Empire Strikes Back & Attack of the Clones = The Thin Line between Serious and Silly
What must it have been like to be among the first to see The Empire Strikes Back when it was released in theaters? To that point, the entire Star Wars “canon” consisted of the original movie and a novel entitled Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. That book was to be the official follow up had the original film not become such an instant hit and pop culture phenomenon. Instead, Star Wars proved to be a hit, and it proved to be such a hit that a sequel was not only expected but it was expected to surpass the brilliance of the original. The first Star Wars movie was the film nobody wanted, nobody understood and nobody cared about. It’s for those reasons (and thanks to the success of American Graffiti) that Lucas was able to have such extensive creative control, even to the point of retaining merchandising rights; Fox didn’t mind giving them away when they assumed the movie would flop. Instead Star Wars merch made Lucas more money than the movie itself.
Fox would have rushed out a sequel by 1978 or 1979 if they could, but Lucas decided to take his time and get things right. He was looking beyond one movie and envisioning, for the first time, a franchise of films. One thing he knew, however, was that he was not going to direct all of them. Instead he slid into the Executive Producer’s chair and turned the directing duties to Irvin Kershner, and the gave the writer’s pen to the man who had just finished writing Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lawrence Kasdan. Together they would do individually what Lucas did on his own in creating the original Star Wars film.
Despite how things are sometimes spun today, Lucas retained tremendous influence over the production. The story was his, as was the decree that the film be darker. Kasdan gave the film it’s voice, but the adventure the characters went on was still straight out of Lucas’ mind. Kershner’s role should not be short-changed, but the fact is his biggest contribution was giving the sometimes-goofy dialogue a little bit more gravitas.
If you go back and watch the original Star Wars film you can admire the kitschy, low-budget quality. In that respect the silly words and mumbo jumbo becomes endearing. Empire, however, had a much bigger budget and it was now a part of a major film franchise. It needed a more grounded, serious tone. The outsider Kershner was able to strike such a tone in a way Lucas probably couldn’t.
So to see Empire for the first time, in 1980, without any spoilers or even any idea of what to expect, must have been exhilarating. We take for granted the now-iconic opening, with the deep blue “a long time ago…” appearing on the screen in advance of the title card and text-scroll. In 1980 who could have predicted that the movie would have started the same way the original film did? It was unheard of (and in fact was forbidden by the Director’s Guild, which prompted Lucas’ resignation from the organization).
And then the film starts, and it doesn’t slow down until the iris-out and the credits roll.
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Most of the praise fans give the film has to do with the great moments it brought us: The Hoth battle, the asteroid chase, the introduction of Yoda and the climactic lightsaber fight all stand on their own as memorable parts of the wonderful whole. There’s lots of praise that can be heaped upon The Empire Strikes Back, but it should never be overlooked just how brilliantly paced the movie is, or how pitch-perfect the tone is. Kershner got on Lucas’ bad side by coming in over-budget (despite the hundreds of millions the movie ended up grossing), and the shoot went a little past schedule as well, but the end result speaks for itself. This movie is not just a great Star Wars film, or a great science-fiction movie. It’s a great film, period.
And its success is largely owed to Kershner, who directed the silly moments with such a delicate hand and with a straight-faced seriousness, we don’t even notice how ridiculous they are anymore. The scene right after Han has been frozen features slapstick humor courtesy of a disemboweled 3PO. The scene mid-duel when Vader stars force-tossing random wall props at Luke could easily be a source of unintended humor. The entire scene inside the belly of the space worm ought to be as eye-rolling as any idiotic Jar Jar one-liner. Yoda is a two-foot tall goblin-looking, backwards-talking Buddhist. I can go on but the point is made. Those moments should have taken the viewer right out of the movie. Instead they will themselves into dramatic being. We take them seriously because the movie takes it seriously.
What’s the movie about? It’s so famous for being famous, it’s curious how hard it actually is to summarize in one sentence. You can summarize the original film easily: Star Wars is about a young farmer, an old wizard and a pirate who team up to rescue a princess, each having their own motive for doing so (the farmer wants adventure, the wizard seeks closure, the pirate covets money). That’s it; it’s that simple.
