From the editor and writers of Bright Lights Film Journal
Action! Interviews with Directors from Classical Hollywood to Contemporary Iran
(Anthem Art and Culture), by Gary Morris (Editor), Bert Cardullo (Introduction), Jonathan Rosenbaum (Foreword). London and New York: Anthem Press, 2009.
(Anthem Art and Culture), by Gary Morris (Editor), Bert Cardullo (Introduction), Jonathan Rosenbaum (Foreword). London and New York: Anthem Press, 2009.
"I dare anyone to squeeze between
two covers a more varied, useful and
flat out entertaining sampling of
the personalities that make the
seventh art the liveliest."
— David Hudson, IFC.com
— David Hudson, IFC.com
Defense of the Clones
Lucas's latest: cheap thrills or sophisticated filmmaking?
A close reading points to the latter.
For those who see popular film as capable of providing more than cheap
visceral thrills, the dismal nature of recent writing on Attack of
the Clones is disheartening. While most critics have lauded the
film for pushing the boundaries of digital filmmaking, few seem willing
to treat it as serious cinema. Their skepticism is reasonable: for how
can any film aimed so overtly at a younger audience merit much attention
from older and presumably more sophisticated ones?
Yet Attack of the Clones is quite sophisticated cinema, being
an intricately constructed allegorical and symbolic tale with a powerful
moral message: it is only by mastering the evils that lurk within themselves
that its heroes ultimately conquer those that threaten them from without.
Drawing on the monomythic theories of the late anthropologist Joseph
Campbell, Attack of the Clones is a remarkably literate film.
And while some of Lucas' harsher critics have ridiculed his intellectual
ambitions as pretentious, with one even accusing him and Campbell of
indulging in "pseudo-mythic hogwash", it is worth remembering that if
his views alone deserve the term vapid, then so does much of the
Western Canon by extension.1 The notion that violence is circular
("blood will have blood") is among the most popular of literary themes,
perhaps second only to the belief that man's capacity for love is his
most redeeming quality, and that with it even death is not to be feared.
At the heart of Campbell's monomyth, all of these ideas pervade the
Star Wars saga, and help elevate the most recent episode far
above the level of a simple serial adventure.
In retrospect, some aspects in the original trilogy are so obviously
making these points that few will claim to have missed them. Mirroring
his defeat of the allegorical monster "Rancor" at the beginning of Return
of the Jedi, for instance, it is Luke Skywalker's rejection of
hatred at that film's climax that leads directly to the Rebel victory,
a victory
linked symbolically to the defeat of death through the destruction
of the Death Star and the spiritual resurrection of Darth Vader.
Other
elements of the first trilogy made this same point more subtly. In
some cases, such the visual allusions to Leni
Riefenstahl's Triumph of
the Will that cap the concluding medal ceremony of A New Hope,
the reference could only become clear in the context of the saga as
a whole. In that case, the allusion to the Rebel victory as a quasi-fascist
one suggested the moral hollowness of their victory achieved by military
force, while setting the stage for their defeat at the start of the
second film. The only enduring victories in these films are those built
on love, understanding, and mutual self-sacrifice.2
Given that the critical press is the group most likely to be familiar
with film analysis, it is remarkable that no-one has yet to point out
the stubbornly obvious: that far from betraying it Attack of the
Clones actually deepens and enriches this aspect of the original
trilogy. To those familiar with the more arcane details of Campbell's
monomythic framework, Anakin can clearly be seen at the "initiation"
stage of his heroic quest, the point of the mythic journey at which
the moral certainties of youth crumble as the hero is forced to confront
his own dark impulses. In The Empire Strikes Back, the film to
which Attack bears the closest resemblance both structurally
(in its two-part narrative) and thematically (in its emphasis on the
fallibility of its leads), Luke's similar struggle was portrayed most
powerfully through his descent into the magic tree cave on Dagobah.3
In the cave lay only what he carried with him: his latent aggression
and the potential future it promised to bring. In giving into violence,
Luke would become the very person he set out to destroy. Consistent
with this emphasis on the dual potential of individuals, even Empire's
numerous settings shifted between light and dark: the heavenly Cloud
City hid a hellish core while monsters of the subconscious roamed beneath
the icy surface of Hoth. Evil lurked within good — but good also
within evil.
