“Mythology” is a term that’s thrown around perhaps a little too freely when discussing movie franchises. Does a series develop a certifiable mythos simply by racking up enough installments? Nah, and a big chunk of the audience probably wouldn’t want it to, anyway.
Chart the development of most adventure series, in every medium, and you’ll find that there’s always a very distinct turning point in their lifespan. At this point, the creators step back for a moment from the imaginary world they’ve been making up on the fly, look over what they’ve got and say, "Hey! Maybe we ought to weave this all together into something we can take more seriously." Of course, after this point, some fans inevitably won’t want to stay along for that weaving.
Out of all the endlessly quoted lines in A New Hope, the one that just nails the tone is Han’s smug assertion that “hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side.” If you re-watch the original Star Wars trilogy after years of being immersed in all the Expanded Universe stuff, it's surprising to find how little of the lore’s explained or even addressed within the movies themselves.
The Empire's really just a gang of goons who show up to chase the heroes and get shot down. You don't know how they got there. You don't know what Vader or Palpatine's deals are, either - - the Sith are never even identified on screen. And for all the aphorisms spouted about the Jedi way, Luke doesn't actually have to change that significantly to become the great reclaimant he’s supposed to be. He basically just learns some new, fancy tricks.
Luke gets top-billing, but the point-of-view character is really the previously-quoted Capt. Solo--a smartass who enjoys the bang and zoom of this world well enough, but doesn't particularly give a shit about too many of the particulars behind it all. As such, when the prequel trilogy puts the Star Wars oeuvre closer to Lucas’ admitted literary, filmic and mythological influences--venerated material that hardcore faboys are likely to pay lip service to instead of actually watching, reading or enjoying--backlash is unavoidable (perhaps even inherently so.)
When a series starts taking deep dives into its own backstory, some fans are simply going to be getting answers longer than what they expected, or even wanted. They may have kept asking who the man behind the mask is, but they'd actually prefer not to know the answer.
Knowing that Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress inspired A New Hope will win you points at any Star Wars trivia challenge. How many trivia hounds have actually bothered to seek out this old B&W samurai flick, though? Even if they already knew that General Makabe, Princess Yuki and their peasant pals specifically inspired Obi-Wan, Leia and the droids, they’d be surprised to find that the movie’s actually got far more in common with Episode I than Episode IV. Yuki evades danger by posing as one of her servants, just as Padme does, for one. More to the point, both flicks are dryer serials--almost like feudal travelogues--where hefty chunks of plot involve our fugitive heroes getting out of trouble through clever maneuvering and non-violent bargaining. You know, the “boring stuff before Duel of the Fates .”
Another thing about the Hidden Fortress: Makabe and Yuki are stately figures bound by rigid decorum. Thus, even while you’re compelled to watch what they do, they rarely get into the loud displays of personalities that bookstore screenwriting gurus insist are necessary to make characters compelling. Somehow, such a quality doesn’t hurt the opinion-normalizing Rotten Tomatoes' 100% "fresh" rating of this flick, but it courts plenty of messy tomato splotches when Phantom Menace depicts underage Naboo regents who don't have lives outside of public office in the same fashion. Or Jedi knights who're actually acting according to the way Yoda chatters on about in that faultless Empire Strikes Back--you know, ascetic monks who’ve been trained to totally master their feelings.
Then there’s all that political mumbo jumbo in the Coruscant senate in that brings Star Wars closer to Frank Herbert’s Dune, another source of inspiration that's also held noticeable influence from the beginning. The desert planet Tatooine may be a bit like the desert planet Arrakis and the original trilogy may have had a handful of throwaway references to the commerce of spice but the linkage firms up in these latter installments with the introduction of the Clonetroopers and the Force-balancing Chosen One (who respectively recall the Imperial Sardaukar guard and the messianic Kwisatz Haderach.) Emperor Palpatine’s successive shadow wars are bit like the Padishah Emperor's cloak and dagger with House Harkonen, too.
Here's the rub with Dune: it's often regarded as the greatest science fiction novel of all time, but its Byzantine mythos has been notoriously difficult (unto impossible) to properly render on screen. One might read the book and be riveted just by the details of the Bene Gesserit rite of Gom Jobbar, the rituals of Mentats created after the Butlerian Jihad and the "folding" of the Melange-mutated Spacing Guild... but that sensibility doesn't necessarily align with the one that'd really just prefer some old school flicks that make easy material for cute and ironic t-shirts. As posited earlier, despite what they say, many fans don't really want to get that deep into a long-ago, faraway galaxy.
