More prequel thoughts
Another set of comments I put together during study breaks over the last few weeks. Posting now during an overlong Con Law tangent....
More prequel stuff
Thinking about The Phantom Menace, the most flamboyantly odd and flawed of the prequels, I realized after my "fanfic" alterna-version post that there were three chief elements of that movie I hadn't addressed. There are things there besides Anakin himself that could work, that could make for a great movie. The three biggest weaknesses in the movie, besides Anakin himself, are the pod race, Amidala's lack of a character, and the gungans. And none of them have to fail, each of them could be handled in a way that appears to capture more sharply what Lucas was going for, or should have been going for given the tools he's elected to use.
1. The pod race could work. I think that Lucas, and everyone else involved in the making and merchandising of this movie, was utterly shocked by how little the audience was captivated by this sequence. Pixar would prove a few years later that America loves a good NASCAR story and it is possible to give an audience racing sequences that they’ll eat up. (My own reservations about Cars notwithstanding…) People have always loved funky aliens in Star Wars, so really this should have been a combination of the original cantina sequence, the speeder bike chase in Jedi, and NASCAR. How could it have failed?
Granted, I still think that the narrative shortcomings of a race - that it is an action scene only indirectly connected to the story we’re watching and hence automatically less exciting - would support cutting it in favor of a more straightforward chase sequence. But I can see why Lucas thought it would work, and I would think that everyone was probably really surprised that it was received with such indifference. Sure, some people think it’s kinda neat. But it’s not held up as a classic moment of cinema, and I really suspect they thought it would be. Races in movies can be really kinetic fun, and if that’s what Lucas wanted to make, a really cool race sequence with sci-fi trappings, there’s no reason to insist it was necessary doomed. But there are a few changes that would have to be made.
First, while the funky aliens are there, they aren’t really given any character or atmosphere. This is a seedy, dangerous race on a mostly lawless planet. These guys should be just as sinister as the aliens in Mos Eisley’s cantina. Forgetting Lucas’ bizarre insistence that this movie be kid-friendly and goofy, the alien podracers should have the personality of a biker gang. They like thrills, they like danger, they are unkempt and menacing. All they do now is wave at the stands, smiling, as the announcer introduces them. (Do I even need to add “drop the announcer” to this?)
Second, the race itself needs to be more exciting. It’s fast, sure, but I’ve already indicated its serious deficiencies in the Annotations: it’s hard to follow, there’s never much of a sense of who is in the lead and by how much, it’s not clear how close anyone is to the finish, in general there’s no narrative to the race or any sense of when it will end. Another problem, though, is that even with all that, it should have been possible to give us suspense and thrills in this thing. First, there should be more POV shots. There are a few, but they don’t last long, and they tend to take place over open plains. That’s all wrong. Instead, there should be POV shots when the pods enter a narrow space, make a tough corner, narrowly miss flying debris - in general, any time it looks like the speed is going to make this thing crash or send its driver into a rock wall. We should feel like we’re the driver, and that we’re just narrowly avoiding getting crushed. There should be not just speed, but things just barely missing each other, loud and fast, sudden, and seen from the driver’s perspective. There should be a constant whipsawing around - fast is important, but fast in a straight line or gradual curve is pretty dull. I realize that Lucas is more of an old-school filmmaker, and he doesn’t do the Bourne thing of handheld cameras shaking you up and making you dizzy. Still, when the pods pass each other, it should be clearer that you are zipping past something large and heavy and fast and there’s a real chance of crashing and chaos. Doesn’t have to be through verité tricks. There just needs to be a clearer sense of not just speed, but risk. Watch most recent movies involving races - the car chase in the second Bourne movie, the highway chase in the second Matrix movie, the Fast and the Furious movies - and you get a sense of what’s necessary. We should have a sense, most of all, that it’s Anakin (and, vicariously, us) who’s being whipped around out there, constantly just barely missing a horrible collision, and not just his pod. Even when the shot isn’t a POV shot, the camera should move more, move constantly. As it stands now, watch how many of the shots in the race sequence involve a static camera. They all do! That should not be the case - the camera should always be moving, lurching, dodging and ducking. The possibilities are endless, and barely noticed let alone exploited.
