May the Fourth Be With You!

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I first saw director George Lucas’s blockbuster space opera when I was seven years-old.  Up to that point, I had never witnessed a fantasy/sci-fi/monster movie crafted on such a grand scale, or one presented with such an incredible, unshakable sense of reality.

Unlike many genre films of the epoch (for example, Damnation Alley [1977]) there was never even a single moment during Star Wars when the “spell” was broken, or the fantasy facade broke down to accommodate a bad special effect, a lousy performance, a cheap set/costume, or some other weak production component. 

Rather, that atmosphere of reality – of a different and fantastic reality, no less – was rigorously and impeccably sustained for two hours.

And because of that fact, Star Wars was the most exhilarating movie I’d seen up to that point.  I remember coming out of the movie for the first time and feeling like I had been holding my breath for two hours.  Then, over a period of several weeks, I saw the film in the theater at least three more times...and felt precisely the same way.

The great joy of Star Wars, even today, all comes down to George Lucas’s incredible ability to ground his otherworldly “space opera” world in a reality that is immediately recognizable to all of us.  For instance, underneath the flashy lasers and colored light sabers, or the strange aliens and robots, the film boasts this driving, human feeling of yearning, of almost anticipatory anxiety.

Star Wars’ lead character, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) gazes up at the night sky of Tatooine, and he wonders what awaits him.  Where will he go next?  When does his life really begin? When does he finally get to grow up and chart his own destiny?  What is he supposed to believe in?

Lucas grounds the viewer in Luke’s personal “coming of age” story, yet that’s far from the only grounding the director accomplishes here.  Without explaining in significant terms a back-story, Lucas crafts in Star Wars a lived-in world which nonetheless points to previous adventures, and to a larger universe beyond the main narrative. 

It’s such a big (and yet consistent…) place, in fact, that it almost can’t all fit within the boundaries of the movie frame.  Thu,s at times, it almost seems as if Lucas didn’t make it up his universe at all, or build it all from scratch.  Rather, it’s as though he took a camera in-hand and actually traveled to a galaxy far, far away, filmed what he saw there, and brought that footage back for us to enjoy.

The film’s dialogue, filled with descriptors like “this time,” or “no more,” captures obliquely the notion that this adventure is set on just another day in this faraway galaxy, and that there are many, many other adventures to witness, and personalities to meet there.  The film boasts many half-explored implications, from intimations about unseen characters like The Emperor, Captain Antilles and Jabba the Hutt, to tantalizing hints about the previous adventures of Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, R2-D2 and C-3P0. The scenery or set design itself possesses a kind of unexplored depth and breadth. There's a staircase leading up -- where precisely? -- beyond Docking Bay 94 on Tattooine. There's the packed-to-the-gills interior of a bustling, junk-filled Sandcrawler.  There are even alligators in the sewers, so-to-speak, or rather a Dia Noga in the trash compactor.

The visual form of Star Wars reflects this narrative content in a most unusual and resonant fashion.  Specifically, Lucas utilizes visual homage or visual tributes to previous and well-established cinematic productions to help us -- the audience -- process quickly and thoroughly the essential nature of life in the world of the Galactic Empire. 

So even if we don’t consciously recognize or identify all the visual touches in terms of the original source material (such as The Hidden Fortress [1958], Metropolis [1927] or 633 Squadron [1964]), our eyes nonetheless understand the touches as belonging to some common “language” we all share.  Star Wars is an accomplished blend of the familiar with the unfamiliar, the past with the present, and with the (imaginative) future.  And Lucas’s choice to re-purpose imagery from film history is one key to help us understand his universe.  Underneath this technique of tribute or homage is a simple yet elegant message about man's nature, and not least of all, his spirituality.  In short, Star Wars offers a renewal of movie spirituality in an era of anti-heroes, cynicism, and the personal, idiosyncratic cinema.

“If there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from.”

While being pursued by the Emperor’s minion, Lord Darth Vader (David Prowse), Princess Leia of Alderaan (Carrie Fisher) hides the tactical plans for an Imperial battle station called the Death Star with a small droid called R2-D2 (Kenny Baker). 

With his counterpart, protocol droid C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) in tow, R2-D2 escapes to the desert world of Tatooine with the goal of finding former Jedi Knight, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) and soliciting his aid.

On Tatooine, however, the droids are captured by scavengers called Jawas and sold to the Skywalker farm. There, a young man, Luke (Hamill), hopes to leave his dreary life working at the moisture farm, and tender his application to the Academy.  But his uncle resists.  He doesn't want Luke to go.  He doesn't want Luke to grow up.

Soon, Luke and the droids meet up with Kenobi,  an old man who urges the young man to help him  reach Alderaan with R2 and the technical schematics.  After his aunt and uncle are murdered by Imperial Stormtroopers, Luke agrees to join Obi-Wan's quest.  They book passage to Alderaan aboard the Millennium Falcon, captained by Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and co-piloted by a Wookie named Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew).

