Waiting for Star Wars to End
“We were cast as an ensemble. I mean they had another set of three actors, and if they had gone the other way none of us would be here,” said Mark Hamill.
It was 1977, a new movie called “Star Wars” had become a massive hit. Hamill was on TV to talk about it. Harrison Ford, sitting next to him, explained the concept further to host Mike Douglas, who replied, “In other words, they looked to find the right chemistry, is that what you’re saying?”
The right chemistry. If you were to ask me — a die-hard fan of the Original Trilogy — what it is that makes those films really special, I’d name two things. The chemistry, the on-screen relationships between Fisher, Ford and Hamill — and the tantalising, evocative quality of the writing.
“Before the dark times, before the Empire.” “When I left you, I was but the learner. Now I am the master.” “There is another Skywalker.” “That’s no moon, it’s a space station.”
Lines like these, now infamous, were designed to hint — strongly — that there was much more to this galaxy than what cinema-goers witnessed in just those three films. That idea, of a fuller narrative, a wider story, was embedded. Like the well-worn, rust-bucket space ships, it grounded the Original Trilogy and made the viewer feel that they were merely glimpsing something much bigger. So beguiling was that linguistic scene-setting.
It’s by no means a feature of script writing exclusive to Star Wars. Evocative references to lore are essential to Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Star Trek and many others. Besides helping the viewer really believe in an on-screen world, the backstory is a ready-made money-making enterprise. Right from the beginning with Star Wars, people have sought to go beyond those first three films. Far beyond. A bantha-sized industrial behemoth has been dragging the Star Wars phenomenon along interminably for decades now. Radio series, novels, video games, comic books, TV shows, fan fiction — and, yeah, more films.
Now that Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker has finally landed on our planet, the saga has “come to an end”, as Disney would say. What an interesting turn of phrase. In a universe where there are endless stories to discover, I want to focus on just one. The central story told across nine films rules them all. Really, it is at odds with the wider universe in which it is set. The Star Wars galaxy does not have an end. But the nine-film saga, it turned out, was desperate to find one.
Let’s go back to chemistry. Watch the tape of William Katt and Kurt Russell auditioning for the parts of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, respectively. Then watch Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill’s audition. Katt and Russell do very well but Ford and Hamill are tentative magic. Ford is full of attitude as surly space pirate Solo and Hamill is gently earnest as wide-eyed Skywalker, freshly blasted off his home rock of Tatooine. The contrast is delicious. Mix in a beautiful princess with bags of her own attitude (“Will somebody get this big walking carpet out of my way?”) and you’ve got yourself one of the greatest ensemble casts of all time. These three actors were mercifully well-equipped to deliver George Lucas’s seriously out-there lines with panache. Except for the ones they simply refused to say.
Their stories interweave, they’re changed by one another.
As three friends zipping through space, they have grit. Their stories interweave, they’re changed by one another. That awkward kiss between Han and Leia on the Millennium Falcon in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. The solemn tenderness when Luke asks Leia whether she remembers her mother (their mother) in Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. “I have no memory of my mother,” he responds, lost in sadness. “I never knew her.”
Fans may wax lyrical about special effects and plot devices. For me, the Original Trilogy is unmatchable because of the quality of those three performances. It’s pretty rare to find that. A group of people on a screen, across more than one film, that you really care about. But with Fisher, Ford and Hamill, Star Wars did exactly that. You felt, almost, like you knew them. Maybe you even dreamed that you were one of them.
No-one involved in Episode IV: A New Hope seems to have had any idea that the film would be a galactic hit. Carrie Fisher went to see a screening of it for the first time with her brother Todd, nervous that her career might be over because she had agreed to be in a zany B-movie. (He told her right after the screening that she didn’t need to worry).
Episode IV practically swept the boards in 1977 and from then on, there was no stopping Star Wars. Episode V is still lauded by many as the best Star Wars film, and, indeed, one of the greatest movies of all time. Upon its release, there was already talk of expanding the story beyond what would become known as the Original Trilogy. In 1980, Hamill and Fisher appeared on UK children’s TV programme Blue Peter. Hamill dutifully strokes a wriggling grey cat as Fisher holds a diminutive tortoise as though it were an unappealing hamburger.
At one point, the pair are asked whether they will make more Star Wars films. There’s one more to come, they make clear, “Revenge of the Jedi” (the title was later changed), but they hint at the prequels, too. Interestingly, Hamill says the third of those films — what would later become Episode III: Revenge of the Sith — would feature a five- or six-year-old Luke Skywalker. In the end, Episode III’s story was to finish while Luke and Leia were still babies.
Even more amusing, in 1983 Fisher appeared on the David Letterman programme in the US to promote Episode VI and was questioned again on whether more films were forthcoming. She mentions talk of prequels but scoffs at the idea of Han and Leia returning:
“I don’t think so, can you, I mean… Han and I choosing what planet to live on and having a child […] no,” she says.
