May the farce be with you
There ought to be a name for the phenomenon I’m about to describe — let’s call it the “Buyer’s Endorse.” It’s when you have committed time and money to something that sucks, but since you’ve just devoted those resources, you convince yourself that it was worthwhile.
My brother lent me the DVD of “Attack of the Clones” on Thanksgiving, and my wife Paige and I finally got around to seeing it this weekend. I saw it last summer, and afterwards, the warm glow of the Buyer’s Endorse clung to my body like a moist, warm blanket. Or maybe that was sweat, because it was summertime in northern Virginia. Either way, I thought I liked it.
Now that I’ve seen it again, I realize how much the movie sucked. Part of this is because Paige kept making snide (and fair) comments about the movie; part of it was because I kept comparing it to “The Phantom Menace,” whose plot, you will recall, turned on some sort of intergalactic trade dispute. (Nothing like a trade dispute to get the blood running! When you’re having a boring day at the office, don’t you think of the NAFTA negotiations to put a spring back in your step?)
Were “Clones” not part of the Star Wars marketing phenomenon, it would have gone straight to video after a short, ignominious run at the box office. Once again, the plot is inscrutable: something about that trade dispute turning ugly again, and rebellious guilds, and a crucial vote to restore order to the galaxy. I defy anyone to explain it adequately in fewer than 50 words. Yet for all of its complexity, the dramatic tension of the plot is almost wholly about protecting Senator Amidala (Natalie Portman) from getting murdered. From the opening scene to the climactic battle, the Jedi and the other forces of light
Why is she so important? Well, her character is demographically important because she draws girls to the theater. And for the last quarter of the movie, the bottom half of her tight-fitting white outfit is torn off, producing images that will inhabit the imaginations of young teenage boys for years to come. But other than as a cynical marketing ploy, we never see why the fate of the universe hangs on her very existence. Every once in a while, the script has the characters spew outbursts of gibberish having to do with “democracy” and the importance of the “republic,” but in a real democracy no individual is supposed to be indispensable. And while we’re on the breathtakingly dumb politics of “Clones,” in the last movie Amidala was a queen, but now she’s been appointed a senator because her two monarchical terms have expired. A term-limited queen! On a planet that belongs to a republic! Don’t any of the offices at Lucasfilm have a dictionary? Did anyone think to look up the meanings of the words they’re using?
This is a manifestation of a reversion to pre-modern drama. Before the Shakespeare, audiences accepted the existence of evil and needed no explanation as to why it was evil. Shakespeare attempted to probe the psychological roots of evil, without disputing its existence. Today, in movies like “Clones,” they don’t even bother to explain why evil people do what they do. So the folks in league with the Dark Side don’t just feed the doe-eyed senator to one of the many hideous, man-eating creatures that populate the Star Wars universe. No, they throw Amidala and her two Jedi protectors into an arena so several man-eating creatures can attack and kill them with plenty of witnesses. Why? Well, it’s a convention in the movies that bad guys never kill good guys outright, they have to kill them slowly so the good guys can escape.
Wittgenstein, the Austrian philosopher, loved to watch Westerns in his spare time. People would ask why a man of his powerful, probing intellect would enjoy such slight entertainment. It’s simple, Wittgenstein explained: “There are the good guys, and there are the bad guys.” The original “Star Wars” was successful because it tapped into that primordial desire for earthly justice — to see evil men frustrated by a band of intrepid warriors. From all appearances, George Lucas believes that people watched that shallow, flawed movie because it had great special effects and imaginative extraterrestrials. George, you’d do well to leave your ranch and meet non-movie-industry-related people if you want to start making good movies again.