So what’s Empire about? It’s a coming of age story. It’s a space opera romance. It’s about…what? Running from the bad guys is like 75% of the movie. It starts off where the original movie ended (thematically), with a big battle between good and evil. Only this time evil wins. 2/3 of the heroes (and company) then go on the run…to what end? Meanwhile the remaining third sets off to train as a Jedi…again, to what end?
It’s not so easy to lock down the “one” thing this movie is about. Han and Leia’s story is the means to the end of their falling in love. But the story itself is just “we have to hide from the bad guys, so let’s go to see my old buddy and hide therewhoops captured.” That’s it. That’s all that happens. Meanwhile Luke would have been with them had Obi Wan not spoken from beyond the grave and informed him of a reclusive Jedi master that he must meet. So he goes…but why? Because Obi Wan told him to? In order to train? Yes to both but to what end (in terms of the screenplay)? He never intends to fight Vader until well into his time with Yoda. So what’s the original end game? The movie doesn’t address that.
And that’s okay. Because this movie isn’t as two-dimensional as the original film. That movie is external (rescue the princess). This movie is internal (grow up, learn things about yourself). And peppered throughout Empire is more slapstick humor than anything the original movie had. Empire has 2-to-1 more humor per capita than Star Wars, but it works because the film knew how to use the humor; it punctuated the drama, whereas the first movie’s humor sort of stuck out like a sore thumb (not that it was bad, it’s just that the second movie’s screenplay handled it better).
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So I go back to the original question: What was it like to watch this movie for the first time, without any spoilers?
Because it seems (to me at least) that this movie takes on a deeper level of significance when its paired with Return of the Jedi. Maybe that’s because it was written to be the first of a two-parter, with the mystery of Vader’s identity and the frozen-Han cliffhanger left to be resolved in 1983. The real driving story of Empire is Luke going from eager, immature farmboy to wisened Jedi Knight. Just as he starts to make some headway he abandons his training and goes off to fight Vader and gets soundly beaten. The payoff doesn’t come until the next movie when his confrontation with his dad is more of a cerebral battle with only minor saberplay in the mix. Once you see the third movie you appreciate the second all the more.
That’s not to say Empire can’t stand on it’s own without Return of the Jedi. On the contrary, though it’s a middle-act in a three-act play, The Empire Strikes Back is a perfect movie on its own merits. And it has something Return of the Jedi lacks: drive.
Jedi is disjointed and jumpy in terms of its pacing. I’ll say more about that in the final review in this series, but to summarize: Jedi spins its wheels too much to be considered a good film. It spends too much time resolving the Han plot-point on Tatooine and then farts around on Endor without any plot developments. Then, suddenly all of the plot gets developed all at once in the third act. There’s no buildup, no tension. Nothing happens and then everything happens all at once.
On the other hand, The Empire Strikes back is like watching two opposing forces slowly converging. Vader is hunting Luke and the young Jedi-trainee isn’t even aware of it. Thanks to Vader’s working in the B-plot, Luke is suddenly given a reason to confront Vader, which plays right into the villain’s hands. As a spectator you want to scream, as Leia does, that it’s a trap, but at the same time you don’t because you know the payoff to the two hour buildup will be magic. And it is. The fight between Vader and Luke, good vs evil, blue vs red, is the best fight in the entire saga. Nothing in the prequels, with all its technology and even three-decades of hype could match it. The repeat at the end of Jedi had a lot more personal drama going on, but it couldn’t match it. I doubt anything in the sequel trilogy will measure up either, no matter how good it may be. The magic of that first Luke vs Vader fight was in how it was built up, from the opening text of the movie to those final thirty minutes. It was knowing that the fight was playing right into Vader’s hands. It was remembering all their near-misses in the original movie. And it was the payoff to an incredible, tension-packed story that had been told.
I can’t imagine what it was like to experience it for the first time, but I know what it’s like to experience it. It’s like riding your favorite roller coaster for the fiftieth time. You know exactly what’s coming, but you love it every time.
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The greatest compliment that can be paid to The Empire Strikes Back is that it is so good it transcends itself. It expertly walked the line between silly and serious, never letting the former overpower the latter, and never letting the latter linger too long without the former. It took itself seriously, even the humor, and because of that it was able to tell a story—even though it was only one third (and later, one-sixth, and now one-ninth)—that stands on its own as a triumph of cinema.
