay, an older man with a beard who believes himself to be a Jedi. Again, you can see Thomas’ working pretty clearly. One of the crucial flavour notes of Star Wars is the presence (pretty far in the background) of the Jedi Knights; one of the coolest pieces of hardware is the lightsaber, even if it only appears in two or three scenes. If the Jedi existed, they'd be nothing more than dull warriors mind-powers (Lucas spent three whole movies demonstrating this point): they are only romantic because they lived a long time ago and are all dead. Since Ben-Obi-Want-Kenobi has gone to be more powerful than we can possibly imagine, the best Thomas can offer us is someone who thinks he is a Jedi. Someone who has heard about the Jedi, and wants to be one. Like, once again, me.

For this character to work properly, we have to have known a lot of stories of the Olden Days. If we wrote him now, we could have him referencing half-remembered events from the Clone Wars with the same pedantic enthusiasm as the real Don Quixote quoted Spanish chivalric romances, but Roy Thomas didn't have that kind of information at his disposal. So he fixed on the word "Knight" and envisaged quests and honour and archaic language and round tables and dubbing ceremonies. That's how I imagined Jedi; that's how I wanted Jedi to be; and that, indeed, is how Jedi were until we actually met Yoda and discovered they were an uneasy mix between the dullest kind of Sunday School teachers and the nastiest kind of P.E coach. [***] Again, the "knights" thing is arguably taken a bit too literally. In the final episode, the Magnificent Seven storyline takes a peculiar right turn specifically so that Don Kihotay can go up against a huge reptilian beast with his lightsaber, and the audience can all think “That’s kinda like a knight fighting a dragon.”

The comics are most notable for what they do not contain. No Darth Vader. Virtually no Luke Skywalker. No Empire. No Rebellion. No Force, really: when a mystical character is called for, he’s a non-specific priest worshiping a non-specific God. But I think Thomas got something right which Lucas got wrong. Star Wars isn’t a story; it’s an ethos. We don't want to know what happens next; we want to go back there. A comic doesn't become Star Wars by having Darth Vader in it: it becomes Star Wars by tasting like Star Wars. Thomas may not have got the flavour exactly right, but he knew what flavour he was aiming at.

That's what that cover is saying, isn't it? "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away...they all went off and had even more adventures, for ever and ever..."

[*] I think that the artists feel they need to show actual Stars to justify the “Star Wars” title. Five out of the first six post-movie issues have starry starry night skies on the cover. 

[**] On Tatooine, they wipe their bottoms with sand. On spaceships, there is an efficient decontamination ray built into the toilet itself. 

[***} Can’t…or won’t? Do…or do not. There is no try.

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The Last Jedi: Tertiary Thoughts

People who don’t like Star Wars seem to have mostly liked the Last Jedi; it is Star Wars fans who seem to have had misgivings about it.

This is doubtless why the vibe on the opening night was so negative. The five hundred people who had sat through the Force Awakens/Last Jedi double bill were, by definition, the five hundred biggest Star Wars geeks in Bristol.

The five hundred biggest Star Wars geeks who could afford to go to bed at 4AM on a school night, at any rate.

The media still talks as if Star Wars fans are some obscure cult, like collectors of 78rpm vinyl or Juliet Bravo enthusiasts. But even in 1977, when Star Wars was new and strange, it was also the most popular film of all time. Not a movie, more of an industry, said Barry Norman, before it had even opened in the UK. In the ensuing 40 years it has only grown bigger. It is strange to look at Star Wars Lego and Star Wars computer games and Star Wars Lego computer games and realize that millions of kids who have never seen a Star Wars movie know the identity of Luke Skywalker's father.

There is a show on Radio 4 in which guests are challenged to try things they have never tried before. So the notoriously well-dressed journalist is asked to buy a pair of jeans; the serious food writer is asked to go to McDonalds; someone who claims never to have eaten cheese is presented with a vast tasting palette of the stuff. The title of the show is I’ve Never Seen Star Wars.

We are all Star Wars fans now. 

*

Richard Dawkins famously said that if atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby. Garrison Keeler, almost as famously, said that in Minnesota, even the atheists are Lutherans: it is the Lutheran God they didn't believe in. 

Everyone has seen Star Wars. Nearly everyone likes Star Wars. But if you are reading this you are part of a tiny minority who have seen all the films an average of 16 times each; and have spent time thinking about them — as history, as mythology, as drama, as the possible subject matter for role-playing games.

