Trollheart

Trollheart Explores the Legacy of


I’m old enough to remember queuing to see the original release of the first Star Wars movie, now titled Episode IV: A New Hope. I remember the line stretched all the way down the street, and even for my time this was unusual. People queued for movies, yes, but generally you were talking maybe fifty or so people max; for the line to run down the street (this being O’Connell Street, the main one in Dublin city centre) you would need a few thousand easily. But that was what it was like when Star Wars was released in 1977: everyone wanted to see it, and that included adults and a whole lot of people who wouldn’t even watch a science fiction movie.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, for a very long time - up to the release of this movie, in fact - science fiction was seen as the purview of two types of viewers: kids, and nerds who enjoyed science-y stuff, and almost always by default wore glasses, had bad unfashionable haircuts and lots of acne. One thing science fiction movies at least were not was fun. Look at the ones before this time - even relatively light fare such as Logan’s Run (released only a year before this, and look how different it is, the audience its writers were catering to) had a dark, almost fatalistic element to them, and others such as Planet of the Apes and Silent Running were really meant to be taken seriously. You had the serials of course from the 1930s and 1940s, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers flying around in unrealistic spaceships in tight-fitting costumes, the hatches of the ships specially widened to admit those strong, lantern jaws. Nobody took these things seriously. Nobody could, and maybe nobody was meant to.

And of course you had television trying to make science fiction “respectable”, with shows such as Doctor Who and Lost in Space, and the big one, Star Trek. But while these managed to divest science fiction somewhat of its geeky/kids-only trappings, at the cinema folks still went to see westerns, romances, comedies and adventure movies. Horror was okay too. But science fiction? What am I, seven?

All that changed with the release of George Lucas’s blockbuster. It’s not in any way hyperbole or overstating the case to say that Star Wars - the first movie as well as the later franchise - changed the face of science fiction cinema forever. After this, everyone would jump on the light-hearted, family-friendly adventure in space, and hundreds, if not more, clones would copy the success of a man whose movie had not even been expected to be a success. A blueprint for science fiction movies had been laid down, and with slight variations, still drives most of the movies of that type today. It wouldn’t be true to say that every science fiction movie owes its existence to Lucas, but as a whole, science fiction film came of age under Lucas’s then-young hand, and a movie about far-flung empires, bad guys in black and princesses set the blueprint for what was to follow.

I was, of course, a fan of Star Wars, and for a long time there were only the three movies. We thought that was all there ever would be, and to be fair, the third one had wrapped up the story pretty well. Nevertheless, Hollywood is a hungry beast, and rumours abounded of “prequel” movies, but nobody really ever believed they’d get made, never mind see the light of day. Lucas was tight-lipped, dropping hints and giving knowing winks throughout the late 1980s and into the next decade, and indeed the millennium was nearly out before we got the “next” movie, which was indeed a prequel, and was indeed pants. Like a lot of fans, I found myself wishing he hadn’t bothered. Sometimes a classic (even three) is best left alone.

Although I’ve seen, only once each, the “first” three prequels, I never went any further, and this journal aims to do just that. With a total now of eleven movies (including the originals), a staggering seven separate animated TV series (and this doesn’t even include a further seven micro-series, whatever they are!) and three live-action TV series, it’s safe to say Star Wars, the franchise, is giving the other big name in the science fiction TV and film universe, Star Trek, a real run for its money.

So, hell: there’s a lot to get through, so you’ll appreciate it when I say do not expect major episode or film synopses. What I intend to do here (and it’s going to take some time, let me tell you!) is watch all the movies (starting from The Phantom Menace*, as I know the other three backwards and in the original Klingon, sorry, wrong series) though I will be talking, of course, about the original trilogy, and the TV series, and comment on them, where I see there being major changes, how they impact the overall storyline set out in the originals, or don’t, how they fill out the history or mythology of the franchise, and how, in general, they add to, or detract from the franchise.

I feared for Star Wars when Disney bought them out, and I think my fears have been more or less justified, with the emphasis more on games and toys that can be squeezed out of the movies and series now than the actual stories, but we’ll see as we go along. I will do everything in order, sticking to a strict chronology, so if for instance there are two movies with a series in between, I’ll do one movie, then the series, then the second movie, so that the timeline is maintained.

