Ya know folks, I wasn't going to publish any more STAR WARS comments till I saw the film at 12:01am (Cool Standard Time) here in Austin. But... Well, I've been waiting for one of the early DAY ONE reviewers to come to the same conclusion I did immediately upon reading their reviews.
Tuesday Night at the Metropolitan here in Austin, I was offered a press pass to see STAR WARS EPISODE ONE, I turned the fella down to rejoin the line. Why? Because upon reading those reviews, I realized that I need the line. I need to become a kid with all my fellow kids in line. I need to sit in my 'indian sweat box' and let go of everything I've learned. I need to be a kid.
Yesterday, to test my theory, I started doing 'Jar Jar' lines for some kids that visited the line. They all started laughing and giggling and that was just having a fat redhead doing the lines, not the eyes on stalks big lipped Jar Jar. Kids will love Jar Jar. I saw them coming out of the press screening with drool hitting the ground. And one adult film critic here in Austin commented to my father, "I've grown up, but the film didn't grow with me."
BAM! My point exactly. It's real easy to say, "I'm going into this film with a child's perspective" and it's another thing entirely to do it. So... Beginning Saturday Night at the Metropolitan theater here in Austin, Me... and my fellow line folks will become children through the Early Wednesday hours. We'll help each other to acheive this. We'll be revisiting films that make us children. We'll pull out our OLD games. We'll sing early eighties tunes together. We'll devolve.
Why go through this much effort? Because.... remember when you first saw Star Wars? Remember that feeling? I want that again. I don't know if I can get it, but I'm gonna try. And I might end up like Christopher Reeve did on that hotel bed in SOMEWHERE IN TIME, but I'll have a smile. Mind over time.... I can try.... I hope you try... and most of all, I hope it works.
Moriarty did the professional thing. He saw the movie as it is to our generation. I want to see the movie through the eyes of the next generation. I can't wait to write about this Wednesday...
Yesterday, to test my theory, I started doing 'Jar Jar' lines for some kids that visited the line. They all started laughing and giggling and that was just having a fat redhead doing the lines, not the eyes on stalks big lipped Jar Jar. Kids will love Jar Jar. I saw them coming out of the press screening with drool hitting the ground. And one adult film critic here in Austin commented to my father, "I've grown up, but the film didn't grow with me."
BAM! My point exactly. It's real easy to say, "I'm going into this film with a child's perspective" and it's another thing entirely to do it. So... Beginning Saturday Night at the Metropolitan theater here in Austin, Me... and my fellow line folks will become children through the Early Wednesday hours. We'll help each other to acheive this. We'll be revisiting films that make us children. We'll pull out our OLD games. We'll sing early eighties tunes together. We'll devolve.
Why go through this much effort? Because.... remember when you first saw Star Wars? Remember that feeling? I want that again. I don't know if I can get it, but I'm gonna try. And I might end up like Christopher Reeve did on that hotel bed in SOMEWHERE IN TIME, but I'll have a smile. Mind over time.... I can try.... I hope you try... and most of all, I hope it works.
Moriarty did the professional thing. He saw the movie as it is to our generation. I want to see the movie through the eyes of the next generation. I can't wait to write about this Wednesday...
Moriarty did the professional thing. He saw the movie as it is to our generation. I want to see the movie through the eyes of the next generation. I can't wait to write about this Wednesday...
Hi, there, Harry. You know, it's been exactly one week since I was fortunate enough to finally see STAR WARS EPISODE ONE at the Exhibitor Screening here in Los Angeles. I posted a review of the film to your website the following day, which you added to a long line of similar reviews. I was severely critical of the film, and I guess I had some interesting things to say, because I actually saw a line of my review quoted in the New York Times (yay, me!, feeling like Navin R. Johnson finding his name in the phone book).
But it has been a week. A long week. A trying and difficult week for Star Wars fans everywhere. It seems our worst fears have come to life. The possibility that EPISODE ONE could be anything less than perfect was, at best, a denied consideration. And the plethora of people eager to get online and crow about having seen it, and then tear into it mercilessly, surprised even me...AND I WAS ONE OF THEM. Shame on me.
It has been a week...and I regret having written a negative review of the film. Because I think I was wrong. No...I KNOW I WAS WRONG.
This became clear to me today after having a phone conversation with a pal at 20th Fox who got to see an employee screening last night. He came away giving the film a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, and described himself as "bummed". And I tried to talk him into seeing the movie as I saw it.
But, wait...a week earlier I had walked away from the movie with much the same reaction. What had happened to me?
Here's what...
After 16 years of waiting, I must have made EPISODE ONE, TWO and THREE in my head a thousand times. I knew what it would look like, sound like, and feel like. And in that theatre on Tuesday night, what I saw quite simply did not match my vision...and I faulted the movie and it's creator for that insult to my imagination. I became a lousy, small town film critic embittered because I didn't get EXACTLY what I wanted.
And that is NOT THE WAY TO WATCH THIS MOVIE.
