Has anyone else unironically come to appreciate the SW prequels as the kino they are recently? Rewatching them I finally understand George's vision.
The OT was an ultimate expression of the monomyth. George read mythology, folklore and fairy tales for months as he was developing ANH. Joseph Campbell was his final muse, he arranged the story to be the purest expression of monomythic storytelling. After American Graffiti George had something of a crisis of confidence, he recognized that movies that showed the world as it was were of lesser artistic merit. The Westerns were the last kind of movie in the US that actually dealt with this, the western was a kind of mythology, artists painted their visions against the backdrop of a vast unknown, where all of the values held in the civilized East held no sway, where men could come to a new understanding of what was right and wrong and where they fit in the universe.
The westerns had mostly died off or devolved into kitsch as Lucas began directing, and he saw Sci-fi as a genre that could be used in the same way, much as the serials he watched as a kid helped to inform his understanding even with their simplistic morals. In an era dominated by gritty realism, Lucas wanted to give America a different kind of story, a fantasy. A fantasy with some very important messages for a society that could no longer trust itself. That redemption was ALWAYS possible, that against impossible odds the will to win could deliver a righteous, spiritually superior cause to victory even against the crassest form of power politics. A message of hope for the future, and this hope does NOT come from technological progression, but instead from adhering to righteous principles. Liberty over tyranny, God over government.
>>69706464
The spaceships were just a means to an end, a backdrop against which he painted his moral story. He can be considered a similar artist to Tolkien in a sense in that he yearned for a simpler time and appealed to a deep yearning in the west to a return to the childlike innocence of the modern, the modern who believed in a progressive history. By the time Lucas was directing, postmodernity had already sunk its fangs into western academia and was spreading rapidly downward through society. We had awoken to the death of God.
Star Wars was, of course, a smash hit. The message of hope and redemption resonated with Americans disillusioned by WWII and Vietnam. One might even argue that Ronald Reagan was carried to the presidency atop an X-Wing, as Star Wars revealed America’s deep hunger for a world that made sense, a world where there was good and evil, a world where our values were righteous again. Reagan’s speeches were often very evocative of the movies (referring to the USSR as an empire of evil) and his herald program was even named after the films. It was a seminal cultural event that ended up going far, far beyond what normal films were capable of.
But what was the outcome? Nothing! While we consumed George’s message, we didn’t act on it. The establishment cynically exploited it for its own ends, it rode the storm. Postmodernism endured in academia and continued to sew the seeds of nihilism in the western psyche. Lucas was well aware of this as he prepared to make the prequels. With the prequels he is trying to get us to do the same thing but instead by showing us things as they are. He wants us to see things as they are BECAUSE this forces us to go back and reflect on the OT so we can see where things went so wrong. As Nietzsche said, the roots of a towering tree must run deep. The PT movies are the deep, dank roots of the great sequoia George grew in his older work.
>>69706506
The OT movies are constructive in nature while the PT movies are deconstructive. The OT builds a myth while the PT destroys it. The OT is the myth while the PT is the truth, the horrible truth. Midichlorians are a perfect example of this dichotomy. The fans were FURIOUS that the force was explained through a scientific process. And Lucas WANTED the fans to be furious.
TPM’s entire point is summed up in the title, which is the first hint we get that Lucas is entering into the realism he once detested as low culture. The menace is a phantom, it’s not known. Nobody knows who’s evil, the bad guys are these generic corporate flunkies and a hook nosed winged Jew but we can’t really call them evil, just self-interested. Just as in the real world, our certainty over who is the true menace is muddled.
TPM starts a theme that is further explored in AOTC. The deconstruction of the monomyth itself. TPM shows us a wise mentor, who is actually reckless and irresponsible, who offers little good guidance to his pupil, who is shown to be morally flexible. AOTC shows us a tragic hero who is more tragic than hero, more angsty teenager than heroic savior. It shows us the mother who is cold, who is stiff. She is no Mary, mother of God, for she lacks maternal warmth. This is commentary on modern love, how the world has made it difficult for us to relate to one another. Both are career obsessed professionals and neither has time to fulfill themselves as they would like, restrictions prevent us from being fully human. They still kiss, but they cannot escape the society they live in.
>>69706539
The society as it was portrayed was clearly heavily researched. Lucas delves deeply into the history of societies on the brink. He brings forward the general sense of decadence, of confusion that grips a society during its death throes. As I watched the senate scenes my mind was drawn towards Plato’s Republic. Plato describes the failing of democracy beautifully. Democracy promotes blind individualism, it atomizes us until each thread of society’s fabric is a different color.