Dune's steeped in mythology, of course--its hero's even worshiped as a prophetic "M'uad Dib." Likewise, the biggest influences the prequels bring Star Wars closer to are the various underpinnings of world religion that've been a key part of the franchise’s PR platform since well before the opening of any “Power of Myth” museum exhibit. Anakin has a divine birth like Buddha's instead of just being some hotshot pilot, his ruination comes down to him seeking out and misinterpreting prophecy like Oedipus Rex, the Jedi are an uncompromising monastic order instead of a set of vaguely-defined weekend warriors... and so on.
Read a lot of these classic poems, epics and tragedies and, yeah, you'll find the players don't talk the way normal human beings do. They're more often personifications of ideas, virtues and whatnot, in service of the conceptual point. Even if any other merits of the prequel trilogy are dismissed, it still does offer much to chew on, conceptually. It's something of a Satanic inversion of Campbell's monomyth, actually. Not only does the protagonist murder most of the cast, he's also presented with a whole host of intentionally undesirable qualities--legitimately undesirable ones, not endearingly undesirable--that no focus-group-minding studio board would ever allow another hero to get away with in movie spectacles of this magnitude.
Anakin’s a creepy stalker, he's prone to bi-polar mood swings, he's entitled (or "whiny," in other terms,) he awkwardly attempts to seem stoic or romantic, he makes a lot of seriously stupid decisions... and yet he succeeds in spite of all that simply because he was born to be the most powerful being in this universe. Add on to this the unstated implication in Revenge of the Sith that Sidious (or his master, Darth Plagueis) willed Anakin’s birth through black magic in a horrific perversion of the Jedi prophecy. Now the saga’s even more of a generational conflict; one that's largely taken up by a grotesque, cosmically-sized prank the Sith play on the Hero’s Journey.
This part of the series offers a departure from your usual cycle through Call to Adventure > Belly of the Whale > Crossing of the Return Threshold with a likable, blank-slate everyman. It passes the turning point described at the start of this feature to veer closer to influences that've been there from the beginning. The journey becomes markedly different, to be sure, but it does follow through on a trajectory it was always pointing to.
Are there missteps? Certainly, but no movie saga of this scope is free of them--including the original trilogy. Here we are, 13 years later, and the Phantom Menace's re-release is still doing respectably in spite of its missteps (close to $90 million gross at the time of writing.) If you’ve been reading all of this and rolling your eyes, then I'd argue that what you really wanted out of these prequels was a space pirate on screen to roll his eyes about everything, too.
I've never liked the films beyond a superficial enjoyment of the special effects and costume/set design. If you are not convinced the prequels are bad, watch the The Red Letter Media videos - they really show how terrible the plots are.
@ArbitraryWater said:
This has been the best way for me to rationalize them as well. Bad pieces of entertainment, terrible pacing, and poor performances from some otherwise talented people make them much less than the depth they added to the franchise.
The problem is that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the prequels makes sense. They're boring, yes. But the issues with logic are what destroy them utterly. So regardless of any allegory you may be able to divine from them, the fact is that they fail as stories completely.
im glad someone put up a fair fight for the prequels
Exactly.
People only like or dislike movies based on how popular it will make them feel. I wish I was as much of an enlightened individual as you. Oh well, back on the bandwagon with the rest of the mindless herd!
I honestly don't give a fuck about the Star Wars mythos if it isn't going to be presented to me in an entertaining fashion.
And it wasn't. Those movies were plain boring.
I think a good Dune movie could be made. It just can't follow the books as faithfully as people think. Star Wars is basically picking up the same messiah story of the Dune and Dune Messiah books. One is of a reluctant hero that is thrust into the role of saviour, and the other is of a tragic hero that inevitably takes the course of civilisation in the wrong direction (from the perspective of the future characters). No inner monologues required.
@Fantasgasmic: i wasn't expecting to enjoy that video but i really liked that guy's ideas.
And i also enjoyed the prequels
The most valuable point in all of this for me was the reversal of the hero's journey. Making a sci-fi big money lotsa CG trilogy about a totally shit dude is strange and maybe even brave. That's a good point.
