A short time ago, in this galaxy right, right here, I indulged a family member’s desire to watch all the Star Wars movies, in story order. There are 11 movies, plus a handful of TV series. Clicking through Disney Plus (while doing everything possible to avoid accidentally selecting Artemis Fowl), we watched all of them in under two weeks.
Here are my thoughts:
The Phantom Menace:
“Maybe it has mellowed with age… Nope. Still bad.” Starts with “the taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute” — passive voice. What mental gymnastics can I do to ignore the racism? Disney put a text disclaimer at the beginning of Aladdin, but they need it more for this movie. Neimoidians = Japanese businessmen; Gungans = tribal Africans; Watto = Jewish pawnbroker. Then there’s pidgin-speaking, Rastafarian-resembling, lope-walking Jar-Jar.
I wish George Lucas had run with the online theory that Jar-Jar was an evil overlord controlling everything. … Awkwardness abounds. “Anakin is a cool name — what should we name his mother? How about Shmi?” Why do Jedi apprentices have hair tails like the guys you’d see in 1980s video-arcades wearing Journey shirts? At least they cast Liam Neeson, he brings dignity to….aw, poor Liam. Best moment: Darth Maul pacing angrily behind the energy wall.
Attack of the Clones:
Introducing Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker; qualifications: He’s tall, he’s fidgety, he hates sand. Computer-generated Yoda: CGI of a puppet of a living being. It reminds me of a videogame version of miniature golf: A simulation of a simulation of an artificial concept. Much of this movie’s plot sends Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi on a detective-like procedural, so if the original Star Wars (i.e. Episode IV: A New Hope) was based on Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, this one is more like Kurosawa’s High and Low. Christopher Lee: “Sure, I’ll play your villain. What’s the name?” George Lucas: “You’ll be named Dooku.” Christopher Lee: “Uhhh. Just make sure the checks clear.” When Yoda and Dooku fight, Yoda spins and jumps around like an espresso junkie; what Dooku really needs is a giant tennis racket.
Revenge of the Sith:
George Lucas: “Whoops, this is the last movie, isn’t it? Guess it’s time to pull the story together.” Bam, bam, so much development — an impressive finale, with the urgency of solid filmmaking, but the unfortunate rotten cherry of Darth Vader’s awkward “Noooo!” Anakin’s turn to evil makes some sense even if the whole character drama feels mechanical. So that’s something. The three prequels are painful and the over-reliance on CGI has aged badly, but they do build a world and a backstory. But what really saves me from completely hating them is the presence of Samuel Jackson. Imagine how intolerably pasty-white it would all be without his consternated face and shiny noggin in the mix.
Solo: A Star Wars Story:
Alden Ehrenreich gives Solo a go, and isn’t bad…you really have to Han it to him. Donald Glover also a good choice. Less thrilled with Emilia Clarke and Woody Harrelson. New rule: Limit one big-budget fantasy series per actor. Han Solo is sort of a Western-style loner, so they run with that, but did they really need the washed-out, gray-and-brown Western color palettte? The story does an okay job explaining Solo’s trust issues, but it wasn’t good enough, and sadly the box-office failure of this movie put the kibosh on a planned Boba Fett movie.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story:
The best of the non-original trilogy. The highly East Asian cast doesn’t make up for the Neimoidians, but it’s a welcome attempt. Suicide-mission aspects and atomic explosion drives home the WWII Pacific Theatre connection a bit too well. Character assembly somewhat resembles Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. Mads Mikkelsen makes any movie better. Not thrilled with the CGI-puppety Princess Leia at the end.
Star Wars: A New Hope:
The original movie. I saw it at Cine Capri in Phoenix, Arizona, a cavernous theater which at the time had the biggest screen in town — it curved a bit, and it had these lush, multi-draped curtains that were drawn back before each show. I was a little kid and I had this embossing label-maker, where you could click alphabet tabs and press words onto small bands of red plastic stickytape. We lived in a three-bedroom house, and I made a “LUKE SKYWALKER” label for my bedroom door, a “PRINCESS LEIA” label for my sister’s door, and a “DARTH VADER” label for my dad’s door. This was before the other movies had come out, and I later realized that I had inadvertently predicted the characters’ surprise family revelations.
Unfortunately, the original theatrical version of the movie can’t be chosen on Disney Plus or anywhere else: You are forced (no pun intended) to watch the crappy CGI-“enhanced” version. All of Disney’s power and billions of dollars, but they can’t let people watch the movies the way they experienced them originally? What evil is this? The worst is that added scene with the CGI Jabba, and the worst second of all is when Han Solo walks over Jabba’s tail and they CGI-edit Solo’s body lifting slightly (since Jabba was originally a human character). I hate the fact that children experiencing Star Wars for the first time have to see this.
The Empire Strikes Back:
Best movie of the entire series. Things I love: The fact that you can see the characters’ breath when they’re on the ice planet — they’re in a real place! Not in a studio or CGI-land! I love the creepy, insect-like probe droid and its buzzing-fly Seth Brundle sounds. I love the clomping walkers seen at a distance through snow-goggles. I love the asteroid chase and John Williams’s rising-seawaves music as the tie-fighters are crashing. The John Williams score has some excellent motifs: The Imperial March, the Leia-Solo love theme, the Yoda theme, the chugging-train music at the end. “I love you” / “I know” is wonderfully jerky in the middle of a scene of despair. I love Luke finding out that Darth isn’t pure evil, but somebody horribly close and with a desperate agenda. I love Luke’s massive F.U. at the end, not with words but by silently letting himself fall into oblivion.
