Star Wars versus Expectations

~The Paradox Menace~

At the time of writing (March - 2000), it is almost a year since the highly anticipated STAR WARS prequel THE PHANTOM MENACE hit international cinema screens and caused havoc. Everyone saw it, but several of those very same "everyone's" said that they were disappointed when they left the theatres.

In order to understand this paradox, we have to go back to the glorious days of 1977, when George Lucas' original film premiered.

I was personally a bit young to experience it for myself, but it is a known fact that the film, for some reason and totally unexpected for the producers, transcended the basic film medium and became a phenomenon altogether. It was as if a decade of sociorealistic psychodramas finally woke a public hunger for adventure and fantasy - a hunger that hadn't been as intense since the appeal of musicals in Hollywood's Golden Era. In other words, the timing was perfect!

Lucas - accompanied by the likes of Spielberg, Scorsese, De Palma, Coppola and Allen - was part of the prodigy film director generation that popped up during the 70's, when, with a few exceptions, locked Hollywood conventions seemed to trickle down into obscurities (such as "blaxploitation movies"). So it is not accidental that a "resurrection" of the cinema was due in this particular period. And STAR WARS served as a sign of optimism for the upcoming decade - a decade that, among other things saw Ronald Reagan name his space program after the successful film.

But the explanation as to why it became such a success digs deeper than the simple question of timing and of the public and social condition at the time. It has as much to do with the film itself, and the "recipe" behind Lucas' final product. I won't  make a comprehensive analysis of STAR WARS here, but suffice it to say that it obviously hit a nerve, a "socio-emotional" core  by utilizing simple means:

Sure, there had always been science fiction - from the politically charged monster movies of the 50's to Kubrick's modernistic 2001, but nothing like this. Coupling his own, imaginary universe - his artistic vision - with influences such as Kurosawa and the Flash Gordon comic books, Lucas came up with a tale of simple themes - the everlasting concept of good versus evil, of yin and yang, of lost innocence and of Freudian trap doors of the subconscious (a theme that was heavily touched upon, albeit in a more gritty way, two years later with Ridley Scott's epos ALIEN - explored here).

In other words, the STAR WARS trilogy became a household "concept" rather than a simple film trilogy, among other things causing devoted fans to heighten it to deic proportions - a worldwide clan or a cult was soon established (not to mention the extensive marketing and "milking of the cash cow" that made it an economic phenomenon as well - but that's another story...).

Now, most of us initially knew (because the opening titles said STAR WARS, PART IV - A NEW HOPE) that the first trilogy was part of a larger story arch - a nine part saga, and that the following movies would come eventually (now, though, it sadly seems that the third trilogy will never materialize). But little did we worry about a future, possible disappointment in a new installment, even if the possibility was there.

The intial trilogy and its inherent atmosphere was so much embedded into people's minds - not to mention the teenagers that grew up with it, that it grew far out of its skin.

What I mean to say here is that nostalgia often is a source of misrepresentation of the past - things that seemed bad at the time, may be looked back upon as rather good; for instance, a film score like STARGATE was not that well received at the time of release, but is highly respected today, in light of David Arnold's recent works - which again may "improve" over time. Mozart, as another example, only received proper fame posthumously, and there is also a reason why elderly  people often claim: "Oh, everything was so much better when I was young!", even if that is not necessarily the case (from an objective point of view). In other words, our own memories may fool us, and we tend to heighten our own past beyond rationality, simply because that's a past we strongly identify with emotionally.

What I'm aiming at with all of this, is that the ones who first connected to and fell in love with the initial film and trilogy,  not exactly were unbiased film critics when THE PHANTOM MENACE premiered more than 20 years later. Obviously, these former STAR WARS children/teenagers expected (perhaps unconsciously, since many did not admit it) that they would experience the same kind of thing today, disregarding both the fact that they had grown older and that their memory of that experience from the past also  had been "enhanced" over time.

This does, partially, explain the hysteria surrounding the premiere in May - 99, when people (especially those former SW fans in the US) spent nights and days in sleeping bags on the streets, waiting anxiously to pick up advance tickets, or more "deeply", to experience a resurrection of that long-lost feeling from the summer of 77, 80 and/or 83.

Moreover, everyone obviously ignored the critics (who, more often than not, slashed the movie with an apparent simple-minded motif of "being different" and distancing themselves from the public "low taste" - that's actually always the case, isn't it?) and stormed theatres unaware of the fact that they only were up for a motion picture, not a religious experience. And those not particulalry interested in the film or the phenomenon, went to see what all the fuzz was about...

So, there it is. This is the situation that faced a certain George Lucas when he finally decided to sit down and write a prequel, and then direct it 20 years later. Being well aware of the impact of his inital films (both for his own sake and for the film industry in general), he eventually came up with something that made sense to him (remember, he had always had a certain idea of the basic plot line in all nine movies, so TPM consisted mostly of "materializing" that idea into a concrete synopsis/universe). And he was himself, as the marketing wiz that he is,  part of the escalating level of expectations by rereleasing the first trilogy in theatres - remastered and with extra footage - in 1997, as a buildup to the new film. But he obviously did not expect the extent of the following, paradoxical situation that occured when people stormed theatres while simultaneously being somewhat reserved about the artistic quality of the film they had just seen (judging from frequent street interviews after the screenings). The only ones that truly seemed to unreservedly enjoy it, were the hardcore SW fans that would probably have enjoyed it no matter its artistic merit - "after all, it's STAR WARS"! (the very phrasing of this sentence, by the way, goes to show its stature as a phenomenon).

And although I too tend to put myself in that latter category (as you may have gathered by now), I cannot for the sake of me (even from a socalled objective viewpoint) understand how someone can explain its "failure" with anything other than referring to the monumental EXPECTATIONS that faced it. Only a phenomenon as STAR WARS is, can cause this kind of ambiguity, and time is, as I've mentioned,  also very instrumental in forming these expectations.

Surely, TPM wasn't that bad when compared to other recent sci fi films? When socalled connaiseurs claim that the well known "formulae" of STAR WARS 1977, is somewhat different and altered for this prequel, that the characters weren't as well rounded as in the first one or whatever, that is simply due to the fact that the characters in the first film are so strongly printed into the public mentality, that they have become stereotypes or household references, so to speak.

I personally loved TPM, and found that it improved radically upon repeated viewings (which again goes to prove[?] my theory that films and works of art "improve" in people's minds over time). I even found that the much-hated Jar-Jar figure wasn't that bad after all (I've always thought that a comic sidekick, albeit perhaps a somewhat more funny one than this character, is essential in this kind of space opera, in order to avoid a self-aggrandizing seriousness).  The Jar-Jar case is a prime example of how people just love to throw themselves on a collective hate-wave or bandwagon, ignoring the actual source of critique, and mindlessly agreeing and self-fulfilling their influenced  perception of the character when viewing the film for the first time. But that, too, is another topic altogether.

Let me end then, to say that I don't think it was Lucas' film that failed as such (although it of course had its shortcomings), but rather the public expectations that heightened it to something of a Deity it could never be or become. And in that case, those selfsame expectations were the real phantom menace at work....