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Star
Wars
Visually founded
on 2001: A Space Odyssey, and
scriptorially on Hidden Fortress
(and, say, The Dam Busters),
with a climactic battle scene laid out like a diagram for Sex Ed, and a coda
whose unfortunate resemblance to Speer’s Nuremberg rally design is like a
tangible manifestation of the script’s imprecision, “rear
deflectors” and all, Star Wars
is far more significant as a cultural phenomenon than as a film; indeed, if it
had not been as successful as it was, it would now be regarded as one of a
number of abortive examples of the Valley school of filmmaking.
This writer
recalls the way it swept the nation at its first release (John Carpenter aped
the phenom with In the Mouth of Madness).
It’s perhaps explained by a certain sense of wholeness Lucas endows his
fatuities with, a formal completeness derived from the video game.
Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace
I suppose the
distance between, say, American Graffiti
and this film is explained by the enormous success of Star Wars unsettling a delicate mind,
in the way Jaws upended
Steven Spielberg. This is a computer cartoon projection of a video game, whose
theme may be stated as the invasion of China by Japan (at the time the film was
made, this was still a favorite theme of the Chinese government, though the
event took place under the government overthrown by the current one), and as
such is beyond criticism, being really not a film at all, despite
interpolations from The Ten Commandments
and Ben-Hur, a profusion of
gratuitous wipes, the appearance of Jesus Christ among the doctors (Yoda, et al.), and the devil himself as
villain.
The most
remarkable thing about the whole venture, apart from anyone ever having
embarked on it at all, is the publicity that heralded it. Months and months
before the release, a ten-minute trailer with ample selections from the
imbecilic dialogue was given out to local television stations, which ran it end
to end on their news programs as news
for a solid week. And still it made money.
Perhaps this
might be understood as having been spread by word of mouth, like the old
country fair exhibit, “See a Horse With its Tail Where its Head Should
Be!” You paid twopence to enter the stall, and there you saw a horse with
its tail tied to a feed trough. Despite the temptation to take the fat fool who’d
robbed you and ride him out of town on a rail in tar and feathers, you
bethought yourself, you went out and smiled upon some poor dotterel you knew,
and told him of a most wonderful sight it would be a shame to miss. Thus,
countryman, you recouped a tuppenny guffaw from “a mirror held up to
nature.”
Critics like
Leonard Maltin who expressed a condescending admiration of this film should be
condemned to watching Saturday matinees (especially Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, a vastly superior film)
and eating Jujyfruits and Flicks until they are properly seasoned to appreciate
it. Most of all, it’s time to tell Roger Ebert where to stick that thumb
of his he waves in front of our noses, if it is his thumb, if those are our
noses.