Star Wars on Trial (59 page)

The sad thing is that movies do not have to be this way. Yes, film is a visual medium, so films can be primarily visual experiences, but that doesn't mean that films can't make sense as a basic narrative. 2001: A Space Odyssey is primarily a visual experience, but it doesn't use its visuals the way a drunk uses a lamppost, like the post-Star Wars movies do. Star Wars and many of the post-Star Wars blockbusters claim to be carrying on "the spirit of the pulps," but what they forget is that the pulps were often better than the hundredmillion-dollar crap Hollywood hands us. The pulps gave us Asimov, Bester, Heinlein, Silverberg and Ellison. The pulps benefited from editors like John W. Campbell, Jr., who knew that his beanie-wearing readers wanted stories that delivered on the action and made sense.

Even today, any issue of Asimov's Science Fiction or the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has stories superior to any Hollywood blockbuster of the past twenty-nine years, and these dying digest magazines manage to score these stories for less than a dime a word. Compare that to the tens of thousands of dollars spent on scripts, and layers of script doctors, that lead to far inferior products. There is no reason that a primarily visual experience has to be full of gaffes, plot holes, nonsensical motivations and dialogue as crappy as these gems from Episode III:

"My powers have doubled since we last met."

"Your move."

"I think you're mistaken."

"There are too many of them; what should we do?"

"You're alive."

"Surprised?"

"From my point of view, the Jedi are evil."

"So this is how-choke-liberty dies. To thunderous applause." (And this out of the mouth of a woman who writes queen next to "Occupation" on her tax forms.)

And how could we forget Vader's first line, "Noooooo!" which instantly reminded me of an episode of Futurama in which Calculon, the soap opera-acting robot, has a similar line and then explains, "In the first take, the line was `Yeeeeeeees!"' That is how indefensible Star Wars is: the parodic TV knockoff actually predated the actual filmic event by several years.

When I turned to my friend Jody at the end of Episode III and said to her, "So this is how-choke-storytelling dies," all she could do was shrug. There's nothing else out there anymore, except for bad blockbusters. 2005 was an absolute nadir for filmgoing, and yet, from that nadir may emerge-dare I say it?-a new hope. In 2005, America was given a choice: watch The Island or stay home, and we chose to stay home. As Variety noted in October, 11 [S]o far this year,
grosses of _link_ $6.84 billion are 7% lower than at the same point in 2004. Given price increases, total admissions are down even more steeply"
It was March of the Penguins, a charming French documentary about birds walking across Antarctic ice, that was the year's big hit, while the blockbusters Hollywood rolled out for those of us with more spending money than sense suffered and died like a snotty Jedi childling.

Take the bacon out of your mouths, boys and girls, and let's show Hollywood that we're not going to be fooled by well-cut trailers and nostalgia for our eight-year-old selves anymore. When you see a movie you think might be okay, but that is probably going to suck as much as Star Wars, just stay home.

Repeat after me!

"Just stay home!"

"Just stay home!"

`Just stay home!"

Nick Mamatas is the author of the Lovecraftian Beat road novel Move Under Ground (Night Shade Books, 2004) and the Marxist Civil War ghost story Northern Gothic (Soft Skull Press, 2001), both of which were nominated for the Brain Stoker Award for dark fiction. He's published over 200 articles and essays in the Village Voice, the men's magazine Razor, In These Times, Clamor, Poets & Writers, Silicon Alley Reporter, Artbytes, the UK Guardian, five Disinformation Books anthologies, and many other venues, and over forty short stories and comic strips in magazines including Razor, Strange Horizons, ChiZine, Polyphony and others. Under My Roof.• A Novel of Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority (Soft Skull Press) will be released in late 2006.

THE COURTROOM

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: (checking his notes) Hmm ... "wheelbarrows of rancid bacon" ... "Eat it, you pigs" ... "gobble it up and crap yourselves in glee"... "When the meat runs out, the show is over."... Hmm. That's some, er, vivid imagery, Mr. Mamatas. Tell me, do you do a lot of drugs?

DAVID BRIN: Objection!

DROID JUDGE: Mr. Stover, you've been warned about abusing the witnesses.

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Come on, Your Honor-this man has testified that he thinks Midnight Express is character-driven drama. And anybody who thought Dark City was a good SF film needs to watch it again while sober.

DROID JUDGE: (severely) The objection is sustained. Mr. Stover, confine your questions to the witness's testimony.

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Oh, fine. Let's look at a few of your supposed plot holes, then. You claim that Anakin Skywalker piloting an entire starfighter into the main hangar flight deck-the (let me repeat this for the Court) main hangar flight deck-in the center of a Trade Federation droid carrier is "virtually the same" as Luke Skywalker dropping a single torpedo down one tiny unshielded thermal exhaust port on the surface of the Death Star. I'm sorry? Could you repeat that for the Court? Or would you like to simply admit that you weren't really paying attention?

