When Did Star Wars Jump the Shark?

stm2 writes "As a long time fan of the stories, I watched as Star Wars transformed from one of the better sci-fi stories told to 'Whedon is my master now.' An article at the TechRepublic blog explores the weakness of the sequel trilogy and states that the Midi-chlorians are the culprit. Was it the Midi-chlorians, Jar Jar Binks, the actors? When did Star Wars jump the shark?. A bonus question: Did George Lucas redeem himself in Episode III?"

Comments

When Han Shot Second.

[SatanicPuppy]

Jar-Jar and Midi-chorlians were just a symptom of the underlying disease. He only directed one of the first three movies (IV, V, & VI), and in that one, there were people who felt like they could challenge him when the dialogue was crap...Harrison Ford was famous for it, and I doubt very seriously that Alec Guiness would have spouted some of the tripe that came later. Other directors on the other movies made the whole thing more palatable.

Fast forward to the second set (I,II,III) and you see that not only does he feel that he is capable of directing all three movies now (ha!) but no one dares to dispute his character or dialogue choices and unnecesarry plot wankings...Things thrown in just as an excuse for visual effects masturbation. If there had been anyone who felt like they could stand up to him, I can't imagine some of the horrible bad calls (like the dialog of the whole of episode II) would have gone through.

Episode III was by far the best of the new set, but I wouldn't call it great by any stretch. The movie fricking starts with them landing half a fricking starship on a landing strip, rather than, you know, in a giant self-made crater. I know it's sci-fi, but come on. I'd have bought one of them levitating them to the ground using the Force (which doesn't make a ton of sense), but not a fricking crash landing.

In short, the whole mess had potential, but the dialog was terrible, and the actors looked uncomfortable, and there was waaaaaaaay too much "Hey this would look cool!" without a thought to what it meant for the plot.

Re:When Han Shot Second.

[pandaba]

Having the prequels being mostly about the Jedi could have been great, if George had just read a bit of history and actually understood human nature.

All he had to do was show the Jedi at the seeming height of their powers but with extensive internal decay. They have high standards and impossibly strict rules, but depending on who you are, a blind eye could be turned on various rules violations. Show them slowly becoming corrupt with their power and becoming too fond of the respect and privileges of their position.

More importantly, show them as rigid fundamentalists: they think they know what is right for the rest of the galaxy despite being cloistered away from mainstream society for much of their lives. And they tend to jump in feet first in the various causes they intervene in. Would have been nice to see the Jedi take on a noble cause and then somehow leave the situation much worse than it was before. The current crop of neo-cons and fundie Christians would have been a perfect model for the Jedi. Or, for a historical reference, the mindset of the Imperial Japanese military.

A decadent, myopic Jedi, drunk on their own power and trapped in their ancient traditions, would have been a beautiful thing to see. And Anakin should have been initially cast as a teenager who would have then played the classic role of the outsider becoming an insider, and all the bullshit that is entailed in that process. He would have been the eyes of the audience, gradually revealing the sickness within the organization and the deep divide between what the group promised and what they actually delivered.

And this would have made the switch to the dark side much more logical, because there wouldn't be much of a difference between the dark and the light. What is good or evil when both sides are striving relentlessly for power?

Rather than presenting Obi-wan as an idealist, the films should have gradually revealed him to be deeply cynical. His language is full of the promised Jedi ideals, but his actions reveal him to be incredibly ambitious. He is one of the most capable Jedi of his day but he'll do anything to achieve his goals, and he will have only a limited attachment to the truth.

Telling the stories in this light would have made the choices Anakin made very ambiguous. Is he really going over to the dark side or is he just becoming a slightly different shade of dark, since the good guys are corrupt beyond all repair?

And it would offer a new complexity to the original trilogy. Rather than a clear-cut battle of good vs. evil, it becomes all about the return of the old nobility. Obi-wan lies to Luke in order to make Luke into a weapon by which he can accomplish his revenge. He knows the truth about the Jedi but fills Luke's head full of one-dimensional fairy tales and gets away with it because Luke is very lucky but not all that bright. Yoda is old and senile, and comes by his delusions honestly, thinking the past was much better than it ever was. And the end of the Empire only means that the old noble class will return to its former position of power and doesn't mean that power will now reside in the hands of citizenry.

