Saturday Evening Movie Thread 12-21-2019 [Hosted By: TheJamesMadison]

World Building in Star Wars

Okay, it’s going to be the topic on every movie goers’ lips for the weekend, so I capitulated.

Maybe it’ll drive more clicks to the site and Ace will get more ad pennies for more advanced shelving equipment that spins in the right direction.

So, racking my brain for a topic about Star Wars, I started thinking about the narrative successes of the first film in the franchise contrasted with the narrative failures of the prequels. There are several big reasons, but one of them is definitely the approach to building the world around the story at play. In short, the world building is details that fill in the edges of the story and screen, igniting the imagination, while in the prequels they come center stage and squeeze out anything that could be called drama.

Anyway, let’s dig into it.

The Original Trilogy

The story of the first Star Wars is really just Joseph Campbell’s work on the hero myth and journey distilled into a techno fantasy setting. The story is super clear: a farmboy gets his call to adventure, goes under the wing of a wizened wizard (from SPACE!), and defeats the bad guy with gifts he’s always had but needed to learn how to use. It’s really basic stuff. The characters are simple archetypes cast perfectly with likable actors. The delineation between good and bad is clear not just narratively but visually as well.

You could take the Star Wars story and just plop it into any setting because it’s a tale as old as time, to coin a phrase.

Around that simple story, though, is a new world. The setting of the film seems to spill over on every side. Yes, we have the Empire and the Rebellion, but we also have hints of the Old Republic, a Senate, the Emperor, an ancient religion called the Jedi (or the Force), and a host of new species that all look different and sound different. There are droids that speak English and those that speak their own clicks and beeps.

The key to the opening up of the world is the cantina scene. Up until that point, we’ve mostly seen humans and droids. There were also jawas, little hooded scavengers, but it’s felt almost grounded. And then, the cantina opens up and we see a sampling of the host of new creatures that populate this universe. None of them are explained, and they seem to just be in the middle of their own stories (there’s an Expanded Universe short story collection that details at least one of their lives completely). The lack of explanation and the simple look at what’s out there ignites the imagination. It sets us off in completely different directions of our own making, using these new creatures as starting points. We know we’ve gone from the familiar to the fantastical.

The rest of the trilogy follows the same basic model. The Empire Strikes Back actually decreases the visual scope of the film as it goes along, starting as a big battle on a snow planet and ending with two people in a lightsaber duel in a series of rooms. There’s little concern for definitions like who the Emperor was before he was emperor, what the governing philosophy of the Empire is, or even what the mechanics of the mining operation on Bespin are. We’re just carried along with the fantastic sights and sounds, focusing, once again, on the human centric journey at the film’s core.

Return of the Jedi ends up taking a step backwards a bit (repeating the Death Star visual, but at least giving it a different, unfinished look) while introducing us to ewoks (there is really only one of those who carry any great worth, and he’s well-known around these parts) and giving us the first good look at Jabba. It’s really our first introduction to the gangster side of the Star Wars universe. It doesn’t talk about how he functions with other gangsters, just showing us as he rests and enjoys what seem like a series of easy days ruined by some pesky wannabe Jedi.

The world building was never the point of the story across the original trilogy, it was just the stuff that got painted into the edges, and it ignited imaginations for decades.

The Prequel Trilogy

The prequels were very different beasts.

It is my estimation that Lucas wanted to make, not just new Star Wars movies, but important Star Wars movies. He had a thematic goal. He wanted to contrast the fall of a republican form of government into tyranny with the fall of a good man into evil.

Given that goal, it’s obvious that the setting becomes a lot more important to the story itself than it was in the original trilogy. The Republic needs to fall, not just exist in the background while people have adventures. The problem was that Lucas didn’t really understand how to strike the right balance between storytelling and making the fall of an inefficient republic compelling.

In The Phantom Menace the world building gets very tedious very fast. Just mentioning trade routes in the opening crawl is eye roll inducing. Stepping back from the purpose of drama, it feels like a good place for the beginning of an end to a republic (something rather anodyne that gets blown out of proportion), but what follows is even more dull. Lucas felt it was necessary to show, in rather excruciating detail, how the Senate can’t get anything done. That becomes the central focus of the “drama” a big Senate hearing where nothing happens. It’s like reading a Wookipedia article about a boring parliamentary maneuver from another country. You don’t know the people, the stakes, or the result, and you find it hard to care.

The second film, purely in terms of world building (the movie is worse), does it better than the first. In Attack of the Clones, Lucas introduces us to new worlds, aliens, and technologies. We don’t get detailed histories of them (like the cloners on Kimino), just a view at their methods. Perhaps it takes a step too far in showing those details (or perhaps the visuals just aren’t that engaging), but it’s a definite step in the right direction. Instead of copying the Wookipedia article, Lucas just read it over and placed the characters there. The characters are still dumb and make curious choices, at best, but at least the world they inhabit feels less stolid.