The failure of many critics to understand this point — the interior
rather than exterior nature of moral conflict in the Star Wars
saga — probably explains why so many seem oblivious to the extremely
literate qualities of the latest film. Yet once these are recognized,
it becomes hard not to admire Lucas for his audacity in building such
a complex six-part drama, and his willingness to face critical and popular
scorn for pushing it through to its logical end. From its opening shots
of Coruscant wreathed in fog, Attack plunges its audience immediately
into the thematic uncertainty appropriate for a film where nothing is
what it seems. Viewers must struggle to follow the plot, asking who
is responsible for the assassination attempt on Senator Amidala; who
has ordered the clone army; and who is fighting whom anyway, and why?
The relationships between such key characters as Palpatine and Count
Dooku baffle even the Jedi, while among the film's smaller touches,
we find Amidala's one-eyed security chief (touché, George) making one
of the most atrociously short-sighted statements in the entire saga.
"I guess I was wrong, there was no danger at all," he announces seconds
before her Diplomatic Shuttle bursts into flame.
This recurring emphasis on clouds, fog, and blindness is of course
symbolic: it betrays the protagonists' moral ambivalence while showing
that the "shroud" of the dark side is quite literally falling. Lacking
knowledge of their own potential for evil, what the characters in this
film fail to understand is that their most dangerous impulses are often
their most noble ones. To place this in context, remember that Luke's
attack on Vader in Empire was driven by his love for his friends,
while his rage in Jedi was fueled by his desire to protect his
sister. Both cases were explicit moral traps. After giving in to the
former (in "attacking" rather than "confronting" Vader), Luke suffered
a dismemberment, fall, and symbolic crucifixion on the weathervanes
below Bespin. The latter was even more dangerous: for in killing his
father Luke would only have supplanted him at the Emperor's side —
further perpetuating the cycle of galactic and interpersonal violence
that begins in The Phantom Menace.
Associated with the subconscious since Homer's treatment of Neptune
in the Odyssey (at least according to the nineteenth century romantics),
water imagery dominates the new film.4
As a symbol of latent aggression and hubris, it lurks in the background
at those pivotal moments in the narrative where characters make terrible
lapses in judgement. As a cliff-dwelling diplomat, Amidala is as logically
bound to oppose the creation of an Army of the Republic as the amphibious
Jar Jar is thematically fated to support it: the deliberate division
of ego and id could hardly be clearer. Lucas appropriately places the
romance and marriage of Anakin and Amidala at a lakeside retreat, while
he situates the Army of the Clones on the watery planet Kamino. Among
the most interesting qualities of this film is the way this symbolism
reinforces itself on multiple levels. Not only are the Clones an aggressive
and irrational race (like the Gungans they are warriors who live in
a "hidden city"), but the Jedi are as oblivious to the existence of
Kamino as they are to the dangers of the pride and aggression that lurk
within themselves.5
As in The Phantom Menace, water images are tied to lunar ones,
which become associated not only with violence and aggression, but also
with the maternal figures his attachment to whom is precisely what drives
Anakin to the Dark Side.6 The cave imagery and dream imagery prominent
in earlier episodes also returns with a vengeance. And if the use of
cave symbolism was occasionally overbearing in The Phantom Menace,
its treatment in the new film is more unobtrusive. The droid factory
is located quite naturally in an underground maze, while the closing
confrontation between the Jedi and Count Dooku occurs in a cavern carved
into the face of a cliff.