Of course, it should go without saying, comment, discussion, debate and bare-knuckle fist fights are all involved (please deposit any light sabers or blasters at the door, thank you) and if we can get a discussion going and some interest, maybe this will be fun. If not, well, at worst it will allow me to catch up on the many, many elements of the Star Wars universe I’ve been either missing out on, or have mercifully escaped. At the end of this project, I will at least have formed a proper, informed opinion of how the franchise has gone, and how things have developed, for good or bad, since I stood outside the Savoy Cinema in O’Connell Street with my brothers and my ma, munching on a Kit-Kat in the rain, a geeky fourteen-year-old, wondering if it would be worth it.

Forty-five years is a long time - most of my life, in fact: let’s see what Lucas - and Disney - have been up to during that time.

* Correction courtesy of Batty

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

Why are you starting with Attack of the Clones when Phantom Menace is the first one?

__________________

Trollheart

Shit.

Duly noted your comment is; mistake did I make in order of the films.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Mindy

rubber soul

You can't get anything past ol' Eagle eye Batty.

__________________

Trollheart

Yeah that was a great start, wasn't it?

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

This thread won't mean anything to me if you ignore the books.

__________________

Trollheart

You are kidding. Do you know there are SEVEN seasons of Clone Wars, four of Rebels, 2 each of Resistance and Ewoks (God, no!) - I'll be lucky to get through those without drawing my pension! And you want me to do books as well?

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Introduction: A new hope of striking back for revenge

I: Some time ago, and quite distant from here…

I’m just going to assume that every living being on this planet, indeed in this galaxy knows the plot lines of the first three movies. If you don’t, well then I really can’t help you. So I’m not going to go over them. However I will talk about the movies in more general terms. While it’s true to say that Star Wars (I’m not going to call it A New Hope: for the purposes of this journal Star Wars will refer to the first movie as well as the actual franchise) was a groundbreaking movie, it’s in some ways a little hard to call it a real trailblazer, as it built on so many tropes that had been used before, not only in science fiction. I guess the main thing it did was introduce, as I mentioned above, a sense of fun into science fiction, which had up till then been a very serious business. It’s also perhaps - I’d have to check - the first science fiction movie that really doesn’t bother itself too much about actual science. Nobody worries about how hyperspace works, or the engines that drive the X-Wings. Nobody asks what exactly a lightsaber is, or how the droids are put together? Put simply, nobody cares. Star Wars, at its heart, both movie and franchise is, or was, all about escapism and having a good time. It’s far more a fantasy/adventure story that just happens to be set in space than a “hard” science fiction one.

It was also, I believe, the first science fiction trilogy, (at least, I don’t remember any before it) and therefore the first to follow the hero and his companions through successive movies. Now, I could not say with any certainty it was the first trilogy per se, but even so I kind of think it was. Either way, almost certainly the first one in the science fiction sphere, so that was a new thing. It gave a starring role to essentially a kid, which was also unusual, and made stars of most of its cast. It used old fantasy tropes of good versus evil, and I’m certainly not the first to remark on its similarities to, and usage of themes from, the legend of King Arthur and of course The Lord of the Rings. Hell, when Luke Skywalker rescues Princess Leia from the cell on the Death Star, not only is he a knight in literally shining armour - as he’s wearing a white Stormtrooper uniform - with a space-age equivalent of a horse waiting, (or at least a Falcon!) but he is armed with a fucking sword!

Lucas seems to have been the first to consider the idea of his heroes using swords in the future (yes, yes I know, but you get the idea). Every other science fiction movie - and series - up to then had the characters armed, if they were armed, with everything from lasers and phasers to blasters and zap guns. Swords were seen, by most writers (can’t speak for those in literature, but certainly on the big and small screen) as archaic, belonging to an older time, not in step with the future, and not anything their heroes would be using. But Lucas made the case, through Obi-Wan Kenobi, for the lightsaber very well. The old Jedi says “anyone can use a blaster, but a lightsaber takes skill and finesse.” That’s not an actual quote, but you know the one, and the implication is of course that in order to use a lightsaber, like a knight of old, a man (or woman) had to have certain skill and discipline. So the lightsaber became a symbol almost of class, the weapon of choice for those who were the more skilled fighters, the true galactic aristocracy, or as one of the games based on the series would have it, the Knights of the Old Republic.

