The Talkies / A Cartoon Odyssey

...In the first half of Jedi, we meet Jabba the Hutt, a vile and greedy creature whom one critic described as "a lascivious sofa...

...Another cliche", but rendered through images, not words...

...Not excessively, but just enough to suggest that wearing the damn thing has always been a constant, low-level pain...

...Through his ponderous headpiece Darth Vader even breathes audibly, like a threatening caller...

...But we see the actor David Prowse's face and head furrowed, bruised, and slightly scorched...

...The Emperor himself is a sort of cross between Dracula and the Grim Reaper-not very interesting compared to Darth Vader, who is basically a voice and a costume...

...We can feel his physical and mental relief at simply being in the air, unencumbered by his duties to the Empire...

...For the Star Wars trilogy is nothing if not a grand and glorious, technically astounding, state-of-the-art cartoon...

...Only now I'm using the word in its positive sense, as a form of play...

...Most films give us recognizable types...

...Spring brings the printed ads and previews, followed in summer by the TV ads, toys, posters, Burger King drink glasses, video games, and cute references by disc jockeys...

...The ideas are simplified, but the images are not...

...It's only a movie," Lucas admits...

...It is true: Lucas was raised on Flash Gordon, the Masked Marvel, Disneyland, and comic books-and the Star Wars opus is solidly in this vein...

...For this quotation, and for details about George Lucas's life, I am indebted to Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas, by Dale Pollock (Harmony Books, $14.95...

...the continual struggle to accept grace and become worthy of it...

...Maybe the apprentice will surpass the sorcerer, and George Lucas will learn how to turn cartooning into art.n cartooning into art...

...I didn't catch this fellow's name, but I vividly remember his pale, fleshy head grown out in three places, like a grotesque jester's cap, into massive serpents that coil around his neck...

...Worst of all is the glazed expression of adults who declare that the latest high-tech movie has restored their capacity for wonder, their childlike ability to experience life directly, and so forth...

...For example, there is the visible difference, among bad guys, between those who rule by exploiting, human nature and those who rule by suppressing it...

...We cannot help but be seduced by that dry wit, those suntanned limbs, those black eyes shooting sparks...

...These poor souls are so *The Gandhi Nobody Knows, Thomas Nelson Publishers, $3.95...

...As for Gandhi, we can turn again to Grenier for documentation of how ridiculously oversimplified its portrayal is.* I find it a bit more affecting than Missing, because director Sir Richard Attenborough obviously fell in love with his own notion of Gandhi, and that emotion comes through-especially with British actor Ben Kings-ley squeezing the role for every drop of charisma it contains, and then adding his own...

...If the bad guys wear American or British uniforms, and do not get the trouncing they deserve, then critic and Academy declare that we have left cartooning behind and entered the realm of serious filmmaking...

...My problem with the whole debate over these movies is' that it goes from one extreme to the other, for reasons which have little to do with why the films are so popular...

...It's true that by the time young George got out of Modesto, and began hanging around the film-school crowd at USC, his upbringing had been diluted...

...Instructed by older and wiser figures-a retired knight named Obi-Wan Kenobi (played by Alec Guinness) and a rabbit-eared elf named Yoda-Luke sets forth to do battle with the forces of evil as embodied in Darth Vader, chief lieutenant of the top bad guy and would-be dictator of the universe, the Emperor...

...And what a costume: lightweight, molded black plastic, with a certain weight of wiring and circuitry underneath- exactly like a mons'ious telephone...

...Perhaps the debate is really between those who did, and those who did not, grow up hooked on Disney...

...By winter, there were a great many citizens willing to shoot E.T...

...Machines taking over the human race is, of course, a science-fiction cliche...

...Eventually we learn that Darth Vader is Luke's father, and begin to sense another dimension: that he is a good man whose mind is being controlled by that efficient-looking headpiece...

...Like Disney, he has an eclectic, synthesizing visual imagination which is not afraid to revive cliche" or raid past and present folklore for all they are worth...

...1 low, the problem with calling this simple-minded is that it implies an unfavorable comparison with other films more esteemed by the critics and by the people who vote for the Academy Awards-films such as Missing, for example, or Gandhi, which are considered more intellectually and morally complex...

...Last year, it seemed that the phenomenon had peaked...

...Since it is difficult, unless one is Jack Lang, to say definitively where American popular culture is headed, or even what it is, I would suggest waiting to see what Lucas is going to do next...

...But no one at Jabba's court is quite as compelling as his snake-headed henchman...

...In fact, it quite resembles the down-home Methodism which Lucas's grandparents brought with them when they moved to California from Arkansas...

