New Star Wars trailer

I didn't mention yesterday that the Star Wars: Episode 3 teaser trailer ran in front of The Incredibles (although I was thinking about the prequels when I wrote that line about computer animation being used in live action movies). I picked up the original Star Wars trilogy DVD box set when it came out a couple of weeks ago, and I've got news for the fans that feel let down by the new movies: the original trilogy feels a lot closer to the new trilogy than I anticipated, and I don't think it has anything to do with the latest alterations either.

Some people might take that to mean that the prequels drag down the original trilogy (hereafter referred to as SW:OT for short), due to the disappointment that's been expressed by many long-time fans with the new movies. I haven't seen or read any spoilers for Episode 3 to speak of, but if the first two and this trailer are anything to go by, when all is said and done Star Wars is going to be one tight, coherent story that covers decades, and that's not easy to pull off. Watching Star Wars: A New Hope, for example, after finding out how Darth Vader started out, really opens your eyes to the character's pathetic state at that point in the story. Lucas says it himself on the commentary track. This guy was once the most promising Jedi in the galaxy - now he's being ordered around by bureaucrats, imprisoned in a layer of technology just to stay alive. However you feel about the midichlorians being introduced as the means to using the Force, it does explain why Vader is not the emperor: he no longer possesses most of the body in which all those midichlorians once resided. (A note on that breathing apparatus: I used to be bothered by the fact that the rhythm of Vader's breathing didn't match up with his speech, until I realized he may no longer have any lungs at all, or if he does, the breathing apparatus could be pumping his oxygen directly into them, instead of air going down his throat.) Discovering Luke wakes him up, restores his ambition. He sees a future without the man who has dominated his life for most of its length, Emperor Palpatine, Darth Sidious.

Yeah, Jar Jar is annoying, and the acting in the new ones doesn't hold a candle to SW:OT, with the exception of Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid, and Frank Oz as Yoda, but the character of the films is the same: Saturday matinee fun with the kids, no questions asked. C-3P0's quips in Empire are about as bad as his quips in Clones, and nobody complained that a black man was hired to voice the face of evil for the series while his body was played by a white Brit, or about Admiral Ackbar's alien-accented English in Return of the Jedi (remember the Gungans have extremely long tongues, if Jar Jar's any indication, so I prefer to think of the extra -sa's they put on the ends of words as an overly pronounced lisp). So what if Lucas is running out of new ways to make the aliens different? That's because he's packed them so tight into the series in the first place.

There's one new alteration worth commenting on, and that's Hayden Christensen's image replacing Sebastian Shaw's as Anakin Skywalker's ghost at the end of Jedi. As a writer myself, I can see how Lucas painted himself into a corner here, and there's no easy way out of it. You obviously don't want Anakin to appear in the Vader costume standing next to Yoda and Obi-Wan - even without the helmet, it would be depressing to think he was spending the afterlife in that state. So Lucas made his ghost look like Anakin would've looked if he'd never become Darth Vader, but that doesn't make any sense - he had never looked in his life like he does as an apparition, whereas Obi-Wan and Yoda look like they did when they made their decision to die (i.e., "join the Force", as Lucas puts it on the commentary track). So as far as I can tell, for the DVD he lets Anakin's apparition appear as he did at the point when "Anakin Skywalker ceased to exist", as Obi-Wan puts it to Luke in Jedi. Of course, that's if you believe he remained Vader when he died instead of reverting back to Anakin when he has that tender moment in Luke's arms on the deck of the Death Star, the single most affecting moment of the series. (sigh)

I'm not saying Lucas and his writers (don't forget he didn't write the whole thing alone) haven't made any missteps along the way, but this is one story that I still want to see from beginning to end, and at this point I don't think I'll be disappointed.