It may be hard for you and I to believe, but the overwhelming majority of people who saw the Last Jedi didn’t have any strong feelings about it either way. They honestly haven’t given it a second thought since they left the cinema. They are, however, enormously looking forward to the Black Panther. Trust me, if you think the Phantom Menace retrospectively ruined your childhood, or even if you take the contrarian view that A New Hope is boring and dated and the sequels are where it's at, then you care infinitely more about these movies than nearly anyone else in the world.

Any schism between people who hated The Last Jedi and people who quite liked it is a schism within that tiny minority. It is not an argument between people who like Star Wars and people who do not. It is an argument between Star Wars geeks who like Star Wars and Star Wars geeks who don't. People who are geeky about liking Star Wars and people who are just as geeky about not liking it. There are, in fact, a fair number of people in the world whose hobby is telling other people to stop playing chess.

In this corner a group saying it is just so great that this film annoyed Star Wars fans because we fucking hate Star Wars fans, us, and want to see them getting annoyed. And in that corner a group saying we, the fans have ownership over this material; we, the fans get to decide how this material is used; and no-one else has any say.

And in the middle, an overwhelming majority whose review of the Last Jedi is the same as my mother’s review of A New Hope when she took me to see it at Barnet Odeon in 1978. “Yes, that was an enjoyable film. Now can I please forget about it?”

Is it possible to find balance between the two sides?

Who is Star Wars for?

*

We are all Star Wars fans now.

The Last Jedi cost literally $200,000,000 to make. It is on show in every multiplex cinema in the world. It is the literal definition of mainstream. It’s target audience is everybody.

But "everybody" isn’t invested in Star Wars in the way that you and I are. Everybody will not feel that their whole day is ruined if someone uses the Force in a way that no-one has ever used the Force before. Everyone doesn’t care if the film’s very existence does spoil Return of the Jedi. Everyone doesn't think very hard at all about what the film means. Everyone is probably not even giving the film their full attention while they actually watching it. 

When I am in a cynical mood, I say: “Oh: I suppose that means that everybody but me just gazes zombie-like at the big coloured lights and listens to the loud bangs?”

When I am being less cynical, I say that if you watch the movie for the landscape and the battles and the shape of the story without engaging with it at a cerebral level you are watching it in exactly the way it is supposed to be watched.

I once speculated that Star Wars could best be understood as a succession of images held weakly in place by a plot — that the emotional power of the first movie comes from seeing a little spaceship and a big spaceship and a scary man in a black cloak and a golden robot and a squeaky little robot even if you aren't quite sure exactly what a "consular ship" is. George Lucas considered dubbing the film into Japanese, or into some entirely made up language, to force audiences to attend to the imagery. Mark Hamill told Leslie Judd that the story of Star Wars is “only so much non sense to hang a great visual spectacle onto.” 

The plot of Star Wars is a little long a song lyric. Not a song by Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, just a pop song. We understand them perfectly well. They go:

La-la-la 

the sort of thing that people say in love songs 

la-la-la 

the kind of thing a young lad might say to a girl at a party

La-la-la

The kind of thing which people say in songs like this

La-la-la

Sex

The person who asks exactly where the strings of one's heart are located, and what exactly it would feel like if one of them went "zing" has clearly not quite got the idea of songs yet.

*

We are all Star Wars fans now.

I am a big fan of The Godfather Part II, although I always get lost during the Cuban sequences. Most people agree with me that it is a fine movie. Some people say that it is one of only two sequels which is actually superior to the original. (I forget the name of the other example.) 

But The Godfather Part II doesn’t stand alone. Al Pacino Robert De Niro is not merely portraying Vito Corleone; he is quite specifically portraying Marlon Brando portraying Vito Corleone. It is a fabulous performance precisely because we can so easily believe that Pacino De Niro is the young Brando. You wouldn’t think me a pathetic gangster geek if I said that you really won’t get very much out of The Godfather Part II unless you have seen The Godfather. The Godfather is one of the things which the Godfather Part II is about. The main thing, even. 

Yes, Mr Exception, I know you saw Part II before you saw Part I and enjoyed it very much. Please say so in the comments below: I am sure we will all find it fascinating. 