Unfortunately, the commanding officer on the Death Star, Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) plans to make Princess Leia reveal the location of the secret rebel base, and destroys her home planet of Alderaan to coerce her cooperation.  

When the Millennium Falcon arrives in the Alderaan system from Tatooine, it finds not a beautiful planet, but the Death Star.

Now, Luke and his friends must rescue Leia, Ben must confront his old student, Vader, and they all must get the plans to the rebels, before the Empire and the Death Star carry the day…

For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the 

Old Republic. Before the dark times... before the Empire.

When you stand back and gaze at Star Wars from a good distance, you can detect that the film tells a very old story: the hero's journey.  But it tells that tale in a new way, and in a new (final?) frontier: outer space.  

Rather, it is the explicit details of the narrative that are new to audiences, from the history of the Jedi Knights and The Force to the explanations of such things as snub-nosed fighters, T.I.E. fighters, tractor beams, hyper-drive, Wookies, land-speeders and droids.  The way to make all these people, concepts, and ideas immediately understandable, Lucas understands, is to mine much of film history for visual antecedents, ones that make the story graspable for audiences, even though they don't know the precise details of the Old Republic, the Galactic Empire, or the Clone Wars.

From the film’s opening crawl, this is the very technique Lucas regularly deploys.  In particular, the crawl that appears immediately after the film's title harks back to Flash Gordon (1936), and the title cards used in each serial opener. In Flash Gordon, such screens conveyed important information about previous episodes in the thirteen installment production.  This crawl is actually our first visual indication that Star Wars is a pastiche, or a work of art imitating and honoring the work of previous artists.   It also sets the jaunty, almost retro tone of the picture. By recruiting this technique from the Flash Gordon films, Star Wars announces, specifically, its intention to be pulpy, lighthearted, swashbuckling fantasy and fun.

This was not a small detail in the 1970s.  The disco decade was an era when such swashbuckling adventure films were not in vogue.  In terms of the sci-fi genre, Dystopian-styled films dominated the landscape (The Omega Man, Soylent Green, Logan’s Run, and Damnation Alley, for example.).  Not coincidentally, the same decade was the age of growling, violent anti-heroes like Dirty Harry and Paul Kersey (of the Death Wish films).  

By commencing Star Wars with a 1930s-era, serial-like crawl, George Lucas effectively renounced contemporary cinema, and reached back to an older tradition, a “golden age” of more innocent fantasy fare. Not incidentally, the screenplay seems to share his point of view, describing the light saber of the old Republic as an "elegant" weapon for a more "civilized time."  In other words, the past inside the Star Wars universe, and the past of Hollywood history outside Star Wars were both more elegant and civilized than the present of the Galactic Empire/anti-hero cinema.

Our invitation to adventure in a more elegant and civilized time: Flash Gordon (1936).

Our invitation to innocence in a cynical time: Star Wars (1977).

After the opening crawl, Star Wars very much begins to deliberately ape elements and details from Akira Kurosawa’s film, The Hidden Fortress.  That film also used “wipes” as visual transitions between scenes, but more importantly, involved two pseudo-comic individuals, Tahei and Mataschici, who escaped a pitched battle, wandered for a time in a wasteland, and were then captured and enslaved.  They then became involved with the rescue of a Princess and the exploits of a General.  

This familiar sequence of events is repeated with the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO in Star Wars.  Two likable (and funny) robots escape from the rebel blockade runner battle, become lost in the Tatooine desert, and unwittingly become involved with the rescue of a princess and the exploits of a Jedi-Knight.  The point in both films is to highlight two unassuming, even “common” individuals who become caught up in huge, important events beyond their control, and even their understanding.  It's a ground's eye view of world-shaking incidents, of history unfolding.

In terms of Star Wars, the first twenty minutes of the film or so mostly revolve around the droids and their exploits, and this kind of “macro” focus is one way to introduce the Star Wars universe without inundating audiences with tech-talk and difficult-to-pronounce names or sci-fi concepts.  Matters of galactic import (like the Death Star), can wait, and Lucas introduces his core concepts one at a time without risk of sensory overkill or confusion.

Two common men get caught up in world-changing events, in The Hidden Fortress (1958).

Two lowly droids get caught up in galaxy-changing events, in Star Wars (1977).

A trek through the wilderness, their future uncertain.

A trek through the desert, their future uncertain.

The first hour of the Lucas film is, on retrospect, my favorite portion of the film. After things settle down a bit, there's a quiet yet vital scene set in Ben Kenobi’s desert home. What Star Wars accomplishes here, again, is revolutionary, if in an unassuming kind of way.  Kenobi quietly and steadfastly introduces us to his faith.  He describes the Force as the thing that “gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”  

Again dismissing the tenets of the contemporary and cynical 1970s Hollywood, Star Wars thus reintroduces “spirituality” to a cinema that had asked, explicitly, “Is God Dead” in films such as 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby, and also, to some degree, Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973).  Certainly  Lucas's film is not a strict re-assertion of Christianity, necessarily, but rather a non-denominational acknowledgment of man’s inherent spirituality and interconnection.  The Force, like belief and faith in Jesus Christ, is a promise of immortality in  the Star Wars universe.  We see this quality of belief depicted in Ben Kenobi’s heroic death – or disappearance – after his duel with Vader.

