Monday 5 May 2014

Thoughts on Yoda and The Great Sin



On G+ the world and his wife are talking about "Star Wars Day", which is apparently a thing that people do. Don't worry if you can't guess why it's May the 4th. It took ages for me to work it out too.

So I thought I'd write about Star Wars. Specifically, Yoda. I hate the prequels to Star Wars in the sort of mild way that I hate, say, rice pudding; if faced with the prospect of watching one I will probably pull a 'yuck' face, but I don't froth at the mouth the way some Star Wars fans do. I honestly think that the prequels, for me, were like Star Wars antibodies. Once they'd been introduced to my system I became able to see the entire franchise for what it really is: two really good films, an enjoyable kids film, and three shit ones. Hitherto I was a huge fan; afterwards I maintain a cordial relationship. It's like an amicable divorce. In the same way that you might not mind the thought of getting back into bed with your ex wife or husband but it would come wrapped up in too much bullshit to be worth it, I wouldn't mind being a fan again except for the fact that it would mean accepting notions like General Grievous and Count Dooku are good names for baddies or somebody thought that "I don't like sand. It's coarse and irritating and it gets everywhere. Everything here is soft and smooth," is something that an actual human being would use as a chat-up line, let alone one that would work.

But in some way I do still have a bit of bile and vitriol left for George Lucas when it comes to Yoda. Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back was such a great character. I say it unashamedly: the scenes with Yoda in that film are some of my favourite scenes in cinema. The combination of Irvin Kershner's unfussy, calm directing, Mark Hamill's understated acting, John Williams' gorgeous score, and Frank Oz's puppetry is more or less perfect. It's easy to be sniffy about the pseudo-Buddhist nonsense that Yoda is spouting, but the character and his situation have so much charm that you just don't care.

In the prequels, George Lucas takes Empire's good-natured, humble, peace-loving, grammatically-confused SF version of Kermit the Frog and transforms him into a vicious, mean-spirited, aggressive little prick with a god complex. Worse than that, though, he commits what I often think of as The Great Sin of genre fiction: giving the audience what they want.

In Empire the presentation of Yoda's power is perfectly judged. When you watch it for the first time, you are first shown a slightly annoying, but amusing, clown character, who then transforms into a wise old teacher. You gradually get the sense that this little fellow is more than he seems, but you still aren't quite sure about him - until the moment when he shows Luke what using the force is really all about by moving the X-Wing. In common with everything else in the film, it's executed brilliantly: from the way the score builds and swells, to Mark Hamill's reaction, to Yoda's killer closing line. But, for a moment of great grandeur and climax, it's also nicely understated. All Yoda has done is move a starship. He hasn't killed anyone, blown anything up, or done anything fancy-dan. He's helped out his young student and given him a valuable lesson. That's all.

Watching that scene, of course, the audience is given the awareness that, wow, Yoda must be an immensely powerful badass. But it's done so well that you don't need to be shown anything more. The message comes across perfectly. Yoda must be a mighty warrior. And Kershner has the taste, the class, to leave it at that. Let the audience imagine what they want. He's given a hint, knowing - crucially - that the power of suggestion will be more powerful than anything he could actually have put on the screen. The audience wants more, but Kershner knows that actually their imaginations will be more satisfactory than anything he can deliver.

But of course, Star Wars fans being what they are, they want to see more: they want to see what Yoda can do. And in Attack of the Clones (easily the worst of the prequels), George Lucas gives every 25-year-old Star Wars fan what they'd only previous dared to imagine: Yoda having a fight with lightsabers. In an act of sheer, barefaced fan service, we see the full shebang - Yoda getting out his lightsaber, shooting lightning bolts, and throwing boulders around. And it's fun...for a second. Until you realise that there is something awfully tawdry about the whole affair. Yoda was a calm, wise, peaceful little puppet in Empire, and he had a certain message - that you should try to transcend violence. That aggression and anger lead you down the path of ruin. Yet here he is, throwing his weight around in the most unseemly fashion. The fight with Count Dooku is like the moment you get a blowie off the hitherto untouchable school good girl: it's nice and everything, but at the same time you can't help but feel as if something important has been sadly diminished. Something that was pure in your mind has become forever sullied.

In giving the audience a view of Yoda's full power, the magic of what had hitherto only been hinted at and imagined completely dissipates. He falls from being a great and powerful being of myth into a silly little dancing green ninja with a shiny sword. And we all lose something as a result.

36 comments:

  1. It was Kershner that made the Star Wars Trilogy bloom. It's like Lucas can't be trusted to tell a good story with his own material, rather he needs a sensible director to focus the world building into a compelling tale. Maybe this bodes well for SW7, who knows. On the other hand, Star Trek Into Darkness was painfully incoherent. Damn you Abrams.