Finally, the context for the race needs to be changed. The bet is dull, and all the talking scenes setting it up, as I’ve already noted, are the worst in the movie. I think it would be more interesting to have Anakin simply be a podracer, this is something he’s done before. As it stands, the way he meets the Jedi is somewhat dull. It would be more interesting if he grabbed their attention by being such a great racer. And there’s no need for this whole “he’s never even finished” crap, that doesn’t fool anyone into wondering who’ll win. There needs to be a better way to connect the race to the story. Somehow victory in the race needs to have some narrative consequence. But victory shouldn’t simply be a means - it should be something worthwhile on its own. We should want Anakin to win because we want him to win, not because that’s the only way to get something else we want. All races in movies that work generate suspense and thrills because we really want our guy to win. Maybe Anakin wants to prove something, maybe to the Jedi, about what a great pilot he is. Or maybe he just wants his mom to be proud of him? In any case, if the podrace stays in the movie, the context for it absolutely has to be changed. We have to know that Anakin really wants to win, and the victory has to speak to that.
To be honest, now that I think about it, it might be best to accept that the race is essentially lacing in narrative, and assign it a role as mere atmosphere. The Jedi could be attending the race to meet with (or to locate) someone to help them fix the ship, and the winner of the race could be this kid Anakin. That would not only be an interesting way for them to meet, it would lend a nice resonance to Obi-Wan’s line in Jedi that when he first met Anakin, he was already a great pilot. This approach would present an obstacle to placing attention on the race itself, since at the time we would not have met any of the racers. But I’m not sure that shortcoming would be any worse than any the film has as it currently stands.
The thing is, the pods are, admittedly, kinda neat. A race, as much as I hate it from a narrative standpoint, could work. And funky aliens are fun. There’s really no reason to believe that no possible approach to this race would make it fun. It’s just that it seems like every single choice Lucas made caused this sequence to be far more dull and uninspiring than it needed to be. And hence Hasbro was stuck, back in 1999, with tons and tons of podracing merchandise, waiting for a consumer frenzy that just never came.
2. Amidala’s change of heart. How did she come to trust the Republic so much? Wouldn’t her experiences in the first movie actually make her more of Palpatine’s pawn, someone who doesn’t trust the bureaucracy and instead believes in military might?
Amidala’s character never made sense. In my last post, I suggested ways of fixing Anakin’s character, specifically limiting myself to speculation within the confines provided by the movies themselves. No starting from scratch re-imaginings. But I said almost nothing about Amidala, and that’s because with Amidala, I’m not sure it’s possible to fix her without starting over. There simply isn’t enough of a coherent character here to work with. She’s a fighter, she’s a political idealist, she’s a naïve pawn, she’s a lover, she’s sort of everything at once, depending on the needs of a given scene. It would be possible, however, to tweak her character in the first movie, and use that as a jumping off place for the other two. In Episode I, her arc should be roughly this: she begins as a young queen who is unwilling to defend her planet against the Federation interference lest too many lives be lost. She flees to Coruscant to plead her case to the Senate, but while she is gone, the Federation tortures and executes thousands of Naboo folk in order to lure her back so they can kill her (I’d ignore the whole “treaty” thing, but there should be an answer to the question of why the Federation cares about Naboo or the Queen). Once on Coruscant, she is disillusioned by the political stalemate and the futility of debate while her people are dying. When Palpatine becomes Chancellor, she’s totally indifferent, because she feels “the Republic no longer functions,” and she returns to Naboo now emboldened, ready to fight. Having begun the movie as a political idealist and a passivist, she is now extraordinarily cynical about politics and wishes only to fight for her people. On strategy, and just about everything else, she defers to the Gungans (see below). This way, in the next film, she can be an ally of Palpatine’s, now that she sees his willingness to cut through the bullshit and put an army together. Her experiences as a young queen make her furious at the Separatists, not merely because of Federation involvement with the insurrection, but because she believes all disloyalty should be shut down and punished for the sake of order and peace. I’ve already said that I believe Kenobi should be supportive of Palpatine in the second movie, moved by the discovery that the Separatist leader Dooku has been behind the assassination attempts on Amidala’s life (and Dooku’s general terrorist approach). Amidala would now have her own reasons to support him. This way, Palpatine’s rise to power is fueled by all three heroes, and the third movie can feature both Obi-Wan and Amidala realizing how far Palpatine intends to go, switching allegiances and now wary of him. Anakin, the only hero who still supports Palpatine, has yet another reason to feel abandoned, and to worry that Obi-Wan is turning Amidala against him. And Amidala and Kenobi can get some wonderfully anguished moments when they realize what their choices have made possible. Kenobi already indicates in the original trilogy that he blames himself for Vader’s turn to the Dark Side, and we already know Amidala was stupid enough to fall in love with the guy - presenting them both as supportive of Palpatine, realizing their errors only too late, is consistent with that, and makes for great tragic drama.
