Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy (2004)

Director: Kevin Burns, Edith Becker

Cast: George Lucas, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher

Have I Seen it Before: I’m almost positive that I have watched it before. By all indications, it as the main feature included in the initial DVD release of the original trilogy in 2004, and I was there the day it came out, my copy long-since reserved*.

Did I Like It: The documentary is fine. it’s professionally made, and it has access to its subjects, and a thoroughness in its exploration of the topic.

But let me take a moment from another piece of recent documentary filmmaking to illustrate this film’s weakness.

After Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) was released, George Lucas never gave an interview that wasn’t at least on some level about selling one of his movies or businesses. He has controlled the narrative of the story of how his films, just as closely as he controlled the story of the saga itself.

Now that he has retired from big-budget moviemaking and the Lucasfilm family of companies, he doesn’t need to have that same control anymore. In Disney+’s docuseries on Industrial Light and Magic, Light and Magic I finally saw Lucas be interviewed and have the filmmaker push back. In the talking head, he looked like someone had farted, but the truth of the moment was at least at least illuminated, if not fully explored.

There are no moments like that in this film. It’s a fully-approved exploration of the party line. Vader was always going to be Luke’s father**, Leia was always going to be Luke’s sister***, and Jabba was always in A New Hope****. It’s not hard to figure out that the truth is more complicated. The truly great documentary about Star Wars hasn’t been made yet, but the possibility exists now, and I’m waiting to see it. Not, a polemic like The People vs. George Lucas (2010) but a more concerted effort to illuminate the man who made those films and the process he took to get it done. A film version of Michael Kaminski’s The Secret History of Star Wars: The Art of Storytelling and the Making of a Modern Epic would be really something.

*I remember it so well because some girl had turned me down that night, and I remember watching the trilogy and by about the midway point of Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980), I had gotten over the unpleasantness earlier in the evening.

**Was never written down before the second draft of Empire.

***Wasn’t decided until well into the production of Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) when Lucas was drowning in what he wrought and decided he never wanted to make the sequel trilogy that would have introduced “the other.”

****Still doesn’t fit into the movie. It introduces the Millennium Falcon right before the scene that actually introduces the ship. Fight me about it.

Village of the Damned (1995)

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Christopher Reeve, Linda Kozlowski, Kirstie Alley, Mark Hamill

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. I’m not 100% sure how, when my average of watching some of Carpenter’s later films has been low for quite a while, but I imagine it showed up on a Netflix recommendation at some point, and the thought becomes, “John Carpenter and Christopher Reeve? What could possibly go wrong?”

Did I Like It: And nothing much really does go wrong, so there’s that, but I can’t report much goes right, either.

With every one of Carpenter’s later movies, I keep lamenting the fact that at a certain point Dean Cundey stopped shooting his pictures. I mean, I guess Cundey at this moment is off shooting movies for Spielberg and the like, but is it really that hard for him to make the time for his older friend Carpenter? It seems like Carpenter is in a pattern with every othe movie in this phase of his career. With They Live (1988), I’m very nearly prepared to let Cundey go the way he wants to go (which was apparently directing Honey We Shrunk Ourselves (1997)) and just go withe the flow and accept what Gary B. Kibbe has to offer. Then I’m struck with Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992), and I yearn for Carpenter’s glory days. But then, right on schedule In The Mouth of Madness (1994) threatens me with a Carpenter renaissance.

And now we’re here. One might want to nitpick the little things that went wrong. The special effects aren’t anything beyond the 1960 original, which really leaves one to wonder why they felt the need to remake the story in the first place. Reeve is solid, but he managed to be solid in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), so that defense will hardly work in the film’s defense. Alley made her bones in genre movies (or rather the genre movie, by way of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and I can’t ever dismiss someone who was in that movie), but it feels like she has just spent too much time doing sitcoms (again, anyone on Cheers on which I cannot and will not turn my back) to bring any degree of earnestness to really much of anything.

Ultimately, there is one problem that governs the film’s failures. Carpenter has been on the record saying he was a gun-for-hire (despite him getting his name above the title once more) , but there is not a moment where I needed him to tell me that. Everything here is perfunctory, and that is the last thing one wants to see from a Carpenter film. Ultimately, it’s unfair to think that Cundey shooting the thing would have saved much of anything.

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

Director:  Eric Radomski, Bruce Timm

Cast: Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Dana Delany, Hart Bochner

Have I Seen It Before?: The VHS copy—I am sadly one of the many dolts who didn’t catch it in the theaters—was part of the haul of a massive tenth birthday shopping spree at Target (it went as high as fifty dollars!), twenty-six years ago today.

