Thoughts on Star Wars

Originally published May 21, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1331

Assorted Star Wars thoughts and recollections, in no particular order:

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Am I the only person who hears the name “Darth Maul” and thinks it sounds like a Star Wars-related shopping center?

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This just in: As the days tick down until the May 19 release, truly rabid fans are displaying all manner of disturbing behavior. Not only have they already been lining up for several weeks, but many of them have taken to: painting their faces red and black; dressing exclusively in costumes; speaking only in movie quotes; becoming positively belligerent when conversations threaten, even for a moment, to veer away from Star Wars-related discourse. This excessive crankiness and irritability has been dubbed “Phantom Menace Syndrome,” or simply PMS.

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Correction to last week’s column. There are, in fact, four variant covers on the novelizations rather than six. To quote Rick Blaine in Casablanca: “I was misinformed.” So don’t go scouring the stores trying to turn up the two additional covers that you read about here, because they ain’t there. For that matter, the books are being published by Lucas’ own publishing arm, so perhaps the royalty plan (which was non-existent before) has loosened up. Even so—a hundred bucks if collectors want the entire set? Aw c’mon…

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This just in: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace will be opening on a staggering five thousand screens.

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When I was in college, there was a school-sponsored trip to Rome that I participated in. While walking around the city one day, I came upon a theater that was showing Star Wars dubbed into Italian. I couldn’t pass that one up. Most of the redubbed parts were perfectly credible; indeed, I kind of liked the new voice of Obi-Wan better than I did that of Alec Guinness. The one real howler, however, was Luke. My only surmise was that the Italian voice casting agents were told that Luke Skywalker was the hero. So they brought in their standard-issue hero-voice actor. Unfortunately, the voice didn’t quite mesh with the youthful countenance and panache of Mark Hamill. Out trotted Luke Skywalker in the Italian version, and when he opened his mouth there emerged a heroic basso profundo voice that appeared to originate somewhere around his shoes. It was hysterical.

The other major oddity of the theater-going experience in Rome was when our heroes were trapped in the trash compactor. There were the walls, converging upon one another, about to pancake Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie. And then, abruptly, the film came to a halt. For a moment I thought the projector had gone on the fritz. The lights came up—and then food vendors started walking the aisles, like guys at a baseball game. Yes, that’s right: Intermission. They unilaterally inserted an intermission into their showing of Star Wars.

Of course, now I have this vision of someone from Lucasfilm reading this and saying, “Hmmm… intermission! Of course!” And when The Phantom Menace reaches a convenient midway point in theaters throughout the land, Lucasfilm-hired ushers will be moving up and down the aisles selling merchandise directly related to the scenes that audiences just saw.

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I look at the boxed video release set of the first three films. (Will we have to start calling them the second three films now? Or the first second three films?) I’m reminded of one of my prize possessions back when Star Wars first came out. It was a silent, several-minute-long film 8mm excerpt from the movie, commercially released (and which would nowadays probably fetch a decent amount of money on the collector’s market, now that I think about it). It featured the escape from the Death Star and the subsequent firefight as the Imperial TIE fighters parsed the Millennium Falcon. I can’t begin to count the number of times I watched it, sitting there as it unspooled in the darkness of my living room, the only sound accompanying it being the crank of the projector’s motor. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

As opposed to now, when, if you go see a new release in Times Square, you can walk out of the theater and find people selling pirated videos one block over.

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This just in: Giving up any pretense of any other film mattering after May 19, theater owners have decided to run The Phantom Menace on every screen in America. The owner of the UA theaters, Sony theaters and every other major chain stated in a joint release, “Really, why not just bow to the inevitable? I mean, who are we kidding?”

All other movies will be pulled from release for the duration of The Phantom Menace. Relieved producers have been quoted as saying, “Well, thank God, it’s about time. I mean, y’know, what was the friggin’ point? It wouldn’t have been like other times where we might pick up spillover business from people who couldn’t get in to see Star Wars. If tickets weren’t available when theater goers showed up, they would have just bought tickets for the next showing and waited in line for it. It would have been really embarrassing.”

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Back in my fan days, I used to write skits that were performed at a convention called August Party, a Relaxicon held in Maryland. And I wrote several that were Star Wars-related.

The first, after Empire came out, was entitled “Star Feuds.” We folded the Star Wars universe into the then-popular game show Family Feud.

“It’s the Rebel Family: Luke, Leia, Han, Lando and Yoda, ready for action! And the Imperial Family: Darth, Boba, Ozzel, Veers, and Needa. On your mark… let’s start… the Star Feuds! And here’s the Star of Star Feuds, Obi-Wan Kenobi!”

