The Good, the Bad and the Greedo

I stumbled across this amazing art site, Arethemost.com, here's a fun example:

Star Wars Revisited

I'm watching Star Wars (or as the neo-geeks call it now, "A New Hope" but as the nerds call it, "Star Wars") to see if it's apporpriate for my sons (yeah, that's the ticket). A few comments:

1. The ending sequence, the Battle of Yavin (a.k.a. The attack on the death star) is one of the best in movie history and has permanently elevated Lucas into the public discourse - it's why I even care about his later work and why I feel betrayed by his future crimes.

2. The Porkins Effect - This is what I'm now labeling the general status of Lucas' movie-making crimes. If you recall, and if you need help here's the online script, Luke's flight wing was the 'red team' with Luke as Red Five. One of his wingmates is Red Six, a.k.a. "Porkins":

INTERIOR: PORKINS' COCKPIT.

PORKINS: Red Six standing by.

Porkins, is, how do I say it, chubby. So, OK, I thought, maybe this is just a pilot nickname, like the Top Gun thing ("Maverick" "Ice man" "Certified Public Accountant"), but no: the official Lucas universe states that the character's name is Jek Porkins.

To review: despite all being White Anglo Saxon Protestant humanoids, many with classical Western names (Luke, Ben), sometimes they have made-up nonesense names (Han, Jek) that will be mixed up with real words (Solo, Porkins). And he's fat, so his name is Pork. As you see from the picture (more from here), many others have found this character problematic.

So what's my beef (pun intended) with Porkins? His name is childish, stupid, and unimaginative. And this impulse to turn fun, exciting, action into puerility is what overtook Lucas's latter films. This is related to the Ewok Effect, where serious matters are converted into cutesy-poo family-market pandering, but while Ewoks were meant to push toys, and thus demonstrates artistic integrity sacrificed for greed, Porkins is artistic integrity sacrificed for cheap laughs for six year olds.

True, both the Ewok and Porkins effects combined to create the dreaded, execrable Jar-Jar Binks, but my point here is to say that this impulse was present in even the first beloved film.

BTW, this looks like an awesome website made by fellow-travelers from my generation.

3. Inconsistencies between the Original Three and the Hated Last Three

Just for ease of use, even though the last triology were planned prequels, such that the first movie (A New Hope) is to be numbered 4, or somesuch, I declare here - in concert with all those born in the 1970s - that the original trilogy are to be numbered 1 2 and 3 while the last trilogy are to be burned at the crossroads at midnight and if they are to be referred to at all, they are to be known by their real-life chronology of 4, 5, and 6. Hear ye.

Ahem. Anyway, I am on record stating that the 6th movie, Sith, is the worst of the bunch. One reason it's atrocious is the ham-fisted attempts to make the prequels consistent with the original trilogy. Never mind that the technology of the latter trilogy is way better than what was to have taken place 20 years in the future, the biggest problem is that the entire tenor of the first three films - meant to resurrect the underdog resistance of WWII, think Casablanca - is totally undermined.

But besides tone, I now realize, seeing the first film again after a few years - possibly the first time since seeing Sith - is how many freakin' facts are wrong!

The best example is this dialogue between Obi-Wan and Luke:

LUKE: No, my father didn't fight in the wars. He was a navigator on a spice freighter.

BEN: That's what your uncle told you. He didn't hold with your father's ideals. Thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved.

LUKE: You fought in the Clone Wars?

BEN: Yes, I was once a Jedi Knight the same as your father.

LUKE: I wish I'd known him.

BEN: He was the best star-pilot in the galaxy, and a cunning warrior. I understand you've become quite a good pilot yourself. And he was a good friend. Which reminds me...

BEN: I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damned-fool idealistic crusade like your father did.

What do we learn from this:

1. Obi Wan and Anakin were about the same age, and lived together in Tatoonie as friends,
   
2. "Uncle" Owen knew Anakin and Kenobi and didn't want them to go off and fight for ideals in the Clone Wars,
   
3. Anakin and Obi-Wan were already, or later became, Jedi Knights, pilots, and were already enlisting to go on an idealistic crusade.
   
4. The Clone Wars seem to be already about fighting for ideals, the implication is against the Empire, and there were air-battles and tactics fought and implemented by Jedis,
   
5. The "ideals" of Obi-Wan, shared by Anakin, are meant to parallel Luke's desire to fight in the rebellion along-side his boyhood friends - and thus we can learn more facts from this nearly explicit parallel (e.g. Obi-Wan's relationship with Anakin was as comrades in arms just like Luke and Biggs).

Enough. Basta. None of those facts, which are fascinating and would make a good movie/trilogy, are present in the latter three films. Which begs the question that I will resist putting in all caps: Did Lucas watch Star Wars even once before he made the second trilogy? Seriously! It's like he forgot what he did in the first three, remembered only certain details through the Southern California doobie haze, and make the latter trilogy consistent with invented facts and not the real ones.

4. Han Shot First, Just have to say it, again. It's a motto for those of us betrayed by the Crimes of George Lucas. Pic from here.

