Fluxblog
May 23rd, 2005 6:32pm


Is Darth Vader Gonna Have To Choke A Bitch?

Fellini “Rock Europeu” – The liner notes to the new Soul Jazz compilation The Sexual Life of the Savages tells me that this song is an “ironic comment on European music,” but since I don’t understand a word of Portuguese, I’ll just have to take their word for it. The Sexual Life of the Savages is the second collection of Brazillian post-punk to be released this year, following the excellent Nao Wave compilation released by Man Recordings last month. Fellini’s music is a highlight of both records. Their bass and guitar sound is obviously heavily influenced by post-Joy Division/New Order Euro rock, but their integration of Latin rhythms and horns keep their music from sounding like a rote impression and more like a regional adaptation. (Click here to buy it from Soul Jazz.)

Teen Anthems “I Hate Oasis (And I Hate The Beatles)” – Teen Anthems is the most common alias of John Williams Davies, a DIY songwriter from Wales who specializes in bouncey pop tunes that critique the insular pop culture of the UK. His songs are packed full of references to obscure British television personalities, tabloid celebrities, and music that barely exists outside the context of the UK, but this song about the stifling influence of Beatles worship is lyrically accessable to most anyone on either side of the Atlantic. (For what it’s worth, I love The Beatles and I like a bunch of Oasis songs.) (Click here to buy it from the Teen Anthems website.)

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith – The Star Wars prequel trilogy did not have to be bad. On a basic level, the story of Anakin Skywalker’s descent has the potential to be a compelling cautionary tale, even if the drama is diminished somewhat by the fact that the audience is already aware of his ultimate fate. The problem with the prequels lies entirely in George Lucas’ extremely misguided execution. I place a lot of the blame for this on the fact that Lucas spent more than a decade after the release of Return of the Jedi on the merchandizing end of his enterprise, immersed in the iconography of his saga but entirely cut off from the mythic themes and recognizably human characters at the core of the Star Wars phenomenon. It’s easy to understand how he may have come to think that the audience responded more to the signifiers of his movies rather than the characterization or the allegory. To a certain extent, he may not be entirely wrong. Even if the new trilogy is unsatisfying in terms of content, most people can at least have some superficial fun with the lightsaber duels, droid armies, crazy aliens, and action setpieces.

For the prequel storyline to be entirely effective, it is crucial for the audience to be on Anakin Skywalker’s side. Lucas almost entirely fails to make the character even remotely sympathetic, even though you could make a bullet point list of things that are meant to make his seem that way – he was a slave; his mom died; his marriage must be kept a secret; he gets his hand chopped off; he is basically a superhero. Nevertheless, it’s hard to like Anakin. Though he’s more or less blameless as a little kid in The Phantom Menace, it’s difficult to really care about him in that film other than in a “aww, cute” sort of way. Hayden Christensen plays Anakin as a sullen charisma-free dick even when he ought to seem affectionate or valiant. Ideally, Anakin’s story in the prequels should have followed Luke Skywalker’s arc in the original series, but with Anakin succumbing to the dark side at the end of the second film rather than rejecting it, as Luke did at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.

Emperor Palpatine is the best thing about Revenge of the Sith, full stop. Ian McDiarmid plays the character with a hammy glee that outdoes his performance in the same role in Return of the Jedi. He seems to be the only actor who had a good time working on the movie, but that could be because he’s the only one asked to cut loose or show any sign of complexity. Palpatine is the one character from the original films who is actually improved by the existence of the prequel trilogy. The character was very effective as a representation of ultimate evil in Return, but in Revenge, we actually get to see what makes him so terrible aside from being a creepy old dude in a black robe. I loved the character as a kid, and at least in terms of how he was represented in this film, I think I got what I had really wanted from the prequels when I was young. I am sure that if I saw this movie before puberty, it might have been my favorite Star Wars episode if just because there is so much Palpatine and the heroes get thoroughly trounced. This is a theme that I really responded to as a kid – half of the reason I loved (and still enjoy) Star Wars and the X-Men so much is because the heroes routinely lost their battles and always faced desperate odds.

Though Palpatine and Anakin’s scenes together are among the best reasons to see Revenge of the Sith, Lucas misses a great opportunity by not including a sequence of scenes in which the Emperor shows Vader the ways of the Sith, mirroring Luke’s Jedi training with Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. That could have been wonderfully creepy, but it also could have shed more light on the differences between the two sides of the Force. In the new context of the prequel trilogy, the morality of Star Wars is maddeningly vague. Before, we could just assume that the Jedi were these really great people, but in these films they just seem like a bunch of beaurocratic self-righteous douchebags who are only interested in preserving a self-serving status quo. The original films hinted at a noble spirituality, but as it turns out, they are just cops with dogma. The only Jedi who seems at all heroic is Obi-Wan Kenobi, though I suspect that if a lesser actor than Ewan McGregor had been cast in the role, the character’s grace, humility, and selflessness would have never emerged from subtext.

Though I respect Lucas’ clumsy attempts to bring complexity to the morality of his story, it does the series as a whole few favors. Back when the Jedi/Sith conflict was black and white, the integrity of Luke Skywalker and the redemption of Darth Vader was far more powerful and resonant, enough so that I definitely feel that the end of Return of the Jedi had a pivotal influence on the deve

lopment of my own code of ethics as a child. Now it just seems like the moral of Star Wars is that it’s better to be a passive-aggressive smug turdodouche like Yoda than to be an aggressive, domineering asshole like Palpatine. Ech, you know? (For an elaboration on this concept, I refer you to The Face Knife)

In spite of its considerable flaws, I definitely enjoyed Revenge of the Sith more than I disliked it. It’s certainly more like the original trilogy in terms of tone and general aesthetics, and the majority of the mistakes in the first two prequels (poor pacing, Jar Jar Binks, space diners, nebulous political intrigue) are jetisonned in favor of a fairly streamlined storyline that remains focused on the central conflict of Anakin and his two mentors. The plot occasionally seems more like a history lesson than a movie, but the action sequences are mostly quite fun and engaging. My kid brain liked it, and since this is a series aimed at little boys, I can assume that this film at least met its objective goals even if it was held back by the baggage of its immediate predecessors.

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