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| Star Wars poses no mysteries for the young. |
As I mentioned in “How Clone Wars Helped Me Love The Star
Wars Prequels,” the prequels didn’t resonate with me the way the original movies
did. At the time I didn’t understand
this. Perhaps I’m just older, and
they’re intended for a younger audience, I reasoned. Perhaps I’m so in love with the original cast
that I’m resistant to a new group of characters, I argued. But there was one fact that was unarguable:
the structure of the stories was dramatically different to those of the
original trilogy.
The stories in the original trilogy exemplified simple
storytelling. A few key characters pulled
you into their world. The plot of each
movie took place over a short period of time, a few days at most. And each seemed to follow its predecessor
smoothly, with little substantive change having taken place in the characters’
lives (or their universe) between the films. With the prequels, each movie took place over a
longer stretch of time. You met a lot
more characters, and many changed substantively between installments. Each movie dealt not with two competing
forces, such as the Rebellion and the Empire, but numerous political and
economic factions. With so many
characters and organizations vying for attention, each movie gave me less time
to understand them all. And, unlike in
the original trilogy, I didn’t understand many of the types of droids, weapons and
technology people used, or how some of the competing factions were structured.
Author Kevin J. Anderson has either written or edited over
twenty Star Wars books, so I think it’s safe to view him as an authority on
George Lucas’ universe. At a panel on
Transmedia Storytelling at Stan Lee’s Comikaze, he related how the Star Wars
prequels didn’t resonate with him as much as the original trilogy. For an example, he referred to a specific
event in “Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.”
After Anakin helps him kill Mace Windu, Chancellor Palpative issues
Order 66 to the leaders of his clone army.
To stirring music, we then watch as various Jedi, whether on planets or
in space battles, are turned on by their clone troops. Unlike Yoda and Obi-wan (who survive these
attempts on their lives), most of those who die in this event, known as The Great Jedi Purge, were never major
characters. If they sat on the Jedi
Council, we were given little reason to care about them. Others shot down we had never seen before in
the movies.
So, Kevin said, as much as he wanted to be moved by these
dramatic moments in the film, he was left unaffected. The problem, he explained, was that Lucas had
chosen to develop all those other characters, and illuminate the other
factors I mentioned, in the comic books, role-playing and computer games, and
novels that his company put out before (and between, and after) each
installment. Thus, each film represents
an iceberg, the most visible part being what we see on screen, with the
majority of each story residing beneath the water.
Each storyteller compiles a backstory for his characters and
fictional worlds, and sometimes a story fails because the audience either learns
too much, or not enough, about the characters, factions, and events on the page
or the screen. Can such a condemnation
be made of the Star Wars prequels? Was
George Lucas’ approach to storytelling in the prequels flawed? Many of us who are older would argue,
“Yes.” But from the overwhelming
popularity of the prequels, particularly among the young, I would suspect
not. The fact is that a person in his
thirties, forties, or fifties interprets a story in a different way from a
child or a teen. As much as one would
like to go back, and view a story through younger eyes, that is simply
impossible. So, as he did with special
effects in the original trilogy, Lucas emerges as an innovator with the
prequels, this time with his approach to storytelling.
Through his fiction, his work ethic, and the way he’s
remained accessible to his fans, Kevin J. Anderson has given me many reasons to
respect him. Through explaining why the Star
Wars prequels never worked for me, he has added one more. I shall forever be grateful.
Dragon Dave
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