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| Every time I looked at this poster in 1999, I got cold chills. |
I thought about writing a review of TPM for you, done from the perspective of my thirteen year-old self, but a) It would be in all caps and b) I think there's a statute concerning the number of times the words "awesome" and "lightsaber" can legally appear in one paragraph, and thirteen-year-old me would violate it severely. Instead, I'll offer only reminiscence.
When we left the theater, my mom was understandably exhausted, but that didn't stop me from sapping what little will to live she still possessed by recounting all of TPM's most exhilarating scenes, frame by frame. I was blindly, wildly elated. Jake Lloyd's suspect delivery of some suspect dialogue didn't phase me. The out-of-left-field "the force is the result of something called a midi-chlorian count" element didn't phase me. Jar-Jar Binks? Didn't phase me. Not even a little.
But such is the luxury of being thirteen. I wasn't worried about little things like acting, writing, direction, and specious plotting. My concerns had more to do with lightsabers and the myriad ways in which the Jedi use them to dispatch legions of Trade Federation droids. When I got to school the next day, I touted the film's merits and gloated incessantly about seeing it before any of my friends. I had them salivating by day's end. And the next day, after they'd all gone out and seen it for themselves, we became a little chorus of awe-struck adolescents, rehashing each of the film's most pivotal moments and prognosticating on how all of these loose threads would tie together when the gap between Episodes I and IV was bridged.
Since none of my friends were film critics or thirty-seven–year–old men who'd imbued the original trilogy with way too much personal and emotional significance, it took a long time for me to temper my consideration of TPM. Ahh, the wonders of teenage solipsism.
Eventually, though, the points I heard people make about Jake Lloyd's acting and the hokey dialogue and Jar-Jar's distracting goofiness level started to make a lot of sense. As the years rolled by and Attack of the Clones approached, I was convinced that TPM had been an aberration, that the closer we got to Anakin's turn to the dark side and the destruction of the Jedi, the films would recapture some of the dark edge that made The Empire Strikes Back my favorite movie of all time. I turned out to be very, very wrong, but even after the warnings of TPM, I didn't realize it right away.
For probably a month after I first saw AotC (remember that I'm sixteen at that point), I defended it ferociously. I played down the overly saccharine love scenes—complete with botched CGI—and extolled the darkening story arc, the emergence of Christopher Lee's Count Dooku, learning the origins of Boba Fett, and finally getting to see Yoda wield a lightsaber. Even those elements soon lost their luster, and I gave up trying to defend George Lucas, instead slipping into the easy cynicism of a jaded nerd.
I won't pretend that I didn't still get excited for Revenge of the Sith three years later. No matter what happened, I was going to get some plot resolution that I'd been waiting more than six years for, and I hoped beyond hope that Lucas could work his magic one more time and save this wreck from capsizing completely.
There's a lot to be said for RotS, but the roots of that cynicism I had adopted grew deep. I began to poke holes much more quickly, and though I still think it's the best of the prequel trilogy, my estimation of it is not notably greater than the other two.
The great lesson in this little bit of personal history is not, despite what a great many Star Wars fans have written and said, that George Lucas botched one of the greatest cinematic opportunities of his, or anybody else's, lifetime. The lesson, for me at least, is that the Star Wars prequel trilogy represents a kind of descent for me, a descent into something more hard-hearted and less accepting, more bitter and less freely adventurous. In those three year gaps between movies, I went from being a middle-schooler to a high-schooler to a college student. My intellectual maturity and many of my critical faculties sprouted during that time, and what came with that was a sharper ability to appreciate and analyze art. The upside of this is obvious, but there's a downside, too.
The downside is that I end up feeling very much like Susan in The Chronicles of Narnia. I might look back on that midnight screening of The Phantom Menace and know, intellectually, that I was incredibly excited to see that film, but I can't really connect to those feelings in any meaningful way. I've left that version of myself behind, and while there are a fair few reasons to be thankful for that, there are a least a few reasons to mourn the loss. I've long since lost the capacity to approach films with that same barely suppressible exuberance, and that's a real shame.
Now, when I see commercials for the 3-D re-release of TPM, I simply scoff at Lucas' brazen and unnecessary ploy to suck more money from the pockets of the people who have spent a lifetime fueling his outsized hubris by watching his films.
And then I feel ridiculous, like an old man shouting at kids to get off his lawn. Am I so bitter about one filmmaker's mishandling of a beloved story that I can't even imagine a reality in which he just wants some thirteen-year-old—some kid who wasn't even born while I was wide-eyed and gaping as twenty-foot-tall images of the noble guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy flashed before me—to have a chance at experiencing a story that has been such a wonderful part of so many people's lives?
Lord, I hope not. I hope, in fact, that I can summon the urge to go back and watch TPM again, maybe even in theaters, just to feel that rush as Obi-Wan Kenobi flies at Darth Maul, lightsaber raised, delirium in his eyes.
Actually, I'm getting kind of excited just thinking about it.
By Josh Corman
Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman
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