People sometimes propose the experiment of finding someone, maybe a child, who really has never seen Star Wars and showing them Episodes I - VI, in that order, in George Lucas’s preferred, redacted form. Would they understand them? Would they even be watching the same movies which we love so much? Would Darth Vader's dramatic entrance in Episode IV be even more dramatic if you immediately thought “It’s Anakin! And the lady in the white dress must be the girl baby all grown up! And he doesn’t even know!” Would it be more fun to see Old Ben drive the Sand People away if your immediate thought was "Golly gosh! Ewan McGregor has sure let himself go!” And would the climax of Empire Strikes Back be even more climactic if all the way through it you were thinking "Vader is Luke's Dad, and Luke doesn't know! Vader is Luke's Dad, and Luke doesn't know. Is he going to tell him? Is he going to tell him?"

Once we have done that experiment, we could try to imagine what it would be like to watch The Last Jedi without having seen the Force Awakens; nay, without even having seen A New Hope. 

“The old guy has gone into some sort of space ship. Is it the ship the younger woman came in? I suppose the thing that looks like a dustbin is a robot of some kind, a much more primitive version of the one we saw the guy in that little red and white space ship talking to earlier? The way he’s touching it, I suppose he must think of it as a friend. Maybe he used to own it? It is showing a very old film of a girl. Who is she? Sounds like she’s in some kind of trouble. I suppose the robot is reminding him of some time long ago when he helped a person in trouble. Maybe it’s a reference to some previous film.”

It is possible to watch a film like that. It can be quite fun. I have occasionally enjoyed watching a detached episode of a soap opera, where all the characters present themselves as “that-kid-who-has-to-admit-to-his-dad-he’s-done-a-bad-thing-I-have-no-idea-what” and “that-woman-who-is-meeting-someone-she-shouldn’t-be-meeting-I-have-no-idea-who”. Back when I only read Marvel Comics (on religious grounds) I used to positively enjoy it when someone else’s DC title fell into my hands. The Teen Titans felt so much more superheroey than the X-Men because I hadn’t got the faintest idea who any of them were. Because I didn't know the backstory I could actually attend to the surfaces. It used to be quite normal for films to be playing on endless loops and for audiences to catch the second half, of one and the first half of the other. You'd get to see some car chases and some kissing; you could tell if it was a police movie or a romance. Only some kind of weird movie geek actually care about the plot. 

But these are accidental pleasures. When we saw Star Wars for the first time there was indeed a kind of joy in hearing people talk about the Clone Wars and the Jedi Knights and having no idea what they were. But George Lucas intended us to have no idea; very probably he had no idea himself. Rian Johnson knows perfectly well what Artoo Deetoo is and why the hologram is important. He expects us to know as well. If Mr Exception goes to see the movie and enjoys the confusion of not knowing, then he is finding something in the film which the director didn’t put there.

But it's a silly question. there is no way of carrying out the experiment. Everyone knows who Luke Skywalker and Artoo Detoo and Princess Leia are. We are all Star Wars fans now. 

*

Who is Star Wars for?

At the very end of the movie, we see Luke Skywalker meditating, floating above a rock, looking into the sunset. It is a double sunset; Ach-Tu is a binary system. After a moment, we see his empty robes fall away: he has vanished.

It is theoretically possible that John Williams thought “I suppose I had better play some sad music at this point. I can’t be bothered to write a new tune, so I will bung in one I’ve used before. It’s not like anyone will notice!” It is possible that he said “This scene needs a bittersweet sound track with an element of triumph and an element of sehnsucht” and just happened to compose a tune that was very similar to the tune he composed the last time he wanted to signify sadness and happiness and triumph and nostalgic longing. And certainly, if you have Never Seen Star Wars you would not sit through that scene thinking “I am baffled! What is this music and why is he playing it now? I feel confused and excluded!” 

But everybody has heard this music before; during the iconic Binary Sunset scene in the first act of A New Hope, when Luke was looking out to the horizon wishing for adventure; and again in the final seconds of Revenge of the Sith, when the infant Luke first arrives on Tatooine. The meaning of the scene depends on our familiarity with the score. The music, far more than the pictures, is saying: “Luke is setting off on a big adventure” and “Luke has come home”. 

In fact, if you could translate what the music and the pictures were saying into words, it would come out much more like “LUKE SKYWALKER!!!!!” or possibly even “THE SUMMER OF NINETEEN SEVENTY BLOODY SEVEN!!!”

The man who has Never Seen Star Wars might look at the scene and say “What just happened? Has Luke been beamed up to the Starship Enterprise? Has someone done a conjuring trick? This crazy science fiction stuff is impossible to understand!” You and I are remembering that moment when Darth Vader struck Ben Kenobi down his cloak fell to the ground in two parts, but Ben's body was not in it. And that moment on Dagobah, when Yoda's body vanished, leaving only his robes behind. We may not even be thinking of those specific scenes: but everybody knows that when good Jedi go to be with the Force, their bodies vanish.

