Techland

I will post the comment on made at a different post on a master list of this decade's disappointments as it has relevance here to the topic at hand. Let me say that I was one of the original SW haters because I came from a background where by the time it debuted when I was the tender age of 13, I had already cut my teeth on such things as Dune, Lord of Light, Frankenstein, The Martian Chronicles, and The Forever War. Although I appreciate SW in light of how awful the prequels were/are, part of me still can't quite get around that while SW sets extraordinary high standards of verisimilitude, it did so at the expense of storytelling, whereas most low budget media grapples with story and manages to often transcend the production values, however modest, nonexistent, or just plain stingy-ass cheap.

Rant to commence now: I should also like to say that I did not think it was humanely possible to ever, ever top the infamous "You stupid, STUPID earthlings!" line from "Plan 9 from Outer Space" until I saw just a clip from "Battlefield: Earth." Then I did not think it even remotely possible for the rest of human history to sink below that until I saw "Star Wars Episode 3: Attack of the Clones."
Mr. Grossman states his ire for The Clone Wars: "Because it completes the arc of George Lucas from a writer of stories about humans and emotions to a VFX coordinator, passing off digital battle sequences as something awe-inspiring. Because it suggests that not only did Lucas not realize Jar Jar Binks was the worst part of his new trilogy; he probably wanted more Jar Jar."

Excuse me, but when was Emperor Lucatine ever a writer of stories about humans and emotions? He farmed that out ages ago. The one film that saved the franchise's collective ass was "The Empire Strikes Back" and Lucas didn't, thankfully, have a hand in either writing or directing it. Just as Rod Serling's initial first treatment of Pierre Boulle's novella kept the original screen adaptation of "Planet of the Apes" safe from being too violated by the chauffeur-driven anal-rententives of Hollywood, so too did they go to some humble old schooler to craft that rare gem, the bulletproof sequel. That person was Leigh Brackett, one of the silver age science-fiction and fantasty writers who was a pioneer of the space opera genre, and we are fortunate she took Lucas' bare-bones ideas and made them work shortly before her death from cancer in 1978 (ironically she passed away just as announcements in STARLOG with Brackett prominently featured went to press). TESB stands out as the best of the 6 if only because it shows what can be accomplished when you have someone who knows what they are doing at the helm. Oddly enough, Lucasfilm has legally intervened to prevent the original screenplay from ever being published although it can be read privately at the college to which Brackett's estate bequeathed the manuscript.

I put this all down to emphasize that I am not some frothingly rabid cynic who despises the franchise. I am a frothingly rabid sardonic who sees it as a benign growth that mestastasized beyond all reason. I was perfectly content to see SW for what it was originally, an entertaining pastiche hommage to all the media sci-fi/fantasy done 50 years prior, including such obvious literary references as Lord of the Rings and Dune. The latter I am absolutely convinced was Lucas' original intent to adapt but the horrendous option battles made it a hot potato that like LOTR will defy any definitive adaptation outside its original literary format. And I am of the opinion that all the quasi-religious/mythology allegory affixed to it was a deliberate afterthought and brilliant marketing ploy, underscoring some boundaries that even Gene Roddenberry with his Star Trek franchise would not dare cross.

In that vein, George Lucas showed that he ultimately is either unwilling or unable to do right by the very characters he creates. I am only thankful that I saw Attack of the Clones on video in a private inn as I was so incensed by what went across the screen, I would have done serious damage if it had been my own property. When Anakin make his candid and petulant confession about his genocide of the Tusken village, Amidala's oh so understanding and weepy let's sweep this all under the rug response of "Anakin, being angry makes you human," made me want to drop kick the television set into Lucas' pool, preferably with all his kids in it as well. I had heard that Terry Brooks broke his contract to adapt the prequels when handed the screenplay of AOTC, saying it was crap that he couldn't make work. If true, that's saying something and one of the biggest hacks in the fantasy genre has earned my grudging respect. Jar Jar Binks is just the tip of the iceberg with just how badly these characters have been treated. When a Marvel Comics spin-off on Darth Maul makes him look respectable as a villain, the original Clone Wars cartoon by Genndy Tartakovsky show more emotion and feeling than flesh and blood characters, and the scores of fan fic written to ameliorate the mess actually make these characters worth caring about, something it seriously wrong with the mother canon, so to speak.

Thank you for the courage to state the obvious.