Some of the ideas of the prequels are great. I like that they make Jedi and the Republic a bunch of petty, bureaucratic self-absorbed fools and pseudo-monks. It at least approaches decent gray-scale morality where the "good" guys are actually causing a lot of stupid things to happen. I like that the Jedi's hatred of emotion actually contributes to Anakin turning on them, proving that reason alone does not a human make.
But, to echo everyone else, it doesn't come together. The mythos as an idea is fine; the execution is bunk.
It's good to write articles that bring out what is good rather than bitch about what is bad. Thanks for that, Tom. Still doesn't make those films worthwhile.
I don't think that simply relating the prequel trilogy to several great films makes them good. The difference to me is that the both the characters in the prequel trilogy and the films themselves just aren't the sort that I care about and feel like they have no heart or soul. Also the dialogue largely made me want to gag.
Yeah. Well. Those movies were awful and nothing good came of them. Human interest is what made the originals work and Irving Kirshner, Lawrence Kasden and the original cast are behind that, not some fat bearded hack who set magic in space. And if you've never heard those names before, you really have no right spouting off nonsense about how some awful hackwork makes what they were so pivital in creating better. In a world where the prequels and the awful "remasterings" never happen, the Star Wars universe is more interesting. Every change Lucas makes to the originals and every choice he made in the prequels exposes the fact that he was merely a hanger on and had nothing to do with what actually made the series work and make it a classic other than the very first movie of the 3. It speaks volumes that the favorite film of 6 for most people is also the one he had the least to do with.
I grew up with the prequels. My parents showed me the original trilogy on VHS but I barely remember it. As a kid I liked stuff like the look, or Darth Maul. But even then I disliked the series as a whole. The only one I can completely remember Revenge of the Sith was something I went into with hope and conviction. I came out sorely dissapointed. It's not really the ideas, or the push but the presentation that was broken. People felt like dicks and often for no conceivable reason. Bad Guys won but it didn't have the impact it should have. Everything felt poorly acted, and designed. The older movies(still prequels) had parts that should have had better sequences or better followthrough. Their explanations were concise but in that their flaws became more inherent. The world started to matter, at least in this design, and they weren't finding a story they just made a path leading to it being crushed. A lot of people tell their complaints, but it's not about the concepts they tried to put in but the way they did. It struck the wrong chords. I could tell you all the great referentialism and ideas behind Spiderman 3 and his descent, but in the end you still groan when he does a pelvic thrust. When better movies do dark they can do it well. Fight Club didn't have a clear winner. Blue Valentine was really sad and emotional. Jar Jar being comic relief and going to save a homeworld that nobody cared about and wanted to get to the story? There are so many problems and bad design decisions. Sure people expect it to be like the old ones, and sure you can divert, but in the end it's how you make it that matters.
And for all it's throwbacks and concepts The Prequels just weren't able to make good on their design.
It's why people liked the originals more. Their design wasn't as deep but they did it well.
I am pretty sure it's Muad'Dib, rather than M'uad Dib, but either way, great article.
Naw, I'll just stick with they suck. Thanks.
All the inspiration and influences in the world don't mean anything imo. These movies aren't good. Saying that someone was inspired or influenced by something else doesn't magically negate the fact that the final product was poor quality. Unlike many, who probably are posting here, I didn't see the original films before seeing the prequels. I wasn't coming in as a person who was a Star Wars fan, I was just a person who liked going to the theater to see movies. Even with that, these films blow. At their best they have some some decent scenes here and there but it's usually a sum of 20-30 quality minutes out of a 2 hour movie.
Saying that they pull from mythos or cinema history is a zero factor on whether or not they are good movies. To each their own though. If having references or being influenced by something trumps writing, acting, and directing prowess, more power to you.
Reading the comments here is proof positive of the schism, even if not involving fandom... I unapologetically prefer the prequel trilogy to the original, perhaps because I watched them 1,2,3,4,5,6. It's nice to hear about what other works they were emulating, but really I'm just tired of people hating on the prequels. They're entitled to their opinions, of course, but the rhetoric from those that didn't like them would make you think it murdered a close family member for each critic.
A camera, B camera
@Stinky2 said:
Exactly.
It's nice to know that if I do one thing well, I can then shit the biggest shit I've ever shat and then somebody on the internet will smear it around into a sensible picture for me.