You may think that this is all so obvious that it is hardly worth saying. But it would not be obvious to your Mum, to Mr Exception, or to the man who has Never Seen Star Wars.

*

Who is Star Wars for? I do not have an answer. I am minded to accept the theory that I have spoiled the Last Jedi for myself by over-thinking it. There is a strong case for saying that when I ask myself whether Luke's grounds for rejecting the Jedi order are fair I am making a category mistake. It isn't exactly that I am the only person who is listening. Everybody is listening. But everybody else hears  Luke's speech as a song lyric. 

La-la-la, mystical nonsense,
la-la-la, the kind of thing old mentors say in this kind of movie,
la-la gub-gub hey nonny no. 

Everyone may even think that the Ach-Tu sequences are just the boring bits they always put in between fight scenes so you have a chance to go to the toilet and get some more pop corn.

And yet the film seems to demand a fairly high level of engagement. It seems to think that we can identify musical themes and recurrent motifs. It seems to be about Star Wars in just the same way that the Godfather Part II seems to be about the Godfather. The film's entire punch comes from the fact that this is not just some guy saying that it is time for the Jedi to end (and then sacrificing his life to keep them going) this is Luke Skywalker. The kid who wanted to pick up the power converters at Toshe station; the kid who flew down the trench; the hero with a thousand faces who tried to save his father and found he already had. Luke Skywalker.

**********L*U*K*E  B*L*O*O*D*Y S*K*Y*W*A*L*K*E*R **********

Only Star Wars can possibly be expected care about this stuff.. But we are all Star Wars fans now.

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10 facts about the Star Wars trilogy

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1: The Force Awakens is the seventh film in the Star Wars series!

2: The other film in the series are The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, A New Hope, the Empire Strikes Back and the Return of the Jedi.

3: Although it is Episode 1 of the saga, the Phantom Menace actually came out 22 years after Star Wars!

4: Star Wars was created by George Lucas, The Force Awakens was written and directed by J.J Abrams!

5: Despite it's futuristic hardware, the Star Wars series happens a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away!

6: Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill, was the hero of the first three movies!

7: Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker father, was the hero of second three movies!

8:  In Star Wars, Han Solo shoots a bounty hunter down in cold blood! Later releases of the film re-edit the scene so the bounty hunter goes for his gun first!

9: Christopher Lee, who plays Count Dooku in Attack of the Clones, once played Count Dracula in a low budget British horror movie!


10: Peter Cushing, who played Tarkin in Star Wars, played Van Helsing in the same movie!

READ:

The most incredible article about the Star Wars trilogy you will ever read

How Hollywood got Star Wars wrong

Why the Force Awakens is the new Star Wars

What is Luke Skywalker's relationship to Rey? The true answer may surprise you. 

Rebel Agents discover the New Order's ultimate weapon...you won't believe what happens next!

Why Star Wars bad guys ain't as good as they used to be. 

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“Speedysnail”

For more than 30 years, fans have been waiting for the definitive guide to the monsters, vehicles and aliens in the Star Wars universe. Some of them may find that this collection of essays by passes the time while they carry on waiting.

Starting with the opening night of Phantom Menace, Andrew explains why the prequels aren't quite as bad as everyone say; wonder if sometimes a lightsaber is just a lightsaber; and tries to show why the Saga has become so important to so many people.

A very personal journey to the heart of the Star Wars saga, in the company of such luminaries as Joseph Campbell, Jack Kirby...and Bob Dylan?

Includes parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the seminal "Little Orphan Anakin", though not necessarily in that order



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Did you like the Force Awakens, or didn't you?

VII

Chewie: we're home.

Very early on the morning of December 16th, I said “The Force Awakens was as good as it could possibly have been”.

Having now seen the film, er, five times, I think I would say “It was far better than it needed to be.”

I remember the days when TV and movie adaptations of comic books had nothing to do with the source material, and you didn't really expect them to. The Hulk was a fugitive named Dave; Doctor Strange was a medical student; Spider-Man wore his webshooters outside his sleeves. Even the Tim Burton Batman, which was fan-approved and kicked the whole thing off, had us struggling to find the things which resembled the comic book. (Even Reeves Superman. Krypton made of sugar. Elderly Jor-El. Hairy Lex Luther. No Superboy.) But at some point, somewhere around the X-Men, I suppose, someone realized that hey, these comic books are actually quite good; and hey, the kinds of people who read comic books go to movies; so hey, let’s make a Captain America movie that actually, like, follows the plot of Captain America! Let’s make a Guardians of the Galaxy movie and reference the Celestials and Howard the Frickin’ Duck! Let's make geek movies for geeks!