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    1. I have reasonable hopes for SW7 but as I said in the post, my relationship with Star Wars isn't what it was. I'll still see the film but it won't be a massive event for me.

      Star Trek Into Darkness was painfully incoherent but I think that matters less in a Star Wars film. I actually felt like Star Trek Into Darkness to all intents and purposes was a Star Wars film, in mood and feel and attitude. It was like an audition to direct SW7.

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  2. Your schoolgirl analogy in the second to last paragraph is incredibly creepy. But the rest I agree with

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    1. No it isn't.

      What's creepy is that everyone is automatically interpreting it as being about pedophilia instead of just remembering high-school.

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    2. I certainly hope that's not what's being insinuated.

      I think rather I'm being accused of being "problematic" about female sexuality and perpetuating outmoded notions that once a girl has sex she's fallen or something....

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    3. You're both wrong:
      -not about pedophilia
      -not _ever_ about being "problematic" (this is me talking, not some drooling moron on the bus)
      I just have no idea what good thing is _lost_ or diminishing and sullying when someone does something completely awesome and good.
      You reported an actual emotion. That anyone has that particular emotional response to something as good as a blowjob is simply creepy.

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    4. I'm not sure it's all that unusual to observe that sometimes getting what you want isn't quite as good as it was in your imagination beforehand??

      It happened to me with the extra large helping of cheese and chips I had after a night out on Friday.

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    5. "I'm not sure it's all that unusual to observe that sometimes getting what you want isn't quite as good as it was in your imagination beforehand??"
      This statement implies this scenario:
      Cute girl
      Blowjob
      Blowjob isn't that good
      (not creepy)

      Your original implies this scenario:
      Cute girl
      Blowjob
      Her very willingness to give you a blowjob makes you feel that something has been diminished or sullied.
      (creepy)

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    6. It's neither. It's:
      Cute girl who is supposed to be untouchable and who you've built up into something amazing in your imagination
      Blowjob
      It can't possibly live up to what you was in your imagination, so the thing that was in your imagination is sullied

      Like Yoda.

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    7. That sounds like a bad blowjob.

      UNLESS the "untouchableness" is viewed as a _positive_ quality, which is the thing I think is creepy.

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    8. The hitherto-untouchableness is value-neutral. It's to reinforce the fact that an important element of the analogy is that something that has been built up in the imagination over an extended period of time. Nothing more or less.

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    9. I guess then you're implying there's a level of "built upness" that enivsages a level of quality that a blowjob from a pretty can't provide.

      Which assumption is difficult to wrap my mind around. Even the worst blowjob from a pretty girl is still a blowjob from a pretty girl and so is still way better than any imagined blowjob. And almost anything else.

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    10. Zak, it's just an analogy.

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    11. Analogies can be creepy.

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    12. I can only do an electronic shrug.

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    13. Can I just chime in and say that this whole thread has gotten kind of creepy?

      I see Zak's point, but I think we're talking about something that is psychologically very complicated (i.e. human sexuality) and it seems to me that he's trying to flatten it in the interest of satisfying a very rigid ideology.

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  3. In an uncharacteristic twist, I agree with everything you've said here, though I'm going to pretend quietly that the schoolgirl part didn't happen. Y'know, YKINMK and all.

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    1. To defend my honour and reputation, if such things exist, I was obviously talking about the perspective of a boy of the same age, i.e. 16 or older, and who is in her school. ;)

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    2. Ah, _naturally,_ what was I thinking?

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    3. That wink emoticon isn't a nudge-nudge-wink. That really is what I meant. If only a jedi master were here to read my mind.

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  4. I see what you mean, but on the other hand they can't just have yoda move the occasional space ship for 7 films and still be an interesting character.

    It's like the Alien films. (also 7 movies deep, coincidentally). Everyone talks about how much better and more subtle the first movie was but you can't go home again: the horror and mystery are all used up. They can't make more movies in the style of the first one and expect it to have the same impact. Shit's just got to evolve.

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    1. I disagree - I still think they could have done that and have him still be an interesting character. But we'll never know now.

      Aliens is a good example of how to do that sort of thing well. Definitely. Yoda is the paradigm example of how to do it really poorly.

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    2. There's nothing "evolved" about the Star Wars prequels.

      Writing? Awful. Acting? Awful. Direction? Awful? CGI special effects? Look worse than models in most cases, and horribly overused in every case. I'm not a bitter Star Wars fan, because frankly I never liked the original movies all that much. But they were, at least, entertaining. The prequels are quite simply some of the worst major Hollywood productions ever released.

