I recently bought the first three Star Wars movies on DVD. Having had time to watch the original three movies over the last 4 weeks, I think I can say that it wasn’t the prequels that ruined Star Wars; it was the sequels. That is, there never should have been The Empire Strikes Back and there definitely should not have been a Return of the Jedi.
I know it’s generally agreed that Empire is the best of the films and that’s mostly true. The budget was bigger & thus the special effects were better. The movie had a better director in Irvin Kirshner and the acting was better in general. Star Wars by contrast was grainy, had worse special effects and was full of Luke’s whining and complaining. Still, the story is a good one that is fairly well-told and is definitely self-contained. I.e., no sequel required.
I’m only speculating, but I think it’s a good bet that there was no original intent for a trilogy. It was in the wake of the huge success of Star Wars that The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were conceived. To accept those movies as a cohesive story, we have to accept a few inconsistencies along the way. I’ve accepted those inconsistencies my entire life, but upon viewing the trilogy with a new eye, I was only willing to get as far as Empire could take us and by the end of Jedi, I was sort of bored.
This video captures the crux that gives Star Wars it’s potential.
Ben Kenobi: A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force.
At that moment, the setup is perfect for the rest of the film. Luke’s father is dead and Vader is evil. Obi Wan Kenobi is filled with regret because his student went on to become a ruthless ruler and servant of the Dark Side. In that moment Luke goes from being a farm boy to someone who was betrayed by an evil marshall of the Galactic Empire. The small town kid finds out he has a more interesting past than he ever could have imagined. Events beyond his control catapult him into a new life that’s huge and scary. Furthermore, Princess Leia is still a real princess who is not a Jedi and most certainly not Luke’s sister. It’s dark and filled with regret, betrayal and death. It’s perfect and it’s all done with a minimum of muppets (no disrespect to Yoda) and absolutely no teddy bears.
In Empire we’re asked to suddenly believe that Vader and Luke’s father are one and the same. In Jedi Kenobi explains it all away by saying his earlier statement was true, “from a certain point of view.” At that point, all is lost and we must resign ourselves to the Empire being defeated by the aforementioned teddy bears.
The point is that the first Star Wars movie (before it was called A New Hope) is perfectly suited to be a self-contained science fiction story if it were only executed better. I used to think that meant re-writing the script, but after reading parts of the script I think it just means getting a real director. Here is the setup:
With story elements like that, how could you fail? It’s epic. Imagine a new version of Star Wars with focus once again on the story and not the special effects. Ground-breaking as the special effects were at the time, George Lucas had to work within limitations and not just bring things to their logical conclusion with as many light sabers as possible. Could we go so far as to ask for some bad language, sex and violence?
Help us Quentin Tarantino, you’re our only hope.
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