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unodostres
1. Oil.
Hey, Mattrix: gonna see the bald Australian perform in Indianapolis
tonight. :)
2. Clones.
One of Lucas's problems as a director appears to be, as I read somewhere
recently, that he's a bad director of actors. Like, when he should say,
"Christian, pretty good, but a little too 90210 on the 'I've got a bad
feeling' line; let's try it again," instead he says, "Great! Let's go
play CGI!"
Another problem with Lucas is that his personal philosophy is a laughable
jumble, judging by his films. I take THX-1138 as my exemplar (a film in
which Lucas manages to get a subpar performance from Robert Duvall).
THX-1138 takes all the scary dystopian ideas from mid-20th-century and
rolls them into one film. You have drugs for control (like Brave New
World), and you have an ultra-authoritarian rule-bound facist regime
(like 1984) at the same time. In what is obviously a communist/socialist
environment being propped up by an authoritatian central government (the
ol' permanent feature of communist countries in transition), Lucas
inserts frequent references to capitalism. The movie isn't scary in
terms of ideas, because it has no one idea, just a mass of conflicting
impulses. Blech. It's not that the movie has zero virtues, but as
dystopian lit, set on a curve with Huxley or Orwell or even Terry
Gilliam's Brazil, it scores a D- or F. I think Star Wars worked better
because Lucas went with big, general myths and a pretty black and white
moral universe. It's still got problems: Lucas's bid for total
syncretism isn't seamless. And, yeah, the politics are a little snarled.
I thought that Weekly Standard article was interesting, too. But at
base we know that the Empire is willing to destroy a planet and everyone
on it and that the Rebellion would do no such thing, based on their
central principles. And the Rebellion is pro-self-determination,
pro-decentralization, from what I can tell. But good heavens, the OtR
list is no place to hash out that debate, is it?
I think next time out, better collaborators could help the bigger
problems. I was thinking David Fincher as director. :) Tom Stoppard as
dialogue doctor. :) Or maybe Linford.
And why not let Samuel L. do some improv? "You dark side m***** f*****
m***** f*****!"
In Rhineland, Linford is Yoda. His piano is R2D2.
Willow is the Wookie.
Fred
PS: I figure Han Solo is arond 30 in Star Wars IV, right? And Luke is
twenty, tops, at the beginning? Assuming L and L are born about a year
after Ep II, Han is ten-ish during Ep II. Could be older. I'm saying,
he could be in Episode III, if even six years have passed, right?
Possibly as a peer to our boy Boba. And Chewbacca's like 200 isn't he?
Just sayin'. I have now expended my ability to speculate about Star
Wars.
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