...the pressure to strive toward perfection-all these aspects of "the Force" can be found in the sermons of good old John Wesley...

...reviews of this summer's offering, Return of the Jedi, have been less than enthusiastic...

...A lot of fans whose lives get consumed by Star Wars think my life must also be that way, and it's not.' 't Which brings us to the opposite extreme: those who would take Lucas as seriously as Costa-Gavras and Attenborough take themselves...

...When we do look, we see a fair amount of silliness, but also some richly suggestive images...

...In some ways, this medu-soid figure is the most malignant-looking thing in the movie: a literal representation of the evil in man's mind being allowed to develop without limit...

...And his legions of stormtroopers look the same, only scaled down and in color, like decorator extensions...

...This segment of the movie audience responds eagerly to Yoda, no doubt preferring his counsel to that of the white authority figure, Obi-Wan Kenobi...

...the availability of salvation to all types and conditions of people...

...I don't know how deliberate these associations are, but they are extraordinarily effective...

...George Lucas, the creator of the Star Wars trilogy of which Jedi is the third installment, is once again being accused of simple-mindedness-the usual backlash sentiment...

...Having disposed of the extremes, I can happily fall into line with the bulk of the audience, who perceive quite correctly that George Lucas was put on earth not to enlighten in the manner of Wesley, but to entertain in the manner of Disney...

...But in other ways, this kind of evil seems more human, more old-fashioned, than that of the Emperor's sidekick, Darth Vader...

...The subject sounds complicated, but as Richard Grenier has pointed out with admirable thoroughness in Commentary, Costa-Gavras is a firm believer in simplification: he distorts, omits, and exaggerates the facts of real political crises to render them melodramas in which the American government is always the top guy and would-be dictator of the world...

...But consider: the clear, accessible distinction between good and evil...

...Lucas does the opposite...

...Again, there is no mention of mind control...

...By flooding us with strange apparitions and visual details which do not combine easily or predictably, he induces us to stop recognizing and start looking...

...starved for religion, but so disdainful of Western civilization, that they succumb to any high-sounding palaver, provided it issues from the lips of a non-Westerner, or better still, a non-human extra-terrestrial...

...Missing, a film by the Greek director Costa-Gavras, is about a young American who disappears during the Pinochet coup in Chile, apparently a, victim of his own government's wish to cover up its involvement in the overthrow of Allende...

...I'm just not sure that when we are all finished, we have received much .more spiritual guidance than can be gotten from Yoda...

...But isn't that all the more reason to admire Lucas for making it seem fresh...

...Little do they realize that the spiritual message of Star Wars is not all that exotic...

...George Lucas has a gift...

...Carl Sagan appears to be the exception, until we consider his manner of speaking, which suggests that he, too, comes from Somewhere Else...

...There is a bit more to Jedi: Luke discovers that Darth Vader is his father, and eventually wins him over to the good side...

...They set up recognizable types, and get on with the action...

...Take simple-mindedness...

...Ruling his little planet with a cruel but personal touch, Jabba's idea of a good time is to watch captive dancing girls while snacking on live frogs, or dropping visitors through a trap door to be devoured by the biggest, most disgusting muppet ever made...

...Disney succumbed to saccharine in the end, but for a while he amazed us by turning blackbirds into bookies, Dickens into ducks, and a mouse into a Faust...

...The moment quite transcends the movie's other, more obvious climaxes...

...Included in this group are what I like to call the Outer Space Millenarians, the sort of people who await the Second Coming as foretold by Carl Sagan...

...Hie accusation of simple-mindedness seems to rest upon two factors:, what kind of costumes are being worn, and which side triumphs in the end...

...The plot of all three Star Wars movies is the same as any Saturday-morning cartoon: first the bad guys get the good guys, then the good guys get the bad guys, then the bad guys get the good guys again, then the good guys get the bad guys again...

...But is this really so...

...on sight, and the Martha Bayles is film critic for The American Spectator...

...But what a voice: James Earl Jones, rumbling through an amplifier...

...Dying, Darth Vader requests Luke to remove the headpiece, "so I can gaze upon you with my own eyes...

...The fact is, most popular films do not spend a whole lot of time defining how goodness (or evil) is arrived at...

...Its hero, Luke Skywalker, is a pure youth whose only fault is a lack of experience...

...Pilgrims seeking the origin of Yoda's wisdom would do well to begin their quest in that stretch of southern California where the Bible Belt runs into Disneyland...

...The very familiarity and intimacy of the telephone make its domination seem all the more convincing...

...I happen to like the movies of George Lucas because, although they are simple-minded, they don't pretend to be dealing with events in this galaxy...