3. The Gungans should be more threatening, a paradoxical race of passivist warriors. They should be fearsome, their beasts more terrifying - yet be in hiding because they don’t want to enter armed conflict. That would be a neat parallel to the Jedi - peaceful warriors, wars not make one great, and so on. Heck, they could even resemble Wookies, or at least Chewbacca - adorable companions who can turn into 7 foot tall unbeatable killing machines. They should actually be doing quite well against the Federation army, and start to lose only because the battle plays out as Jedi should have. Ferocious beasts, however strong, still burn when faced with laser fire.
Leaving Jar Jar aside, the Gungans themselves are somewhat blank slates. We only really meet two others besides Jar Jar: Boss Nass and Captain Tarpals. Tarpals has a few lines and seems like a somewhat one-dimensional police officer type, and Nass seems a bit like a blowhard. But they’re both proud and neither is particularly stupid. Other than that, we know few things about them, but there are some meaningful suggestions. First, they’ve got a “grand army.” Second, the technology they use for their underwater bubbles makes a fine shield on land. Third, they have beasts of burden which include not only reptilian/avian-like mounts, but also enormous freakin’ dinosaurs.
We know Lucas likes his whole “primitive society fights technologically superior one” and we also know that he likes his “medieval concept in futurist trappings.” I think a tribe of Gungans with energy shields (not the big bubble on a hill, which is static and dull, but the hand-carried tower shields the soldiers use) fighting with fast-running kaadu’s and stomping fambaa’s would be quite a foreboding military force. They could rip a few of the opening ranks of battle droids to shreds, before gradually succumbing to greater and greater numbers. After a few tanks take out their fambaa’s and whittle their numbers down, the battle could start to go poorly, until the Gungans are saved by the destruction of the Droid Control Ship. Along the way, we could get a much clearer sense both of how proud and yet how timid this warrior race can be - how fiercely they fight when they need to, yet how they isolate themselves rather than fight when given the choice.
We could also get a more dynamic battle. Give the characters some dignity, and the battle some energy, make it all less static. Not just rank and file standing around on a hill - and why, seriously, are those fambaas just standing there? You look at what Peter Jackson does with Olyphants outside the walls of Minis Tirith in Return of the King and then you see those fambaas just standing on that hill and the mind reels at the wasted opportunities. For all of Lucas’ talk about what computer technology makes possible in the world of visual effects, he doesn’t really do all that much in this fight that he couldn’t have done on Hoth back in 1980, other than the fact that he didn’t have to film physical models for this battle.
Plus, treating the Gungans this way solves other problems. It makes them more interesting, by giving them something to contribute rather than having them be so flat (other than Jar Jar and, perhaps, Nass). It makes their relationship to the Naboo more clear, explaining why each race is wary of the other. It sets up their importance to the final battle. It even helps give shape and substance to Amidala’s arc - at the start of the film, she is unwilling to fight back, and the Gungans are in hiding, and at the end they joint together to fight and die rather than submit.
In my original considerations of this movie, I took for granted that these three elements were among the worst the film had to offer, and that was all. When I imagined the most direct way to improve both this film and the prequel trilogy as a whole, I focused on Anakin, whose character is central and remains frustratingly undeveloped and amorphous. But in thinking a little more about how to fix up this film, I think these three changes could turn it into quite an exciting story. Sharpen the presentation of Amidala as an idealist who becomes a militaristic cynic, setting the stage for the methods Palpatine uses to gain power. Present the Gungans as fierce isolationists who unite with the humans on Naboo to provide the movie with both an exciting battle and a happy note for its ending. Present the pod race and the world from which Anakin comes as a seedy, dangerous place, in which Anakin is a special kid with a good heart, a bit cocky, and preternaturally skilled as a pilot and reckless adventurer. That makes the race more exciting, Anakin more interesting.
