Fixing Star Wars

I've spoken before of my frustration with the Star Wars saga. In many ways, George Lucas reminds me of long-time X-Men scribe Chis Cleremont (wiki). Recently, Claremont has had some good ideas that his clumsy plotting and horrible dialogue made nearly unreadable. I often found myself reading issues of Uncanny X-Men just hoping that it would be better because, hey, I liked the premise!

Similarly, Lucas's idea for Star Wars is amazing! From the epic feel, to the detached Jedi and everything in between, the general ideas and concepts are top notch, which is one reason the franchise has lasted as long as it has. But, as most evident is the recent trilogy, Lucas writes dialogue very poorly, and his directing is pretty sub par. So how would I fix it? Well, let's turn on the Way Back machine and take a crack at it:

First of all, the first thing that should have happened is George Lucas should have found himself a writer or co-writer and/or director that had balls. Like, big huge cajones. Big enough to say "Screw you Lucas, that sucks!" Think about it; go back and watch Phantom Menace and imagine if someone like Spielberg, Tarentino, or hell, even Michael Bay had been on the set. You think any of them wouldn't have said "uh, George, maybe a 9-year-old protagonist isn't such a great idea..." Why are Empire Strikes Back nad Return of the Jedi considered the best movies of the saga? Could it have something to do with the fact that Lucas didn't direct or write the screenplays for them? I'm currently reading the novel of Episode II, and even though it's based on the screenplay, it's much better because the author (R.A. Salvatore) has put a greater emphasis on nurturing Anakin and Padme's relationship; you understand what it is in him that she finds so attractive - unlike the movie, where the entire thing feels forced.

Second, there needs to be better lightsaber fights. Episode I had - hands down - the best lightsaber duel this side of Ryan vs. Dorkman. But after that everything went downhill. Attack fo the Clones didn't have much (although I admit seeing Yoda kick ass was cool), and while Revenge of the Sith had fights a-plenty, they all suffered from the same problem, namely, too much facial close-ups, not enough wide-angle shots. All in all, very disapointing, made all the more so by the great beginning in Phantom Menace.

Third, make Anakin older! If everything else had been the same, Episode I would have been much better if Anakin had been, say, 19, instead of 9. In fact, make both Anakin and Padme their ages from Episode II and there are no problems. You can easily begin his fixiation with her - and wanting to protect her - and no one's asking "What the hell is a 14-year-old doing as a freaking Queen?" It has the added bonus of making it less of a continuity problem with Luke becoming a Jedi. As it is, it seems strange that a 9-year old was nearly not allowed to be trained by Yoda, only to have him go ahead and train Luke when he was late teens/early twenties.

A corollary to that, show me Anakin interacting with other Jedi. In Clones we're told (over and over) that he's arrogant, but we never really see him being all that arrogant. He's mostly being whiny constantly. You really are never given a frame of reference regarding what Jedi Padawans are supposed to be like - except for Obi Wan in Episode I. Contrasting Anakin with others of his age would have shown how he was acting different, and what that difference could lead to.

Finally, stop making it harder on yourselves. Lucas had to have known that these movies would be ruthlessly picked apart by fans, yet he opened up so many problem areas when there was no reason to! The relative ages of Anakin and Luke is one example; the (needless) introduction of midichlorians is another, and the self-contradicting "prophecy" sub-plot is a third. And that isn't even bringing up the stupidity that is Jar Jar Binks.

So there you go. That's how I would have made Star Wars better. I haven't looked online for any websites or anything to see if other people have thought of these things or others, but I'm sure they have. These are just the thoughts I have as I read through the Star Wars books.

"Frequent" is a Subjective Term

Yeah, yeah, I know I suck at this. I have some thoughts on why my posting has been so poor of late; I will get to that later. For now, the updates on my life.

• Work goes well. I'm starting to tell the difference between the different types of dirt that I see. Oh, how all of you poor fools miss out. You see a pile of dirt and think "wow, that is really uninteresting dirt." I see it and think: "Wow, that is a sandy silt with few (<5%)>
• The Reva will be proud of this one: I've started watching How I Met Your Mother. I stopped watching sit-coms (and most TV as well) when I shipped off to college a few years back, and hadn't gotten back into the spirit of watching them again until very recently. HIMYM is quickly approaching my favorite show, although it has stiff competition, mostly from Two & a Half Men, but also from another show that is a guilty pleasure of mine that I will not mention here lest I get mocked incessantly.
• My mom had been out visiting the past two weeks. I wish I could say I spent a lot of time with her, but due to other circumstances (see lower post) she had to leave early, cutting short our visiting time.
• Over on National Review Online this weekend has been Star Trek Weekend. They have some interesting articles up. The sum of it is that Star Trek was liberal, Star Wars is conservative. Except for TOS, which is more of a Kennedy-liberal, which in today's poltical climate is practically fascist. Some good reads. (I would provide a link to said article, but that website isn't working at the moment. bah!)
• In Transformers news, the DVD for the AWESOME MOVIE is slated to be out October 19th, so go pre-order people! The second movie is now scheduled to be released Summer 2009. I'm excited!
• The first Lakers exhibition game is October 9. Who wants bets as to whether the Lakers make the playoffs this year?