I think it may be fair also to credit Lucas with the usage of hyperspace in movies. Yes, Star Trek had warp speed, but the actual mechanics of how the Enterprise got from one point to another were never explained. 2001 showed us a sort of hyperspace sequence in the “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” section, but Star Wars was the first to actually take us into hyperspace and show us what it was like. It’s possible too that the movie was the first to pioneer, or at least popularise, the phrase "light speed", though Lucas didn’t always get it right, as we know from the extremely embarrassing speech by Han Solo, where he mixes up parsecs as a measure of time rather than distance. The attempts to “explain” this later on only made it worse, as the writer, producer and other commentators dug themselves in deeper; they should just have admitted, sorry we got it wrong, and left it at that.

But these elements aside, basically Star Wars was nothing really new. It was Errol Flynn, but in space rather than on the Spanish Main. It was Arthur and Lancelot, but on the Death Star instead of in Camelot. And it was, to some degree also, John Wayne fighting off the Indians and saving the girl. It was, to put it bluntly, every adventure movie you’ve ever seen, just transported to space. But it worked for one reason really, and that was that it was the first time this had been done. Science fiction movies up to then had concentrated on either dystopian futures or bleak alien planets, exploration and invasion. Nobody had ever thought you could have fun with the premise. But Lucas did.

Now, I’m not going to pretend I’m privy to the man’s thoughts, and knew what he intended, how his movie came about, if it achieved all he set out to or changed radically, or if the success was too much for him. All that I could find by researching, but I won’t, because I don’t care, and I’m sure others have done it much better than I. The point is the impact Star Wars had on the movie-going public, on youth and on science fiction. Really, it’s no exaggeration that none of the three would ever be the same again. Kids were now growing up wanting to be Jedi warriors, there was a reawakened interest in robots (which had been all but completely absent prior to this - can you think of one significant robot or android character in film before Star Wars? What? Robbie the Robot? Do me a favour!) and later adults would unashamedly attend conventions and collect figures, videos, posters and other memorabilia in a way nobody had other than Trekkies.

Hollywood noticed, sitting up and blinking in the darkness, and movies which had been unable to even get a second look were suddenly being screamed for and inspected with interest, probably. Without question, the idea of science fiction in film, as a major earner and a for a mainstream audience, was born in 1977 with the success of Star Wars. Witness the popularity of such “soft” science fiction blockbusters as the Back to the Future trilogy, Tron or Independence Day. Sure, these are different movies in tone and scope than Star Wars, but would any of them have been greenlit without its success? Given the, at the time, thinking prevalent about science fiction movies among producers, I venture to say they would not. Of course, some other science fiction blockbuster could have led the way, but was there ever anything quite like Star Wars in science fiction?

The Matrix, Terminator, Robocop, even the Star Trek movies all owe a debt of gratitude to Star Wars, a movie which took the conventions of what was accepted as a science fiction movie and went “Nah”. A movie that dared to look beyond the dark, often sterile, doomy and quite frequently baffling nature of science fiction movies up to then, a movie which catered not only to kids or geeks, but to everyone - or perhaps it might be fairer and more accurate to say, to the kid or geek in all of us, however well hidden or denied - and dared to show them that science fiction could be enjoyable, that you didn't need a degree in quantum physics to understand it - that in this case, you didn't’ even have to understand it! - and that you could have a really good time with the kids, or on your own, or with mates, watching a movie that took you out of yourself, said forget about the factory, the school or the union boss, and just let yourself go. Listen, let me tell you a story. No, not once upon a time: a long long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Queen Boo

There's only like a billion of them.

Who cares that they're not canon anymore? You're a wuss if you don't review every single one of them.

__________________
https://www.twitch.tv/drrobuttnik