But, I guess that version of the prequels would be too cynical for a mainstream audience.

Ep 3 almost redeemed him

[SlappyBastard]

Lucas almost redeemed himself. Until the entire dumb Anakin kills Padme sequence -- which by itself was probably survivable -- followed by Vader howling in girlish pain over a murder he knew he was going to commit. Also, it is hard to figure, especially after watching Ep 3, just how stoopid Vader had to be to not blame the Emperor and seek revenge for what was obvious: the Emperor pushed Anakin into killing Padme in order to bring him over to the Dark Side.

Lucas took a painfully simple view of human nature. Anakin would have had to have been dumber than a bag of hammers to not get the hustle that was played on him.

Until you actually see the Emperor toying with Vader in Ep 3, it remains believable that Vader would be willing to be the Emperor's lieutenant. When you see how obvious and clumsy the Emperor's actions were, it just makes Anakin/Vader look even more gullible and childish and simple than he already was portrayed in Ep 1 and Ep 2.

People, just relax

[El Lobo]

I have always been a big fan of StarWars. I liked the filmd from the first time I saw them back in 1977 (yes, I'm that old). I liked the original trilogy and I enjoyed very much the new one.

My secret? I just relax and enjoy the ride. I know that this is not MY story, not MY movie but the vision of GL (good or bad). Even today I enjoy reading fairy tales to my son. And inmensly enjoy Pinoccio, Sleeping beaty , etc, and I'm not trying to search the explanation of why the she woke up with the princes kiss... Accpt it: it just happened so.

With the new trilogy I had NO EXPECTATIONS whatsoever. Yes, the episode 1 was sometimes silly whith tehe kid, but I like it. Midiclorians? The force? No diference to me. The could introduce the "infinite Delphian gravity cloack" and I would have accepted it. Jar jar? Silly but OK, as a silly sidekick can be.. The effects where great in my opinion and adeded a lot to the atmosphere.

People bitch as well with any new chapter of a sequel: Harry potter, StarTreck, Lost, you name it. Me? I enjoy the ride . And like them all? I'm I stupid? maybe, but hey, I have double fun.

Re:People, just relax

[Opportunist]

Nah, what could've cured those midicrapians would've been a Sith who, rejected by the Jedi council for a lack of those critters, went and tried on his own until he became a dark master.

Though that would've certainly created another problem: The audience would've stood on the side of the bad guy.

Re:People, just relax

[Eccles]

I think a problem is the prequels aren't cheesy enough; they take themselves too seriously. Star Wars IV and V have a plethora of cheesy but wonderfully quotable lines. Can you think of the last time anyone ever quoted a line from a prequel?

Re:People, just relax

[mabhatter654]

to second that, GL didn't use the talents of the awesome actors he hired. If you watch the out takes, GL seems to pride himself on surprise script lines on the set... which is the most awful thing a director can do to actors and it shows in the performances. Even in episode 1 (perhaps by Ep 6 actually) , the actors were stiff, disconnected from each other. There was no ensemble performance, no benefit of characterization by "happy accidents" by having the group of actors bang out the lines until the word work on their own... Jar Jar was hated because the character's timing was off, he simply didn't fit the style or performance of the other actors and fans picked up on that as distracting.

That's why Pixar's films are SO good in contrast... they spend a great deal of time letting the actors play out the roles and it feels like theater performance, the actors are right there in the room, before the animation ever starts. GL seemed to pride himself on using technology to do what HE wanted and not capture the life his story had... and THAT is the art of story telling he seems to want to do so much. Stories aren't perfect, they grow on their own and GL ignored his own work, the work is own company did, the work of official licensees, and the expectations of the fans... a master story teller plays to his crowd... GL completely missed the boat. The movies were technically awesome, but the story fell flat.

Re:People, just relax

[Antique Geekmeister]

Oh, no, assume that there's a limited power output. Chopping through a human body is a whole level of power output different than chopping through a thick wall of reinforced metal.

What's interesting is the way that reaching the limits of power output doesn't deflect or block the blade. My working description is that it's it's a magnetically bound plasma. The material exposed to it vaporizes and the blade can pass through the gas, but try to pass through metal and you get fascinating magnetic interactions with the field.

Sorry to disagree.