Dream imagery also resurfaces. As Carl Jung once wrote, "The dream should
be read properly as the little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into
that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which
will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness may extend."7
And alarmingly, in Attack of the Clones Lucas gives us characters who suffer
repeatedly from nightmares both literal and symbolic. Anakin's visions of his mother play a
critical role advancing the plot, but also signal his emotional immaturity. The second
assassination attempt on Amidala occurs appropriately enough while she sleeps. And there are
numerous scattered references to the world (and life) as dreams or nightmares into which
characters "fall" only to be rescued by friendship and love. The most striking of these is
the transformation of C-3PO from protocol to battle droid at the climax, an event compared
during the fact to a "nightmare" and afterwards to a "strange dream."
If this last sequence is used primarily for comic relief, it also shows Lucas at his most
adept, using C-3PO's physical transformation as commentary on the more abstract
metamorphoses of the other characters, whose purpose also shifts from diplomacy to war. The
senate's decision to develop an Army of the Republic is one to forgo negotiations with the
separatists. By the climax even the pacific Amidala abandons diplomacy for "aggressive
negotiation," while the Jedi Council chooses to fight the forces of Count Dooku rather than
surrender and risk becoming "hostages" for negotiation. As the title of the film suggests,
the Republic is the aggressor in the final battle, not the separatists. And of course, the
proclivity of the main characters to embrace violence holds in each of the film's individual
confrontations. Obi Wan charges at the bounty hunter Jango Fett on Kamino, while he and
Anakin are the aggressive ones in their final clash with Dooku, rushing into his cave with
lightsabers drawn. Even Yoda ignores the dictates of his own Zen-like counsel when
commanding troops at the climax and targeting firepower on the evacuating ships of the Trade
Federation.
For those attentive to how Lucas manipulates this type of logic, Attack
of the Clones is a fascinating film with many rich and rewarding
layers, and also many intriguing suggestions. For the Jedi alone, the
purposeful deception of the Senate by Yoda and Mace Windu regarding
their diminishing powers is troubling, as is Lucas' very suggestive
lighting of Windu throughout (he is repeatedly shown cloaked half in
darkness – a visual cue last used during Luke's temptation in Jedi).
The arrogance of the librarian at the Jedi Archives is equally striking.
In her haughty claim that "if an item does not appear in our records,
it does not exist," she echoes the mistake of the archive droids in
their failed analysis of a key toxic dart. As one of the more worldly
characters informs us, this failure comes from focusing on exterior
"symbols" rather than trusting the holistic wisdom that flows from knowledge
of the whole. Lucas' playful association of the librarian with an unthinking
robot is another charming touch that works seamlessly with the film's
stress on the perils of over-rationalization and its theme of encroaching
mechanization. Acting like a machine is, after all, the first stage
in losing one's humanity.
Oddly enough, Amidala is the only character who seems to recognize the problematic nature
of uncontrolled passion. Her rejection of temptation in the seduction scene (set naturally
enough to fire and moonlight) marks her shift into white costume from the progressively dark
tones of her dress during her pastoral romance with Anakin (her costume shifts during these
scenes from white to yellowish-red to black).8
And even here victory is short-lived. Reversing her decision in the face of impending death,
Amidala's declaration of love precedes a sequence in which her costume is quite literally
tattered. Morphing into the very image of her own repressed sexuality, Amidala becomes as
much the symbol of her lust as does Leia in Jedi, the parallel holding even in such
small details as the two characters' mutual use of a restraining chain as offensive
weapon.
