A Star Wars retrospective

We have about two months left to go until "Rogue One" hits the silver screen, so I think it's time to stop and take stock of where the franchise has been.

The year was 1977. Jimmy Carter was in office, having carved out a victory over President Ford the previous fall. The United States was in an economic slump marked by stagflation. The energy crisis was on, so much so that President Carter was pushing for ways to get the nation off oil and moving toward energy independence, even taking the revolutionary step of adding solar panels to the White House roof. That May, "Star Wars" came out.

Soon Star Wars was everywhere. It wasn't just in movie theaters; it was in schools as children carried their new Star Wars lunchboxes with them. It was in toy stores, with rack after rack of action figures for characters like Hammerhead, whose entire appearance involved turning his head to follow the camera as it panned across the Mos Eisley Cantina. Phrases like "May the Force be with you" dropped into everyday speech, and people waited in line for an hour or more to see the movie.

And somewhere in CBS headquarters, some genius had the idea of filming a made-for-TV Star Wars movie to broadcast.

The basic plot of "The Star Wars Holiday Special" is fairly straightforward. It's Life Day, the most sacred holiday to Wookiees, and Han Solo is doing everything he can to help Chewie get home. Unfortunately, there is an imperial blockade around Kashyyyk, and there are star destroyers on the tail of the Millennium Falcon. While Han and Chewie do their thing, and the imperials do their thing, Chewie's family are at home, wondering if he'll make it home and wondering if they'll ever be free from the jackbooted presence of imperial troops.

A friend of mine recently shared that he had been unaware of this movie, Oh, Jeff. You don't know how lucky you have been.

The holiday special first aired in 1978, a week before Thanksgiving, and not long after we had made the annual switch to standard time. I was 8 years old at the time "The Star Wars Holiday Special" aired, and remember chiefly being disappointed that I was unable to watch the special when it aired, as all my friends did.

We were an excited group when it came to Star Wars. At the lunch table we talked about which action figures and other toys we had. We argued over who had seen Star Wars the most times. We even brought in Star Wars trading cards to show, to share and to trade with one another.

No one talked about the TV special the next day. It was like it hadn't even happened.

In the years since, I heard stories about how bad it was, and it became something of a legend. The movie never aired again, though there were two more made-for-TV Star Wars movies: "Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure" and "Ewoks: The Battle for Endor." Rumor has it that whenever anyone mentions the holiday special to George Lucas, he gets glassy-eyed and acts like he drifted off and missed what you were saying.

(Not that the other Star Wars TV movies were any better. When I let my 5-year-old watch one, she started crying halfway through because an adult was verbally abusing the main character, a young child whose parents had just been killed. I had to turn it off. She's never asked to see the Ewok movies again. Keep in mind that these were all movies made for the holidays.)

As fate and fortune would have it, several years ago a co-worker lent me an nth-generation copy of a videotape of the original "Star Wars Holiday Special." The copy had deteriorated badly. The picture was fuzzy, it jumped, and sometimes it was marred with green and black lines. These were actually the best features.

"A Very Wookiee Christmas," as the movie also is known, is so awful that it's not even fun to watch for how bad it is. It's just awful. I think it may have killed the comedy careers of a few people who were in it. It certainly claimed the lives of a few people who watched it and were unable to change the channel.

The first five minutes are nonstop Wookiee growling, without benefit of subtitles, dubbing or a human interlocutor. Shortly after that Chewbacca's father watches nine minutes of Wookiee porn. Other highlights include a six-minute Jefferson Starship video, the world's least funny humor sketch starring Harvey Korman (three of them), a really bad musical number with Bea Arthur set at the Mos Eisley Cantina, a 10-minute cartoon that introduces Boba Fett but still isn't enough to redeem the special, and finally Carrie Fisher singing for Life Day.

You might think that the presence of performers like Harvey Korman and Bea Arthur would make this something to see. You would be wrong. Long before the movie is over, you're left feeling sad for them, that their careers actually came to this.