So Brandy noted her corruption due to me a while back and I would also like to note that I, too, have been corrupted. For the first time in 24 years on this planet I am excited about a playoff series in a sport other than Basketball. And I can name nearly all the Anaheim Angels starters. And I've been watching football like I care about it! It's definitely wierd, but in a good way. I've started reading TMQ over at ESPN and am getting about half the references. But I'm determined to keep learning about these sports which aren't basketball.

Finally, I have much to say about the style of my blogging, why I haven't done much recently, what I plan on doing to change that, and all that good stuff. But it will have to wait for another post.

George Lucas is a Scumbag

First, a Star Wars/movie question:

If someone has not seen any of the Star Wars movies, is it better to watch them in episodic order (i.e. Episode I - VI), or in order of theatrical release (the original trilogy first, then the prequels)? I'm sure that it is impossible to have "spoilers" for the later films, as most of the major plot points everyone knows, but which order do people think is better?

Second, George Lucas is an ass-hole. I watched Garden State this weekend (how I dated Candace for 4 years and never watched this is beyond me, but I digress), and dammit Natalie Portman is a good actress in it! It took me a while to realize this because for the first half of the movie all I could think of is thats scene is Episode III where she's bitching to Anakin about holding her. *shudder* Once I came to my realization, I was irritated at Lucas for being such a horrible director, and screwing up which should have been good movies. Damn you Lucas.

Now, following is a discussion on the current Star Wars novels, and will contain spoilers to things which have occurred post Return of the Jedi. Be warned.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Yeah, the dots mean spoilers, read on only if you don't care.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Ok. I recently finished the book Betrayl, which is Book 1 of the new "Legacy of the Force" series.

So, if you remember, Anakin became Darth Vader mainly out of a desire to save his wife, Padme. He had visions of her dying, and Palpatine/Sidious promised that the Dark Side had the power to save her; thus, in a Faustian manner, Skywalker sold his soul. This, to me, epitomized the old Jedi rule that Jedi's were not supposed to have attachments, as they often led to problems. So far, so good right?

So, following ROTJ, Luke Skywalker sets out to re-establish the Jedi order, training young Jedi and so forth. Now, I read one of the most recent books, taking place some 40 years after the fall of the Empire, so imagine my shock to learn that not only is Luke Skywalker a Jedi, and not only is his sister, Princess Leia a jedi, but both of their kids' are Jedi as well!!! And both of them are married; Luke to another freakin' Jedi!! To me, this makes no sense, and goes contrary to the way that I would think that the Jedi Order should be run. And this particular book proves my objections: Han Solo and the Galactic Alliance, whom the Jedi's work for/with, are on opposing sides of a political dispute. Leia (a Jedi, remember) goes out of her way to lie and decieve the GA in order to protect her husband. The fact that a wife wants to protect her husband is no shock to anyone in love, but, as Leia's own father proved, is potentially disastrous to a Jedi. What else will she to protect Han? Steal? Kill? To me, this seems to be the path to the Dark Side. The only one who stays true to the Jedi form, despite his attachments, was Luke, who did not interfere or try to pursuade another Jedi's decision to take Luke's son, Ben Skywalker, on a dangerous mission. Luke recognized that Ben's instructor was best suited to make the decision on weather he was ready to go, not the boy's father.

Sadly, this isn't the only problem I have with the mythos's changing opinions. The end of the book spends quite a bit of time painting moral equivalence between the Light and Dark sides of the Force, arguing that the "dark side" wasn't inherently evil, but rather, was used by evil people. The dark force user who was making these arguments was trying to seduce a young Jedi, Jacen Solo (yeah, Han and Leia's kid, raise your hand if you didn't see that one coming) into being the newest Sith Lord. Crouched in terms remarkably similar to Palpatine's to Anakin Skywalker, this woman talked about how the Dark Side could bring peace and justice, if only the evil Jedi Knights didn't supress it.

Now, another Jedi was with Jacen, and she wanted to arrest the dark force-user (as she was a confessed criminal), but Jacen stopped her - for the greater good. He saw a future of death and destruction if the dark person was arrested, so he killed another Jedi. This immediately calls to mind Anakin's killing of Samuel L. Jackson, err... Mace Windu, and annoys me because you would think that Luke and Leia Skywalker, of all people, would teach their kids the follies of believing the tempation of the power of the Dark Side. Alternatively, the Star Wars franchise wants to make the argument that the Dark Side isn't evil, in which case I'm just annoyed that they are doing so.

So now I'm trying to go back and read earlier books, to see why Luke made the choices he made in organizing the Jedi in this manner, and trying to read the newer books, to see if the moral equivalence continues. In both ways, I'm hoping that the new Star Wars books don't continue to irritate me.