Resolved
Finally, something important. In the midst of so much pointless debate these days, here's one that counts--Star Wars On Trial. In this book, they discuss eight issues:
1. The Politics of Star Wars Are Anti-Democratic and Elitist.
2. While Claiming Mythic Significance, Star Wars Portrays No Admirable Religious or Ethical Beliefs.
3. Star Wars Novels Are Poor Substitutes for Real Science Fiction and Are Driving Real SF off the Shelves.
4. Science Fiction Filmmaking Has Been Reduced by Star Wars to Poorly Written Special Effects Extravaganzas.
5. Star Wars Has Dumbed Down the Perception of Science Fiction in the Popular Imagination.
6. Star Wars Pretends to Be Science Fiction, but Is Really Fantasy.
7. Women in Star Wars Are Portrayed as Fundamentally Weak.
8. The Plot Holes and Logical Gaps in Star Wars Make It Ill-Suited for an Intelligent Viewer.
My peremptory conclusions:
1. True. Lucas makes feints toward democracy, but his heart isn't in it. And while we're at it, the Federation is a military operation.
2. False. The Force can be used for good and bad, and the good side (ignoring Lucas's cheap shot at Bush in Star Wars III) is pretty easy to spot, and generally aligns with what we'd call religious virtues.
3. Haven't read the novels, though I assume they're not great SF. On the other hand, I doubt they're what's responsible for other SF not selling well--if anything, they've opened up the market.
4. False. First, there's a lot more SF because of Star Wars, good and bad. Second, there'd be a bunch of FX extravaganzas no matter what--Star Wars moved them in the direction of SF. Third, most of the "thoughtful" SF before Star Wars isn't that great.
5. False. Star Wars took an ill-respected cubbyhole packed with nerds and turned it into a popular universe packed with nerds.
6. False. The division between fantasy and SF has always been a bit overblown anyway, but as far as I'm concerned, it's got the hardware, and no elves, so that's good enough.
7. False. Women in Star Wars, like women at Star Wars conventions, are lonely, not weak. Sure, they tend to be damsels in distress, and the Jedi seem to be a patriarchy (Leia's alleged powers notwithstanding), but the women are still pretty tough.
8. False. Sure, there are plot holes, and a lot of Star Wars was jury-rigged. But when you're creating an entire new world, you're gonna have some parts that stick out.
I hope that settles things. But if not, please let me hear what you have to say.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:10 AM
12 Comments:
"STAR WARS" by the numbers:
IV,V: Two of the best movies of all time.
VI: The biggest movie disappointment of all time. [Sounds like a ripe topic heading for LAGuy.]
I,II,III: Bad, no matter how desperately prequel fans want it otherwise.
Todd
Generally agree with LAGuy but here's my 2 quatloos:
1. Yes. So? (I think there are plenty of unwatched films in the Archive which attempt to glorify collective acheivement of the common people)
2. Absolutely. That is its appeal.
3. Star Wars Novels are, if anything, substitutes for other poor Science Fiction. True these are plotty as opposed to idea-driven but in their subclass of the SF genre I think they are actually a little better than most (For the record, I've read exactly one "Darth Bane: Path of Destruction" at the request of my 10 year old son -it neutrally presents the philosophy, so-to-speak, of the Sith bad guys- see # 2 above).
4. If anything Science Fiction Films have been enhanced by Star Wars. They are still poorly written but now have great special effects!
5. Please check the meaning of "Popular Imagination" The pre-Stars Wars popular perception of SF was - "look! those are the guys we can give wedgies to".
6. OK- but what exactly is non-Fantasy Science Fiction- Stephen Hawking goofing on string theory? (I suppose the political types could say Intelligent Design or Global Warming Studies? )
7. Maybe but so are stormtroopers, droids, most non-human species and imperial officers. True there are relatively few women in Star Wars but Leia, Princess Amidala and the Green Jedi in the bikini are all pretty tough broads
8. I broke this into 2 parts.--Plot Holes and Gaps-OK but this applies to almost all of popular entertainment- they are not histories after all. Intelligent Viewers- I'm afraid to hear what the compiler of this list thinks is well-suited for Intelligent Viewers- ponderous BS & non-ironic versions Kirk's speeched on humanity?