*****
AOTC AND THE THIN LINE BETWEEN SERIOUS AND SILLY
Attack of the Clones might be the most frustrating Star Wars movie of them all. Sure, Return of the Jedi was a bit too cuddly, and The Phantom Menace is boring, and Revenge of the Sith is basically a 90’s FMV video game, but the real stinker in the Star Wars line up has to be Attack of the Clones.
The production was the most troubled Lucas had since the original Star Wars. Locked into a May, 2002 deadline, Lucas was approving toys and character models before ever sitting down to pen the first draft. By the time he finished the first draft it was time to shoot and there was no time left for rewrites, tweaks, edits and changes to the basic story. Even John Williams was forced to reuse parts of the Episode I score because there wasn’t enough time to work on it. Sometimes movies that are rushed turn into surprise masterpieces. Sometimes Star Wars Episode II happens. As a result of its hurried production, it became a movie that makes no sense, meanders when it should move, tells when it should show and shows when it should leave well enough alone.
I remember the excitement behind this movie as it was preparing to release into theaters. Mostly everyone by then had come to terms with The Phantom Menace being a disappointment but the belief was that Episode I was a necessary evil that had the unenviable task of setting the stage for a six-movie story where the final three chapters had already been written. Most assumed that Episode II would be better if Jar Jar was reduced and because Anakin was now a Jedi.
As it turned out Jar Jar’s role was greatly reduced, and Anakin was a Jedi, but the movie wasn’t necessarily better. It was different and it might have done some things better than Episode I, but overall it just wasn’t that much better. A lot of the problems people had with Episode I (namely the drama suffering from cheesy acting, and the humor being elementary school-level) were still present, and in fact the drama was even worse with even worse acting, and the humor was even worse with even worse grade-school humor. The new movie fixed one major problem from the first prequel: The middle of the film had something going on, so you weren’t bored to tears the way you were watching Anakin and Jar Jar wade through literal crap on Tatooine. The problem was the middle of the film is where the whole plot unravels and where it becomes obvious the film needed another six months of rewrites.
The basic plot involves a basic plot to kill Padme. Until it doesn’t anymore. Killing Padme stops being important about half an hour into the movie and it instead becomes a story about a mysterious now-dead Jedi (whom we never see and never saw) that apparently ordered the creation of a clone army. That’s Obi Wan’s story. Details to help the audience understand the plot are kept from us, presumably to keep it a mystery, but those hidden secrets are never fully revealed or explained. Important elements are gone and forgotten by the time we reach Episode III. We’re just told certain things and expected to take them at face value. That works when you’re hastily trying to summarize a movie to a buddy, but it doesn’t work when you are trying to actually make a movie.
Anakin’s story follows he and Padme to Naboo and eventually to Tatooine where they “fall in love” according to the needs of the Star Wars saga. Unfortunately there isn’t one single moment that implies those two core characters ever are “in love.” At least not until Padme suddenly says she loves Anakin just when they think they are about to die. Nothing that came before that gives any indication that she thought of him as anything more than a young, sad, helpless teenager. She spends the movie, leading up to that love-declaration, treating him like a mother treats her child. She advises him when he lets out frustrations about Obi Wan. She acts impressed when he does a trick with the force. She laughs at his bad jokes. But there’s no indication of love. When he kisses her she pulls away. When he tells her he loves her she rebuffs him. When he tells her that he murdered everyone—including women and children—at a Tuscan Raider camp, she looks mortified. But half an hour later they’re giggling together about to go on a Obi Wan rescue mission and the next thing you know she’s all “I’ve always loved you!” and we’re just supposed to accept it. Why? Because they have to fall in love. The plot demands it.
Han and Leia’s “I love you” / “I know” was earned. They had a true flirtatious rivalry going on throughout Empire. You could tell, by the strength of the screenplay and direction, that she loved Han just as much as he loved her, but she never wanted to admit it because she didn’t want to give the smug pirate the satisfaction. Han meanwhile clearly loved Leia but was too macho to just own up to it, so he settled for bravado and trying to woo her like a tough guy. Everyone knew they’d end up together, it was just a matter of something serious happening to make them confess their feelings. Han being lowered into the carbon-freezing chamber was the moment, so when the “I love you” came, it was earned.