More prequel stuff
Thinking about The Phantom Menace, the most flamboyantly odd and flawed of the prequels, I realized after my "fanfic" alterna-version post that there were three chief elements of that movie I hadn't addressed. There are things there besides Anakin himself that could work, that could make for a great movie. The three biggest weaknesses in the movie, besides Anakin himself, are the pod race, Amidala's lack of a character, and the gungans. And none of them have to fail, each of them could be handled in a way that appears to capture more sharply what Lucas was going for, or should have been going for given the tools he's elected to use.
1. The pod race could work. I think that Lucas, and everyone else involved in the making and merchandising of this movie, was utterly shocked by how little the audience was captivated by this sequence. Pixar would prove a few years later that America loves a good NASCAR story and it is possible to give an audience racing sequences that they’ll eat up. (My own reservations about Cars notwithstanding…) People have always loved funky aliens in Star Wars, so really this should have been a combination of the original cantina sequence, the speeder bike chase in Jedi, and NASCAR. How could it have failed?
Granted, I still think that the narrative shortcomings of a race - that it is an action scene only indirectly connected to the story we’re watching and hence automatically less exciting - would support cutting it in favor of a more straightforward chase sequence. But I can see why Lucas thought it would work, and I would think that everyone was probably really surprised that it was received with such indifference. Sure, some people think it’s kinda neat. But it’s not held up as a classic moment of cinema, and I really suspect they thought it would be. Races in movies can be really kinetic fun, and if that’s what Lucas wanted to make, a really cool race sequence with sci-fi trappings, there’s no reason to insist it was necessary doomed. But there are a few changes that would have to be made.
First, while the funky aliens are there, they aren’t really given any character or atmosphere. This is a seedy, dangerous race on a mostly lawless planet. These guys should be just as sinister as the aliens in Mos Eisley’s cantina. Forgetting Lucas’ bizarre insistence that this movie be kid-friendly and goofy, the alien podracers should have the personality of a biker gang. They like thrills, they like danger, they are unkempt and menacing. All they do now is wave at the stands, smiling, as the announcer introduces them. (Do I even need to add “drop the announcer” to this?)
Second, the race itself needs to be more exciting. It’s fast, sure, but I’ve already indicated its serious deficiencies in the Annotations: it’s hard to follow, there’s never much of a sense of who is in the lead and by how much, it’s not clear how close anyone is to the finish, in general there’s no narrative to the race or any sense of when it will end. Another problem, though, is that even with all that, it should have been possible to give us suspense and thrills in this thing. First, there should be more POV shots. There are a few, but they don’t last long, and they tend to take place over open plains. That’s all wrong. Instead, there should be POV shots when the pods enter a narrow space, make a tough corner, narrowly miss flying debris - in general, any time it looks like the speed is going to make this thing crash or send its driver into a rock wall. We should feel like we’re the driver, and that we’re just narrowly avoiding getting crushed. There should be not just speed, but things just barely missing each other, loud and fast, sudden, and seen from the driver’s perspective. There should be a constant whipsawing around - fast is important, but fast in a straight line or gradual curve is pretty dull. I realize that Lucas is more of an old-school filmmaker, and he doesn’t do the Bourne thing of handheld cameras shaking you up and making you dizzy. Still, when the pods pass each other, it should be clearer that you are zipping past something large and heavy and fast and there’s a real chance of crashing and chaos. Doesn’t have to be through verité tricks. There just needs to be a clearer sense of not just speed, but risk. Watch most recent movies involving races - the car chase in the second Bourne movie, the highway chase in the second Matrix movie, the Fast and the Furious movies - and you get a sense of what’s necessary. We should have a sense, most of all, that it’s Anakin (and, vicariously, us) who’s being whipped around out there, constantly just barely missing a horrible collision, and not just his pod. Even when the shot isn’t a POV shot, the camera should move more, move constantly. As it stands now, watch how many of the shots in the race sequence involve a static camera. They all do! That should not be the case - the camera should always be moving, lurching, dodging and ducking. The possibilities are endless, and barely noticed let alone exploited.