Well, as Episodes VII to IX reveal, they did come back, they did have a child — but never settled on that happy ending planet.
I wanted to quote these early interviews because they capture that half-baked notion that there could be more Star Wars to come for cinema-goers, even if no-one was quite sure what that meant. What would make sense after these first three films? What would work? The Original Trilogy deliberately and — perhaps frustratingly for the writers of subsequent episodes — provides a complete, perfectly formed story in space. Sure, you can embellish it, as with the radio series that re-told Episodes IV to VI with heaps of additional scenes thrown in. But, in essence, those three films tell the only Star Wars story you really need to know. They are teleological, the narrative is watertight. The three friends discover one another, are nearly destroyed by cosmic evil but, in the end, they triumph. The end.
The trouble is, a lot of people never saw it that way. The Original Trilogy was too good for its own good. The fact that it was a supremely difficult act to follow is a truth that, weirdly, doesn’t seem to be explicitly acknowledged very frequently. Once the idea was out there that there could be more films, it just seemed like a matter of course that there would be. George Lucas started work on the prequels in 1994. Five years later, thousands of fans assembled at cinemas around the world for the release of Episode I: The Phantom Menace. What happened next will probably haunt Lucas till his dying day.
The Prequels
“This is the closest thing to any sort of religious text or spirituality that, as a people, as Americans, we can all identify with. Because this is basically the sum total of our culture. You know, samurais and space ships.”
I love that comment from an adrenalin-fuelled fan who was interviewed shortly before Episode I finally came out. It’s a remark packed with irony as well as hype. That Episode I completely failed to live up to the galaxy-sized expectations of fans and movie critics is well-known. Exactly why it and the other two prequels failed is a topic that has been raked over in countless opinion pieces across a thousand star systems already. But there are some things worth highlighting here, I think.
In this genuinely enlightening oral history from StarWars.com about the making of and reception to Episode I, Lucas states bluntly that he didn’t want to tell “a limited story” with the prequels. He felt enabled by new special effects technologies and wanted to show a much bigger world. He wanted, at last, to reveal vast swathes of the universe that was merely hinted at in the Original Trilogy.
He also comments that he had heaps of backstory and plot-lines that could be used for the prequels. Reading Lucas’s descriptions of what he wanted to offer in Episodes I to III is fascinating because a lot of the ideas are brilliant. He refers to the narrative of the prequel trilogy as “the tragedy of Darth Vader” and discusses how he wanted to show the grandeur of the Jedi — but also how they were vulnerable, how they could be exploited and then destroyed by the Machiavellian Palpatine. I can’t help but agree that, yeah, that is excellent fodder for a film series. But it was all lost beneath wooden acting and a profound lack of chemistry between the leading characters in the prequels themselves. The films, all three of them, ask you go to along with an awful lot of stuff without ever really earning that investment.
Lucas has often said the movies were designed for children and were unfairly dissected by grown-up fans. I don’t think that’s quite right — though I do see how super-fans can be a scourge on anyone facing a challenge as daunting as resurrecting Star Wars. The fickleness and extreme negativity of these fans has been out in force, if you will, in recent years.
Unintentionally, perhaps, the prequels reveal just how good the Original Trilogy was. How perfectly pitched. As fans turned on the prequels to give them, in Lucas’s words, “a beating”, the dream of a new era for Star Wars turned into a nightmare. The fact that the prequels do have some redeeming features doesn’t matter, Star Wars had faltered.
And yet, very few people seem to acknowledge what I think really happened here. In my opinion, people fell in love with the human relationships of the Original Trilogy but didn’t realise it — instead, they thought they were in love with lightsabres and special effects. Samurais and space ships.
Scavenger Girl
“She’s brave and she’s… vulnerable and she’s so nuanced, that’s what’s so exciting playing a role like this,” said Daisy Ridley four years ago at the press conference for Episode VII: The Force Awakens.
Ten years after the end of the prequel trilogy, another trio of Star Wars films has arrived — the sequels. As was suggested around the time of Episode VI, the potential was certainly there for later writers to project forward to the future as well as delve into the past. But by 2015, an interesting question seemed to hover. Did this central story, pivoting on the character of Luke Skywalker, need another ending or not? An opportunity to right the wrongs of the prequels was presumably too good to pass up — and the chance to make another shedload of money out of Star Wars was no doubt attractive to the franchise’s new proprietor, Disney.
But, narratively speaking, did it matter? There were already heaps of novels and other fiction that picked up the story at the end of Episode VI for those that sought more. To make a canonical, main series addition to the timeline makes a statement. It insists to audiences, “There is more to this story that you have to hear, it’s not even a matter of choice.”
A loss of agency, funnily enough, has been an increasingly familiar feeling among Star Wars fans. One friend said to me recently, “I’m definitely going to see it but I think I am, sadly, not all that excited for it. I think I’m off-board with Star Wars.”