This famous Time cover set the tone for the late 1960s and early 1970s American cinema.

But Star Wars re-introduces spirituality in the form of "The Force..."

And the film even promises "eternal life" for those who believe in its precepts.

As Star Wars continues, the film spends more time in space, and indeed, in space combat.  Again, George Lucas chooses to make his “space opera” one that visually resonates in terms of film history.  When Luke and Han take to the guns of The Millennium Falcon to destroy several pursuing TIE fighters, Lucas explicitly references combat visuals from Twelve O’Clock High (1949), a film about American flying fortresses in aerial combat during World War II.  

Once more, viewers may not exactly recognize the specific reference, but they absolutely "get" the allusion to a previous  global conflict, and a previous form of warfare.  We may not understand how lasers work, or what powers TIE Fighters, but we do understand the settings and dynamics of aerial combat, even translated to space.

The underside gun of a flying fortress in Twelve O'Clock High.

A view on the inside looking out (from the same film) as a gunner targets evading fighters.

From Star Wars: Targeting evading fighters.

And again, an underside gun mount.

The battle to destroy the Death Star follows the same film making approach. Only this time, Lucas re-casts a critical set-piece from the 1964 British film 633 Squadron as his point of origin and point of audience recognition.  In that film, several Allied Bombers make a run against a Nazi base lodged between two mountains (essentially in a trench...).  As the bombers make their attack run, they  attempt to avoid blistering anti-aircraft guns.  There is also an initial false start, and a false detonation at the target site.  Additionally, enemy fighters swoop in to challenge the bombers and pick them off as they focus on their quarry on the ground.   If you’re at all familiar with Star Wars, you will recognize the setting, sequence, and outcome of the Death Star trench scene as being very similar indeed to 633 Squadron.

The point isn’t that Lucas stole anything.  The point is that when “you’ve taken your first step into a larger world,” to quote Obi Wan Kenobi, elements of that world need to be understandable immediately, so that other important concepts can be grasped.  In other words, if you’re focusing on something like how a tractor beam works, or what is hyper-drive is, you’re not paying attention to the details of Luke’s quest, and Lucas’s story.  

By updating old cinematic imagery, Lucas conveys his story -- and his message about spirituality -- in a way that we visually accept and understand, almost at once.

From 633 Squadron: the Nazi's strike back at attacking Allied aircraft.

From Star Wars: The Empire Strikes back at attacking rebel spaceships.

On the horizon, enemy fighters swoop in for the kill (in 633 Squadron).

TIE Fighters swoop in for the kill (in Star Wars).

In the trench, planes avoid blistering gunfire. (633 Squadron).

In the trench, rebel X-fighters avoid blistering gunfire (Star Wars).

I’ve long argued that Star Wars may not be a perfect film, but that the film offers a perfect presentation of a galaxy “far, far, away,” and I think that’s the point of all the tributes and re-framing of scenes from The Hidden Fortress or 633 Squadron.  But the deeper point is the one I mentioned in connection with the Force and Flash Gordon.  George Lucas’s epic space fantasy serves as an explicit indictment of the 1970s self-involved “personal cinema,” and harks back to a time of greater innocence and greater adventure in terms of movie narratives. 

I suspect this is the reason why, seriously, that George Lucas altered the dynamic of the Han Solo/Greedo sequence. In that scene as it was originally crafted, Han fires his blaster, and Greedo doesn’t shoot at all.  It’s an almost anti-hero, Dirty Harry-esque moment for the Solo character.  I believe that’s precisely the kind of aesthetic Lucas wanted to eschew and avoid, and so on retrospect, did just that by making Greedo shoot first.  Han’s act was thus transformed from one of preemptive murder to self-defense.  I’m not arguing that his selection was the right one, or that Lucas should have tampered with the scene, only that some of the changes Lucas has forged in terms of Star Wars tend to play into this very notion of Star Wars as pastiche, of a call-back to an earlier, more innocent generation of film productions.  

Even the idea to title his Star Wars films numerically and with melodramatic sub-title fits in with this tradition of the crawl concept of Flash Gordon which boasted titles such as “The Unseen Peril.”  That sounds a lot like The Phantom Menace, doesn’t it?

If Han Solo shoots first, is he Dirty Harry?

The two concepts I have discussed most frequently in this review are: 1.) how Lucas grounds the reality of Star Wars by creating a lived-in, recognizable universe and 2.) how Lucas attempts to hark back to a more innocent, swashbuckling, spiritual age of movies.  If you link those two concepts, you will arrive at my unified theory of Star Wars, and at the very essence of the film itself.  Star Wars presents a universe so authentically-rendered and well-thought out that you can truly believe in it. The careful forging of the world discourages cynicism or disbelief.  