Finally, the context for the race needs to be changed. The bet is dull, and all the talking scenes setting it up, as I’ve already noted, are the worst in the movie. I think it would be more interesting to have Anakin simply be a podracer, this is something he’s done before. As it stands, the way he meets the Jedi is somewhat dull. It would be more interesting if he grabbed their attention by being such a great racer. And there’s no need for this whole “he’s never even finished” crap, that doesn’t fool anyone into wondering who’ll win. There needs to be a better way to connect the race to the story. Somehow victory in the race needs to have some narrative consequence. But victory shouldn’t simply be a means - it should be something worthwhile on its own. We should want Anakin to win because we want him to win, not because that’s the only way to get something else we want. All races in movies that work generate suspense and thrills because we really want our guy to win. Maybe Anakin wants to prove something, maybe to the Jedi, about what a great pilot he is. Or maybe he just wants his mom to be proud of him? In any case, if the podrace stays in the movie, the context for it absolutely has to be changed. We have to know that Anakin really wants to win, and the victory has to speak to that.
To be honest, now that I think about it, it might be best to accept that the race is essentially lacing in narrative, and assign it a role as mere atmosphere. The Jedi could be attending the race to meet with (or to locate) someone to help them fix the ship, and the winner of the race could be this kid Anakin. That would not only be an interesting way for them to meet, it would lend a nice resonance to Obi-Wan’s line in Jedi that when he first met Anakin, he was already a great pilot. This approach would present an obstacle to placing attention on the race itself, since at the time we would not have met any of the racers. But I’m not sure that shortcoming would be any worse than any the film has as it currently stands.
The thing is, the pods are, admittedly, kinda neat. A race, as much as I hate it from a narrative standpoint, could work. And funky aliens are fun. There’s really no reason to believe that no possible approach to this race would make it fun. It’s just that it seems like every single choice Lucas made caused this sequence to be far more dull and uninspiring than it needed to be. And hence Hasbro was stuck, back in 1999, with tons and tons of podracing merchandise, waiting for a consumer frenzy that just never came.
2. Amidala’s change of heart. How did she come to trust the Republic so much? Wouldn’t her experiences in the first movie actually make her more of Palpatine’s pawn, someone who doesn’t trust the bureaucracy and instead believes in military might?
Amidala’s character never made sense. In my last post, I suggested ways of fixing Anakin’s character, specifically limiting myself to speculation within the confines provided by the movies themselves. No starting from scratch re-imaginings. But I said almost nothing about Amidala, and that’s because with Amidala, I’m not sure it’s possible to fix her without starting over. There simply isn’t enough of a coherent character here to work with. She’s a fighter, she’s a political idealist, she’s a naïve pawn, she’s a lover, she’s sort of everything at once, depending on the needs of a given scene. It would be possible, however, to tweak her character in the first movie, and use that as a jumping off place for the other two. In Episode I, her arc should be roughly this: she begins as a young queen who is unwilling to defend her planet against the Federation interference lest too many lives be lost. She flees to Coruscant to plead her case to the Senate, but while she is gone, the Federation tortures and executes thousands of Naboo folk in order to lure her back so they can kill her (I’d ignore the whole “treaty” thing, but there should be an answer to the question of why the Federation cares about Naboo or the Queen). Once on Coruscant, she is disillusioned by the political stalemate and the futility of debate while her people are dying. When Palpatine becomes Chancellor, she’s totally indifferent, because she feels “the Republic no longer functions,” and she returns to Naboo now emboldened, ready to fight. Having begun the movie as a political idealist and a passivist, she is now extraordinarily cynical about politics and wishes only to fight for her people. On strategy, and just about everything else, she defers to the Gungans (see below). This way, in the next film, she can be an ally of Palpatine’s, now that she sees his willingness to cut through the bullshit and put an army together. Her experiences as a young queen make her furious at the Separatists, not merely because of Federation involvement with the insurrection, but because she believes all disloyalty should be shut down and punished for the sake of order and peace. I’ve already said that I believe Kenobi should be supportive of Palpatine in the second movie, moved by the discovery that the Separatist leader Dooku has been behind the assassination attempts on Amidala’s life (and Dooku’s general terrorist approach). Amidala would now have her own reasons to support him. This way, Palpatine’s rise to power is fueled by all three heroes, and the third movie can feature both Obi-Wan and Amidala realizing how far Palpatine intends to go, switching allegiances and now wary of him. Anakin, the only hero who still supports Palpatine, has yet another reason to feel abandoned, and to worry that Obi-Wan is turning Amidala against him. And Amidala and Kenobi can get some wonderfully anguished moments when they realize what their choices have made possible. Kenobi already indicates in the original trilogy that he blames himself for Vader’s turn to the Dark Side, and we already know Amidala was stupid enough to fall in love with the guy - presenting them both as supportive of Palpatine, realizing their errors only too late, is consistent with that, and makes for great tragic drama.