Did I like it?: Oh, man. At a time when Schumacher was at the helm of live-action Batman, this was hands-down the greatest feature-length story of the Dark Knight ever produced. Nolan came and the bigger movies got better. This one might have fallen a bit in esteem, but that is patently unfair. It is just as good as the Nolan films, and certainly better than either of the Zack Snyder entries with the character.

It’s equal parts competent whodunit puzzle (and it’s a shame how rarely a Batman story is also a mystery), film noir tragedy, and superhero story, all jammed into a tight 76-minute package. The moodiness that typifies people’s skepticism about Batman (Conroy) is given context (but not explicit explanation) here. He is a product of his own obsession, born in an era that made some brutal sense, but a part of an era where some degree of insanity is the only valid insurance policy. The only reason he continues to be a hero is because that obsession hasn’t completely swallowed him up, despite its best efforts and easier success with others. Other films have tried to harness this truth about the character. This one succeeds. The animation was originally intended for a direct-to-video release, and it shows, but none of us were showing up for Batman: The Animated Series for the feature-quality cels. We came for the writing… and also, it’s what was on the local Fox affiliate at that particular moment.

It also eschews many of the things that can become so de rigueur about Batman stories. At no point in this film does Martha drop her pearls. What’s more, her name isn’t even mention despite Bruce’s parents hovering like a cloud over everything. One of the Rogue’s Gallery doesn’t suck the air out of every moment in the film, either. Joker (Hamill) is here, but he’s a supporting character, a cypher. I’ve always felt the Clown Prince of Crime is like comic book wasabi. A little bit, and the flavor is surprising, perhaps even chaotic. Too much, and your mouths numb aside for the feeling of green horseradish in your mouth. Batman often works best when the supervillains are just part of the scenery; just see The Long Halloween for a master’s course in the subject. Or, better yet, give this film a view. It’s currently on Netflix, but who knows for how long?

Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Director: J.J. Abrams

Cast*: Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley

Have I Seen it Before: It’s opening weekend fam, beyond the vague sense of a mixed reaction, I had no real idea what I was in for, although I did get the impression I might fall into a diabetic coma with the amount of fan service potentially on the horizon.

Did I Like It: Well, since I’m already on record adoring Star Wars – Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), I guess I have to loathe this one, right? 

Is it okay if I still like this one? Are we cool if I do? Do I care if we’re cool? All good questions. Yes, I think the film is messy, and there are plot threads I may spend some idle time over the next few years trying to make sense of, but it was rousing, and crowd pleasing, and fun.

That’s the job J.J. Abrams was hired to do, and now he’s done it twice.

The flaws are real, though. While it was nice to have scenes with Carrie Fisher again, she never felt terribly present in her scenes. Had we somehow not known she died after the production of The Last Jedi, maybe I wouldn’t have had the same issue with her material. Had the film opted for a different tact and had her die off-screen in the events leading up to the film, maybe we would have had a whole new set of complaints.

With the diminished role of the original trilogy characters very much hanging over the film—Billy Dee Williams’ Lando has scarce screen time, and very little to do with the plot other than to show up places and be Lando—the film fully becomes the purvue of the new characters. Rey, Poe, and Finn finally become a trio, spending much of their first two films apart, and their chemistry is breezy, and their quest for the location of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid, another original trilogy character underserved) is the most coherent part of the film. Kylo Ren’s redemption also gives Adam Driver some of his best material in the series. I’ve read some takes on the film that have said it ruins the legacy of all Skywalkers, Rey, Ben Solo, Leia, the entire series, Rian Johnson specifically, and more childhoods than I thought were still standing after Lucas made swift work of them in the last decade.

The film ruins nothing. The story of Ben Solo and Rey (insert last name here) is complete. As had long been prophesied, the Skywalker was destroyed the Sith and brought balance to the force. The Last Jedi still exists, and as of this writing is still available to watch on Netflix, Disney+ be damned.

So, once again—just like with The Last Jedi—I am left with one big complaint: I could have used a whole lot more Lupita Nyong’o. Yes, Kelly Marie Tran virtually disappearing from the film isn’t a great look for the franchise, but Nyong’o was the best part of Star Wars – Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015) and was tragically underused in The Last Jedi and here even more so. In The Last Jedi she is relegated to not much more than a cameo, but it was a fun moment that added to the mythology around her character, Maz Kanata. Here, she largely just stands around the Resistance base camp quietly reacting to the story around her, and I even think that level of involvement for Maz was a byproduct of her being central to the re-purposed footage of Carrie Fisher from The Force Awakens. 

Dear Hollywood, 

Please use more Lupita Nyong’o. Jordan Peele and Abe Forsythe are exempt from this notice. Even Ryan Coogler could do a little bit better in this department.

