The End of Days: Part Five
A few years back I attended the annual screenwriting expo in Los Angeles, specifically to see veteran screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, The Princess Bride) talk about his life and the state of screenwriting in general in front of about 5,000 people. When somebody in the audience mentioned Star Wars, Goldman, a famous hater of bullshit, roared: George Lucas makes whore’s movies!
He was met with a vast echo of applause that grew ever-louder as people realized it was okay to join in. Screenwriting wannabes stood up and whooped as if they were greeting G.I.s walking into their dusty bombed-out European towns.
George Lucas makes whore’s movies!
There is something mythic about Star Wars: in that no myth is complete without tragedy. As metaphors for our own lives, myths are journeys undertaken under the specter of potential failure. The concept of inevitable decline, of goals unfulfilled, has to be woven into the tapestry of a mythic story for it to truly resonate, and Star Wars has this in abundance.
I’m not talking about the tragedy of dead Ewoks, though, or vaporized planets, or even the fate of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader (a character of true mythic proportions - the absence of which was still enough to sustain the first two limp prequels - that stands as Lucas’s highest achievement). I’m talking about the tragedy of a talented director who risked his sanity to make a film without precedent, and succeeded against the odds when everyone told him it was a fool’s mission; but thereafter this General, victorious, proceeded to tarnish his own magnificent creation by thrashing it like a stormtrooper’s jet bike that ran out of gas, as all the studio clonetroopers fell into line, heads bobbing to give him whatever he wanted. The tragedy of a director who has never made another American Graffiti, and could still do whatever he wants to do, but is seemingly content to oversee an ever growing roster of characters with increasingly ridiculous names, as he runs out of consonants and small bills.
At the end of the saga of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Jason has failed to secure the fleece (forget the Ray Harryhausen film with the happy Hollywood ending), and sits weeping under the beached rotting prow of his once mighty vessel Argo. As he dreams of his past victories and the comrades who died, the stern breaks off and crushes him in his sleep.
The lesson here must be: avoid prequels. Avoid bridging stories. Avoid backstory. Kill your heroes and kill all their children; leave no orphan unslain. Have the dignity to give it all up at some point. There are things far worse than failure.
The Daily Mona Lisa Monster Truck:
Of course, some people weren’t able to create their own stand-alone Joseph Campbell hero journeys; and figured if Star wars was coining it, why not simply rip that off instead? Jess Thompson over at Toplessrobot.com lists the 10 most egregious Star Wars rip-offs…