As has been noted, Mr Walt “Uncle” Disney spent 2.75 billion pounds buying the rights to Star Wars. And while a movie like Force Awakens makes a tidy little sum in a tickets and popcorn sales, the real, ongoing money is in computer games and action figures and breakfast cereal and lunchboxes and lightsaber shaped water bottles and duvet covers and t-shirts and lots and lots of underwear. People were going to go and see the Force Awakens whether it was critically acclaimed or not. The main thing to do was not damage the brand. (Marvel and Star Wars and Star Trek and Doctor Who are called "franchises" nowadays, a word which originally had to do with secret recipes for fried chicken.) The easy thing to do would have been to just show us all the toys and not knock over too much of the furniture. Disney would have made it's money back out of any film in which a wookie and a walker said may the Force be with you to a lightsaber. But Disney placed Star Wars in the hands of a man who actually liked Star Wars (however much he may have disliked Star Trek); and he shows every sign of having put together the kind of film he would have liked to have seen. He didn't go for all the obvious fan-pleasing effects; he held some of the cool stuff back til literally the last moment; he killed off good guys; he left us wondering what was going to happen next and wanting more. This was a far, far better film than it needed to be. 

The Force Awakens was a film I felt comfortable with. It was not, in truth, a film that thrilled me or filled me with joy. But as you get older, that happens less and less, which is why we start listening to folksingers. The main thing which was missing, I am afraid to say, was George Lucas. Lucas brought a mad inventiveness to the table; a sense of excess. Yes, someone sometimes needed to take him aside and say “George, George, are you absolutely sure about the Jamaican fish people?” Star Wars had iconic X-Wings and TIE Fighters and The Empire Strikes Back had almost equally iconic Walkers and the Return of the Jedi had, er, loads of cool stuff as well and the prequels, bless them, and gold pointy naboo fighters and funny round Jedi fighters and robots that curled up into wheels like roley poley bugs... The Force Awakens offered us, I think I am correct in saying, not one single cool new piece of hardware: X-Wings and TIE Fighters with slightly different liveries; a lightsaber with a cross bar; an even bigger and more deathier Death Star.

But on the plus side, there was no sense of anyone going through the motions, quoting famous lines, referencing famous scenes for the fans to tick off on their scorecards. Carrie Fisher made very little attempt to re-do her turn as Princess Leia from the first movie. We entirely believed in Han and the General as a middle-aged couple for whom things hadn’t quite worked out. I have known ever since the Ewoks started their song that when I next saw Luke Skywalker he would be a wise old man with a wise old beard and wise old robes, so there could be no better image for the film to end on.

Star Wars is an ongoing, generational space-fantasy saga, created by George Lucas and others. 

It is set during and after the fall of a great Galactic Republic; like the Arthurian saga, it’s about holding on to what you can of civilization as night falls. The cyclical conflict between Light and Darkness is represented by a single family. The first trilogy deals with the messianic Anakin Skywalker; the second with his son Luke Skywalker and the third with his grandchildren Ben and Rey Solo.

In it’s original form, the fourth chapter was intended to be a stand alone work, and therefore does not fit entirely satisfactorily into the saga; although George Lucas engaged in an on-going editorial process to rework the films into a single “fix-up” saga. It was painfully possible to see the narrative crack between Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Episode IV: A New Hope; but when the saga resumed in 2015, fans were relieved that there was no such disjuncture between Episode VI: Return of the Jedi and Episode VII: The Force Awakens. 

At a micro level, the details of the generational trilogy may not have been what creator George Lucas originally envisaged; but we can be pretty certain that at a macrocosmic level, the saga was running roughly according to his intentions. Episode VII takes us into the third generation of characters; just as the heroes of episodes IV - VI were the children of the heroes of episodes I - III, so the Force Awakens introduces us to those characters grandchildren. A new political force, with a new technological terror, threatens the New Republic. The mystical guardians of peace and justice are once again riven by a schism between Darkness and Light. Unlikely heroes and heroines must take up their parents and grandparents swords to fight the coming darkness with their backs to the walls. This is the story that Lucas would have told; it is the story that Abrams is telling; and it is the story which will doubtless continue into the third decade of the new millennium when and elderly Rey Solo will doubtless witness her own children being tempted by the Dark Side of the Force. 