I saw Episode VII twice at the time of its release. Then I didn’t watch it again until last week. I had mixed feelings about it four years ago and now I am pretty sure it’s an overrated film. It’s frantically paced, the relationships between the characters hang by a thread. I kept looking for tension and found none. There seems to be an emphasis on trying to show fans what they always say they want while in the meantime relatively little effort is expended on getting you to care about who’s on screen.
With one exception. I don’t think Episode VII actually does very much with the character of Rey — but it does introduce her. Throughout the film, the audience is presented with a lot of moments that seem to insist we should find her interesting. However, I don’t think we get to really feel or understand that. All the same, Ridley does a good job with the script. Here is a character you want to follow to the next part of the story.
Famously, Ridley was no die-hard Star Wars fan growing up. “I can’t really remember when I saw them all,” she says in one interview. But something she did know and love about Star Wars was the music. It’s worth saying that John Williams’ compositions are without fault across all nine films. Take Duel of the Fates in Episode I, perhaps the best thing about that instalment, or the wonderful music from Force Awakens that was used for the film’s trailer. It was so well-received that people took to making remixed trailers for the Original Trilogy films with it. This one, for Episode IV, is outstanding. Last year, Williams announced that Episode IX would be the last Star Wars film he would work on. Someone else who has clearly decided that the time is right for an ending.
“You’re just a child in a mask”
Perhaps the fact that Ridley loves the music of Star Wars helps her to capture the spirit of the thing. Who knows. Whatever the reason, she does manage it. Episode VIII: The Last Jedi was weirdly divisive among fans but I never felt very strong feelings towards it. Upon re-watching it I was struck by how interesting and novel the story is between Rey and Kylo Ren. That plot-line upturns a lot of natural expectations about Star Wars — for once in a good way. There are, finally, slower moments in which we get to know the characters of the sequels a bit better.
“You’re just a child in a mask,” Ren is told. A now elderly Leia scolds Poe: “There are things you cannot solve by jumping in an X-wing and blowing something up. I need you to learn that.” After Rey’s persistence finally pays off and the exiled Luke starts talking to her, he expounds on the vanity of the Jedi.
In general, Episode VIII just seems far more sure of itself. I still don’t feel like the chemistry of the originals resurfaces here but Episode VIII is a big improvement on the prequels and on Episode VII.
After that, there was just one film left to come. As mentioned earlier, Episode IX was marketed by Disney very explicitly as an ending. The saga finishes. It’s over. At last, here’s the big curtain fall.
I was a little surprised to see that. Wasn’t Disney buying Star Wars meant to result in Star Wars films until the end of time? Maybe off-shoots from the main story, like Rogue One and Solo, and TV programmes like The Mandalorian, will become de rigueur. Either way, to appeal to fans by saying “this thing you love is about to be over” speaks volumes about the closure that more and more people now seem to seek. “It’s time to let old things die,” as Kylo Ren says in Episode VIII.
Episode IX has received a swathe of very mixed reviews. But I largely agree with Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian who gave it four out of five stars and praises, specifically, the sense of fun the film has — and the chemistry between the leading characters. He’s right. This episode stands alone among all of the main-saga films made since Episode VI because rapport between the characters is one of the things that really pulls the viewer along. (The only other recent Star Wars film to achieve this is Rogue One). You start to believe, again, in their joint effort, in their camaraderie. The twists and turns in the plot are very interesting — but they would be tiresome without the actors’ excellent performances and their on-screen investment in one another.
That said, it’s mind-boggling as to why the nascent love story between Finn and Rose Tico from Episode VIII is completely abandoned. Perhaps that will be the subject of another film or comic book or TV series?
Either way, Star Wars fans have a lot to be thankful for in Episode IX. And if you ask me, the chief subject of that thanks should be Daisy Ridley and the character of Rey. The Original Trilogy was the story of Luke Skywalker. The prequels were the “tragedy of Darth Vader”. The sequels tell the tale of a scavenger girl who ends up saving the galaxy — with the help of her fantastic friends. It’s really a re-telling of Luke’s story, an echo of it, but it has new things to say, too. That feels very Star Wars to me. The execution, ultimately, is successful.
In Episode IX, Rey has a position of responsibility. She’s powerful, she calls a lot of the shots. She has also developed fully-fledged relationships with those around her. Notably, Luke and Leia. That’s a huge nod to the Original Trilogy right there. It feels like cashing in a cheque of sorts — and it’s about time. Probably, the sequels were inevitable. At least they now have a conclusion that is worthy of the characters we first met in those original, extremely good films. It’s enough to just about tick the boxes and finish this thing.
As Ridley said in one recent interview, the end really is nigh. It feels right that way. But — echoing Fisher 30 years earlier — she just about leaves open the possibility that, should the stars align, there might be more to come:
“To be lured back, the story would have to be so extraordinary… I don’t know if this [Episode IX] could be topped. Never say never but right now I feel like this is… this is an end.”
See ya ‘round, kid.