There are other things that the intervening years have allowed me to forget, a gift of time for which I am immensely grateful. The only good parts of the movie feature Chewbacca and Han Solo, or they are clips taken from the actual "Star Wars" movie.

Here it is, but I strongly advise against watching it.


Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.

lightsabers and adamantium

What the world needs is a discussion of whether lightsabers can cut through adamantium. And thank goodness, Fark is there to provide us with that discussion.

As every Star Wars fan knows, lightsabers can cut through everything. And as every comics fanboy knows, adamantium is the nearly indestructible metal used in Marvel Comics. Ultron the genocidal robot has been made of it since the alloy was first discovered. Wolverine's skeleton is laced with it, which makes him even tougher. Just about anyone whom the writers and editors at Marvel want to make more dangerous, has access to it.

Still, while adamantium is nearly indestructible, the key word is "nearly." The metallurgist who created it did so in an attempt to recreate the unique alloy in Captain America's shield. He failed. In the Marvel Universe, the shield remains the strongest alloy in existence.

The shield has been broken only once that I'm aware of. At the conclusion of the 11th issue of the Secret Wars miniseries back in the 1984, Doctor Doom killed Spider-man, the Hulk, and those members of the Fantastic Four, X-men and Avengers who were present with a single bolt from the blue. When they were all restored to life in issue 12, Captain America's shield had a long shard missing.

Doom succeeded in breaking the shield only because he had stolen the power of the Beyonder, a being so powerful that Marvel editors at the time equated him with God himself. Captain America was able to restore it at the conclusion of the issue, owing to residual omnipotence in the air following Doom's defeat.

So the real question isn't whether a lightsaber can cut through adamantium. It's whether it can cut through a metal so tough that only God can break a piece off.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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'order of the phoenix'

My daughter Evangeline just finished reading "Order of the Phoenix" this morning and it's the turning of an era. (It took her about two weeks to finish, mostly because we made her stop reading so she could eat, go to the bathroom, and get outside.)

A colleague of mine from the school board said she envies Evangeline the opportunity to read the books for the first time and to experience Harry's world as a brand-new thing on her own. For us adults, the magic is still there, but it's imore informed because of all the other fantasy works we've read over the years.

I'll allow Jessica that feeling, but I have to admit that I don't envy my younger daughter Rachel the experience she'll have. By the time she gets to finish the Harry Potter series, all the surprises and cliff-hangers will be part of the cultural white noise. It'll will be lost on her, like Star Wars was.

You see, when "The Empire Strikes Back" came out in 1980, all we could talk about was whether Darth Vader had been telling the truth when he claimed to be Luke Skywalker's father. We argued about it on the bus, over the lunch table in the cafeteria, and in the letters pages of magazines like "Dynamite." We were still arguing about it three years later when "The Return of the Jedi" arrived.

No so my children.

When Evangeline and Ruth saw "The Empire Strikes Back" not long ago, they laughed out loud at Darth Vader's big revelation. Suddenly they understand the joke from "Toy Story 2" when Zurg claimed mid-battle to be the father of Buzz Lightyear. They have no way of appreciating just how unexpected that line was.

It's going to be the same from here on out for children and the Harry Potter saga.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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'i am your father'

Evangeline and Rachel just saw the Star Wars trilogy for the first time last week. When we reached the famous scene when Darth Vader tells Luke that he is Luke's father, Evangeline burst into laughter. She suddenly understood the joke in Toy Story 2 when Zurg and Buzz are facing off on the elevator.

In some ways, I feel my daughters have missed something by seeing Star Wars at their age, or perhaps even in seeing it in the context where they know the joke first and foremost. There is no way they can appreciate what a shock it was to viewers who saw that movie for the first time and heard Darth drop that particular bombshell. I remember that even back then it was primetime grounds for debate and discussion. We had back-and-forth discussion for years about whether it was true, with people pulling out one bit of evidence or another to support their position. For my girls, there is no way the mystery ever could reach that level of suspense.