And so lurking in Attack of the Clones is a far from simple commentary on the
dangers of passion untempered by reason, and of reason untempered by passion. By the end of
the film, the protagonists have lost the delicate balance between the two associated with
moral virtue and self-awareness. Only Yoda views the outbreak of War as a defeat for the
Republic at the finale, yet Lucas invites us to concur through the parallels he deliberately
constructs across films. To provide a few examples of this intertextuality, the decision of
the Senate to grant Palpatine emergency powers in Attack should recall the eerily
similar crisis of The Phantom Menace, where Amidala's motion for a vote of
non-confidence in the existing Chancellor ushered Palpatine (visually presented the devil
whispering sophistry into Eve's ear) into his first position of real power.9 In that film, Amidala's misguided assault on the forces of the
Trade Federation would backfire, a pyrrhic victory possible only once the deliberate (in the
case of the Gungan Army and Amidala) or accidental (as with Obi Wan and Anakin) disarmament
of the protagonists had been engineered deus ex machina.10 Of course, no one familiar with original trilogy or even basic
color symbolism could possibly miss the other clues Lucas scatters throughout: the blood-red
sky during Anakin's rage-fueled quest for his mother, the similar coloring of Palpatine's
office on Coruscant, or the strains of the Imperial March struggling to liberate itself
during the closing scenes of the film.
Many of these points should be obvious to even casual viewers. Catching
others requires more familiarity with the saga, and often with the language
of cinema itself. Deliberately reversing the logic of the opening Hoth
sequence from Empire, the closing battle in Attack is
filled with cross-cutting visuals of an evacuating rebel base and an
invading army of proto-stormtroopers. The presence of such early Imperial
technologies as squat walkers invites further doubt as to the moral
virtue of the Republican assault, as does the generally right-to-left
direction of their attack (the positive direction in film being of course
left-to-right) and the reddish-brown haze that masks the battlescape.
Clouds are symbols of moral ambiguity and blindness: this battle is
relentlessly clouded by the Dark Side.
Other images traditionally associated with the Dark Side are also on the ascendant.
Masks, linked with duplicity and deception, continue to appear in the most disheartening of
places (such as on Amidala in the opening scene), while the appearance of new characters
like "changelings" and clones carries sinister implications in a film where good characters
such as Dooku and Anakin prove equally adept at shifting allegiances. Hellish images also
surface repeatedly. From the very first shot of Anakin and Amidala descending into it
through steaming cracks in the earth, the droid factory plays out as a molten hell replete
even with the requisite lava. As do those of the magic tree cave sequence in Empire,
these scenes are also highly symbolic. The entrapment of Anakin's hand in a robot assembly
line not only anticipates his loss of it in the final battle with Dooku and his progressive
dehumanization through the saga as a whole, it also foreshadows his inability to protect
Amidala with the kind of force on which he increasingly relies, and the ultimate futility of
his attempt to defeat death through violence. It is hardly coincidental that it is R2D2,
not Anakin, who rescues her during this sequence, or that Amidala ultimately rescues
herself from a gladiatorial-style execution.
Like Empire, Attack of the Clones revels in heightened images of death and
dismemberment as its leads embrace increasingly destructive behavior. The Death Star makes
its first appearance and — if one counts the comic treatment of C-3PO during the final
melee — there are at least five instances of dismemberment and three of decapitation in
the entire film. It is of course the aggressors who suffer such fates, and the Dark Side
that becomes closely associated with them. Small touches such as the Trade Viceroy demanding
Amidala's head on his desk may play for humor, but also are typical of a film where casual
dialogue is more perceptive and meaningful than is usually recognized.11
The most obvious way Lucas
condemns violence continues to be by showing on the narrative level that aggression is the surest
road to defeat. Obi Wan's assault on Jango Fett
leaves him hanging below the city in a clear parallel to Luke's defeat
in Empire. Attacking Count Dooku at the climax, Obi Wan and Anakin
also assure themselves of a terrible loss at his hands. The tide of this
battle does not turn until the arrival of Yoda, whose appearance significantly
marks Dooku's shift from a defensive to an offensive strategy and
in turn triggers his own loss. The pursuit of would-be assassin Zam Wessel
provides a more subtle case in point: it succeeds only when the hunters
allow themselves to become the hunted. It is a testament to Lucas' creativity
that this pattern plays out in even the smallest of subplots without (five
films and ten hours into the saga) becoming stale or self-evident.12
As a film in part about the perils of aggression (it is puzzling that some
reviewers persist in calling it pro-war), Attack of the Clones
has garnered some rather unusual reviews, the oddest of which has to
be the Weekly Standard's widely circulated and presumably satirical
defense of the Empire.13
The allegorical status of key figures such as the Trade Viceroy (greed), and the various
Sith Lords (anger/hatred/death) moots this review as serious criticism. Lucas is hardly
counseling us to cheer for the Emperor and his death-like minions. Nor is Count Dooku's
promise of "unlimited profits" to his supporters a paean to free markets, being instead a
cautionary tale about the consequences of unfettered greed. For the Dark Side is always
mired in the language of commerce, an association strengthened through its reliance on
bounty hunters and smugglers, and reinforced more subtly through the use of casual
references to "deals" and "bargains" that backfire continually on those who make them. Obi
Wan's tirade against the corruption of the Senate may sound like a call for campaign finance
reform, but it serves a deeper thematic purpose in linking the decay of the Republic to the
rise of taboo behaviors in individual Senators, Senators whose purpose — Lucas reminds
us through seemingly casual banter between Anakin and Amidala — is to selflessly
represent their constituents rather than maximize their own interests.
