If you somehow missed it JJ Abrams is selling tickets to win a chance to spend 6 hours in a chair getting a foam alien face glued on and shoved into a crowd shot to bake in the Tatooine sun while Abrams plays the bongos on the cameraman to get the shakey cam effects just right take after take. It’s hard to be shocked; that’s what Abrams does. He’s got a fetish for making hype that rivals Tarantino’s footjob problem.
For Cloverfield and Super 8 JJ played with viral marketing and the mystery of the project. For Star Trek Into Darkness he purposefully had actors on the interview circuit make false accidental reveals pointing the secret of who the bad guy was away from the (widely held) notion it would be Khan. Only with Star Wars JJ must be getting blueballs the size of death stars because he can’t mystery hype what the movie will be about until the opening night. The fanboy machine that demands every possible detail is the only real thing capable of destroying an entire planet. so here’s JJ with this ‘film hype 101’ bullshit: send in ten proof of purchase boxtops and *you* can be entered in a draw to fly to the set of the movie! First I was all like, damn, with JJ Abrams pimping out the hype on episode 7 so hard you’d think he should be wearing one of those wide brim hats and strutting with a cane; don’t make JJ Mack force-choke a bitch.
Then I had the realization that finally, after all these many years I’ve let go of my Star Wars love. When I think of another Star Wars movie I can barely summon up the enthusiasm I used to feel for getting a new pair of shoes. You might think I had to let it slide beneath the chilly waters after the prequels ran aground on Goerge Lucas’ swollen ego (that’s what he keeps in his neck pouch) but no, that’s not it.
Actually that’s where he keeps all the souls he’s harvested.
The original Star Wars trilogy was a powerhouse of awesomeness so vast it probably changed culture for the next fifty years. But everybody knows that and I’m not going to sit here giving it a handjob. Between 77 and 83 Star Wars became a legend and then, like a ghost-jedi’s fart, it vanished without a trace. It burned bright, made us all fall in love, and died young. And that’s the keystone of the Star Wars myth; it went out on top and at the whim of George Lucas, never came back. Unlike other comparable film brands like Batman or the Alien series it never rebooted. Never came back with an inferior version of itself. Until it did.
And yeah, I hear you, shut the FUCK up about the EU stuff. Some of it was good but most of it was terrible and none of it was more movies, which is what we’re talking about. Let the grown-ups talk.
I took my oldest to see Phantom menace in 99 which, by happy coincidence, made him the same age I was when I saw A New Hope. A sensation like ice-cold joy being injected in my veins hit my body during the opening scroll, a sensation I hadn’t felt since 1983. Fast forward another ten years and those three bloated prequels are barely acknowledged abominations, like the unwanted deformed babies the fallout mutants in the Hills Have Eyes keep giving birth to. Aside from a few set-piece scenes and the odd, effective, use of CG to build overwhelming alien landscapes there’s nothing redeeming in those movies and if you still cling to the belief they aren’t that bad I dare you to sit through Mr Plinkett’s obsessive, exhausting, soul destroying and utterly accurate evisceration of just how horrible the movies are. I warn you, they get incrementally longer as Plinkett finds more to be outraged over; the review of Revenge of the Sith is almost a full 2 hours long and he wanders into these odd, in-character serial-killer framing devices that are a little disturbing, but I’ve never seen anyone so elegantly sum up just how bad and how far wrong they went.
But it wasn’t the prequals that dick choked me until my nostalgia’s gag reflex was gone and I became desensitized to the repeated penetrations. It was Lucas selling the whole works to Disney and feeling, (not just knowing, but understanding deep down in my sarlacc), that the Star Wars from my childhood, that unchangeable, died-young-and-left-a-good-looking-corpse masterpiece was gone forever. Replaced now, just like every other brand in the galaxy, by a monetization machine.
Ugh. Tell me this shit-eating muppet doesn’t have a speaking role in the movie.
Star Wars wasn’t just unique because of the artistic vision it made, it was unique because George Lucas’ weird control-freak behaviour kept the brand gripped to his neck rolls. People say he sold out and made the prequels just to make a shitload more money but there’s a fair amount of evidence he just loved the things so obsessively he wouldn’t let anyone else have them. And the reason they suck harder than a gay vampire is he had so much power over every aspect of their creation and there was no one around to say no. The look on producer Rick MacCallum’s face when he sees the final version of the film for the first time says it all: What the fuck have I done? George went bananas and we should have had the guts to stop him.
You want my opinion I think Lucas’ feelings were hurt after finishing the prequels. I think he tried his best and folded like a deck chair. Maybe mixed with some shame and regret that his lazy, rushed production of a childishly poor script finally pulled back the curtain on his mystique as a creative genius. Given all the money in the world and nobody to tell him what to do and that’s the best he could do? The day he sold to Disney the guy must’ve woke up that morning realizing all this and cried for a day then picked up the phone to the magic kingdom and said, ‘name a price’.
So now the Disney profit machine is building steam and getting ready to run a train on Star Wars. There will be cartoons, TV shows and dozens of movies. They’ll Avengers the whole thing; solo movies and spinoffs that drip crumbs of the overall plot that lead up to mega blockbuster tentpoles. Disney now owns one of the most recognizable and beloved brands of all time and they are going to squeeze it for every republicredit they can. They’ve announced a ‘Young Han Solo’ movie, a ‘Boba Fett’ movie and (huurk,) a ‘Yoda’ movie so far. It’s the thing that fanboys like me begged for, for like, decades, but those were simpler times. The full might of Disney’s empire is about to descend on Star Wars and you will be shocked by the dick-chugging corporate whore they turn her into. I mean, Lucas loved her and look how hard he cashed in on the merchandising. Disney is gonna tie her spreadeagled on a bed until people get tired of riding her. In ten years they’ll reboot the whole series, its as inevitable as the decay rate on atomic isotopes. And when they do…
And when they do that unique, beloved brand will be just like every other movie. Focus-grouped into a generalized notion of what it used to be.
So yeah, Star Wars – the Star Wars you love – is dead to me now. I’m good with it.
I swear.
SPOILER ALERT: False Positive 