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This quote from George Lucas has received a lot of attention lately:

“The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.”

I assume most readers are familiar with this controversy, but for background, read this.

I first saw Star Wars in 1997, in its “Special Edition” form. I feel it necessary to state that up front, because your first impression of the films is always the one that will feel “right” to you. Also, the article with the Lucas quote includes the original 1977 version of the scene in question, so you can watch it there if you haven’t seen it. But I think that most people have.

Watching the ’77 version, all you see is Greedo threatening Han, then Han says “I’ll bet you have” and there is some sort of explosion in front of Greedo, after which he slumps over the table. I don’t know if the explosion is supposed to be Greedo being hit, the table exploding (why are the bar tables highly explosive?) or the muzzle flash of Greedo’s weapon, while Han’s shot hits him under the table.

While Lucas could be trying to rewrite history so that Han never shot first, (and we have always been at war with Eastasia), I do think that the 1977 scene could be interpreted as Greedo firing first. It’s pretty hard to tell what happened, so I think Lucas might have a point here.

In the Special Edition, Lucas has indeed clarified things by having Greedo fire and miss, followed by Han firing (twice, for some reason) immediately afterwards and hitting the mark. The idea that a professional bounty hunter like Greedo could somehow miss a man seated across the table from him seems ludicrous, although the implausibility is lessened when one considers the shoddy marksmanship of even the Empire’s specially born-and-bred soldiers. In this galaxy, missing a sitting target at point-blank range makes you just an average shot.

So, Lucas is sort of right: it’s possible that Greedo fired and missed perhaps a millisecond before Han fired in the 1977 version. Or that Greedo never fired at all. Or they both fired simultaneously. Or that Greedo tried to fire, and that explosion is actually his weapon malfunctioning. (Probably forgot to clean it and it… jammed? I don’t know; these weapons make no sense.)  It’s ambiguous, in my eyes.

In the Special Edition, it isn’t ambiguous at all, but it does look pretty ridiculous. So, though Lucas may be correct that the original version was misinterpreted by the viewers, it’s still a better scene than the updated one. As I’ve said on other occasions, filmmakers should make the audience do their thinking when possible.

(Hat Tip to Christopher Knight.)

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Via The Escapist, a very amusing article by Lt. Col. Dan Ward of the U.S. Air Force that criticizes the wastefulness and mismanagement the Evil Galactic Empire demonstrated in the creation of the Death Star.

It’s a delightful piece, but in addition, Lt. Col. Ward makes some very important points about organizations and management.

Also, as I think about it, I realize that there is, tragically, a parallel in military history to the Death Star:  the Japanese battleship Yamato. It was a giant and fearsome ship, yet it was utterly squandered in the war, needlessly wasting the ship and the lives of the men aboard.

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As I’ve mentioned a couple times on here lately, I didn’t much care for the last book in the Harry Potter series. So I was pleased to see this Entertainment Weekly article by Jeff Jensen that expressed one of my many problems with it. As Jensen says:

“I wish Harry’s final victory over Voldemort had nothing to do with the technicalities of Elder Wand allegiance. Not that it doesn’t make sense… But it bugs me to this day that the most dramatic, cathartic moment in Rowling’s story pivots on a twist that required a bunch of exposition to explain.”

I’ll go one better: it makes very little sense, except inasmuch as anything can make sense due to magic. This “magic did it”  explanation is perfectly satisfying when things seem dramatically “right”, but, as Jensen observes, it’s weird for Potter to have to stand there and explain the legalistic intricacies of who actually owns the wand. It would work well enough in a comic opera, but not at the climax of a seven-part fantasy epic.

Jensen goes on to say:

“Maybe [Rowling] didn’t want Harry to ‘win’ by killing anyone, even someone as loathsome as Voldemort. Messianic Chosen Ones don’t murder their way to righteous, world-saving victory. See: Luke Skywalker.”

Okay, but the ending of Return of the Jedi is way more effective in my book. The Potter ending is sort of like if Emperor Palpatine were defeated because his payment on the Death Star’s electric bill didn’t go out on time due to a bank holiday. Not dramatically satisfying.

Well not for me, anyway; though clearly most other people feel differently about the book.

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I enjoy Andrew Sullivan’s blog, but I wish he wouldn’t do things like this:

“Palin has been airbrushed out of the GOP race by the entire scene – from Politico to National Review. And yet, for some unfathomable reason, she has secretly put together an hour long “Triumph Of The Will“ “Evita” “Undefeated” documentary that will attempt to do what Josh Green tried: to reframe her as a visionary reformer.”

I, along with many others, have repeatedly expressed my dislike for the Nazi comparison rhetorical device. Now, of course, a great many movies were influenced by that film. (I have even heard it said that the ending scene of Star Wars: A New Hope was influenced by a scene from it!) Maybe it will turn out the Palin film has some technical similarities, although so far I know of no reason to think it will. Such comparisons are very interesting from the point of view of a film student, but I don’t think that’s how Sullivan meant it.

