Letting Go

Seeing the final chapter in the Star Wars saga (as Filmbrain did on Friday night) was less a movie going experience than it was an act of letting go -- a closure, so to speak. And the mood amongst Filmbrain and his similar-aged friends as they sat in a Hell's Kitchen bar after the film was not one of elation or ebullience, but rather one of melancholy. When we entered into this, we were wide-eyed and pubeless; now, twenty-eight years later, we find ourselves walking away cynical and jaded. The experience of watching Revenge of the Sith is akin to finally getting over the girlfriend you loved with every inch of your soul all those years ago who dumped you for the type of guy you despise the most, one who is not only blessed with good looks and magnetic charm, but has a life full of endless good fortune, where things just literally fall into his lap without his needing to lift a finger, and though he treated her like garbage she stayed with him even when he slept with both of her sisters and you built up hopes that she would finally come back to you but she only phoned you to tell you that she was moving to Paris with the guy and she would have loved to see you one last time but wanted to spare you the pain. Or something like that. So, while Natalie Portman was lost in a sea of wooden dialog, and Hayden Christensen was doing his best to show us his inner turmoil, Filmbrain was going through a rite of passage. Star Wars and sweet youth, farewell!

Comments

[Ulrike B]

This is probably the best review of the film I have come across.

[Josh]

I quit after Episode One, does that make me a 'I used to love her with every inch of my soul, but that bitch crossed me once and I never want to see her again' kind of guy?

Hopefully not. I think it's more a generational thing. I'm old enough to remember the original three from before the Special Edition rereleases, but also young enough that I was still only just discovering girls by the time The Phantom Menace rolled around. So my childhood nostalgia for Star Wars was already tainted by this new, terrible movie and I never felt the need to see it through to the end that so many others do.

[la depressionada]

you know i couldn't agree with you more. even sadder for me the de-evolution of feminism that parallels its de-evolution in the real world -- in number 4 leia did everything the guys did -- running, jumping, guns etc. i love when she tells them she's in charge. in this one padme (o brother -- kind of a different name than leia organa) did all the mewling, whining, supporting, helping in the movie. (plus it would have killed them to have a few high profile female jedi knights?) i almost puked.

not to mention, this genre is predicated on absolutes. i mean ming was fucking merciless, right? at least in ep 4 you came out feeling right would out. george lucas is guilty, guilty as charged of being a hack of the first magnitude. he and his buddy steven speilburg and their conservative social values single-handedly destroyed hollywood movies (and in the middle of its golden age).

speaking of american film's golden age -- saw xan cassavetes's documentary on channel z. it's pretty great.

[cinetrix]

I will never be able to refer to Star Wars as episode 4, nor will I start prefacing Raiders of the Lost Ark with "Indiana Jones" simply so all three flicks can sit together on the "I" shelf somewhere for the convenience of illiterate video store patrons. But I don't think seeing this latest and last will have quite as profound an impact on me as it did on you, FB. I went into a Saturday matinee of Phantom filled with excitement and ready to regress, and I got Jar Jar Fucking Binks for my pains. So I skipped the Clones all together. The moment had already passed for me.

That said, this story took me back.

[Flickhead]

I can remember the moment in 1977 as if it were yesterday. People who generally considered the movies nothing more than a Saturday night diversion began raving about this "Star Wars". The decade began splendidly -- "Chinatown", "Shampoo", all the best of Altman, Ashby, Coppola, Scorsese, you name it. And now the new Hollywood appeared to be moving in on fluff!

I went to see it the first week it came out at New York's Ziegfeld Theatre, despite the two-star rating Newsday gave it, a review quickly recanted in favor of a 4-star appeasement to that same crowd who consider the movies a Saturday night diversion.

We sat in the tenth row center. I was immediately confused by the textbook scrawling on the screen -- just what were all these words about? And for the next two hours I was hopelessly lost. It was as if the children had taken over and I was observing a sugar induced recess-hour rant on celluloid.

Wookies? Chewbaccas? I walked out of the theatre feeling like I'd been urinated on by the family dog.

A month later I tried "Star Wars" again, thinking that perhaps the first time I was in some foul mood. But, no -- the movie was trash. And I'm sure it still is.

This isn't cinema, this is a narcotic. It's evident by the throngs who've moaned about how bad the last two movies were, yet continue to pile into theatres like junkies for more.

