Star Wars debate

From a galaxy far, far away to the corporate-minded Excel centre, stormtroopers and Jedis descend on Docklands this weekend for a giant thirtieth-anniversary 'Star Wars' convention. But is George Lucas's creation a unique cultural phenomenon or just overrated, overhyped and over here?

For 'Star Wars' Against 'Star Wars'

 

A new fan at the 'Star Wars Celebration Europe' convention at Ex

‘Trust your feelings’ says Alan Jones

Some moments stay with you forever. One of mine was July 20 1977, the first London preview date of what became a rite of film-going passage defining its generation. I’d got to know Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford through my job at a hotel where the ‘Star Wars’ cast stayed during shooting. That friendship led to covert Elstree set visits and casual interviews with leading players in this little sci-fi B-movie that no one had any faith in. Fate had those interviews printed on the same day as the press preview. I received a telegram from Cinefantastique informing me of my entry into film journalism just as I headed to the Dominion in Tottenham Court Road. The auditorium was delirious with anticipation. Then came the gasp the moment the 20th Century Fox fanfare faded into that thrilling opening shot of the spaceship…

Working in Forbidden Planet for a while during the ’80s meant endless conversations on the darker merits of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ versus the soap-opera flaws of ‘The Return of the Jedi’. You put up with it to make a sale while acknowledging the reach of a franchise going beyond cynical marketing. ‘Star Wars’ touched people in ways few movies capturing the zeitgeist do. Its continuing effect, agelessness and potency still staggers. As a result, three decades on from personal attachment, I’m still writing about ‘Star Wars’ from my unique perspective. I feel akin to Peter (Chewbacca) Mayhew and Anthony (C-3PO) Daniels who made profitable careers on the fan-convention circuit solely based on right-time, right-place casting luck. I’m sure they will be in Docklands celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of their spectacular ensemble epic which changed genre perceptions and became one of cimema’s biggest ever success stories.

But I won’t be joining them: been there, done that and still do have the original ‘Star Wars’ crew T-shirt. And the Perspex paperweight grabbed at the post-screening dinner! But I understand people wanting to. To share their ‘first time’ experience of visiting far away galaxies, their memories of the magical moment when Good really did triumph over the Evil Empire. Oh no, I can’t stop myself, here it comes… May The Force Be With You!

 

Evil empire? Toy light sabres are 'helping George Lucas build his Death Star'

‘Don’t buy into the evil empire’ says Nigel Floyd

George Lucas’s ‘Star Wars’ not only imagined an evil empire, it gave birth to one. The phenomenal box-office success of his fairy-tale in space rewrote the rules of cinema distribution and ushered in the era of blockbusters. Thirty years later, multiplexes are giant concession stands, their screens filled with spectacularly stupid kiddies’ movies. These ruthlessly franchised products are not films, they are loss leaders for merchandising operations. More than any other movie, ‘Star Wars’ is responsible for the modern obsession with opening-weekend box-office figures, and what New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael called ‘the infantilisation’ of American film culture.

After the success of his teen movie ‘American Graffiti’, Lucas set his sights on a younger age group. Exploiting the vacuum left by Disney’s recent failures in the children’s ‘market’, Lucas cobbled together a mumbo-jumbo mythology out of ‘Flash Gordon’ serials, pulp ’30s sci-fi and the heroic quests identified by cultural anthropologist Joseph Campbell’s studies of archetypal myths. Aiming low, and bypassing his target audience’s brains, Lucas hit them smack in the eye, in spite of the film’s myriad failings: static camerawork, lifeless performances, rudimentary special effects, boring dialogue and chunky set pieces strung together like plastic beads on a child’s pop-together necklace.

As Lucas himself admitted: ‘I’m not that interested in narrative. The dialogue doesn’t have much meaning in any of my movies.’ This cavalier disregard for the basic tenets of storytelling is even more apparent in the prequels, where Lucas’s control-freakery had the actors moved around like toy action figures in front of a special-effects green screen. Therein lies the genius of the ‘Star Wars’ franchise – and its ultimate failure. As well as virtually inventing the global market for movie-related toys, it reduced cinema to the level of an eight-year-old playing with dolls. In fact, the ‘Star Wars’ franchise is more like the Death Star, sucking the life out of flesh-and-blood cinema to replace it with a desiccated digital simulacrum.

So every time you pay to see a ‘Star Wars’ movie, add that special-edition DVD box set to your collection or buy your child a toy light sabre, you are helping George Lucas build his Death Star. May the force of evil be with you.

 

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