The idea of “May the Force be With You,” not unlike the exclamation “Go with God,” is inherently about belief; about believing in yourself and your capacity to tap the spiritual center of existence itself.  Yet no one would possibly believe in Lucas's world or in that inspirational message if the special effects in Star Wars were unconvincing, if the aliens looked hokey, or if the space battles were confusing. 

I believe that by referencing these older films and older visuals, Lucas was making certain that we could relate to Star Wars. It’s a unique and intriguing technique, and I submit it actually works very well.  The later films in the franchise depend on vast, special effects set-pieces with digital backdrops and drooling creatures, and yet the greatest emotional thrill I felt during the saga occurred here, in the original Star Wars, as Luke and Leia swung boldly across a chasm together, and John Williams’ scored blared heroically underneath their leap. 

A boy, a girl and a universe.  The thrill and appeal of Star Wars are almost literally that simple. Despite making a high-tech film filled with laser blasts, spaceships, robots, and a complex internal history Lucas directs us through this complexity and gets right to the mythic, spiritual heart of his film.

As of today -- how many years after I first saw the film?? -- that pure-hearted (but intellectually-conceived) approach still works for me.  

May the 4th Be With You: The Force Awakens (2015)

At long last, the anticipation is over. The hype no longer matters. The time for spoilers, fan theories, and trailers has passed. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) is here, right now, on our movie screens.

And, it’s fair to state it’s a good film.

A good film; not a great one,

How do I make this particular assessment?

I’ll tell you. 

These were my expectations going in, posted a few months back on the blog when I was asked about what I desired from the film:

“I hope the movie is coherent, joyful (in J.J. Abram's words), and exciting.

I hope it has something to tell us about the world we live in today, while also transporting us to one of the most fascinating fantasy worlds of all time.”

I also wrote: “I hope The Force Awakens meaningfully reacquaints us with characters we love, and introduces us to new ones who are love-worthy and can carry the torch forward.”

That’s it. That’s all I wanted. That’s all I needed to write a positive review in this space.

The movie didn’t need to be the Second Coming, or the best Star Wars ever. I just wanted those particular Christmas presents from it.

J.J. Abrams delivers on quite a few of those deeply wished for items, and deposits coal in place of a few others. But overall I like the film a lot. It’s a solid, if not particularly inspired foundation for the new trilogy to build upon.

I’m rather surprised that what The Force Awakens accomplishes well (and what it doesn’t do well) failed to line up with my expectations.

For instance, I would say that the film is indeed joyful, though not particularly coherent or exciting. 

Furthermore, the action scenes are shot in undistinguished fashion, and don’t build suspense in any careful or sustained way. The film’s major threat -- Star Killer Base -- is a rehash of a rehash that never feels like a significant threat, or even a fully-formed plot-point. The film's big villain, Snoke, is a bust.

Nor does The Force Awakens speak meaningfully about our world today, as -- love or hate them -- the George Lucas prequels definitely did. Abrams usually shies away from any kind of subtext in his work (the much derided Into Darkness [2013] is a stark exception), and so perhaps it is no surprise that this Star Wars pretty much works on a surface, soap opera level, and leaves it at that.

However, The Force Awakens does transport us back to the Star Wars universe with a lot of gusto and energy. That fact also seem undeniable.

Where I feel the film succeeds most --- and the reason why I say it is “good” -- involves my final laundry list of qualifications. 

The film very meaningfully, and touchingly re-acquaints us with characters we love, and it beautifully -- and very successfully -- introduces us to new characters who are worthy to carry the torch. 

Harrison Ford is amazing in this movie in his attempt to revive and deepen the Han Solo character. He delivers a great, affecting performance. He is the film’s most valuable player, by a long shot.

And that fact takes nothing away from the rest of the cast. The newcomers -- Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver -- are nothing less than terrific. The casting for the movie is great, and I can already envision great moments from this group still to come in the rest of the trilogy.

Given J.J. Abrams’ track record, however, I expected the film’s action to be achieved in more accomplished fashion and the treatment of the characters to be only mediocre, when in fact, the precise opposite appears true.

This Star Wars movie earns major kudos because of the characters, first and foremost. They resonate, and never feel like cartoon stand-ins for real human beings.

The reason to return to this galaxy far, far away in 2015 is, clearly, the people you meet there.

“There are stories about what happened.”

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, conflict still rages.

The survivors of the Empire have re-formed under a new name, The First Order, and under a new Leader called Supreme Leader Snoke. The Republic is reformed too, and the former rebel alliance is now a resistance force battling the Order.

Both sides seek to know the location of the last surviving Jedi knight, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) who disappeared years ago, and whose whereabouts are unknown. 