P.T. Barnum summed it up: You can never underestimate the taste of the American people. Lucas only expanded that to a global level.

[greg samsa]

You remind me of the cranky old man David Cross played on Mr. Show that would only listen to marching band music on a gramaphone. Star Wars is fun, propulsive, exhilirating cinema. Yes it is populist entertainment, but on that level is it any worse a film than The Wizard of Oz? King Kong? As for being a narcotic, I actually consider that praise. There is room for cocaine and valium in movies.

[990000]

I think in the future they should redo Star Wars, kinda darker -- the way they're attempting to redo Batman. actually, I would love to see Clint Eastwood do Star Wars, Unforgiven style. that would rock. no, actually Clint should redo Batman. that would be even better.

[Sal C]

Sometimes I feel like the only 36 (soon to be 37) year old white male in America who doesn't give a goddamn about Star Wars. I saw the first three as a kid (loved the first two, hated the third), but never owned a toy, bought a serialization, watched the X-Mas special, or purchased a VHS/laserdisc/DVD copy. I went to see Phantom Menace out of some twisted sense of obligation and hated even more than Jedi. That was it and I'm glad the hype is over for good. The Star Wars mythos is nothing but a cult hit writ large, VERY large, but a cultish obsession nonetheless.

[Filmbrain]

I actually think the series started out strong. Lucas' obsession with Joseph Campbell helped a lot, as did Lucas' other obsession, Akira Kurosawa.

He let his friend Steven Spielberg talk him into the Ewoks, and that was the beginning of the end.

Again, I think a lot has to do with my age at the time. I also can't help but think of the initial three films in parallel with my own sexual maturation. Scary, I know.

[Alex]

Very nicely put

I don’t remember the first time I saw star wars, but I vividly remember the first time I saw the Darth Vader Action figure. Those toys were such a part of my youth that seeing the movies is like being seven in the backyard again. Most of my melancholy about the disastrous turn the movies have taken is that the imaginative world is ruined too.

Before the Phantom menace was released I sat in a bar with some friends and debated whether skipping the would be the closest we would ever get to exercising free-will. We all agreed that if we didn’t go we’d be bucking a monstrous and defining cultural force - and we all went anyway. I'll go see this one too, glad that it's over, more than anything else.

[Michael]

Next to Anthony Lane's review in The New Yorker, I think I've identified with your comments on Revenge of the Sith the most. I can still recall walking out of the theater in 1977 after my parents took me to see Star Wars, and I was elated, wide-eyed, and convinced I had seen the greatest movie ever. Of course, I was a kid then, and for a long time, Star Wars dominated my world. But there are so many things fundamentally different about Episodes I-III that have left me with a similar sense of melancholy, disappointment, and, finally, disinterest. Part of this is because I've simply grown up, changed, and moved on, and Lucas really makes films that speak and appeal to children, even though he's trying to speak and appeal to adults. Goodbye is perhaps the most appropriate thing to say to this series of films.

[phyrephox]

I wish casual movie going audiences looked as critically at "normal" movies the way they seem to hyper-critique Lucas' prequels. The way the American public debates the merits of these films you would think the populace was suffuse with fairly active, thinking, critical audiences.

[Michael K.]

Oh SWEET! Finally I know one: it's from Star Wars, right?

[burritoboy]

You know, I saw the first two movies of this subway car disaster as a kid.......and I was bored by the experience. All the other kids were yelling about how great these movies were, and I was bored. Don't know what that makes me.

[Toto]

Come off it folks: Star Wars (the original, aka Episode IV - as in drip) was a rollickingly good ride. V was where confusion set in, mainly because the extended story didn't really fit with IV. VI - an attempt to re-establish coherence - bordered on the ridiculous, a disappointment. But it was fun to take the ride, like going on a boat trip round Manhattan, which loses much of its interest when you go beyond the UN, north on the east river... but you can still enjoy the sunshine.

I never really considered Star Wars very seriously. I think thats why I liked it so much. I had already seen the best in SciFi films, 2001 - A Space Odyssey, and read the best in Fantasy, The Lord of the Rings (I had indeed lost my youthful heart - I was 10 at the time - to an Arwen, a fellow classmate, who was reading it at the same time as me) some years before.

So if the Star Wars series was like a girlfriend, for me, she was the sort of tom-boyishly fun sort who got a little bit dowdy once she grew up. She still has my affection, but she never came close to breaking my heart.