[Spy der Mann]

I was 10 when I watched The Return of the Jedi, and I liked the ewoks. Specially funny was the part when Luke used the Force because C3PO refused to impersonate a deity.

I also loved how the Ewoks managed to defeat the imperial forces with lo tech. That was a big plus for me, and in the end, Luke defeated the dark side and rescued dad.

And what's wrong with selling toys? I loved the Jedi action figures and the little two legged transports.

In my opinion, the movie was perfect. Now let me tell you, it was Ep 1 that jumped the shark. Midichlorians, no father, and let's not forget the new adventures of R2D2 and C3PO!

Ep2 was less awful, but Ep3 really screwed it. Even I could have come up with a better plot! I was hoping to see Anakin's corruption and how he began desiring power and destroying cities all along. Big disappointment.

Re:Sorry to disagree.

[sumdumass]

Well, JarJar is what is wrong with selling toys. He would have probably been a lot less obnoxious and a little less racists if they weren't attempting to make him a dumb lovable merchandising tool that was appealing to all races of kids.

The Ewoks, showed signs of this too. It is the buyme syndrome of characters. They pulled a lot of unneeded stuff to get your kids asking for them. They were the Teddy Bears for the kids who weren't interested in the speeders, ships and action figures.

Episode one was the one that bit the bullet for me too. You could weed all the annoying filler out of the three prequels and probably have one good movie. It is almost as if they made one good movie and stretched it into 3 to get an extra 2 movie tickets sold. The matrix did the same thing and it ended up sucking too.

Re:Sorry to disagree.

[chromatic]

And what's wrong with selling toys?

Introducing new characters because they make good toys and not because they're important to the story is lazy and irresponsible writing.

Re:Sorry to disagree.

[Dun Malg]

The Ewoks, showed signs of this too. It is the buyme syndrome of characters. They pulled a lot of unneeded stuff to get your kids asking for them. They were the Teddy Bears for the kids who weren't interested in the speeders, ships and action figures. I find the Ewoks are perfectly cromulent, so long as you can manage to ignore the cutesy music themes used with them and the few small bits of physical humor/goofiness. If you think of them as vicious little dog/bear monsters, they get a little creepier. Imagine being swarmed by two dozen furry little spear poking, sharp fanged, feral mini-bears.

Episode one was the one that bit the bullet for me too. You could weed all the annoying filler out of the three prequels and probably have one good movie. It is almost as if they made one good movie and stretched it into 3 to get an extra 2 movie tickets sold. The matrix did the same thing and it ended up sucking too. Eh... Matrix seemed to me more like one good, solid movie, and two slapped together fanfic sequels. The sequels were so badly written that it's strangely believable that the Wachowski brothers(siblings?) stole the original script from someone else, like that crazy lady claimed.

Re:Sorry to disagree.

[vertinox]

I also loved how the Ewoks managed to defeat the imperial forces with lo tech.

Quick question... Why do Stormtroopers wear armor if it cannot help the occupant survive:

A.) Blaster fire
B.) Spears
C.) Blunt Objects such as rocks

This has always puzzled me.

Re:In Jedi

[Maxo-Texas]

Star Wars jumped the shark halfway through jedi when it turned from a gritty juvenile science fiction/fantasy story into a children's book.

Jar Jar Binks was one of the two decent things about the entire set of three movies (Palpatine being the other). He was the only source of minor character conflict (the only one to get a rise out of a jedi), he was abrasive, he stirred emotions in the audience. The rest of the movies felt flat, emotionless with a lot of special effects. And I put it almost all on the director.

Re:In Jedi

[sgant]

to be fair though, that wasn't really Lucas' work...and he opposed it big time.

He screwed up all by himself, no need to credit him with this abomination.

Minority of 1

[pokerdad]

I know I'll be in the minority with this view (possibly a minority of 1) but here goes.

The Internet killed Star Wars.

Long ago, in a galaxy far far away, when people didn't like a film they told their friends not to go see it, then let it go. If you look at the box office records for TPM, you'll see it continued strong in theatres throughout the summer, and hung in all the way to October. This is not the box office of a film that had great hype but no substance; it is the box office of a film that impressed more than a few people.

Of course, the internet says otherwise. For three years the only thing more hated on the internet than George Lucas was Jar Jar. I'll be honest, I have no comprehension of how people can invest the kind of time I saw wasted complaining about TPM.