General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) sends a hot-shot resistance pilot, Poe Dameron (Isaac) to the far-flung desert world of Jakku to recover a map revealing Luke’s location.

The First Order sends a sinister agent, Kylo Ren (Driver) as well. Dameron is taken into custody by Ren after giving the map to his droid, BB-8.  But he is freed from custody and torturous interrogation by a Stormtrooper who has rejected his training, Finn (Boyega)

BB-8 meets a wily scavenger, Rey (Ridley) and she takes responsibility for Dameron’s mission, a mission that brings her into contact with Finn, Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), and the Force itself.

Now these new friends must get to know one another even as the First Order prepares to launch an attack with its deadly new weapon at Star Killer Base.

“I have lived long enough to see the same eyes in different people.”

I have lived long enough to see Star Wars re-use the same plot-line three times.

The assault on the Death Star (Star Wars), the second Death Star (Return of the Jedi) and Star Killer Base (The Force Awakens) all repeat key plot points. First, there’s a weapon that can destroy planets in an instant. Then there’s a sustained fighter attack on the base. And finally, there’s a weak point on the evil base that can be exploited during that sustained attack. In two of the three attacks, there’s also a shield that needs to be brought down by a ground-team during the assault.

The first part or movement of each Star Wars trilogy so far also features the youngster who is taken under the wing of an elder-statesman or wise-man. That wise-man -- as part of the hero’s journey -- must die before the story ends. Anakin loses Qui Gonn Jinn in The Phantom Menace. Luke loses Ben Kenobi in Star Wars. And Rey lose someone who fits that role in The Force Awakens.

And then of course, we have our young hero. This person lives on a backwater world (Jakku or Tatooine), and experiences a mundane life as a farmer, slave, or scavenger. Soon, however, the galaxy comes knocking on the door of that character (often in the form of a droid), and the hero's true potential and destiny is realized. Thus we have Anakin/Luke/Rey.

A couple of things we can consider here. 

The first is that each trilogy serves as a reflection of the earlier one(s). This is the grand saga of the Skywalker Family across three generations, and in each generation, the same events (attacks and deaths, as noted above, for instance), recur. If one accepts this line of reasoning then the repetition of similar events in The Force Awakens is intentional, and an attempt at a genuine artistic flourish, a sense that although the generations pass, the story remains the same. 

Another way to explain this is that although our generations pass, we keep looking to the same, unchanged mythology (especially in terms of the Monomyth) to understand our world. Star Wars keeps giving us new characters taking the same steps because the overall myth underlining the saga doesn’t change. It is universal, and eternal.

Another line of defense for the over-familiar plot-line is this. Star Wars has always been first and foremost a pastiche: picking out and harvesting plots, characters, and set-pieces from other Hollywood and non-Hollywood movies and literary sources. 

By now, Star Wars is actually a pastiche of itself, so a case can also be made that J.J. Abram has fashioned the whole 2015 film as a kind of tribute to the 1977 edition, deliberately sprinkling in familiar ingredients and plot points. And that’s why we get the new cantina (a poor reflection of the original, alas), and the McGuffin device of the Luke Skywalker map, which fills in for the Death Star plans of the original.

Yet by the same token, not one of these familiar plot points (with the possible exception of the death of the wise elder) is handled with enough flair or color to mask the fact that we are watching a very expensive narrative rerun, or hide that the plot has little or no originality, and thus little or nothing to offer in terms of real surprise.

By comparison, the final trench battle in Star Wars was exciting, but also tense. The scene was incredibly suspenseful and it was constructed like an elaborate jigsaw puzzle. Jedi’s Death Star battle was a shadow of the first in terms of complexity and tension, but the film’s frenetic three-way cross-cutting between the Emperor’s Throne Room, the battle raging in space, and the boots on the ground on the moon of Endor, nonetheless created a kind of fever pitch intensity. The final battle in this film is totally devoid of any sort of escalating tension or suspense.

At this point, it’s a foregone conclusion in a Star Wars film that the evil battle station will get destroyed with just seconds to spare before Princess Leia, C3PO and the rebel leaders -- standing grim-faced in their control room -- buy the farm.

The film’s other action scenes aren’t any better, and many of them are actually tiresome. Much of the action in the film involves endless battles with Stormtroopers as they get shot up and blown through the air in explosions.  The point, I believe is to show the practical nature of this Star Wars. Real people in costumes, in real locations, with real pyrotechnics. This is a rebuke to the prequels, I understand, but there is a sameness to all the action in this mode.

Indeed, many of the film's act action sequences seem interchangeable, set in long, poorly lit, gray and red corridors. 

I said I wanted coherence, above, and the movie doesn’t always satisfy on that front, at least in terms of visual coherence. 

For example, it isn’t always clear when Ren is on the ground base or in the star destroyer -- the sets all look alike -- and it similarly isn’t clear whether the Star Killer Base destroys Coruscant or some look-alike planet. 