There’s nothing like that in Attack of the Clones. It tries to recreate it, but Anakin is not Han. He comes off as an emotionally immature teenager (which he was). Padme is also no Leia. Whereas Leia was strong, independent and frequently acted on her own (causing Han to react to her), Padme is an empty character, lacking direction or purpose unless she’s responding to another Anakin feeler. Her one time to take action and force Anakin to respond to her comes as she makes the decision to leave Tatooine to go help Obi Wan, but even in that case she was simply making the decision that Anakin wanted to make but was too scared to.
The movie tries to be serious like its sister-film, Empire, but it falls on its face because (1) we don’t care about the characters, and (2) the acting is so poor it’s impossible to take any of the serious stuff seriously. That doesn’t even touch on how abysmal the “silly” parts are. Watching 3PO’s shoddy-CGI trek through the droid factory (complete with non-stop odious one-liners) is the single worst sequence in the entire saga.
Speaking of the droid factory, let’s talk about how utterly wasted the entire “Clone Wars” is. In A New Hope the wars are given only a passing mention. Two, actually: Leia says that Obi Wan served with her father in the “Clone Wars” and then later Luke asks about Obi Wan fighting in the “Clone Wars.” And to that Obi Wan says “yes I was a Jedi Knight the same as your father” which sort of makes the whole idea of the Jedi Knights into soldiers who fought (you know, like actual knights) in a war, presumably against clones. It was just sci-fi sounding enough to fit in the universe, but it was vague enough that it could have meant anything. The term was never uttered again in the Original Trilogy.
The idea of an army of Jedi “knights” fighting an army of clones was intriguing, but when the Prequel Trilogy finally happened and we got to see it, it was not at all what the original movie alluded to. By then the whole concept of the Jedi changed from “knights in a war” to “knights who don’t fight in wars” (as Qui Gon said in Episode I). That made no sense, but whatever: Roll with it. Let’s see how it works out in the movie “Attack of the Clones.”
As it turns out, it didn’t work out.
The clones ended up being the predecessors to the Storm Troopers. Now the Storm Troopers were, in the Original Trilogy, designed to be this scary force of soldiers. They were faceless, essentially nameless, and operated in large masses. There was nothing special about a single Trooper; the effect was in a large group of them operating with laser efficiency (apart from their being unable to hit the broadside of a star cruiser). Turning the clones into the precursor to Storm Troopers only works when you think about it for less than ten seconds. The whole point of being clones is that they all look alike. That’s why they’re called “clones.” Making them troopers (who already look alike) was a waste.
And then there’s the enemy of the clones: Robots. So you have faceless, nameless clone-troopers taking on faceless, nameless robot-troopers in an intergalactic war. Where is the drama in that? Where is the personal connection for the audience? Who cares when clone trooper 162 is killed by robot 218? Remember in the opening montage of the Fellowship of the Ring film? Remember how it depicted this huge battle between the forces of Sauron and the combined armies of the free peoples of Middle Earth? That too had nameless, faceless armies going to war, but it also showed you key characters and focused on them, leaving the rest of it to the background. Who are the key characters in the Clone Wars? The Jedi and Dooku? During the battle Dooku just stands around, and the only Jedi we know and care about fight giant monsters. The actual “clone” part of the Clone Wars happens without any stakes, and without stakes there’s no reason to care. Which is why the final action sequence to the movie was hollow and boring, like a video game cutscene.
As a movie, Attack of the Clones fails due to poor acting, a weak action plot, and a romance story that lacks any believability. As a Star Wars movie, the film fails to make sense within its own mythology. The serious moments lack drama and the light-hearted moments fall over the cliff into sheer camp. It’s not only a poor film, it’s a poor rendition of a Star Wars movie, made in a rush, not to tell a story but to sell toys and spin a gear in the Lucasfilm business machine.
Many fans looked forward to this movie’s release because they hoped the lessons from The Phantom Menace had been learned. And while Episode I may be the more disappointing movie, due to the greater hype and higher expectations attached to it, Attack of the Clones is actually a worse film. It is simply a bad movie.