My Conservative friends used to tell me, with an air of someone revealing esoteric and terrifying knowledge, that the Obama “Hope” poster was based, in some way, on the famous photo of Che Guevara. Well, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit. What poster designer wouldn’t mimic one of the most iconic pictures in the world? But it seems to me it doesn’t necessarily mean anything about the ideology of the figures depicted. Same logic applies here.

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I watched the 2008 film adaptation of the book The Thirty-Nine Steps last week. I’ve never read the book, or seen the classic Hitchcock film, but this version was quite enjoyable, being well-paced and fairly well-acted. From what I have read, however, it bore little resemblance to the novel.

But one thing that irritated me was the film’s use of a rather tired trope. The film’s hero and heroine meet while the hero is being chased by German spies. As they are trying to flee their pursuers by car, they are trading petty insults back and forth, even as the spies are closing in on them.

Ultimately, of course, they end up falling in love.

This sort of thing seems to be very common in film nowadays. Personally, I’m tired of it, and it wasn’t all that good to begin with. I’m all for injecting wit into even serious films; but the fact is that most people will not be coming up with clever insults while being pursued by armed enemy forces.

Moreover; I don’t know who decided every movie couple has to start off being annoyed by and arguing with each other. From what I have heard, I was under the impression it was more regular for a couple to like one another at first, and only over the course of years of knowing one another do they start fighting. But that’s quite cynical, I admit.

One of the reasons I hold the Star Wars prequels superior to the original trilogy is that they managed to almost entirely avoid this kind of thing. Whereas Han Solo and Princess Leia fight with each other almost constantly throughout A New Hope and the first half of The Empire Strikes Back, in the prequels Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala are actually shown to be in love first, before they run into… difficulties in their relationship.

I am not arguing for the Star Wars prequel love story as some kind of model for cinema romance. It is rather shabbily written, no doubt. But as a concept, it stands out from contemporary film romances. (Admittedly, this is partly because it is willing to embrace even older tropes that have lately fallen so far out of fashion they seem more original.)

The essence of drama, the saying tells us, is conflict. Therefore, in order to create drama, the lazy writer simply creates conflict wherever he can, even if it doesn’t make sense for the characters and story.

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I just read a rather interesting post by Ross Douthat, made in responding to Michael Lind’s criticism of Star Wars as “primitivism”. Douthat argues that the prequels were more like Lind’s preferred Star Trek, writing:

“…the lost Old Republic that the rebels fight to restore in the original films was revealed to be , well, ‘a sort of galactic League of Nations or UN,’ with the Jedi Knights as its peacekeeping force and the lightsaber as the equivalent of the blue helmet.

For Lind, then, I can only assume that watching the prequels was an immensely gratifying experience. And for the rest of us, the knowledge that Lind’s prescription for “Star Wars” helped produce three of the most disappointing science-fiction blockbusters ever made should be reason enough to reject his prescription for America.”

I agree with Douthat’s analysis, though not his conclusion. Because, you see, I thought the prequels were better than the originals. No–that’s not quite true. I thought A New Hope and The Phantom Menace were about equally good. Other than that, the prequels were better.

Someday, I’ll have to write a post about that.

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[Note: I wrote this post awhile ago, but didn’t publish it. Then I was reminded of it by thingy‘s comments on this post combined with reading this post by Nameless Cynic.]

Do you have any favorite works of art, music, literature or entertainment that you really like, but that the vast majority of critics hate? I’m not talking about stuff that’s “so bad, it’s good” here, I’m talking about something where you and a friend can be talking about this thing, and it’s like you’re talking about two different subjects. Your friend hates it for reasons you just don’t see, and you can’t make your friend see why you like it.

I think I might have some sort of mental issue with this, because there are all sorts of examples I can think of from my life. For example, remember those Star Wars prequels that everyone hated? Yeah, well… I loved them. I think they’re honestly better than the originals. [Prepares to be flamed.]

Take another example: Obsidian Entertainment‘s video game Alpha Protocol. The critics and videogamers generally hated that thing. Destructoid gave it a 2 out of 10. That just isn’t done in game reviews. I, meanwhile, thought it was an excellent game–in some ways, better than Mass Effect 2, even. [Prepares to be flamed, again.]

Even in my enthusiasm for Gilbert and Sullivan, this issue crops up. The Grand Duke was G&S’s last operetta, and the only one to be an utter failure. And despite the lasting popularity of Gilbert and Sullivan’s works, The Grand Duke has been ignored from its 1896 premiere to the present day. Most G&S fans hate it. And yet I love the thing. It’s my third favorite of their 14 operettas. [I probably won’t get flamed for this, but better safe than sorry]

It’s not like I don’t realize there are flaws in all these works. Yes, the dialogue in the SW prequels is very weak. Yes, sometimes the textures in Alpha Protocol don’t put in an appearance until you’re well into a mission. Yes, it occasionally seems like W.S. Gilbert utterly lost his knowledge of how rhyme and syntax work for The Grand Duke. But somehow, these flaws just don’t bother me like they do most people.

But anyway, enough about my eccentricities. I’m just curious if anyone else has ever experienced anything similar to this.