Yours in watching,

Mac

And now, we are left with the final question I introduced in my review of The Force Awakens: While we may not have needed these movies, I’m still glad we got them. They are spectacle writ large, and adventure storytelling at their very best. I’ve spent most of the last day since completing my re-watch of the series and my first screening of this film humming the John Williams march. I’ve dug into my comixology library, purchased a copy of the annotated original trilogy screenplays, and even bought a dirt-cheap copy of the novelizations of those movies. Why? Because even as this film took a winding, sometimes bewildering road to reach its completion, I still don’t want it to end.

* I mean, technically, Harrison Ford should have gotten second billing in this film, as his appearance in the film is far more substantial than Hamill’s was in The Force Awakens (2015), but I suppose that—in the interest of not being nitpicky—I won’t try to override the will of SAG.

Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)*

Director: Richard Marquand

Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher**, Ian McDiarmid

Have I Seen It Before?: Any number of times, with any number of different celebration scenes at the end.

Did I like it?: It’s generally regarded as the weakest film in the original trilogy. I would tend to agree, but I am left wondering why.

The climactic (or semi-climactic, thanks to the films in the sequel trilogy) battle between Luke Skywalker (Hamill) and his father, Darth Vader (David Prowse in the suit, Sebastian Shaw once his helmet is removed, and James Earl Jones via voice in the suit) is among the greatest in the series. For years, the Ewoks felt like the most annoying thing that happened to the series, before the prequels made them look absolutely charming by comparison. Also, the series once again ret-conned large swaths of its mythos to shoehorn in the twist that Princess Leia (Fisher) and Luke Skywalker are actually twin siblings.

All of these can be forgiven, especially when considered in the larger context of the series, but I think the real flaw is that the emotional stakes, at least for me, were never fully established, or I never fully bought into them. 

Sure, the Rebellion is on the brink of collapse, and the thin possibility of the redemption of Vader hangs over everything, but for years I never believed that Luke was ever in any real danger of turning to the dark side. He had always been portrayed as so morally pure, and not until the last frantic moments of the duel with his father do I get a sense that he could be corrupted in the service of his friends.

That was, of course, until my viewings of it more recently. Of the three main protagonists through the course of the Skywalker saga (Anakin, Luke, and Rey), Luke seems as if he is the furthest on his journey to the dark side. 

Consider, he is dressed in a black outfit for the entirety of the film. Not exactly the light robes of a nascent Jedi Knight. Also, the sequence rescuing Han Solo (Ford) from Jabba the Hutt seems like an overlong effort to walk back the cliffhanger from The Empire Strikes Back (1980), but his band of rebels hesitates not one whit to destroy not only the admittedly vile gangster, but everyone else on board his pleasure skiff. Thieves, gangsters, and other odious ones for the most part, but are there not slaves on board worthy of resuce? Any smugglers? In another world where Han had made good on his deliveries to Jabba, would he have met his end there along with everyone else? It’s a minor act of mass murder for someone who killed several million Imperials on the first Death Star***, but Darth Farmboy is way farther along on his journey toward the Dark Side than I was initially led to believe.

That he is still able to pull out of this descent into evil only raises the film in my estimation. Maybe it is still the weakest of the trilogy it has the bad luck of closing, but if it continues to improve with age, it may one day exceed its predecessors.

*I watched the unaltered versions available on the 2006 “limited edition” DVDs. See my review for Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) for further thoughts on this.

**I keep wanting to give her higher billing, but I feel like I have to wait for the sequel trilogy for that, and I don’t thinkthat is my fault.

***Of which—despite any debate in Clerks (1994)—I have to believe at least some were trying to work their way out of the Empire’s clutches.

Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)*

Director: Irvin Kershner

Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Frank Oz

Have I Seen It Before?: Yes, but probably in the wrong way. I missed all of the original trilogy in theaters by one year, and so had to watch them on VHS in the late 80s and early 90s. So, the first time I saw Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) it was preceded by an ad for the rest of the series, including Luke (Hamill) asking Yoda (Oz) that trilogy-spoiling question: “Is Darth Vader my father?”

So it’s kind of like I had the experience of seeing the film before I ever actually got to see it.

Did I like it?: It would be pretty disingenuous of me to say anything other than “yes” here. It is universally accepted as the greatest of all Star Wars films. It is truly great, not possessing one moment or element that annoys or distracts, and in fact adds so much to the tapestry of the saga, that it probably has had a hard time recovering in the 39 years since its release. It is thrilling and funny in equal measures, and even its supposed “down” ending hints at the—for lack of a better term—new hope just beyond the horizon.

But is it better than A New Hope? I’ve probably spent most of my life thinking so, but I’m not sure why I have changed tracks in the last few years, but I think… (I think) I prefer A New Hope at this moment. It’s an incredibly close comparison, at any rate.