Return of the Jedi:
This movie came out when I was at the early-teen, mocking age. My annoyed response has held, and I still find many flaws unforgivable. To begin with, this movie goes Full Muppet. Never go Full Muppet! This was supposed to be a Star Wars movie, not The Dark Crystal. The first movie had funhouse-mirror Lovecraft lizard creatures (such as Momaw Nadon, aka Hammerhead) and whatnot, but in this movie everything looks like it was stamped out of a Jim Henson processor. One of the cringiest moments in the original trilogy is when Princess Leia says “Hold me” to Han Solo. The sexual tension is gone; bring back the spark.
On the plus side: The forest motorcycles are a great concept, even though anybody who would ride one of those in a forest is really asking for it. I love how the new Death Star’s inner reactor tiltingly collapses on itself before it explodes. The updated CGI crap in this movie is intolerable: They made Darth Vader shout “Noooo!” when he lifts the Emperor at the end, instead of the intensely determined, silent way he did it in the original. Lucas should be tarred and feathered for that decision. Also, they added stuff to the celebratory ending and replaced the gleefully goofy Ewok “wub nub” music with a generic dancey pan-flute tune. Horrible.
I could go on… but on a positive note, Return of the Jedi ties up the trilogy well, gives all the characters a solid ending, and in a less greedy, misguided, meddling world would have been the last of the Star Wars movies.
The Force Awakens:
At this point I stopped watching the movies with my family, only intermittently observing scenes. I was excited when The Force Awakens came out, and initially thought it well-done, but later felt like it was a betrayal to the original stories and character relationships. Han and Leia’s love not only fell apart but resulted in a homicidally angry and broken-spirited little jerk son. Han seems like hasn’t learned anything in decades, and maybe was cryo-frozen the entire time, while General Leia seems as though she’s been secretly drinking whiskey for most of her military tenure.
But money is money, Disney paid George Lucas $4 billion, and it would be equally disturbing if the movie showed Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher living in a Wookie tree together wearing shawls and complaining that their grandchildren never call them. So here we are with brand-new characters and Han Solo christening them by calling them “kid” a lot (as he did with Luke), and especially impressed with Rey’s “Mary Sue” competence. Rey’s a natural! She fixes things, she pilots, and she’s super-boring! The exploitation of Gen-X childhood memories wasn’t enough: They had to make a new character (Maz Kanata) whose eyes look like buttholes.
I ascribe the problem with this movie, and the final sequel, to the J.J. Abrams Sugar High and Come-Down Effect. I wanted to like these movies, but they weren’t well-planned out. Basing them around a female Bildungsroman, instead of Luke’s previous male version, was inspired and would have been magnificent if it had been handled at a level beyond a “girl power!” fist-pump.
The Last Jedi:
This was not only a step up from the previous movie, it seemed like director Rian Johnson was purposely trying to mess with previous director J.J. Abrams’s storylines. He also continues the Akira Kurosawa influences. As mentioned above, previous Star Wars films were based on Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, High and Low, and Seven Samurai. This movie attempts a riff on the Rashomon effect, showing how an incident is different depending on whose flashback you see. Nice try, at least.
One thing that bugs me about these later movies is how they revel in killing off the original characters. Rock-and-roll bands used to smash their guitars at the end of concerts, as if declaring that the great performance the audience just enjoyed will never be replicated. These newer Star Wars movies feel as though a different band showed up after the first band’s performance, smashed the first band’s guitars, and then said, “Look what we did! Isn’t that amazing!?” Carrie Fisher’s real death, in 2016, almost seems an act of defiance against such exploitation: “I’ll smash my own guitar, thank you very much.”
The Rise of Skywalker:
I saw this in the theater when it came out, but declined to watch it again. This movie is packed with activity, loaded with amazing scenes and state-of-the-art CGI and all sorts of stuff that I barely remember. The characters and stories all tie up, but none of it meant anything to me, though I recall it being entertaining, and I recall feeling like the filmmakers tried really hard to do….something. Maybe I’ll watch it again one of these days. No hurry.
Star Wars shows on Disney Plus:
The Mandalorian (TV series): Not great, but watchable. Gina Carano sure is stiff — and perhaps made it easier for Disney to cast her aside (that’s a nice way of saying “shitcan”) when controversy arose. They put comedian Bill Burr in this? That’s weird, but okay. Pedro Pascal’s filtered voice is strangely soothing. The series goes up a notch when Katee Sackhoff joins the cast.
Out of all the other TV series, the best by far is Andor, which feels like it has a story important enough to tell, instead of serving to promote Star Wars rides at Disney theme parks. The next best is The Book of Boba Fett, though quality-wise, it has the lumpy consistency of boba tea. Obi-Wan Kenobi is sadly disappointing, in spite of rallying in its final episodes. I can’t bring myself to watch Ahsoka. In each of these series, you start to notice the limitations of producing effects-heavy shows using the StageCraft video wall.
Nor have I delved into The Bad Batch, Tales of the Jedi, Young Jedi Adventures, the Lego Star Wars specials, or the many other kid-oriented, spin-off programs. I feel that Disney has stretched their Star Wars material too thin, like butter scraped over too much bread….oh wait, wrong franchise.
In summary: I hope you enjoyed this commentary, since nobody has ever voiced an opinion about the Star Wars movies and I thought it was high time somebody did.