It was loads of fun. Darth Vader kept using the Force to kill his teammates when they gave stupid answers. With fewer pounds and more hair, I played Han Solo, except I had no lines because I was still frozen in carbonite. I just stood there, my arms raised, open-mouthed in a silent scream of agony, completely immobilized for the entire sketch. This was, of course, problematic considering that—in order to maintain the staging of the TV show—our team had to first be revealed at upstage right and then move downstage to our positions. Naturally I couldn’t budge or the bit was blown. So we had two burly stagehands come out and physically cart me—as I kept my body paralyzed and rigid—over to the rest of the team.

At the same convention where we performed that sketch, we did a little oddity I wrote in which Luke Skywalker wakes up, a la Dorothy Gale, to discover himself back on his farm at home with his aunt and uncle. Obi-Wan, Vader, Han and Leia show up and chuckle as Luke tells them about the incredible dream he’d had. What drew the most startled audience reaction was when, for no reason I can recall, I had Luke saying, “And you were there, Dad… and you, Han… and you, Ben… and you too, sis!” upon addressing Leia. Audience members turned to each other and said out loud, “Sis? Where did that come from?” Keep in mind that Return of the Jedi was several years away from release.

I suppose part of it was that by the end of Empire, fans were buzzing about two major questions: Was Darth Vader really Luke’s father? And who was “the other” to which Yoda alluded. I didn’t understand the debate. It never occurred to me that Vader was anything but what he’d said. The dramatic beat was too strong; I couldn’t believe the film makers would undercut that incredible moment of Luke screaming “Nooooo!!” by revealing in the next film, whoops, no, Vader was just messin’ with him. From a storytelling point of view, it would have been a ghastly blunder to undo it.

As for “the other,” fifteen minutes after Yoda mentions “There is another (hope),” I stopped looking for a candidate the moment a dangling and crippled Luke whispered, “Leia,” and Leia picked up the mental phone. Yoda says there’s another, Leia suddenly displays a mental connection to Luke. I mean, people, c’mon. I’m not exactly Sherlock Holmes, but this was two-and-two stuff.

The last sketch we did, several years later, was called “Return to Jedi: Address Unknown.” My favorite moment remains the following exchange between Luke and the shade of Obi-Wan:

LUKE: Ben… Ben, why didn’t you tell me?

BEN: Tell you what?

LUKE: About Vader.

BEN: What about Vader?

LUKE: Oh, come on, Ben. Are you going to tell me you didn’t know Darth Vader was my father?

BEN: What? What?!? Oh my God… I’ve got to sit down…

LUKE: You’re saying you didn’t know?

BEN: Of course not! How could I? He had the cape and the mask and everything.

Although a close runner-up for favorite exchange in that sketch was when Luke goes to face down Vader:

LUKE: So… how’s mom?

DARTH: Dead.

LUKE: Oh.

DARTH: Uhm… how’s Uncle Owen? Aunt Beru?

LUKE: Dead.

DARTH: Oh.

LUKE: This is really great, Dad. We should do these family reunions more often.

DARTH: How can you say that? We had such fun the last time we got together.

LUKE: You cut my hand off!

DARTH: So I’m strict. Now… come along. The boss wants to meet you. Stand up straight. Don’t slouch. Make me proud.

Actually, the things that got the biggest laughs were when we made mention of all the insane rumors that had swirled around the big secrets of Jedi. These included such speculations as that both Luke and Obi-Wan were clones of Boba Fett (in an endeavor to explain the reference to the Clone Wars). That, in fact, Obi-Wan’s name was actually a designation: O. B. One, although what O. B. allegedly stood for, I had no idea.

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Return of the Jedi was one of the first films I took Shana to. She was two, maybe three. The movie was ending its run, and I brought her to see it at the Loews Astor Plaza, one of the biggest screens in New York. I figured I was probably wasting my time, but I wanted her to have a chance to see it on a big screen. (Who knew from twenty years later, right?)

Since I’d seen the film, of course, and since I figured it wouldn’t matter to her, I brought her in for the last half hour. As we entered the darkened theatre, the explosive climactic face off between the rebels and the empire had just begun. The screen was absolutely alive with ships hurtling every which way. Little Shana stared at the screen, stunned, captivated, unable to say anything other than, “Ooooooo…. hoooooohoooo!!!” I carried her to a seat because she’d lost the ability to walk. She sat bolt-still, popcorn forgotten, completely entranced.

It was great.

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This just in: In a stunning turnaround, unanimous pans by preview audiences have prompted Lucasfilm to bypass theatrical release and send The Phantom Menace straight to video. Hanging his head in shame, George Lucas was quoted as saying, “What can I say? I screwed up. The film really blows chunks. My bad. Sorry.”

 (Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)