The saga begins with two Jedi Knights being sent to deal with an apparently trivial trade dispute which turns out * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

**********************

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10

Darth Vader is standing on the bridge of a Star Destroyer, looking out into space. 

Boba Fett enters from behind. “I lost him” he says.

"This is most disappointing" replies Vader.

One of the great things about Darth Vader is that, while he is in some ways the personification of anger, he always speaks in calm understatements: "I find your lack of faith disturbing"; "The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am"; "No. I am your father." Not everyone writing Darth Vader after the fact gets this right.  

Vader has hired Fett to track down the boy who destroyed the Death Star. He thinks he encountered the same boy, armed with an oddly familiar lightsaber, on Cymoon 1. Fett has traced Luke to Tatooine, where Luke is trying to retrieve Jedi relics from Ben’s old home. Blinded by a flash grenade, Luke trusts to the Force (doubling all his attributes for one round) and manages to deflect Fett’s blaster fire with his lightsaber. 

Vader asks if Boba Fett got anything at all of value. “Just his name” he replies. “Skywalker.” 

This time, Vader doesn't speak at all. He just clenches his fists, and the Star Destroyer’s windows shatter. You can more or less imagine the heavy breathing sound effect and the Imperial March playing in the background.

Marvel's current Star Wars sub-imprint has a nice line in parallel plotting and intertwining narratives. Vader's discovery of Luke Skywalker identity occurs in issue #6 of Jason Aaron's Star Wars series; but the same scene is shown in #6 of Kieron Gillen's Darth Vader title. Gillen's version is somewhat decompressed: we are much more inside Vader's head. Between Boba's words and Vader's reaction are inter-cut a series of flashbacks — Amidala telling Anakin she is pregnant; the Emperor telling Vader that she is dead; her funeral; the Death Star Trench; Vader fighting Luke on Cymoon. A New Hope, Revenge of the Sith, and earlier issues of this comic are all equally canon, equally part of Darth Vader’s memories. It seems to fit together. Beneath the mask, Darth Vader is still Anakin Skywalker, with Anakin Skywalker's memories and Anakin Skywalker's feelings.

Ben wasn't even telling the truth when he said that Anakin Skywalker no longer existed.

In Kieron Gillen's version, he looks out through shattered glass. “I have a son. He will be mine. It will all be mine.” This doesn't work quite as well as "This is most disappointing". It's too ranty; too much the kind of thing a Marvel Comics Supervillain would say. ("Ha-ha. This is merely a temporary set-back. Soon the world will hear from me again.") In one of the Extended Universe novels, possibly Shadows of the Empire, Vader is seen using the Dark Side of the Force to completely heal his body so he can survive without the black armour. But he doesn't quite have the strength to do so; his love for Luke means he hasn't fully given himself over to the Dark Side. This struck me as pure Doctor Doom and not at all Darth Vader.

In A New Hope, Vader refers to Luke merely as "this one" -- an anonymous pilot who is somehow strong in the Force. By the beginning of Empire Strikes Back he is "obsessed with finding young Skywalker". We have all asked the question "what did the Dark Lord know, and when did the Dark Lord know it?" Aaron and Gillen provide an answer. Vader was completely unaware of Luke at the time of A New Hope (he could not sense his presence and it never occurred to him that anyone would hide his son on his own planet); he guessed the X-Wing pilot was someone important; he only found out what had happened when the bounty hunter discovered the pilot's name. It seems that although Uncle Owen hated the memory of Luke's father and Obi-Wan knew that secrecy was vital it never occurred to either of them to raise the orphan as Luke Lars.

There had to be one particular moment when Vader found out; the equivalent of Luke's moment on the bridge on Bespin. What we read in these two comic-books is exactly what we would have imagined that moment to be; exactly what we would like to have happened in a movie. It feels right.

And of course they made it up. Our of their heads.

It is possible for a scene, or a story, to be so well-imagined that that this doesn't matter. For a scene to achieve instant canonicity, not because a man with a mouse says so, but because we feel it can stand alongside Obi-Wan and Vader's duel, or Luke looking out at the binary sunset, or any other iconic moment. It's that level of iconic canonicity that The Force Awakens has to achieve if it is going to justify its existence.

Some texts force us to have faith in them by sheer force of imagination.

George and Joe and Jack and Bob

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