NICK MAMATAS: Oh, of course they were virtually the same. You see Mr. Stover, the Star Wars movies are just that, movies. They are not a memoir of real events. The climactic scene in Episode I is clearly designed to be reminiscent of the climactic scene in Episode IV-despite that Episode I "happened first." They are essen tially the same. It is very unrealistic that two circumstances that are depicted as incredibly unusual would be so incredibly similar to one another.

And let's not forget the climax of Return of the Jedi, when Lando pilots the Millennium Falcon into the core of Death Star II and blows it up from the inside! Amazing, isn't it? Why even bother with fleets of ships and laser battles; clearly all tactical methodology in the Star Wars universe should be oriented toward getting one ship to fly into a entry port of some sort and and zap the enemy with one shot. You'd think someone would move the super-explodey stuff farther away from the entrances after three giant-ass explosions. Or maybe they'd station a Stormtrooper with a bazooka nearby. A Sith University freshman intern with a baseball bat. Something!

Geez, if this were the Narnia book you might be asking me, "How can you say that the fate of Asian is similar to that of Christ? Asian is a lion!"

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: As for "recognizing the droids," let me ask you this: If a friend of yours had owned, say, a Ford Escort (feel free to pick the anonymously popular vehicle of your choice) that you'd seen for a couple of weeks in, say, 1987, are you seriously telling me you'd instantly recognize the same car if you saw it again today in 2006-because a nineteen-year span is exactly what we're talking about-and wonder why your buddy's underwear wasn't still in the backseat? Bear in mind, here, that both C3P0 and R2-D2 are standard-model droids, of which billlions had been produced by their respective manufacturers and were in service throughout the Galaxy; even their designations are not individual, but rather model numbers, and they have no external modifications whatsoever. Not even paint jobs. Feel free to twist in the wind here; make up whatever justifications you might feel are appropriate.

NICK MAMATAS: If the Ford Escort talked to me and saved my life, sure I'd remember it.

FORD ESCORT: Honk. Honk.

ME: What's that, Fordie? Star Wars sucks! My God, you're the smartest car ever. I'll remember this moment for the rest of my life.

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: As any self-respecting EU'
fan knows ...

NICK MAMATAS: There are self-respecting EU fans?

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER:... R2-D2's internal rockets are aftermarket modifications, not standard equipment on R2-series astromech droids. Are you saying it's clearly impossible that other, further aftermarket modifications could, under any conceivable circumstances, have necessitated the removal of these rockets? What evidence do you have for this?

NICK MAMATAS: No, I'm saying the movies stink. If you have to appeal to non-movie sources like the EU to explain and patch up the events of the movies, you prove my point. Welcome to the smart side of the Force!

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: What evidence do you have for the preposterous claim that the starfighters of Episode III are technologically superior to the starfighters of Episode IV? For example, Luke's X-wing has an internal hyperdrive (that takes him to Dagobah, and then to Cloud City, as you might recall), whereas Obi-Wan's and Anakin's require external hyperdrive rings. Is this counting wings thing just a biplane fetish?

NICK MAMATAS: You realize that you're arguing about a form of technology that uses wings in space, right? Wings. In. Space.

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: As for putting Luke with Owen and Bern Lars-are you familiar with "The Purloined Letter"? With the concept of hiding in plain sight? Are you saying that Edgar Allan Poe is not for readers "interested in stories that make sense"?

NICK MAMATAS: "The Purloined Letter" is also a fiction; Poe's artistry is that he made us believe it, and it is worth noting that Poe himself felt his ratiocinations were ultimately rather contrived. Are you saying that that short story is some incredible insight into human psychology, and that, say, the best place for Osama bin Laden to hide would be in a giant castle with a neon sign reading "Osama's Place"? At least the titular letter was on a desk with a bunch of other papers; it wasn't in a special envelope marked "Stolen letters-check me out."

I'm sure the petty criminals (in real life) who escape from the cops only to run home and get caught three hours later cite Poe when they explain to the cops that they aren't really incredibly stupid.

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: And where is the evidence that Admiral Motti is an "atheist"? His comment is on Vader's failure, not on the nonexistence of the Force. Would you again like to admit that you weren't really paying attention?

NICK MAMATAS: I'll cite the witness Vader: "I find your lack of faith disturbing."

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Is the entire Court getting as tired of this garbage as I am?

(Reaction in the courtroom)

DROID JUDGE: Mr. Stover-

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: What I mean to say, Your Honor, is that we can go back and forth all week with this childish "Is not! " "Is too!" crap. Let me put a stop to the whole business by calling my final witness, Don DeBrandt.

DROID JUDGE: If the Prosecution has no objection? Very well. Let Mr. DeBrandt take the stand.