Attacks on Lucas as elitist and anti-democratic are equally puzzling.
Far from the embrace of authoritarianism that some otherwise perceptive
reviewers including David Brin insist on reading into his work, Lucas
actually offers a more nuanced claim: every democracy is part Republic
and part Empire. As the Jedi and Sith represent the twin extremes of
human nature, so do the Empire and Republic represent the twin extremes
of social communities. And so we should hardly be surprised to discover
that the Republic is the Empire just as the Separatists are
Rebels. The difference is qualitative, contingent on the willingness
of these communities to act with the moral responsibility that comes
with the power to make selfish or selfless choices. The association
of the Republic with democratic norms is sensible: it is the villains
of the saga who continually justify immoral actions by invoking notions
of destiny, inevitability, and/or fate. Anakin's claim that he has "no
choice" but to rescue his mother (and presumably slaughter her captors)
is thus an ominous one, as telling as the closure of the debate on the
merits of militarization in the Galactic Senate.
All of these individual strands converge to make Attack of the Clones a profoundly
dark film. By its climax, both the Republic and Separatists have become loose alliances led
by figures closely associated with the Sith, and framed in suggestively similar visuals
(note for instance the parallel balcony sequences involving Dooku and Palpatine). Like
Bespin in Empire (the other Cloud City), Coruscant is here a paradise that
falls through the corruption of its leaders into a hellish dystopia. The balance between the
light and dark aspects of the city so evident in The Phantom Menace are gone,
replaced with bleak visuals that slouch incessantly toward dusk and night. The impassive
blues of upper Coruscant bleed imperceptibly into the city's hellish core, a setup
appropriate in a film whose trajectory is wholly downward and in which references to
physical and biblical falls abound. Anakin and Obi Wan throw themselves off speeders and
buildings with merry abandon, while one Jedi falls to his death in the final battle, an end
that conveniently echoes that of Darth Maul and anticipates that of death-figure Emperor
Palpatine. Significantly, Anakin and Amidala leap down from a retracting bridge where Luke
and Leia before held their balance, while even C-3PO's nightmare sequence is preceded by a
fall of sorts.
As the vast majority of popular reviews attest, the allegorical and
symbolic subtext of Attack is so unobtrusive that it is possible
to view (and judge) it without once noticing its remarkable sophistication.
But how fair is that? Blithely ignoring the intellectual rigor of Attack
of the Clones leads not surprisingly to self-fulfilling claims about
its status as lowbrow cinema. Perhaps nowhere is this more obvious than
in the popular tendency to dismiss Lucas' cinematic allusions as uncreative
pastiche, with some critics even accusing him of unconscious plagiarism.14 Although most reviewers caught the reference, for
instance, few realized the pod-racing sequence in The Phantom Menace
did more than simply pay homage to the chariot race in Ben Hur.