In general, I think Star Wars bashing has gotten out of hand. The feeling I get from people who were kids when the originals came out and who didn't like the prequels is much like some grandparent who doesn't like the music of today. I don't hear/read much intelligent discussion about it. It's more like "In my day..."
Moreover, it seems that people like to just pick on Lucas. I really don't see anything in the prequels that's remotely as obviously awful as the movie of "I, Robot" to pick and example. I haven't read this SW on trial book, but I'd have to assume that they'd consider Asimov the kind of classy SF that we're being denied due to the success of SW. Forget Lucas, didn't producer John Davis mess that up beyond anyone's wildest imagination? How come there's no book attacking John Davis? Look at the movies he's been cranking out. Alien Vs. Predator, Daddy Day Care, Fat Albert, Garfield, etc. It's a non-stop suckfest.
Anyway, I'm getting off-topic and tend to agree with LA guy. Most of the charges are definitely "not guilty"
Maybe I'll have to read the book, but as far as I can tell, these are just easy shots at Lucas. It's hitting a guy now that he's down. His prequels were pretty bad, but that doesn't mean the whole Star Wars franchise stinks. If he had only made the original, he'd have done more than all those whiners.
1. True. I agree with David Brin and L.A. Guy.
2. I agree with L.A. Guy. Of course, whether a certain religious belief is "admirable" is subjective, so maybe Brin simply doesn't admire the Jedi ethics. And there are also some utterly despicable Jedi ethics, such as taking Anakin away from his mother and not even bothering to buy her out of slavery.
3. Every media-tie-in novel I have ever read (Star Trek, Babylon 5, and one Star Wars book) has been awful. I do agree that the vast numbers of media tie-in novels, which are prominently displayed in the "Science Fiction" section of every bookstore, tend to distract from real SF. But what's the alternative? Barnes & Noble has one entire row of media tie-in books, and three rows of true SF and fantasy. If the media books didn't exist, would they have four rows of SF and F? I doubt it.
But to truly settle this, we would need statistics showing whether those who read the media tie-in books eventually graduate to real SF. Are they a gateway drug?
Personally, I consider most mass-produced fantasy series to be as vapid as media tie-in books.
4. Utterly false. The turn to special-effects-without-plot didn't begin in 1977. It began in the mid-1990's, with Dante's Peak and Independence Day and the two comet-about-to-hit-the-earth movies. This was not caused by any Lucas movie. It was caused by the fact that CGI technology was now incredibly good. Just as 3-d technology led to lots of 3-d movies with no plots, the new CGI effects led to eye-candy movies like Independence Day... and indeed, to Episode 1. So Episode 1 was a result, not a cause, of this trend.
5. I think this may be true, but I don't really know how to measure the "perception of science fiction in popular imagination".
L.A. Guy's response seems a bit off-topic. Brin doesn't seem to be referring to SW-induced changes in the nature (or size) of SF fan subculture. Rather, he seems to be referring to the perception of what science fiction is held by those who are not fans. (Not even the perception of what SF fans are -- but the perceptions of what SF is.)
Star Wars is an excellent example of one subgenre of science fiction: the "space opera". Space operas have larger-than-life heroes and villains, a titanic good-versus-evil struggle, and exciting spaceships and weapons that are used as tools. There is never an attempt to explain the science behind them, since that's not the point.
I think that Brin is saying the following: Only a small fraction of written SF is space opera. But a huge fraction of SF movies, most notably the Star Wars movies, are space opera. So the average non-fan who walks by the science fiction section of a bookstore assumes that these books are all space operas, but they're not.
And I do agree with him, to a significant extent. However, Star Trek is also extremly well-known and isn't even remotely a space opera, so he's not completely correct.
6. False, unless Brin insists on recategorizing all space operas as "fantasy" rather than "science fiction". And this would be contrary to the established usage of these words.
7. Utterly false, and I totally agree with L.A. Guy here.
8. Again, false. An intelligent viewer has the right to watch whatever he or she likes, with or without plot holes. And he or she is free to either be annoyed by these plot holes, or ignore them, or invent clever rationalizations as to why they aren't actually holes.