That may make the debate about which film is “better” a fundamentally meaningless one.

It is a far better sequel than we had any right to expect from the original Star Wars. As such, it may be partly to blame for the litany of movies we’ve received since, each one demanding of us as viewers to not so much react and take in the subsequent films, but create positions on which one we like and which ones we don’t. It has reduced fandom of the series to a tedious xerox copy of partisan politics in America. 

Stop ranking movies. Enjoy them, don’t enjoy them. That is up to you. Just watch them.

With that in mind, both this film and the one that preceded it are great and you should watch them, if you haven’t.

Which you almost certainly have.

*I watched the unaltered versions available on the 2006 “limited edition” DVDs. See my review for A New Hope for further thoughts on this.

Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)

Director: George Lucas

Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness

Have I Seen it Before: I mean, what would I have been doing with my life up until this point if I hadn’t? 

Did I Like It: It’s… Well, hell, at the risk of reading as needlessly melodramatic, it may, in fact be a perfect film.

And a perfect film the way that it was originally presented (see the footnote). Here’s some food for thought: Legend has it that the reason Lucas didn’t include the scene where Han (Ford) encounters Jabba the Hutt in the Mos Eisley Spaceport. 

It’s also the movie I point to when I needed an example of why widescreen was always better than full screen. Kids, ask your parents, as it’s not a debate that needs 

But all of that doesn’t matter when you see the twin suns of Tatooine and dream of a life beyond the one you’ve always known, and when Han return to the Death Star when he is needed the most, and when our heroes (sans Chewbacca [Peter Mayhew], #dontevergetoverthisone) get their reward at the throne room of the Great Massassi Temple on Yavin IV. This movie is simplicity itself, and even The Empire Strikes Back (1980) can’t hold a candle to that.

*I watched the original, completely unaltered version of the film (and will be doing so for the rest of the original trilogy). This was so unaltered that not only is Jabba the Hutt nowhere in sight, but the film isn’t even labeled as Episode IV or A New Hope at this point. That title was added on a later VHS release after The Empire Strikes Back hit theaters. The un-fiddled versions of the film are available in a limited edition from 2006 that is long-since out-of-print but are available on Amazon for about $60.00 per film. The original versions are technically a bonus feature on a second disc on each set and are what appear to be copies from even more antiquated laserdisc copies. Widescreen editions are available, but Lucasfilm/20th Century Fox went slight on the presentation features. It’s not anamorphic and your modern TV is going to find it a little befuddling, but if you’re in the market for looking at Sebastian Shaw as opposed to Hayden Christensen, this is the only way to go (more on that during my review of Return of the Jedi(1983).

Child's Play (2019)

Director: Lars Klevberg

Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Gabriel Bateman, Brian Tyree Henry, Mark Hamill

Have I Seen it Before: At the time of this writing, t’s a new release, so I think you know the answer to that one. Here’s the thing. I’m reasonably sure that I’ve seen the original Child’s Play (1988) at one point or another, but I can’t lay a claim to any particular memory of the film. Maybe I will have to try to watch or re-watch the original 

Did I Like It: I can’t think of much to say that won’t be damning with faint praise…

So let’s make with the damning, shall we?

There’s plenty of likable parts to this remake of Child’s Play*. At times, the film embraces its place in the universe and is content to be a gooey, unrelenting gore fest. Sadly, those moments don’t sustain and are few and far between. 

The film reaches for moments of what might be considered satire of modern life, but it would likely be too much to expect the film to really dig in for these moments when it is designed from top to bottom to be counter-programming to traditional summer fare.

Mark Hamill is a delight. He manages to completely eschew the role that made him a household name, Luke Skywalker. Anyone familiar with his career as a voice actor won’t be surprised by that assertion, but he also manages—aside from just a few menacing laughs—to eschew his iconic work as The Joker. We’re lucky to have Hamill, and we’re lucky he keeps picking weird things to do, even if the rest of the movie isn’t quite living up to him. This is the only uniformly great part of the film.

The rest never quite comes together. Aubrey Plaza looks bored. I mean, her whole thing is looking bored, but even here she seems bored with her boredom. The kids surrounding the film never seem to be really reacting to anything that is going on. They seem like the kids who didn’t quite get the roles of The Losers Club in IT: Chapter One (2017), which incidentally came from the same producing team.

All in all, it’s probably as good as the original Child’s Play. At least, I think it is.

*For that matter, is this the first series that has been rebooted while the original series/continuity is still a going concern? I suppose at this point you could make an argument for Ghostbusters, but when the 2016 film had come out, the idea of a traditional/legacy sequel to the original series wasn’t on the table. This is a truly strange case, with two different Chuckies competing for our dread.