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Oct. 12th, 2006 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacJohn Scalzi eats Star Wars alive for breakfast.
Upon reading his screed, I realized that I've been waiting nearly thirty years for someone to say this. (I've seen other criticisms. They were not so much to the point.)
The fact is I've never really understood the enthusiasm for Star Wars. I wasn't even planning to see the original film, way back when. The descriptions made it sound like the biggest, flashiest, most elaborate space opera of all time, and my SF tastes had never run towards space opera, so I was intending to ignore it.
Just before the premiere, a feature article in Time, or one of them, gave a different perspective, saying it wasn't a serious film but a fun romp. This turned out to be a bit misleading, but it was enough to convince me to join![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sturgeonslawyer and another college friend who actually had a car, on an expedition down to the big theatre, the one where I'd seen 2001 and would, years later, see Jackson's Lord of the Rings films.
And we went in and we saw it and we came out and someone asked, "What did you think?", and I said "Not bad."
This has remained my settled opinion. In a world ofcalimacs, mentioning Star Wars today would generate a briefly wrinkled brow and the reply, "Star Wars? Oh yeah, I remember that. Wasn't bad."
The sequel wasn't bad either, though I didn't believe the Big Revelation at the end for a minute, and the third film had that villain with the terrible makeup job and those obnoxiously cute critters, and after a long break the fourth one was the most tedious film I'd ever seen, telling of a futile, pointless expedition to the Planet of the Bureaucrats and back again, with a pit stop at the Planet of the Boring Auto Races.
After that I refused to see any more.
But wait. Scalzi says that Lucas's problem lies in his attempt to create a mythology. Didn't Tolkien also create a mythology? Why isn't he just as bad, or is he?
The first answer has to be that there's no idea inherently so bad, or so good, that a sufficiently good or bad author can't make it otherwise. The second answer is that conscientious Tolkien scholars refer to his creation as his legendarium rather than his mythology. His purposes were different. Despite the presence of a creation myth, God, angels, legendarily-mighty heroes, and teleology, Tolkien wasn't creating a watered-down religion. Lucas puts his stories at the service of his thesis; Tolkien's best work keeps the mythological aspect as scenic background, and lets the stories get on with being the stories.
Upon reading his screed, I realized that I've been waiting nearly thirty years for someone to say this. (I've seen other criticisms. They were not so much to the point.)
The fact is I've never really understood the enthusiasm for Star Wars. I wasn't even planning to see the original film, way back when. The descriptions made it sound like the biggest, flashiest, most elaborate space opera of all time, and my SF tastes had never run towards space opera, so I was intending to ignore it.
Just before the premiere, a feature article in Time, or one of them, gave a different perspective, saying it wasn't a serious film but a fun romp. This turned out to be a bit misleading, but it was enough to convince me to join
sturgeonslawyer and another college friend who actually had a car, on an expedition down to the big theatre, the one where I'd seen 2001 and would, years later, see Jackson's Lord of the Rings films.And we went in and we saw it and we came out and someone asked, "What did you think?", and I said "Not bad."
This has remained my settled opinion. In a world of
calimacs, mentioning Star Wars today would generate a briefly wrinkled brow and the reply, "Star Wars? Oh yeah, I remember that. Wasn't bad."The sequel wasn't bad either, though I didn't believe the Big Revelation at the end for a minute, and the third film had that villain with the terrible makeup job and those obnoxiously cute critters, and after a long break the fourth one was the most tedious film I'd ever seen, telling of a futile, pointless expedition to the Planet of the Bureaucrats and back again, with a pit stop at the Planet of the Boring Auto Races.
After that I refused to see any more.
But wait. Scalzi says that Lucas's problem lies in his attempt to create a mythology. Didn't Tolkien also create a mythology? Why isn't he just as bad, or is he?
The first answer has to be that there's no idea inherently so bad, or so good, that a sufficiently good or bad author can't make it otherwise. The second answer is that conscientious Tolkien scholars refer to his creation as his legendarium rather than his mythology. His purposes were different. Despite the presence of a creation myth, God, angels, legendarily-mighty heroes, and teleology, Tolkien wasn't creating a watered-down religion. Lucas puts his stories at the service of his thesis; Tolkien's best work keeps the mythological aspect as scenic background, and lets the stories get on with being the stories.
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Re: Two old comments resurface
Date: 2006-10-13 07:02 am (UTC)My own reaction put in the format of #1, however, would be, "Star Wars is a mediocre movie that I found reasonably OK."
it's hard to argue with a billion dollars worth of butts in seats.