As a film whose dominant themes include the corrupting nature of power
and the ultimate emptiness of vengeance, William Wyler's biblical classic
told the story of a man driven to violence to avenge the suffering of
his family at the hands of another Empire. Lucas' allusion worked on
both thematic and narrative levels. It not only confirmed the pivotal
role Anakin's mother would play in his transformation but also laid
out his trajectory of character development through the entire saga,
hinting that like Ben Hur's, Anakin's fall would come through his desire
for vengeance and his eventual redemption through his embrace of self-sacrificial
love.
If anything, Attack of the Clones is rich with such allusions. References to
futurist noir classics including Blade Runner and Metropolis abound in the
night visuals of Coruscant, casually reinforcing the film's dominant theme of moral decay in
the city. Lucas also plays with the themes of human mechanization prominent in both of these
classics. The multiple references to The Searchers in Anakin's rescue of his mother
draw a tight parallel between Anakin and Luke while also suggesting that Anakin's quest, like Luke's, is a quest for family and love. The meaning of other prominent allusions,
which range from Gladiator to Lawrence of Arabia, should be self-evident to
those even superficially familiar with these films. To those aware of the overarching plot of the saga, for instance, the clear
reference to The Sound of Music in the pastoral romance between Anakin and Amidala
hints at the encroachment of the Empire on their love, and foreshadows Amidala's flight from
it with her children in Episode III.
While these references and countless others are hardly obscure enough to please the more
elitist of cinephiles, their omnipresence hardly suggests a lack of purpose on Lucas' part.
Critics excoriating him for other aspects of his film show an equal lack of sensitivity to
the challenges that come with highly structured storytelling. To provide an example, one
should hardly expect the Maul from The Phantom Menace to engage in casual
Tarantinoesque banter any more than the Maul from The Pilgrim's Progress. Both are
allegorical figures meant to represent emotional and psychological aspects of other
characters. In their continual vigilance to skewer Lucas for what they see as racism, other
reviewers fail to appreciate the difference between literary archetypes and popular
stereotypes, or to realize that the latter are almost always based on the former.
Criticisms justified on the grounds of personal taste are harder to
address. It is difficult to deny that Attack of the Clones lacks
emotional resonance when viewed in isolation. Those unfamiliar with
the saga are bound to be mystified by the more arcane plot twists. Yet
if some sequences might profitably have been left on the digital equivalent
of the cutting-room floor, the same can be said for any film approached
with the same level of public scrutiny and high expectations as Episode
II. Those unwilling or unable to enjoy the film as an old-fashioned
serial adventure will doubtless also find some elements — such
as the heavily stylized dialogue — distracting and/or unintentionally
comic. Enjoying any work of creative fantasy requires a certain suspension
of disbelief, or willingness to accept the conventions of the genre.
In this sense, Lucas' saga is no different than Tolkien's The Lord of
the Rings or Lewis' Narnia Chronicles, both of whose mountain trolls
and talking animals can be equally distracting.
To the extent that film criticism can claim to be objective, it must
involve more than the mere cataloging of personal taste, requiring at
least the thoughtful consideration of what trade-offs are involved in
making changes. In closing with this thought, it is worth noting that
by virtue of their focus on the technical rather than literary qualities
of Attack of the Clones, it is not surprising that many critics
have overlooked this point. Yet as this review hopes to have convinced
at least some, such a narrow focus trivializes the fundamental strengths
of the film, not only on its own, but as part of a remarkably unified
saga. In this case, Lucas surely deserves more objective coverage.
Notes
1. Steven Hart. "Galactic Gasbag." Salon. (April 10, 2002)
2. For seminal work on the original trilogy, see the papers by Anne Lancashire and Andrew Gordon cited below. Here and elsewhere, I draw heavily upon these works in my comments on the first four films in the saga.