Under such a chaotic condition, each thread becomes more aware of its difference and more defensive towards it. A society never hits full atomization though, because as the threads diverge, it takes progressively fewer and fewer threads of a similar color to come together, under the command of a strong leader, the Tyrant, to form a scourge which the tyrant uses to lash the rest of the colors into line. This is what Trump represents and what Sheev represented in the movies. People mistook the political commentary in AOTC/ROTS to be targeted at Bush, which it was in part. But Lucas saw beyond this, he saw the next phase.
>>69706608
Sheev comes into the picture in the first movie as a gentle old man, he seems quite reasonable, but as time goes on he slowly is shown for what he is. Sheev is the Empire. He is the manifestation of power politics and he vanquishes those who see themselves as righteous because they are not righteous, they, the Jedi, had become too enmeshed in power structure, too concerned with politics and not concerned enough with their faith. The war had demoralized them and made them into the soldiers that Mace Windu reminded us that they could not be. They became pawns in a game of political power, of kraft and were disposed of as such as Sheev tossed the board off the table. Instead they needed to play the game of macht, they needed the spiritual power to defeat Sheev, and this is what Luke finds in the OT.
Luke stares into the abyss, he dances across a tightrope as he duels his father. Then he pauses and looks at him, he turns away. He knows that in terms of kraft, he must kill Vader, Vader is a valuable political leader. But Luke respects only Macht. Yoda taught him this, this is what Yoda learned during his years of exile, that the spiritual trumps the material.
Anakin too, understood Macht as the valuable kind of power. But the Jedi did not. Windu tried to assassinate Sheev, it was against the Jedi way. Anakin saw in Windu that the entire Jedi order had been corrupted. Anakin fell because despite his failings, he was the best of the Jedi, not because he was a rogue who couldn’t control his emotions, but because the order was a guild of rogues who suppressed their emotions in order to claim control over them. No surprise then that when these Jedi attempted to train a man who had not suppressed his emotions since childhood, they were destroyed by him.
>>69706647
At the end of these films we are left depressed, not uplifted. We ask where it all went wrong. The end of the prequels are intended to mesh seamlessly with the OT, the answer to these questions is embedded there. The entire trilogy was full of signposts directing us to go back, go back and rewatch the original, find redemption, return to hope!
But unfortunately the redditors, the fanboys and other degenerates are too far lost to understand this message. They see only the aesthetic and not the truth beneath it. This is why TFA appeals to them in a way that the prequels couldn't. TFA masterfully returns the aesthetic of the OT and as a result inadvertently carries over the moral message in some ways. But this message falls on deaf ears for JJ’s voice is weak and cannot carry a message from the peaks down into the mountain valleys as George’s could.
The entire project can be seen, in a way, as Lucas contra Nietzsche. But Lucas himself becomes a tragic hero in this formulation, for though he wants desperately to save us, he fails. The forces of Nietzsche, Dionysus, the formless mass crashed against his mighty Apollonian tower and buckled it. Lucas has retreated into retirement a broken man.
My daughter prefers the prequels to the OT.
That means I've watched them a hundred times and actually developed an appreciation for them.
Something I noticed that I can't figure out.
Lucas echos scenes about 10 minutes apart.
ep1 in the sub they get accosted by a big fish
10 minutes later they get accosted by a big fish
ep3 Anakin blasts the sheild generator an Grievous' ship and a shutter closes from left to right
10 minutes later Grievous breaks the glass and a shutter closes from left to right
I can't remember any others right now but there are a couple in each of the prequels.
Would this be deliberate?
Why?
>>69706832
This is another way he is channeling the postmodern, realist method of film making. He means to show the futility of all human action. While in the OT actions necessarily progress the characters towards their goals, the PT characters are often given the runaround, their goals become ambiguous, they are lost, trapped in a maze of endless, rote repetition.
>>69706464
hey OP, everything you wrote is technically true, but it is also the most autistic thing I've ever read, so I have to call you a faggot
Why not submit this to your film studies professor instead of making a thread about it in the hopes that some anonymous soul will validate your opinion on something nobody cares enough to read.
hahaha! memes are epic xD post MOAAARRRR
>>69706464
>>69706506
>>69706539
>>69706608
>>69706647
>>69706752
what does any of that even mean
>>69707397
Basically that George is a genius and future generations will understand that the prequels are meritorious pieces of cinema that perfectly compliment the OT. As standalone projects I would argue that the prequels were bad films, but this is all part of one massive cinematic project.
