I think I’ve finally figured out what’s wrong with filmmakers–many of them just don’t have good sense. Picture this: it’s a year from now and you’re watching the new Star Wars film. There’s a scene where something stupid happens–I mean really stupid, like Chewbacca doing a back-flip in space and blowing Darth Vader’s clone away with a giant rocket launcher. You’re annoyed because this “just doesn’t feel like Star Wars.” Your friends laugh at you and say “of course it does! It’s a popcorn flick after all, what were you expecting? It’s pure cinema!” But is it? Would a film almost entirely devoted to action mayhem really be on par with Lucas’s original Star Wars classic? I don’t think it would be, and here’s why.
George Lucas had good sense; he knew how to tell emotionally meaningful stories and how to render sequences of action that were exciting yet grounded in reality. Just look at the sequences in the Death Star from Star Wars: our heroes run breathlessly down hallways, duck and shoot lasers at baddies; they swing over a chasm after a moment of uncertainty and get miserably stuck in a compacter. Everything feels real and rough and raw. There are no computer graphics, but plenty of sets and matte paintings–just as much artifice then as now–but it still feels more real than, say, Transformers does. This realism comes from a sense of weight–when action happens, our characters are affected by it and they have to take a breath before they move on. They don’t catapult from one action sequence to another and nothing they do seems impossible. Lucas knew how to sensibly pace a series of events so that they felt grounded in reality. He had a style that you could relate to as a real human being, not as a superhero.
To prove this style of filmmaking isn’t a time or a technology thing, just look at other science fiction films that came out around the same time as Star Wars: Logan’s Run, Star Crash, Black Hole etc. These films were just as big, dumb and loud as many films are today, full of insane action made by senseless filmmaker who had no good grasp on aesthetics, pacing, or how to tell a good story. But then again, some were just as sensible as Lucas–Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien comes to mind. In the same way as Lucas, Scott created a sci-fi world full of action and adventure that still felt like it could actually exist.
I’m not writing this post to accuse new Star Wars director J.J. Abrams of having no sense; he demonstrated fairly sensible genre filmmaking in his first Star Trek reboot, but he’s also made senseless films like Star Trek Into Darkness. Here’s hoping that his new Star Wars film is more the former than the latter, but I have news for you: Star Wars is no longer in the hands of a sensible 70’s film school rebel auteur with a love for Akira Kurosawa. It fell out of those hands a long time ago and no amount of faux 70’s film grading and art design will bring it back. The fact that a filmmaker like Gareth Edwards, responsible for the chaotic and pointless Godzilla reboot, has been hired to make a Star Wars spin-off does not bode well for the franchise. But cinephiles should not lose hope! Even if the Star Wars series is ultimately lost, and even if the majority of our films and filmmakers are senseless, there will always be the sensible few, like Lucas, making films that are both entertaining and sensibly crafted.