I rather feel they will have the same problem with "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." Too much of the ending will be known to them, because so many of their friends already will have read it.

retreat of the clones

I still haven't seen "Attack of the Clones," mostly because "The Phantom Menace" was so appallingly bad I didn't want to see another Star Wars flick that was likely to be just as bad or even worse.

A friend of mine who did see it and initially liked it, the further he has gone from seeing it, the more he has decided it was awful. That's telling, I think; often when I see a movie or read a book that is critically acclaimed and yet seems awful to me, I'll start to think more about it as time goes on and start to understand or appreciate things I missed before. John's reaction has been to develop a progressively more negative view of the dialogue and story as time has gone on, suggesting that the lasting impression of the movie is not a good one.

jedis are not allowed to love

George Lucas is full of it.

In "The Phantom Menace," Yoda made a point of arguing that Annakin had been left with his mother too long, that he was too attached to her to be trained as Jedi. And the trailers for "Attack of the Clones" continue this "emotion is bad" thing. I wonder whether Lucas really wants to send the message to children that loving your parents and having close emotional bonds with other people is a bad thing.

A strong attachment to your parents is a good thing, and it's essentially a tremendous form of abuse to take children from their parents, whether they're toddlers or older.

Isaac already has had to deal with some abandonment issues because the state took him from his mother, as bad as she was. He's probably going to go through even more in the next few months as the state starts trying to put him back there, away from a family that really cares about him and that he cares about as well.

Emotion is no better or worse a justification for behavior than logic or reason. What's important is balance. Even hatred can be godly and right -- but it's next to impossible for us to feel that particular emotion properly because we usually are unable to separate the person from an action.

It's hard to say, of course, without greater context, but I think you very easily could make a credible argument that Lucas views emotions as problematic and dangerous since they're irrational and uncontrollable. He wouldn't be the first person to feel that way.

Look at it this way: The heroes of the series all strive for being unswayed by emotion. Anakin is urged not to love or grow attached to Amidala. Luke is warned not to be moved by feelings of compassion for his friends. Yoda warns against fear, against anger and against hatred. All of these are valid emotions and all of them can serve a good purpose, but there's no distinction made, and when someone gives into their emotions, it's cast as a bad decision with negative consequences.

'Attack of the Clones': no thanks

I won't be at the theater Thursday night.

Although I do plan at some point to see "Attack of the Clones," I'm in no particular hurry to see George Lucas disgrace the Star Wars franchise this time around. Besides, I just saw "Spider-Man" with an 8-year-old friend of mine, and have pretty much exhausted my quota of time I can spare for movies with two 2-year-olds in the house.

I probably won't see "Attack of the Clones" until it's out on video.

jar jar must die

You know you hated him. I know I did. In fact, aside from some kids I know who like anything they see, I'm hard-pressed to think of anyone who liked Jar Jar Binks. (Besides George Lucas.)

So let's just say, for the sake of argument, that in "Star Wars: Episode 3," Darth Lucas gives in to mounting pressure and kills Jar Jar off. How do you think it should be done?

My personal preference? Picture an opening scene to the movie in which there is a gathering of various people from the first two movies, with the standard throw-ins from the original trilogy, all assembled in the foreground. They're talking about something serious, relevant to the plot of the movie. In the background, Jar Jar is eating a piece of fruit the size of an apple. It gets caught in his throat. No one notices. He starts to choke. Everyone else starts to file out of the room to the next scene change, while, still unseen and still in the background, Jar Jar collapses and dies.

I love it when a plan comes together.

problems in a faraway galaxy long ago

Watch "A New Hope" some time and you may notice a few interesting things about the characters and the way they interact, that just don't make sense.