Worst of all, I think that the numerous online complaints got to Lucas. I think that AotC was dubious and RotS was pure crap largely because Lucas was trying to meet the demands of a group that probably couldn't be satisfied.

I think that TPM is much more like the original trilogy than some people want to give it credit for; most likely because OT was from their childhood, and so it got rose coloured. (movie goers from my mother's generation certainly didn't have as high an opinion about OT as my gen did; perhaps that says something)

(If anyone is dying to respond to this post with arguments about why TPM sucks, my lack of response is because I wasted three hours a day for three years on multiple forums fighting this fight, and at this point I don't care any more. You think that GL ruined SW for you, well people like you ruined it for me.)

Re:Eh, yeah free spirit and all

[TempeTerra]

The original three movies use strong archetypal characters, a la Joseph Campbell, in fact Lucas gave him credit for the style of the characters. The farmer, the princess, the scoundrel and the evil lord. The prequels throw that all away for some reason and the stories are weaker for it.

Also, in episode 4 Obi Wan tells Han that he could learn to use the force. Han refuses because that's just not what his archetype does. He is only destined to not be a jedi because his character cannot make that choice.

Oh, and one more thing. I've just been reading the Grimm Brothers fairy tales, and they're full of stories about peasants becoming rulers of the land.

Re:In Jedi

[beckerist]

Nope

Jedi

[Womens Shoes]

Sure, there were lots of more dramatic signs of failure further down the road, but I say that the signs it was jumping the shark were all present in Jedi.

When I was eleven or so, when Jedi came out, I loved it just as much as I loved the first two. Then Star Wars was all but forgotten until some friends and I dug up Laserdisc copies in high school. And we watched all three straight through several times.

Right away it was apparent that Jedi was a major letdown. If nostalgia was enough to carry a film, then it should have held up as well as the other two, but it didn't. Though it has several inspired moments throughout, it also has far more embarassing bits than the first two films put together.

I'm not going to get into the details since that's a pointless argument, but I bet nearly everyone here, if they watch the whole OT from beginning to end will notice a dropoff in quality for Jedi. If you don't, then it's likely that the nostalgia _is_ enough for you. Which is fine, and honestly I envy you. But for me the nostalgia is gone, and only the first two films hold up for real.

After that it was mostly downhill. There were a few inspired moments spread out in the prequels... several in Revenge of the Sith, but again, not nearly enough to make up for the embarassing misfires.

The "Attack of the Phantom" re-edit of "Attack of the Clones", complete with re-editor's commentary, highlights just how far off Star Wars films got.

Re:C3PO, R2D2 in Phantom Menace

[MsGeek]

Threepio and Artoo were intended to be the witnesses to the entire saga from the very beginning. As 'droids, they are basically immortal, so long as someone keeps replacing worn out parts. So, who else to take notes?

The Whills, the mysterious entities whose journal is the "source document" for the Star Wars saga, get the story from Artoo, according to some accounts of Lucas' original ideas.

They were inspired by the two bickering peasants in The Hidden Fortress, the Kurosawa chambara movie which inspired the original Star Wars movie.

Re:In Jedi

[tenchiken]

Everyone is focusing on the commercialism, but that's not what has been the death of American storytelling. (Let's face it, Star Wars could have been the American epic). Simply put it's Lucas himself. He had a brilliant idea (space fighters like just plain old air fighters, plus a dash of hidden fortress) and a ton of time to rewrite it into something that didn't suck (and friends who were honest enough to tell him it did).

What's happened since then is that we have learned that no, George Lucas still sucks as a writer if he doesn't have 123 drafts, and the best editors in Hollywood (both film and written word). We also learned that he has no respect for the views of the fans (can you imagine what would have happened in PJ treated LoTR the way Lucas has treated the Star Wars community?). That's not to say that the fans are all knowing and powerful (I mean you Trek fans in particular) but the Mythology took root while Lucas was busy with Young Indiana.

Nevermind that the prequels took what sucked in the original draft of star wars, and brought it back to life, with predictable results.

If Lucas cares about telling a story, instead of making money or engaging in ego masturbation, he would bring in a real show runniner in the form of a JMS, or Eick, or Moore to run the story.