      The transition from the original Star Wars to Revenge of the Sith isn't "evolution", it's a plunge into a bottomless pit.

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    3. Yeah--there are lots of ways to evolve that don't involve Jar Jar Binks or sucking more.

      Many Bond films after Dr No are as good or better than Dr No.

      Can't say that about the original trilogy or Alien.

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  5. I chuckled at 'blowie'. I'm also adding it to my lexicon now.

    As for the great Yoda sin, I imagine there will be some that interpret it as his utilization of violence in the prequels is what helped him reach the decision to advocate pacifism in Empire, but we all know that's crap. Everyone just wanted to see him jump around like Kermit and fight Count Dookie...Doodoo...Dook- I can't do it. Poor Christopher Lee.

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  6. I've been watching the Clone Wars series lately, and it has given me a slightly different perspective on the prequels. More context, essentially.

    It seems to me that Darth Vader's story is really the story of the entire Jedi order. Over the course of the Clone Wars series, they are being militarized, hardening, losing the teaching and mentoring aspects.

    Yoda throwing his weight around in a violent and aggressive fashion is exactly right for Jedi masters of that era. Heck, they are often called Generals, instead of Jedi. He's been in the middle of a war for years, seen hundreds of his friends and students killed, and he's face-to-face with one of the architects of all that.

    Sure, it's fan-service, but it's fun, and it's not wrong. Anakin falls to the dark side, and Yoda nearly does. It takes 20 years of solitary meditation in a swamp for him to get back to the wise teacher he was before the war.

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  7. On the other hand...what if Lucas wanted to show how Yoda changes in time? After all, the prequels are meant to show events and characters and how they evolved/involved. (I still don't like the prequels, but this make at least make sense of what we see.)

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    1. David, Jeremy and Antonio. I get what you're saying and you may be right. But it's not executed well. Or even at all. There is no character development of Yoda through the prequels and you can't really appeal to other subsequent series to explain his behaviour in them: films should stand on their own merits. The way Yoda is portrayed you see him acting like a nasty little shit for three films and when he reappears he's nice. There's no indication that he's going to go through any of that change in Episodes I-III.

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  8. Mmm...I actually think your analysis of Yoda is right on the money (and I, too, think the school girl analogy is apt). But what can you do? You can't unsee the damn thing (like so many other damned things you wish you could scorch from your mind's eye). If Yoda's 900 years old, you'd think his lightsaber days would have been a few hundred years prior to the prequel story (and thus he should have been portrayed in much the same way as Empire...if he were to appear at all).

    'Course, it helps to simply keep things in perspective: they were created to be sci-fi entertainment. It's hard to blame the filmmakers for creating a couple of films that turned into American classics and then failing to follow-up with the later installments.

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    1. It's true. I think with me it's more puzzlement than anger or anything like that. Why and how did something that good become something so bad?

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  9. "The fight with Count Dooku is like the moment you get a blowie off the hitherto untouchable school good girl..."

    C'mon, man. I want my kids, nieces, and nephews to play RPG. Quit cutting them out of the community with this sexist and *pointlessly offensive* drivel.

    Barefaced fan service? What do think dropping blowjobs from "school good girls" into a blog post about kids movies is, exactly?

    If this was actually consciously addressed to your intended audience, know that you've cut my family right out of it.

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    1. Um, good sirrah - "fan service"?

      which would suggest that noisms did it for some prurient purpose, as if I'm upon reading this supposed to get some kind of *ahem* stiff thrill from that line. Right.

      Which line quite frankly reminds me of the scene in Phil Dick's "The Divine Invasion" where the protagonist finally is all set to go to bed with The Fox (his inaccessible dream woman) and she tells him she's on her period and can't. Suddenly the dream implodes and he's left facing a real human being who has real human being stuff going on. Which isn't the analogy noisms was looking for, but a different version of something similar.

      And anyway, it's disingenuous to whine about a throwaway line on (no offense) a niche blog while the RPG art industry does so well at inspiring gender images.

      Plus - sex itself is now "sexist"? What, we're all supposed to procreate by fission now?

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  10. George Lucas is a horrible, un-creative human being. He fell ass-backwards into the biggest jackpot there has ever been. Every time he hands something off to someone else, it immediately becomes one jillion times better.

    The whole concept of himself doing the first three movies was an atrocity. I am so glad he isn't doing the next one.

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  11. "you are first shown a slightly annoying, but amusing, clown character, who then transforms into a wise old teacher."

    Like most Zen masters, only Luke didn't get hit with a stick nearly often enough.

    What's the line - something like "never piss off* a little old Asian man"?

    *note that by saying that I have alienated all the good little boys and girls who would have played RPGs if not for my stinky potty mouth. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

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