For starters, when they're on Yavin IV and the rebels are getting ready to go up against the Death Star, Luke begs Han to stay and help them in the fight. His exact words are "They could use a good pilot like you. You're turning your back on them." Yet all we've seen Han do so far is to walk around the ship, man the gun turrets against some TIE fighters, and get caught in a tractor beam. How does Luke get the idea that Han is a good pilot, and why doesn't he ask Chewbacca to help, since he presumably was flying the Millenium Falcon while they escaped from the Death Star.

I've tried to rationalize this a couple ways. Bear with me:

1. Luke is a starstruck farm boy, and easily impressed by Han's swagger. Luke has never been off Tatooine at this point. He's never even heard of the Force before, and what he knows of Obiwan Kenobi is that he's something of a mad hermit, yet he still gets impressed by Obiwan pretty quickly and decides to rush off into outer space with him. He's blown away by the thought that C3PO and R2D2 have been with the rebellion, and is smitten immediately with Princess Leia.

His assessment of the Falcon and his initial reaction to Han could easily spring from insecurity; i.e., here's a guy who made the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs, a guy who's been to more planets than Luke has brain cells, what can I say that can compare with that? So he gets aggressive and tries to show how much he knows.

It turns out that Luke is a good pilot, but I'd suggest that he has little basis for that claim since all he's flown has been his landspeeder and perhaps some other sort of hovercraft. If the Force -- and Han Solo -- weren't with him, Luke would have been toast.

The movie also suggests that wookies are not especially well known in the empire -- Han has to tell Threepio about their reputation for ripping people's arms out of their sockets when they get mad -- so it could be a case of xenophobia or mere unfamiliarity with wookies that leads to the slight. Or Luke might just be racist.

And let's not forget the possibility that Luke has yogurt for brains. He certainly didn't demonstrate much mental prowess in the movies that I can think of. It was probably all he could do stop from drooling onto his lightsaber.

2. We really don't see the entire flight in either direction. It's possible that Han did a fair amount of flying then as well; in any event, he did get them away from Tatooine, didn't he?

Another interesting question: After the Battle of the Death Star, Han, Luke and Chewie all come forward in some sort of award ceremony at the rebel base on Yavin IV. Han and Luke get medals, while Chewie just stands around and makes growling noises. What's up with that?

I think in one of the adaptations -- it might have been the Marvel Comics adaptation, or the novel -- there is a note made to the effect that Chewbacca was too tall for Leia to put a medal around his neck, and that his medal was awarded separately. But surely it wouldn't have been hard to hand him the medal, wouldn't it?

One also could assume that wookies don't like medals or other outward adornments for religious, social or hygiene reasons. (Most of the other species wear clothes, but even on Hoth, Chewbacca walks around naked. It's just a good thing for the ratings that certain things don't show through that fur.)

It's also impossible that wookies aren't regarded as intelligent creatures. No idea what the basis for this would be, but they simply could be advanced animals or something similar. There's a lot we don't know about Lucas' Galactic Empire for the simple reason that he's never thought it out that fully.

It could be that wookies are discriminated against, and the dialogue on its own does suggest that.
But the possibility also has occurred to me that there could be some sort of institutionalized prejudice against wookies as well. Are they regarded as less advanced than the humans in the empire? Are they less evolved? Chewie seems to be a decent pilot, marksman and mechanic, so I'm not sure about that, but it's an intriguing line of reasoning that probably never occurred to the Emperor when he first drew up the series. (In fact it probably still hasn't. Lucas' main gift is his timing, not his storytelling or artistic vision.)

Also, have you noticed that Chewbacca never gets subtitles for his lines? I guess it's for dramatic purposes. You usually can get the sense of what Chewbacca and Artoo are saying by the reactions and comments of the others around them. But since Greedo and Jabba are actively threatening the heroes, it's important we understand what they're saying faster than reacting to context allows us.

What I found rather amusing when my wife and I watched the Star Wars trilogy last year is that the subtitles aren't really necessary. Greedo and Jabba are speaking English, the same as the human characters, but with accents or something done to alter their speech, like sounds omitted.

