Everything Happens in Threes

First published in Warp 39, March 1984.

Now that I’ve seen Return of the Jedi and the middle trilogy of the project is complete, it is probably time to say something about the Star Wars phenomenon. Let’s begin at the end with Return of the Jedi itself which is without a shadow of a doubt the worst of the three films. The plot threads left dangling in the other films are tied up in the most obvious of ways with little or no thought being applied to them. It is totally unsubtle. I’d say it was hackneyed and cliche ridden, but that would be a hackneyed and cliche ridden thing to say. The film is riddled with logical inconsistencies, and the ending is so sickly sweet that I could feel my teeth rotting as I watched. And did you spot the spelling mistake in the subtitles? At one stage, when Jabba the Hutt was jabbering, the subtitles told us that he was talking about a “Wookiee”. One would have thought that several millions of dollars would have bought a subtitler who knew that Chewbacca was a wookie. And (Oh God) those cute little furry things. Specifically designed to make you say “aaaaaah”, with their great big round bushbaby eyes (so why weren’t they nocturnal, damnit?) and their endearing clumsiness. Darth Vader turning into a good guy (he lost all my respect when he did that—he was a villain, for heavens sake; and I like my villains nasty). The Emperor with blue lightning in his fingertips. Answer me this—if Luke Skywalker, who was a mere beginner in manipulating the Force, could levitate himself as he did in the battle against Jabba the Hutt, why couldn’t the Emperor (with so much more training in the use of the Force) levitate himself to safety when Darth Vader chucked him down the hole?? Well?

I could go on, but you get my point, so why bother. The film was crude and unpolished. God knows, the other two weren’t sophisticated, but they were head and shoulders above this one.

You could probably date the current SF craze, or boom or whatever to Star Wars. 2001 was too cerebral, but Star Wars caught the Star Trek generation with its pants down, and suddenly SF was busting out all over. (Why oh why didn’t the wookie get a medal at the end of the first film? Everybody else did, and he deserved it as much as they did. Is the message of the film a statement that we are going to take racial prejudice out to the stars, or am I reading too much into a simple oversight? Either way, the wookie should have got a medal.)

There were attempts at something better—Solaris for example. But the kindest thing you could say about Solaris was that it was terminally boring, so that never amounted to much. The avant garde had been doing it for years, of course. But nobody went to see Last Year in Marienbad, and even if they had gone, it probably wouldn’t have made any difference, because it probably wasn’t SF anyway. I think. Maybe.

So blame it all on George Lucas. You could say that he was indirectly responsible for Battleship Galactica. I hope the thought gave him nightmares.

If it wasn’t for this last film which casts a dark shadow retrospectively over the other, I would heap praise on Star Wars. The first two films really were astonishingly good, even subtle sometimes—and that is unusual in this sort of area. The famous scene in the bar in the first film, for instance, was a beautifully understated film clip. (I think Lucas listened too much to the praise on this scene. If a few aliens are good, he must have thought, then a lot will be better. Hence all those damn muppets in the last film. Someone should have told him that aliens are like salt on your fish and chips. A few grains makes them tasty. A salt cellar full makes them inedible.)