I faulted the film for not having more adult themes, for playing too "young", and in that moment I became one of those movie know-it-alls who can quote box-office totals from five summers ago, who can name all 12 producers of "Cliffhanger" off the top of his head, one of those people who breaks a movie down into "beats" and uses terms like "demographic" and "long term repeatability". In short, I became a wormy studio exec faulting the film because it was not one I would have "green-lighted" without more "notes" from the "creative executives" (<-- oxymoron alert!).
And that is NOT THE WAY TO WATCH THIS MOVIE.
But most of all I faulted the film because after 16 years of loyalty to the Star Wars mythos, after several thousand dollars spent on various trinkets and Jedi bric-a-brac, after two years of telling people that the greatest adventure movie of the decade was coming...and coming...and coming...I felt entitled to a reward. I wanted a valentine to my Star Wars Generation (21-30 years of age). And EPISODE ONE is, quite frankly, not it. EPISODE ONE is a valentine to my generation's OFFSPRING. And I was "bummed" about it.
And that is also NOT THE WAY TO WATCH THIS MOVIE.
In order to appreciate EPISODE ONE, you must see it through an 8-year-old's eyes. The story is not complex, because there's only so much an 8-year-old mind can assimilate in two hours. The characters are not deep and multi-faceted because 8-year-olds see behavior only in terms of right and wrong, black and white, zero ambivalence. The special effects, when less than photorealistic, will not cause much more than a mild subliminal distraction to the child mind, accustomed as it is to the uniformly awful animation of contemporary afterschool television. You simply must come to terms with the fact that STAR WARS EPISODE ONE IS NOT FOR YOU. It is for the kid in you, the blank slate who doesn't know Kubrick from Coolio, who has never read William Goldman or Pauline Kael, who has never been betrayed by a friend or rejected by a lover or confused by the big bad world at large.
This may sound like simplification, like another lame attempt to justify weaknesses in a movie rather than accept them. But think about it...
It's easy to knock on Max Rebo's band and the Ewoks from "Jedi", but I bet you dollars to donuts that most of the so-called "Ewok Haters" did not adopt that attitude until the late 80's or early 90's. These same people walked out of "Jedi" during that first week of release in 1983 with their hair blown back, their cheeks flushed, and convinced they had had some kind of adolescent epiphany. You know who you are, Ewok Haters. Now, would you have had the SAME REACTION if you saw "Jedi" for the first time yesterday? Of course not. Because "Jedi" wasn't meant for the 30-year-old you. It was meant for the 7-13 year old you. EPISODE ONE works the same way.
Think about the first time you saw "E.T." as a kid. The quarantine hospital bubble thing, remember? E.T. died, remember? You cried, remember? And when little Drew Barrymore turned to Dee Wallace and said "I wish he'd come back. I wish, I wish, I wish", the same exact words were bouncing around in your own tear-soaked mind. And what did Speilberg do? He defied every law of logic, every rule of conventional storytelling that exists...and brought E.T. back to life for no other reason than because every kid in the world wished it to be so. And you cried even harder, didn't you? That it made no "logical" sense was irrelevant. It made sense to YOU. EPISODE ONE works the same way.
Sure, we want all the dark "evil Anakin" stuff in EPISODE ONE. We want the Sith explained, the Jedi Code detailed, the HOT AND HEAVY STUFF. But the kids of today are not ready for that yet. First, they need to be introduced to this wild and fantastic universe we've been lucky enough to explore for the last 22 years. First, they must be able to meet, identify with, and ultimately trust Anakin before the rug can be pulled out from under their feet (as it was for us in "Empire"). As crass and calculated as it may sound, I genuinely believe this was Lucas' intention. Our Star Wars Generation is already BOUGHT AND SOLD, let's face it. He needs to assimilate our children...and we are more than happy to comply.
Jar Jar, annoying? Bet the average 8-year-old won't think so. And how many of us have parents that thought the original "Star Wars" was a bunch of silly shit back in 1977? A LOT, I bet. And, sadly, some of us have become our parents.
I won't sugar coat this movie entirely. I think George Lucas is a visual genius but only a competent screenwriter. His large-stroke vision for "Star Wars" is brilliant, of course, but his characters have never been strong, his dialogue never more than adequate, and his direction of actors limited to offscreen puppetry. This much is certain. But I would never have said such things in 1977, because it would never have occured to me...and it would hardly have made any difference.
EPISODE ONE is the spiritual cousin of both the classic trilogy and more contemporary summer entertainments like JURASSIC PARK. There are "T-Rex" moments in EPISODE ONE, there are "Raptors in the kitchen" moments in EPISODE ONE, but there are also "Ariana hacks into the mainframe" moments, and "Joe Mazello gets shocked and still lives" moments, too. And in the long term, I think the "T-Rex" moments will hold up, they'll be the moments we wake up at three o'clock in the morning to replay on DVD because we "just have to". And the "Joe Mazello" moments will be the ones our children will ALWAYS laugh out loud with...until they turn 18, discover night clubs and the opposite sex, and become Ewok Haters.
I feel sorry for them on that day.
May the Force be with you all. Keep the faith. And I'll see you in line at the Village on May 19th. (Yes, it was good enough to see again).