3. The Gungans should be more threatening, a paradoxical race of passivist warriors. They should be fearsome, their beasts more terrifying - yet be in hiding because they don’t want to enter armed conflict. That would be a neat parallel to the Jedi - peaceful warriors, wars not make one great, and so on. Heck, they could even resemble Wookies, or at least Chewbacca - adorable companions who can turn into 7 foot tall unbeatable killing machines. They should actually be doing quite well against the Federation army, and start to lose only because the battle plays out as Jedi should have. Ferocious beasts, however strong, still burn when faced with laser fire.
Leaving Jar Jar aside, the Gungans themselves are somewhat blank slates. We only really meet two others besides Jar Jar: Boss Nass and Captain Tarpals. Tarpals has a few lines and seems like a somewhat one-dimensional police officer type, and Nass seems a bit like a blowhard. But they’re both proud and neither is particularly stupid. Other than that, we know few things about them, but there are some meaningful suggestions. First, they’ve got a “grand army.” Second, the technology they use for their underwater bubbles makes a fine shield on land. Third, they have beasts of burden which include not only reptilian/avian-like mounts, but also enormous freakin’ dinosaurs.
We know Lucas likes his whole “primitive society fights technologically superior one” and we also know that he likes his “medieval concept in futurist trappings.” I think a tribe of Gungans with energy shields (not the big bubble on a hill, which is static and dull, but the hand-carried tower shields the soldiers use) fighting with fast-running kaadu’s and stomping fambaa’s would be quite a foreboding military force. They could rip a few of the opening ranks of battle droids to shreds, before gradually succumbing to greater and greater numbers. After a few tanks take out their fambaa’s and whittle their numbers down, the battle could start to go poorly, until the Gungans are saved by the destruction of the Droid Control Ship. Along the way, we could get a much clearer sense both of how proud and yet how timid this warrior race can be - how fiercely they fight when they need to, yet how they isolate themselves rather than fight when given the choice.
We could also get a more dynamic battle. Give the characters some dignity, and the battle some energy, make it all less static. Not just rank and file standing around on a hill - and why, seriously, are those fambaas just standing there? You look at what Peter Jackson does with Olyphants outside the walls of Minis Tirith in Return of the King and then you see those fambaas just standing on that hill and the mind reels at the wasted opportunities. For all of Lucas’ talk about what computer technology makes possible in the world of visual effects, he doesn’t really do all that much in this fight that he couldn’t have done on Hoth back in 1980, other than the fact that he didn’t have to film physical models for this battle.
Plus, treating the Gungans this way solves other problems. It makes them more interesting, by giving them something to contribute rather than having them be so flat (other than Jar Jar and, perhaps, Nass). It makes their relationship to the Naboo more clear, explaining why each race is wary of the other. It sets up their importance to the final battle. It even helps give shape and substance to Amidala’s arc - at the start of the film, she is unwilling to fight back, and the Gungans are in hiding, and at the end they joint together to fight and die rather than submit.
In my original considerations of this movie, I took for granted that these three elements were among the worst the film had to offer, and that was all. When I imagined the most direct way to improve both this film and the prequel trilogy as a whole, I focused on Anakin, whose character is central and remains frustratingly undeveloped and amorphous. But in thinking a little more about how to fix up this film, I think these three changes could turn it into quite an exciting story. Sharpen the presentation of Amidala as an idealist who becomes a militaristic cynic, setting the stage for the methods Palpatine uses to gain power. Present the Gungans as fierce isolationists who unite with the humans on Naboo to provide the movie with both an exciting battle and a happy note for its ending. Present the pod race and the world from which Anakin comes as a seedy, dangerous place, in which Anakin is a special kid with a good heart, a bit cocky, and preternaturally skilled as a pilot and reckless adventurer. That makes the race more exciting, Anakin more interesting.