Leia mentions the Hosnian System, but as far as casual Star Wars fans know, Coruscant could be in the Hosnian system, right?  I had to look it up on the net when I came home to see that Coruscant survived the film.  Otherwise, I was going to complain that Abrams apparently possesses some kind of mean fetish for blowing up canonically-important planets (see: Vulcan).

Even the light saber duel in The Force Awakens is not orchestrated in any sort of overtly memorable or suspenseful way we have come to expect; one that would suggest the outcome could be uncertain. 

In this regard, The Phantom Menace’s light saber duel is far superior. It is clever, indeed, to give us a fight between two (or three, actually…) untrained saber fighters in The Force Awakens, but as a result of the characters’ inexperience, the fight lacks any kind of visual distinction. It’s just people hacking and charging at each other in a picturesque setting.

Although Abrams occasionally lands on a memorable shot (like TIE fighters silhouetted against the glowing orb of a burning alien sun), there are very few compositions in The Force Awakens that stir the emotions, or ignite the imagination.

There is no equivalent here of that famous “sunset” shot, for instance; that moment of yearning in the original Star Wars. Even against 21^st century contemporaries, The Force Awakens is a letdown in terms of its action and visualization. This film doesn’t have one-tenth the visual brawn of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), for example, which sustained a car chase for two hours, essentially, via dazzling cinematic chops.

What Star Wars: The Force Awakens lacks in spectacle, suspense and real adrenaline, it absolutely makes up for, however with a lot of good humor, sly banter, and strong characterizations. Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher bring grace and charm to their roles. They don’t get a whole lot of screen time together, but they make the most of it, for certain. Fisher has less time to make an impact that Ford gets, but she registers strongly. Ford is fantastic in this movie.

It’s funny, but Harrison Ford’s persona in later years -- Air Force One (1997), even Ender’s Game (2014) -- is, well, kind of dour. I wondered if he could find the Han Solo within, after all this time away from the part. He sure as hell does. 

The interlude that involves his discovery of the Millennium Falcon, a smuggling deal gone wrong, and some hungry living cargo that gets loose aboard his ship is, in many ways, the high point of the film. 

Here, Ford performs the miracle of reminding us of the devil-may-care young Solo, while projecting, simultaneously, the idea that he has lived through all these years and adventures since the last time our paths crossed. And when later scenes require Ford to tread into trick emotional territory, he is also up to the challenge. He nails every nuance of the character.

It’s also great to see returning characters Chewbacca, R2-D2, and Admiral Ackbar, but the film’s best introduction of an old friend belongs to none other than C3PO (Anthony Daniels) who -- with typical lousy timing -- inserts himself into the middle of a Han-Leia reunion. This scene really made me laugh, and brought back memories of the characters as they interacted in The Empire Strikes Back. Like so many moments in the film, this scene is delightful.

The new characters -- Finn, Poe, Rey, Ren, and BB-8 – are also handled very, very well. There isn’t a bad actor or bad concept anywhere in the bunch. These new individuals all manage to come across as vivid and real personalities, with Ridley’s Rey being the obvious stand-out. She’s a real find. The camera loves her, and so, I suspect, will every fanboy (and girl) in the universe. Rey is strong and resourceful, independent and funny, vulnerable and tough, at the same time. I can’t wait to see her character grow over the next two films and I am glad she so capably takes center stage here. I look forward to Rey being the central character in this chapter of the Skywalker Saga.

The one character who didn’t work for me at all in the film is Supreme Leader Snoke. He is composed of (bad) CGI, and looks like uncomfortably like Lord Chaos from Skylanders, right down to his choice of wardrobe. I didn’t find him particularly menacing or interesting. He’s like a weird-place holder or something, until the trilogy’s real villain shows up, or takes center stage.  My son Joel insists we haven’t really seen Snoke at all, only his holographic image, and that the real Snoke will look quite different when we finally meet him in the flesh.  I hope so, because I couldn’t take him seriously in this guise. Of all the characters, he is the one who transmits as a cartoon, a parody of the kind of villain we would expect in a Star Wars film.

Finally, I should add that The Force Awaken’s climactic scene packs a punch, in part because of the location shooting, in part because of the return of another major, beloved character. This is the best filmed scene in the movie, and will be a great leaping off point for Episode VIII. It feaures the visual coherence or poetry that the remainder of the film seems to lack. It is also, finally, suspenseful.

The Force Awakens is an entertaining and solid Star Wars entry, and that’s what I hoped it would be. I was satisfied with the film on many fronts while feeling that -- much how I felt about The Phantom Menace -- there is also significant room for improvement as the saga continues. 

The Force Awakens is a good beginning to the third Star Wars trilogy, but it's not the greatest show in the galaxy. 

As the nostalgia and hype wear off, people will begin to see this film and its values and deficits more clearly, I believe.  

May the 4th Be With You: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Revenge of the Sith (2005) finds the Galactic Republic embroiled in a Civil War with Separatists. Indeed, "War" is the very first word that appears in the film, on that famous yellow crawl.

