Articles

by Jeff Strand May 31, 2002

The Seriously Whacked Point of View "Star Wars and Movie Magic" by Jeff Strand

WARNING: This column does not deal with adventure games. In fact, it doesn't deal with games at all. Not even a little bit. Not even as a twist at the very end. You will find nary a game-related tidbit in this entire column, and therefore are encouraged to read at your own risk.

WARNING II: I wasn't kidding about the first warning. Really.

It's a lot easier to experience movie magic as a kid. The first time I saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in a movie theatre, around age eight, I fell completely under its spell. When I saw it in a theatre last year, at age thirty, the spell was broken:

"Why is Charlie standing outside the candy shop being all moon-faced because he's too poor to buy any chocolate, when the guy singing 'The Candy-Man' is giving it to those kids for FREE? Look at him! He's just pouring it into their hands! Just walk in there and open your mouth, moron!"

"Wait a second...Charlie's mom slaves away endlessly to support her family, while Grandpa Joe has lain in bed for twenty years. After two decades of watching his daughter work, he JUST NOW decides that maybe he should give up his tobacco habit to give the family a little financial boost? And Charlie picks this lazy bastard to visit the factory instead of his hard-working, devoted mother? And then Grandpa Joe, who has no real interest in keeping his family from starving to death, suddenly decides he can drag his butt out of bed for some free chocolate???"

"Is it just me, or is this a slasher film for kiddies?"

"Those preachy oompa-loompas would last about TEN SECONDS in any chocolate factory of mine before I started beating them with giant gummi bears."

Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka is giving the exact same performance I saw when I was eight, but what seemed magical and delightful now seems creepy and demented (and a trifle over-medicated). The movie didn't change...I did.

As a kid, I was a Star Wars fanatic. I had an action figure collection that would--had I not been so brain-dead as to open them and play with them and later trade them for G.I.Joes--have financed several retirements. My best friend and I arrived at Return of the Jedi several hours early. (VERY STUPID MOMENT THAT I PROBABLY SHOULD NOT REVEAL TO YOU: My first crushing thought upon pedaling my bicycle into the parking lot was "Oh no! There are only a few cars here! Everybody else must have gone home because it was sold out!") And I loved that movie unconditionally. I saw it four more times, and loved it just as much every single time.

Now, I never really continued to watch the movies on home video, maybe a couple of times each over the years, so when the Special Editions were released, it was much like seeing them fresh, with adult eyes.

I realized that a lot of the acting wasn't very good. Same with the dialogue. As a kid, I watched in horror as our heroes were about to be thrown in the Sarlaac pit, where they would learn true agony as their bodies were slowly digested over a period of a thousand years. As an adult, I thought, "That sounds pretty bad, but unless there's a catering service down there, they're lasting a few days, tops." I was unable to completely immerse myself in the movies like I did during their first run.

That said, was there movie magic at work? You'd better believe it. Sure, I may have gone from adoring C-3PO to wanting to slap that prissy, whiny droid, but overall, the movies still worked in a BIG way. When the Rancor creature goes after Luke in Jabba's basement, it's a genuinely exciting scene, despite the shoddy effects work. When Darth Vader reveals that he is Luke's father, it's still a powerful moment, even after being parodied approximately 3,827,901 times. Maybe the movies don't work from beginning to end, but the original trilogy has movie magic galore.

I still believed in that galaxy far, far away.

So, what's up with Episodes I and II?

Maybe we've simply become more demanding. The entire Internet threw a tizzy fit over the title of the new movie, but c'mon, Attack of the Clones may be a goofy title, but so is The Empire Strikes Back (and for you hecklers out there, Send in the Clones is no funnier than The Empire Strikes Out).

We could also blame the reliance on CGI effects. There's no question that the Phantom Menace Jabba the Hutt is more expressive, but there's also no question that the Return of the Jedi Jabba the Hutt looks like it's really occupying the same space as the actors. When Carrie Fisher is pulled against him in her metal bra, you can almost feel the squish.

Or maybe we just need more clarity of action. In the climactic attack on the Death Star in Star Wars, we know exactly what the heroes are trying to accomplish. We've seen it demonstrated. And the final sequence is loaded with edge-of-your-seat excitement. During the final battle in Attack of the Clones, there's a lot of chaos and more CGI effects than you can shake Buzz Lightyear at, but is it exciting...or just busy?

When Luke, Han, and Leia are trapped in the trash compactor, we know what it's for. We may question the need for a slimy creature swimming around in there, but still, it's quite logical that the Death Star would need some method of waste disposal. When young Obi-Wan is trying to help Qui-Gon Jinn and he has to wait for those opening-and-closing force fields...ummmm, what ARE those things for, anyway? To give the video game adaptation something to work with?

The new movies have no sense of wonder. They're entertaining but not thrilling. There's no magic.

Movie magic isn't accidental. Give us characters that we love and care about (c'mon, even if we disregard J**-J** B**ks, there's nobody in the new films that comes even CLOSE to a Han Solo or a Princess Leia). Give us action sequences that put us on the edge of our seat, that we admire with our gut instead of our brain. Dazzle us with imagination. Make us believe that what we're seeing is real. CGI effects don't make that impossible...I believed everything I saw in Toy Story. I believed nothing I saw in Attack of the Clones.

The nerdy little eight-to-twelve-year-old is gone, and he'll never completely return. But in May 2005, when Episode III debuts, I'd love nothing more than for him to pay me a visit.

(Hate mail regarding this article may be sent to HateMailForJeff@aol.com.)

You can visit Jeff Strand's Seriously Whacked website at http://www.jeffstrand.com.