Last weekend the title of the next movie in the Star Wars saga was officially announced: “Revenge of the Sith.” The thing is named. Soon, very soon, we will have closure.
Actually it’s not a bad choice, although I was holding out for “How Vader Got His Groove Back.” “Revenge of the Sith’ resonates nicely with the third movie of the original trilogy, ‘Return of the Jedi,’ which, as true fans know, was originally supposed to be called “Ewok Dance Party.”
The announcement of the name has become a rite of passage for a Star Wars prequel. When the name was announced, thousands of fans at the Comic-Con International convention cheered, jumped for joy and hugged each other, delighted that after months of eager anticipation they finally knew what to make fun of.
Star Wars movies have become the best-selling flops in cinematic history. Hardcore fans hated them so much they had to see them over and over to make sure that George Lucas wasn’t just funning with them.
The first prequel, “The Phantom Menace,” arrived amidst a media blowout, with trailers and sneak peeks and nonstop news coverage and fans waiting in line long enough to legally qualify as squatters. The ecstatic jubilation died down during the opening credits when the familiar music accompanied a long social studies essay on trade routes and intergalactic taxation. Suddenly we all had a bad feeling about this…
Clearly Lucas had gone insane. Why else would he sabotage the best-selling franchise of all time by giving the aliens offensive ethnic dialects and changing the Force from a universe-binding power into a birth defect? Why take excellent actors and direct them to be slightly less life-like than their action figures? Why introduce more plot holes per capita than the first three Star Wars movies combined? Why, George, why Jar-Jar?
Don’t be fooled, he knows just what he’s doing. He’s not ignoring the rich history of his own work to produce bland, sensationalistic fare that’s aimed more at selling merchandise than enriching the Star Wars mythology. Not at all! Instead I believe that, in a Machiavellian move worthy of Darth Sideous himself, Lucas is intentionally driving his public into a bloodthirsty rage so they’ll try to kill him with sacks of money.
Bewildered viewers watched the prequels over and over to see if they were really expected to believe that 7-year-old slaves have plenty of free time, ships can zip through the core of a planet as a shortcut, and governments elect 16-year-old queens. Reviewers fell over themselves panning them. Online Star Wars fandom went into a collective frenzy, writing endless lists of all the mistakes and shortcomings and calling for the physical removal of George Lucas from his own franchise.
Then he announced that the original, beloved trilogy would never be released on DVD, offering instead the updated “Special Edition” versions (“Special Edition” meaning “I can screw these up too and you can’t stop me, mwah ha ha”). Fans complained bitterly and at exhaustive length, certain that the Star Wars magic was muddied forever.
Meanwhile “Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones” grossed over a billion and a half dollars worldwide and the unreleased DVD set of the updated trilogy has been in the top ten bestseller list at Amazon since it was announced. Apparently outraged fans are voicing their displeasure by only buying three of everything.
“Revenge of the Sith” comes out next May. Just ten more months of pre-release anguish, of hints at inexplicable plot twists (‘Anakin’s mom is alive! And she’s really Obi-Wan’s sister! And aunt!’), and page upon page of Lucas-bashing blog rage. Then George Lucas will have another billion dollars and we can put all of this behind us. The healing can begin.
At least until the Special Edition prequel DVDs come out.