Chancellor Palpatine (in office long past his term...) has been captured by the Separatists, and after an incredible space battle, Jedi Knights Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) board the craft of General Grievous and Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) to rescue him. During the mission, Anakin slips towards the Dark Side by letting his vengeance get the better of him with aan act of murder urged on by Palpatine.

Meanwhile, Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) reveals that she is with child, and this revelation terrifies Anakin, for he has been experiencing terrible visions (like the one about his mother, in Attack of the Clones.)

He fears that Amidala will die in childbirth and feels impotent to prevent this grim fate. Angry and feeling powerless Anakin seeks out the tutelage of Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), who tells him that there are ways to save Amidala, if only he explores the Dark Side of the Force.

Eventually, feeling he has no option, Anakin succumbs. He betrays the Jedi Order but in doing so, no longer remains the man that Amidala loved. On opposite sides of the war now, Obi Wan and Anakin duel, and Obi Wan wins, leaving a hobbled, burned Anakin to die on the side of a volcano on the planet Mustafar.

While the Galaxy slips into darkness and an Empire is born, Amidala dies of a broken heart after giving birth to the twins, Luke and Leia. Anakin survives, but is now more machine than man, locked into a mechanical suit -- a cage -- and re-named Darth Vader.

In 1755, Benjamin Franklin wrote "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." 

That is the essential idea at the heart of Revenge of the Sith, both in terms of the Republic, and on a more personal level, Anakin himself. And, in the tradition of all great art, this is a message that relates directly to the times we live in.

What has happened to the Republic? Well, to face a grave and gathering threat (the Separatist movement), the Senate voted for the creation of a "standing" clone army to fight evil renegade Count Dooku. In thousands of years (and presumably having vanquished many other threats), the Republic never required such an army, but rather was safeguarded by the noble protectors of peace, The Jedi Knight.

But now?

Fear-mongering often makes people make bad, rash decisions.

The first chip away at individual liberty in the Republic thus occurs when the Senate sacrifices the principles it has honored for so long, and puts a huge military force under the control of one man, the Chancellor. 

Then, by appealing to the Senate's sense of patriotism, the Chancellor is given further "Emergency Powers." He remains in office well past his appointed term, and then -- claiming an assassination attempt -- alters the structure of the Republic in the name of security. Now, he tells the Senate to "thunderous applause," it shall be a strong and safe Empire...but committed to peace.

This is how -- as Amidala says -- democracies die. The scared masses practically beg a "strong man" to protect them.

And he does. As he says to Darth Vader: "Go bring peace to the Empire." Alas, it is the peace of subjugation; the peace of oppression.

There are a number of interesting factors about this set-up that relate directly to America in the last several years (the time the prequels were made and released). 

The first thing to consider is this: we saw in Phantom Menace exactly how an Emperor began his ascent, chipping away at democracy a piece at a time. A Dark Lord and his allies, using the technicalities of the law removed the Supreme Chancellor (Valorum) from office, consequently gaining power for themselves. 

They did so by claiming that the Senate's bureaucracy had swelled to unmanageable and non-functional levels -- an anti-government argument -- and that Valorum himself was a weak man beset by scandal. The antidote was a self-described "strong leader," someone who could rally the Senate and get it to work again, someone like, say Palpatine. In other words, a man was chosen to replace a flawed leader, a man who could restore "honor and dignity" to the Republic.

In real life, of course, George W. Bush ascended to the Presidency, after the scandal-plagued Clinton. And after the attacks of 9/11, cowed Americans willingly accepted a massive new surveillance state with the passage of the Patriot Act.  And Bush had this to say to the World on November 6, 2001:"You are either with us or against us" in this war on terrorism.

In May 2005, George Lucas explicitly put the following words into Anakin Skywalker's mouth: "If you're not with me, you're my enemy."

And Obi-Wan's rebuttal? "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." 

Clearly, George Lucas has crafted Revenge of the Sith as a direct rebuke to the path America took post-9/11. Those who whine and cry that there is no such political message here are advised, simply, to grow up. You don’t have to agree with the message.  You don't have to like it.  But to deny its presence here is infantile.

What is clever and artistic about Lucas’s metaphor is not merely that it is timely (and frightening), but that Lucas tells his story on two parallel tracks. Fist, in terms of sweeping galactic governments, and second in personal, individual terms. Anakin goes through the same journey personally that the Republic citizenry undergoes on a wide scale.

Consider that he too is "terrorized," or rather, the victim of a terrible attack. Not necessarily by the Separatists, but by the Sand People on Tatooine. They kill his Mother. That loss hurts him deeply, and he pursues (mindlessly) his revenge against the agents who hurt him.