I'm serious! Listen closely to the characters as you read the subtitles, and you'll notice the words match. There are consonants missing or something was done to the voice, but the speech recognizably matches the subtitles. I noticed the same thing years ago watching the Sean Connery movie "Medicine Man." At least on the old "War of the Worlds" series, they reversed the audio so it sounded utterly alien. (Or at least like backmasking.)

Good news about 'Attack of the Clones'

Good news on "Attack of the Clones." Lucas apparently actually went and got help with the screenplay ... from an actual screenwriter!

One reviewer who saw a prerelease showing of the movie apparently has said, "It helped ... a little."

The other good news about "Attack of the Clones" is that Jar Jar has a cameo, and that's about it.

It's not as good as a perfectly somber and serious scene in which Jar Jar chokes to death in the background, but it's better than having Jar Jar be the donor of all the DNA needed for the Clone Wars.

attack of the clones

Good news on "Attack of the Clones." Lucas apparently actually went and got help with the screenplay ... from an actual screenwriter! One reviewer who saw a prerelease showing of the movie apparently has said, "It helped ... a little."

The other good news about "Attack of the Clones" (besides N'Sync being fed to the Sarlaac) is that Jar Jar has a cameo, and that's about it. Granted, it's not as good as my daydream of having a perfectly somber and serious scene in which Jar Jar chokes to death in the background, but it's better than having Jar Jar be the donor of all the DNA needed for the Clone Wars.

No, I don't plan to see it.

the best star wars

I liked the original "Star Wars" movie, the one now subtitled "A New Hope." For all its flaws, it had a memorable and mythic story, the ending was tremendous, and it suggested deeper things beneath the surface.

But let's be honest. In many cinematic terms, the movie was hardly remarkable. It had some truly accomplished actors like Alec Guiness and James Earl Jones, but most of the others were adequate; and the writing was awful. The whole "Spare us your sorcerous ways, Lord Vader" speech is a classic example of turgid dialogue. Han Solo brags that the Millennium Falcon made the Kessell Run in under 12 parsecs, when a parsec is a measurement of distance not time. We're meant to believe that Luke has never been off Tatooine, yet he can pilot a single-man spaceship during a firefight and not panic or freeze.

The movie was good, but I wouldn't say it was the best Star Wars movie. That title clearly goes to "The Empire Strikes Back." When it first came out in 1980, I was 10, or nearly so, and I hated the end of the movie. Since then I've come to appreciate that it's one wicked ending, the writing was topnotch, all the acting was solid, and whoever came up with that fight scene between Darth Vader and Luke clearly had been doing some thinking about how a Jedi knight might fight.

It's by far the best Jedi fight scene we've seen in four movies. Remember how surprised Luke was when things started breaking off the wall to fly at him? You could almost hear him think, "Hey! You can't do that!"

"Return of the Jedi" sucked, and not just because it had a new Death Star. It was awful, for one simple reason: Ewoks. An earlier version of the movie script had the Wookie homeworld being threatened, but the Evil Emperor decided there was more money to be made marketing the Ewoks. The movie should have been called "Attack of the Care Bears."

I once wrote a mock term paper showing conclusively that "The Return of the Jedi" was more accurate historically than "A New Hope," which was a story put forth by the New Republic to make its hero, Luke Skywalker, look good. (Not only did the revisionists make the Death Star fully built, they also gave Luke sole credit for its destruction.)

"The Phanton Menace" was just awful: flat, one-dimensional characters; too much mindless action and overreliance on CGI special effects. Jake Lloyd, who played Anakin, wasn't up to grown-up repartee but didn't have other children to act like a child around either. And Lucas couldn't make up his mind whether he wanted an innocent boy who would become Darth Vader, or a brooding and angry boy who already was warped and destined for evil things.

This is the only Star Wars movie we don't have a copy of, that I have no desire to have a copy of, and that I consider worst than "Return of the Jedi."