But I think L.A. Guy makes the case a bit too strongly. If you want to spend your entire lifetime creating a new world, like Tolkien did, you can end up with consistency and no holes. And even if you just spend a year or two, you can come up with a pretty consistent world that doesn't have tons of glaring holes.
At the other extreme, if you have a certain amount of talent, but then your massive success gives you such an ego that you refuse to take advice from anyone -- like George Lucas and J.K. Rowling -- you will end up with a lot of plot holes, even ones that could have been fairly easily avoided.
Finally, I agree with Anonymous # 1 that the I, Robot movie is worse than any of the SW movies. So was Starship Troopers. But you can't blame Asimov or Heinlein for these movies. Someone once called Starship Troopers "a movie based on the back cover of a book by Robert A. Heinlein."
The film "Starship Troopers" is obviously very different from the book. It's certain that Heinlein would hate its politcs and would cringe at the cowardly military head hiding in the fort. That said, I love the film. But because of its intentional 90210-esque tone, I don't think many people get how smart it is. The politics are much more subtle than crap like "The Constant Gardener" or "Syriana," which many people seem to think are sophisticated.
And to get back to SW, I really don't think people appreciate how great all the political stuff is in "The Phantom Menace." Palpatine's overall scheme is genius and it's never overexplained (a big problem in Hollywood). You can attack many things in that movie, but the political intrigue is great.
what the hell happened to my post?
stars wars sucks.
i would rather talk about no fags in iran.
does this work or what?
god damn internet...
oh, i get it, no identity, well i am mark from michigan and i am in hawaii and you're not.
star wars still sucks.
Anon 4: If there was a problem with an earlier post it was on your end, since we didn't get it.
Todd: Most disappointing film of all time for Jedi is a bit much. Perhaps I will take that up later. But I do agree the existence of the prequels are a net negative.
Larry: 1) I think in general you'll got a lot of disagreement that it wasn't until the mid-90s when you started getting plotless FX movies. Star Wars is traditionally blamed for the trend, fair or not--people were making this accusation well before Dante's Peak. I agree that many critics overstate the argument, and that CGI made it that much easier to produce plotless special effects fests, but I wouldn't say it caused them. 2) Note that fans within SF can make finer distinctions than those outside--that's why I'd guess most non-SF fans would consider Star Trek a space opera. 3) Movies are not like novels. It's easier to control things in novels. Lucas had a deadline with a lot on the line, and he was still developing his script (which he'd rewritten numerous times) even as he rushed the original film into production and then readied it for release. Movies cost a lot of money and the clock is ticking, and he often had to settle for what was possible. And that's just the first film, which he never expected to get such intense scrutiny. Everything after that is retrofitting. He never expected to make sequels, and had to change things around yet again. I doubt in the first film that (SPOILER ALERT) Lucas thought Darth Vader was Luke's father. Then, when he decided to make the prequels, he had to tell original stories that also fit into a complex but fully known future, which is even harder. It's not about taking advice, it's about having to build something organic on top of something else. I doubt Tolkien could have done any better. (Two good examples of retrofitting, even if you don't like the films: Back To The Future 2 and Mulholland Drive.)
In general, I Robot and Starship Troopers did change a lot of the intellectual content of the originals (Starship Troopers turned it inside out, in fact). Whether this is a good or bad thing I leave to you.
I've read more than one Star Wars novel, so I'm maybe more able to judge the overall quality than those people who only read one.
All I can tell is that it's like every series of books, there's both the best and the worst.
The trilogy from Timothy Zahn, for instance, really feels like Star Wars, is well written, has a good plot, is just a good read.
And I agree, this just seem cheap shots at Lucas. People will always try to shoot down everything that is popular with that elitist attitude that if it's popular, it must be crap.
Thanks for the advice on the SW novels. Someone should start a website ranking them. (Maybe someone already has.)
I've heard good things about the Zahn books from several people.
My impression is that between 1983 and 1999, Lucas exerted very little control over the novel writers. And the three existing movies didn't really give a very detailed backstory.
So novelists like Zahn were much less fettered than "Star Trek" or "Buffy" novelists. And it's this fettering that makes most media tie-in novels inferior.
Post a Comment
<< Home