Revenge of the Sith is where things really come together fully. The point is the fall of Anakin and Obi-wan’s powerlessness to stop it (mirrored by the Jedi as a whole being powerless to stop the rise of the Emperor). We get new worlds and new aliens, but they never dominate the screen. We even get the dramatic fall of one system of government into another (done with a parliamentary speech) and it’s contrasted with physical action (Anakin taking over the Jedi Temple). The world is largely built by the point, but the setting does go through rather large changes, and the changes progress in interesting fashions, combined with the fall of an individual.

The Sequel Trilogy

I’m not going to spend too much time on this, because the setting is really just a repeat of the original trilogy’s setting with new names. Instead of the Empire we have the First Order and instead of the Rebellion we have the Resistance. JJ Abrams tries some of the same things like a cantina scene, but we’ve already been exposed to so much weirdness (both in this movie and across the whole franchise) that it doesn’t feel as effective in the least.

The Last Jedi does it both well and poorly at the same time. Canto Bight, the casino planet, is a narrative sore thumb that sticks out, and it includes a lot of dialogue explaining why everyone is there. It’s an interesting idea (that weapons manufacturers have their own casino planet to hang out on), but it’s divorced from the rest of the story and just doesn’t fit. On the other hand, the planet of Crait, is great. It’s visually interesting (the thin white layer of salt covering the red ground beneath) with a big old Rebel base lodged into a cliff face, is a great starting point of an idea, but the history of those things aren’t that important to the story right then. So they sit there as drama and action play out in front of it. Why is the base there? What are the red crystals beneath the surface? Why is there this perpetual layer of salt over everything? Nothing gets answered, just like who the aliens were in the cantina never got answered.

The Rise of Skywalker does setting and world building better. Freed from trying to replicate A New Hope, JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio were able to set their eyes on creating new things, so we got Kijimi, a planet that Poe Dameron once lived on and scraped a living together. There is talk of his life as a spice smuggler on the planet, and the gang he used to grow up with. It’s another view at the sort of world that Han Solo lived in before he was introduced to the franchise, and again, it just invites the sort of speculation about what things mean and where they came from.
The Point

My point being that world building can never be the point. When it becomes the point, it can often feel like reading Wikipedia articles. Sure, there’s detail, and it can be exciting to freeze frame things and point stuff out, but ultimately when it becomes the point it distracts from the story itself.

I’ve been thinking of this because I’ve read quite a few very positive reviews of The Phantom Menace and they all seem just so excited to get more detail about the Star Wars universe. Across the board, they’re about how they know so much more about the Jedi and the Senate, while the rest of the world watches the movie and sees a boring, meandering mess of narrative without a discernable point.

Anyway, to distill this whole thing down: I saw The Rise of Skywalker.

Movies of Today

Opening in Theaters:
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
Cats
Next in my Netflix Queue:
Rambling Rose

Movies I Saw This Fortnight:
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (Netflix Rating 4/5 | Quality Rating 3/4) Full Review "The movie’s good. It’s big, spilling over the sides, but it’s heart is clear. It intelligently synthesizes the previous two films into a rousing and interesting conclusion. Count me as a fan." [Theater]
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (Netflix Rating 5/5 | Quality Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "I adore, not just love, adore this bulk of the film. It’s fiercely intelligent and penetrative of the meaning of Star Wars. It’s compellingly packaged in characters and drama. It’s really well acted. It’s some of my favorite Star Wars ever." [Personal Collection]
Buddy Buddy (Netflix Rating 2/5 | Quality Rating 1/4) Full Review "This is such a sad way for the great Billy Wilder to end his career." [“Library”]
Kiss Me, Stupid (Netflix Rating 4/5 | Quality Rating 3/4) Full Review "It’s lesser Wilder, but it’s still entertaining and works as a whole." ["Library"]
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Netflix Rating 4/5 | Quality Rating 3/4) Full Review "The film is fun, and a pleasant diversion. A good time at the movies from a master of the craft." [Amazon Prime]
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Netflix Rating 4/5 | Quality Rating 3/4) Full Review "The men on a mission story is well handled. The central villain is great. The movie looks good, and it ends with a very good final sustained sequence. Not great, but a solid entertainment." [Personal Collection]
The Front Page (Netflix Rating 5/5 | Quality Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "It’s quick, clearly told, and fun as it embraces a sense of chaos in the service of its story." [Hoopla]
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Netflix Rating 5/5 | Quality Rating 4/4) Full Review "A proposed alternate subtitle: The Humiliation of Luke Skywalker." [Personal Collection]

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posted by OregonMuse at 07:59 PM

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