But then Anakin begins experiencing visions that he will also lose his beloved wife. So, like the Republic itself, Anakin willingly exchanges freedom and liberty for safety and security. He surrenders his golden ideals and turns to the Dark Side because he fears more "attack;" he fears the loss of his family.  He does not heed Yoda's warning that "fear of loss is a path to the dark side."

Thus Anakin is a follower. Might as well be a clone.

Anakin is prone to this weakness early -- as we can tell from his discussion on Naboo with Amidala in Attack of the Clones -- when he notes that a Dictatorship would make things easier, and thus prove preferable to democracy. Indeed it would be easier, which is why some Americans so gladly, to this day, accept the idea of a Unitary Executive.  But why would we give up our own paper, and hand it to someone else?

Only fear can make us do something so stupid.

For all his skills as a pilot and a warrior, Anakin is a weak-minded individual who would rather follow than lead; rather cede individual power and freedom to a dictatorship than make the hard decisions that go hand-in-hand with a democracy. 

Again, Anakin's path is a metaphor for the American populace in the post-9/11 milieu. When attacked, the first thing we do is scream for the government to protect us. We allow the Patriot Act to pass, and don't complain. We allow habeas corpus to be suspended...and we don't complain. We permit the Geneva Conventions to be violated...and we say nothing. We essentially become mindless, quivering "robots,' victims of politically-timed "Terror Alerts."  In other words, we all become Darth Vader: mechanical shells of our former selves, one now obedient to our Master. What remains of us appears humanoid, but functions mechanically and automatically; doing what is ordered.  Fear has programmed us to surrender our freedoms.

And when does Darth Vader/Anakin finally reject the Emperor? 

When his family is threatened...again. When it once more becomes a personal matter for him. He turns on his master not because it is the right thing to do, not for the ideals of democracy, but because he has been ordered to murder his son.

So the journey of Darth Vader is the journey of us. Anakin/Vader is explicitly a reminder of what happens to citizens when they cease to be rational; when they become so fearful that they trade away liberty for safety.

What remains so commendable about Star Wars, and in particular Revenge of the Sith is that George Lucas has given us a story about our times, but he has done so utilizing the language of mythology. There is no "Abu-Ghraib" episode; there is no "post September 11" mentality. There is no obvious metaphor for Islam and sleeper cells (spelled C-Y-L-O-N). On the contrary, Lucas has shown us that a galaxy far, far away holds much in common with what has occurred in human history; and what is happening now. It's all vetted on a symbolic level, not an obvious one.

Consider that the Star Wars films are about - over and over again - man's battle against the "dark side." Unlike many fans who respond to the films on a somewhat superficial level, I don't see that battle necessarily as occurring with light sabers, blasters and spaceships, but rather inside the human soul.

First Anakin, then Luke Skywalker is tempted to fall before darkness, to give in to hate and fear. The father does so; the son does not (at least in the OT).

But the movies repeat these themes (from one trilogy to the next), because that's humanity's constant battle. I can apply that battle to the context of post-9/11 age, and you can see how so much of it fits together, but you can also apply the films to other historical periods and cultures. The Rise of Fascism in the 1930s, for example.

That's why Star Wars resonates so much on a simple storytelling level. It's not just about "here and now," but rather man's perpetual struggle to fend off despotism. Revenge of the Sith tells us that people would give up any cherished right, just to feel, temporarily, “safe.”

It's no accident that so much of the final film's imagery is Hellish in color and dimension. Anakin and all those cowards who gave up their freedom for safety will dwell in that Hell of their own making.

Revenge of the Sith, to its credit, features a strong sense of inevitability. We know where it is headed, obviously, and yet are still shocked by the rapidity of the Republic's fall, and the regime change. This tidal wave of inevitability, which brings us right back to the beginning of Star Wars, is the film's greatest strength.

The film's first half-hour is its greatest weakness. Here, as if Lucas can't quite commit to Anakin's fall from grace (another reference to Hell, in a way...), we get a sustained action sequence in space and aboard Grievous's battleship. This set-piece is pacey, beautifully-filmed, and involving.  And yet, one can't help but feel the time would have been better spent on Anakin and Padme, and their feelings for one another, the feelings that, finally, cause Anakin to spiral to the dak side.

The film's  best scene, unequivocally, involves the Emperor's recitation of the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise.  This scene is fascinating in terms of the saga's history, in terms of the Emperor's back story, and in terms of the Sith.  It is absolutely riveting.  So many fans seem to hate the prequels, and yet I read constantly on the Internet these days speculation about Plagueis.  Clearly, this scene and its story of the Greatest Sith, works brilliantly. It is a foundation for a thousand speculations.

Finally, I love the film's great (largely un-discussed) punctuation or irony. Anakin goes to the dark side to discover immortality for those he loves.  He never finds it there.  But Yoda, and Obi-Wan, thanks to Qui-Gonn, discover that very immortality on the light side of the force (as we see demonstrated in A New Hope). 

Had Anakin stayed true -- and had faith in his friends (in democracy?) -- he might have had the very answers he so desperately sought.