Probably universal

[DrYak]

The Eastern narrative commonly relies on two classes of hero: one who is pure of heart and destined for great things and one who initially joins the quest out of self-interest, but finds himself affected by the actions and idealism of his companions. The first type cannot succeed without the strength of the second, and the second cannot succeed without the first showing them the path to enlightenment.

and you can find this kind of narrative structure pretty much everywhere you look.
Even in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Zauberflöte (Magical Flute) opera (1791), for example, you get a pretty typical archetype 1 Pamino and archetype 2 Papageno.
I'm sure if I wasn't tired, I could also dig out some old greek myth I've studied presenting the same structure.

Such widespread occurance will probably mean that the myth is very old and did travel with humanity.

Probably, Ughr and Onkr did already tell such tales, when they got tired smashing clubs on each other's head and sat down around the fire,...
...except maybe back then, the bad guy was called "Darth Sabretooth" instead and walked on 4 paws.

Re:It has to be Jar Jar

[AbRASiON]

I have to agree, I only hated the ewoks AFTER people told me to, if that even makes sense.
I never found them painfully intrusive before.
Sure they did play a bit too big of a part in ROTJ when you think about it but compared to Jar Jar - good lord.
At least the writing / editing / etc was good in ROTJ unlike the prequels.

Also, I don't think anyone DOESN'T remember that sad scene where the ewok pokes his dead buddy's body.

Re:Fix What is Broken!

[schon]

Inherit implies genetics, but you can get things from your mother through blood, which are not genetic. (Think AIDS or crack-babies.) Lots of physical traits are a result of chemical exposure in the womb, and are not genetic, even though they were once thought to be. (A cat's markings for example - you can clone a cat and it will look totally different, because only the color is genetic.. where they appear on the cat is environmental.)

Back to the subject of the force - I personally thought that it was more like musical ability - you can teach almost anyone to play a musical instrument, but it doesn't mean they'll be any good at it. Others will have a very easy time learning multiple instruments.

Re:In Jedi

[OriginalArlen]

When did you get too old to view things with child-like wonder instead of picking them apart and judging them? mate mate Well, mebbe it's just me (or the way I was brought up) but I was taken to see A New Hope (then just called "star wars" by us) in December 1977, aged 8, in Leicester Square in London. (It was a birthday treat for a friend from school, his Mum took us.) This was an amazing experience for me (the first time I'm been in a fast food joint... I had no clue what any of these weird "burger" things were!) And it was the first film I'd seen at the cinema (apart from Bambi, and 'Fantasia'... my parents were kind of eccentric, OK?) Anyway, no previous film could have prepared me for the experience, it absolutely blew me away and I was practicing drawing X Wings and the Death Star for months afterwards. Er, make that years...

And the point I've got to at last is that I was analysing the living bejesus out of every frame *as I watched it* in the cinema - trying to work out what the hell was going on, and trying to capture as much of it as possible. It was six or seven years until Ep IV was broadcast on TV in the UK (October 14th '83 IIRC... whaddya mean, 'sad bastard'? I taped the soundtrack off the telly and played it back hundreds of times) and I and the other kids at school had lots of arguments about who would win in a fight between Han and Luke, or the rumours from those who'd seen Empire or Jedi about Luke being Darth Vader's son, & Leia being his sister... we got very, very analytical about it I can tell you, we made renaissance theologians look like casual dilettantes.

How Wude!

[robogun]

After the fifth time Jar Jar said "How Wude!" it became apparent Lucas had completely given up on any semblance of craftsmanship. Not only was a lot of dialog recycled, but even R2D2's beeps and whistles simplified, he might have had a vocabulary of 3 or 4 responses (compare R2D2's "speech" in ep 4 vs. ep 5).

Other things were extremely annoying, such as using an off-the shelf SR-71 Blackbird plastic testors model as the Nubian - even the same suggests the original - NO IMAGINATION AT ALL. Don't blame me just because I happen to recognize a Lockheed aircraft that I am annoyed. The paper-thin plot depth & Teletubbies-level conversation tells us who the movies were aimed at - it wasn't adults.

Certainly an empty-headed child can find "childlike wonder" in any Star Wars episode, but the same child can be fascinated & play for hours with an empty cardboard box, I was hoping for a little more depth from a "science fiction" movie.