Kevin Smith & George Lucas

The Onion AV Club has a feature "The New Cult Canon" (which is about what you'd think) and Scott Tobias' entry on Kevin Smith's Clerks (IMDB Wiki) is about as scathing a summary of why Kevin Smith sucks as it should be. I remember hearing the buzz and then seeing the movie and wondering 'why is this any good?' The acting is atrocious and the dialogue was depraved. The rumor that it almost got an X-rating for language has an empirical basis.

Tobias is also correct about the well-known Death Star scene, whose decent dialogue was ruined by the painfully bad acting:

O'Halloran and Anderson aren't skilled enough as actors to serve as more than mouthpieces for Smith's lowbrow gags and bits of philosophy, and they often choke on his reams of dialogue. (Smith has always been praised for his tart screenplays, but to me, he's a writer much too in love with his own voice; his films are littered with scenes that are allowed to drag on several beats longer than they should.)... That said, even Anderson can't trample over this fine monologue about the destruction of the Death Star in Return Of The Jedi:

It's (unwittingly?) ironic that Smith talks about Lucas because both of them share the same directorial trait: that while they may know where to place a camera directing is also how to get the actors to do what is necessary to be good actors. And while I can't necessarily argue about their camera skills, neither Smith or Lucas's actors come off as convincing. How else could Natalie Portman be horrible for Lucas yet in the same year be nominated for an Oscar in another film?

Backpost; put up 11-10-2009. Pic from here.

Sith

I've looked but I can't remember if I've written about "Revenge of the Sith." In short: it was the worst of the six. Note, this did not stop me from buying it (5 bucks, why not). It arrived yesterday. I put it in my computer to test it out. And, to show you how much I hated it, I have a Pavlovian resistance against pressing play - the movie hurt too much! [Sound of booting]

When my stomach settles, I will explain more.

{2009 Update: great pic from here.}

Fun Site of the Day: Bunnyvision

The whole angry-alien website is awesome. This team of high-grade weirdos combines spot-on parody within a delicious standalone concept of a bunny-verse.

My favorites: Alien, The Shining, and Star Wars (where they establish their bona-fides by siding with me on the Greedo debate).

Minty-fresh new thirty second movies appear to be added all the time. Enjoy!

New Hope

While I'm on the topic of Greedo, I should mention that I have not yet purchased the Trilogy for my kid so if anyone wants to get him a late (or early) birthday gift, it would be perfect.

Also, I'd like to point out that now that we have all 6 titles we can see that the best title goes to the worst film (so far). The Return of the Jedi is a great title, and yeeeeuch...

{2009 Update: I have since acquired all 6 movies}

Viewers Cuts

As a cineast, I watch as many movies as I can and naturally I will seek out a "director's cut" so I can see the director's vision in its full expression. Sometimes, the director was cheated by the studios (this is often the case with James Cameron; his d.c. of The Abyss, for example, is an awesome movie... I've never seen the released version, which is why I love it and most people barf when they hear the title).

Now, in the age of DVD, we can enjoy the deleted scenes at our discretion instead of suffering through a release of a DC. Sometimes, the directors ONLY release the DC on DVD so we're forced to live through their reheated bad judgment. Case in point, my beloved Blues Brothers. It is the second best movie ever made, and only the DC is available on DVD. The extra scenes are wild but wholly unnecessary - they should have remained extra.

Most of the time, however, my irrepressibly critical eye creates a "viewer's cut" while I'm watching the movie. You can see how the movie could be better, or even just good, were certain cuts made.

One example of this, in an odd milieu, is to eliminate certain narrative anachronisms (narrachronisms). I was watching Magnum Force the other day (got it cheap, had to see if it worked, hoo hah) and besides the long slow stretches that could have been pruned, the movie suffers from Black Sidekick syndrome - common until the early 80s - that the black character is both subordinate to the hero and one of the first to die.

In Magnum Force he dies, after surviving a few attempts, and it made no narrative sense. I propose that I should be allowed to change the movie. In this new digital age when we will download and watch our Hollywood treats, when addled tyrants can make Greedo shoot first, I think we should be able to change these culturally iconic films to fit narrative logic.

AFI's list of 100 Heros & Villians

AFI, a group of otherwise nobodies, has done it again with a list of the top 50 good guys and bad buys in movies.

Remember that AFI asks ordinary movie-goers what they think, so the list is skewed towards recent movies (e.g. 50. General Maximus Decimus Meridus, from Gladiator for a good guy and 50. Alonzo Harris, Training Day for a bad guy). I *am* gratified to see that Han Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi are on the list but Luke Skywalker is not. I have my own private list, but many of them are on this:

2. Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. James Bond, Dr. No
4. Rick Blaine, Casablanca
5. Will Kane, High Noon
14. Han Solo, Star Wars
17. Harry Callahan, Dirty Harry
20. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid
26. Superman, Superman
29. General George Patton, Patton
36. Rooster Cogburn, True Grit
37. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars
40. Frank Serpico, Serpico
44. Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, The French Connection

I'm glad to see that other people have slightly the same taste I have (except that they put some of the bad guys in the good guy list and good guys in the bad list):

GOOD WHO SHOULD BE BAD
10. T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia

BAD WHO SHOULD BE GOOD

9. Regan MacNeil, The Exorcist
11. Michael Corleone, The Godfather Part II