How about the same amount of butts in seats watching a better movie?
Re: Two old comments resurface
Date: 2006-10-13 07:24 am (UTC)That's not much of an argument against SW. People don't pay to see good movies, they pay to be entertained (the opposite of Scalzi's point).
Iirc, there's only been one non-SW sf movie that's done better than the original SW, and that's ET. As a franchise, Star Wars bowls over everything. This doesn't make any of the movies good, but it does make them hard to just wave away.
And yes, I'd be interested in your other two greatest sf movies. (I need to revise my own lists; just now I couldn't remember what was in my Top 5...)
no subject
Date: 2006-10-13 07:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-14 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-14 03:20 pm (UTC)That's a mighty big if. The fact remains that "better" does not necessarily translate to "popular" or "entertaining". And the fact remains that there hasn't been a better movie (or set of movies) that are this popular.
And again, "prefer" is a relative term that doesn't necessarily mean the lesser preference isn't entertainment. I prefer Eleanor Rigby to I Want To Hold Your Hand but the latter is a better dance tune.
Quite frankly, I'm a little disturbed that this discussion is going on so long. Why is it so hard to say, "well, I didn't like it" and let the people who were entertained have their fun?
no subject
Date: 2006-10-14 04:12 pm (UTC)That is why I specified that they are independent variables, which they certainly are.
I prefer Eleanor Rigby to I Want To Hold Your Hand but the latter is a better dance tune.
That merely means each song is better for different purposes. The sound of a can opener is much less lovely than either, but it's much better at opening cans.
Why is it so hard to say, "well, I didn't like it" and let the people who were entertained have their fun?
That's all that we're doing, saying "I didn't like it" (although actually I did like SW, to a sufficiently loose definition of the word "like"), at slightly more expository length. If there's irritation here, it comes from an allergic reaction to the insistence of its fans that not only is it the greatest thing since sliced bread, but that everyone must agree that it is.
Re: Two old comments resurface
Date: 2006-10-13 03:08 pm (UTC)Not the least of which is the number of people who go back to it, because they were sucked into a later film. The series builds on that, and it provides new viewers for the original.
I know people who went to see the re-release(s) because they'd never seen it, and the hoopla made it something (like 2001, or Lawrence of Arabia) which they felt required the seeing of on the big screen, in part so they could see if the hoopla was justified.
I agree, people go to movies to be entertained, but Scalzi agrees with that, he just thinks Lucas, in Star Wars, forgets that. He argues that entertaining the audience is secondary to what Lucas is trying to do.
Why does this matter? It matters because Lucas' intent was to build an overarching mythological structure, not necessarily to make a bunch of movies. If you listen to Lucas blather on in his laconic fashion on the Star Wars DVD commentaries, you'll hear him say about how he wanted everything to make sense in the long view -- that all his films served the mythology. This is fine, but it reinforces the point that the films themselves -- not to mention the scripts and the acting -- are secondary to Lucas' true goal of myth building. Myths can be entertaining -- indeed, they survive because they can entertain, even if they don't brook participation. These films could work as entertainment. But fundamentally they don't, because Lucas doesn't seem to care if the films work as entertainment, as long as they sufficiently conform to his created mythology. [emphasis in original]
TK
Re: Two old comments resurface
Date: 2006-10-13 11:23 pm (UTC)You can say the same thing about Christmas or The Beatles. I agree that financial success (or failure) isn't the measure of artistic success, but we're talking entertainment. That means getting people to watch the movie, more than once, over time and keep attracting new viewers. I really hate arguments that say "success = failure".
And since when does the artist have the final word on the validity of their work?
Scalzi, in your extended quote, makes a major fallacy: He starts off citing Lucas' desire to make myth more than individual movies and then leaps to the conclusion that he succeeded.
I'm not going to debate the merit of the films (especially the prequels), just to say that a staggering amount of people are very happy that they exist. Whether this is because of or despite Lucas' intentions is irrelevant.
Re: Two old comments resurface
Date: 2006-10-14 03:43 am (UTC)Just as there are a lot of people who have seen Citizen Kane because they have been told it's a great movie, but otherwise would have, as easily, foregone it.
I don't think Scalzi is saying Lucas succeeded in making myth, but that myth was his goal, not entertainment. He makes no real claim (in that argument) about the entertainment value of the films. The point is that entertainment is secondary to making myth.
That comment isn't about the merits of the films, nor the number of people they please, it's about Lucas intent, and some of the flaws that such styles of creating stories induce.
TK
Re: Two old comments resurface
Date: 2006-10-14 02:54 pm (UTC)