3. As Lancashire (1981) points out, a parallel logic works in the subplot centered on Han and Leia.
4. It is interesting to note that an almost identical use of this symbol can be found in Spielberg's A.I. Following its protagonist's search for the God-like Blue Fairy in the world around him, the film's second act closes with his travelling underwater (or within himself) in search of her. For a film about the origins of consciousness, A.I. also opens not surprisingly with a shot of the ocean.
5. This theme provides the most lucid explanation for Lucas' curious choice of title for Episode I. The Phantom Menace in this light refers not to any one character or set of events, as some have speculated, but rather to the ephemeral nature of all evil. The dangers in that film take form thanks to the ill-considered behavior of its leads, who are continually aggressive, rash and vain.
6. In the original trilogy, the Death Star is confused with a small moon, while the moons of Yavin and Endor are launching points for aggressive military strikes. In The Phantom Menace moonlike images appear in the costume and make-up of Queen Amidala, while Anakin describes her to an angel from the "moons of Iego". In Attack of the Clones, the bounty hunter Jango Fett is reported to have to been hired for the Clone Army on one of the "Moons of Bogden", while crescent shapes continue to be associated Amidala and — through the visuals of the Tusken Raider camp at night and the very obvious scar on her face — Anakin's dying mother.
7. Quoted in Joseph Campbell, The Mythic Image. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. p. 8.
8. The color symbolism of the film is not always obvious, and so is worth brief mention. While black and red are strongly associated with violence, lust, blood, and death, their opposites appear to be blue and green. White is apparently a neutral color: being associated with the Clones and technology — both of which have the potential to be used for good or evil. As is evident from the case of Boba Fett and the Clones, blue continues to symbolize youth and potential.
9. Anne Lancashire. "The Phantom Menace: Repetition, Variation, Integration." 24,3 (2000): 23-44.
10. This use of Jar Jar in The Phantom Menace provides another example of Lucas exploiting a relatively minor character to embellish a more general theme. As is less obviously the case with Amidala, Jar Jar's defeat of the droid army follows immediately his decision to surrender.
11. For another example, consider Anakin's fumbling comparison of Amidala to an angel in The Phantom Menace. Coupled with more recent revelations in the new film, including Amidala's declared love of swimming, his early description of her is in retrospect strikingly evocative of the Sirens from the Odyssey. In retrospect, this small touch establishes Amidala from the very beginning of the saga as a dangerous temptress (clothed in black and red) his love for whom will lure Anakin to his destruction.
12. This is presumably the explanation for the controversial "Greedo edit" in the special edition of the first film. By altering the confrontation between Greedo and Han Solo in A New Hope to show Greedo firing first, Lucas eliminated the inconsistency between this particular conflict and the overarching theme of the film as a whole.
13. Jonathan Last. "The Case for the Empire." The Weekly Standard. (May 16, 2002)
14. Steven Hart. "Galactic Gasbag." Salon. (April 10, 2002)
References
Brin, David. "'Star Wars' Despots vs. 'Star Trek' Populists." Salon. (June 15, 1999)
Campbell, Joseph. The Mythic Image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974.
Campbell, Joseph and Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday, 1988.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Pantheon Books, 1961.
Gordon, Andrew. "Star Wars: A Myth for Out Time." Literature/Film Quarterly 6 (1978): 314-326.
Hart, Steven. "Galactic Gasbag." Salon. (April 10, 2002)
Lancashire, Anne. "Complex Design in The Empire Strikes Back." Film Criticism 5.3 (1981): 38-51.
Lancashire, Anne. "Return of the Jedi: Once More with Feeling." Film Criticism 8.2 (1984): 55-66.
Lancashire, Anne. "The Phantom Menace Repetition, Variation, Integration." 24,3 (2000): 23-44.
Last, Jonathan. "The Case for the Empire." The Weekly Standard. (May 16, 2002)
David Begor is a student
of film, politics, and popular culture living in Berkeley, California.
Contact him directly at davebegor@hotmail.com.
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