THINGS THAT WERE GOOD FOR YOU BACK THEN, OR STAR WARS USED TO BE FUN by John Ritchie

So, it’s been a bit quiet here of late.[1] I thought I’d do a quick follow up of the rest of the things we’d started watching, not got round to finishing, weren’t enjoying and whatnot or so on. And I need to say that I started writing this a wee while ago and that life got in the way of this. Right what do you need to know about the family? The dog is mental and has a glow in the dark ball (see here), Sweep has taken up the cello (and is actually just loving it, she’s got a really good, relaxed teacher and here we are in week three of the lessons and her first concert is this weekend, so that’s all three notes she can play), STG is still a STG but at College not school anymore and MDBJ is, well, she’s about to have her book published and it’s all going quite well for her. Look, I know I shouldn’t really but if you look here then you can find out more about her book and whatnot. And as for our viewing well, Sweep is now well into female superheroes, STG is quietly still adoring anything that David Attenborough is involved in and me and MDBJ are getting a bit fractious around stories and storytelling.

And here we go, right back into it by me, in my usual way turning it all on its head and talking about Star Wars on the telly. Not the VHS tape that I’ve still got with the slightly dodgy pausing for the adverts (which didn’t matter, really, cause if you don’t know they’re there then you might not know at all, but I do and it really makes me sad that youngsters today never got the chance to pause the recording to try to skip the adverts or leap across the room to stop the tape before the Radio 1 jingle played after the song you were taping off the top 40 finished – I’ve still got a tape somewhere with the end of Two Minutes to Midnight by Iron Maiden with that jingle right after it) that came from THE PAST or the remembered knowledge that when the local VHS rental shop (Hollywood Video in Roseburn, Edinburgh) opened they sold copies of Star Wars for about £80 (in the early 1980s – really!) but no I’m afraid I’m mostly going to be discussing the Mouse and it’s Star Wars/profit fixation and the ravaging of a galaxy far, far away and, you know what, as this is a major theme of this rant I’m going to tell you what happens at the end, just so that there is absolutely no jeopardy. Ok? Ready? No jeopardy here at all. There’s a photo of the dog and a couthy comment about something. Now, let’s get on with this rant reasoned discussion rant with that one I think I might have moaned about last time I was here (I certainly went for it on that twitter), The Book of Boaby Fetid.[2]

Look, ok, I’m a Star Wars fan. I mean, not in the same way that other people are, I don’t have any tattoos of it or such. I couldn’t tell you the name of the guy that played the stormtrooper that hit his head, or what the character who was third from the back on the left in the cantina was called but I still think that I am fan. Let’s say I’m a non-competitive fan who has nothing to prove because, y’know, I’m that age. I saw it in ’78 when it was released in the provinces (yes, I know, it really does seem like a crazy way to release films, eh? Honestly, I guarantee you that undergraduates simply don’t believe me when I tell them about it and who could blame them ‘cause it’s just bloody daft) and blahblahblah in a kind of justifying why this means more (it doesn’t) than what you thought or more that I feel more ownership of it than I should but listen, honestly, The Book of Boba Fett was a pile of Bantha shite.[3] The best episode of it was the one he wasn’t in and if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the show then I simply don’t know what else to tell you.

Obi-Wan Kenobi on the other hand, uh, well I quite enjoyed it. But only just quite enjoyed it. Because there is one simple problem with the concept of the show which is that we all already know what happens after the show’s time frame. There is no jeopardy in it at all. (See? That’s the theme right there) We know that Leia survives whatever else she goes through in the show. We know that Leia survives because we’ve seen her death, many years after the show is set. We know that Obi-Wan does exactly the same. Because we all saw him die on the Death Star. We know that Mr Stevens goes on to do all the things he does, even with a tray that is a bit wet.[4]

Because we have seen it already so we know there is no danger to the cast of characters. We’ve seen their futures, but we didn’t get the names of any winners of horse races.

And that’s a bit odd for me, the balance of jeopardy thing not the geegees, because I knew what happened at the end of Rogue One (a very good war film), I mean, come on, do I have to do this bit, ok, SPOILER ALERT: they all die, all of them, but the point is that I knew what was going to happen and I still got emotionally involved with it. And I shouldn’t have because, well, y’know, I know. But the thing with Obi-Wan is that something has changed with it. But what? I mean, ok, let’s have a quick look and think about what it could be. We’ve got one director for the series, Deborah Chow. And let’s be honest, that makes a big difference in terms of realising characters as part of a whole, creative endeavour – if you all start off on similar pages then develop and nurture through pre-production then by the time the first slate is written you’ve all got the same ideas of who and how the characters are – because different directors will have different ideas of characters. Brian Cox said in his recent book about Leporidae millinery (or whatever it was about) that he wished directors would piss off and leave the actors alone, I mean don’t give them notes fercrissake. As he explains, in relation to the show he’s in where he swears a lot (I haven’t seen it, sorry, it’s on a platform I don’t have and as I write this I don’t recall its name[5]) the actors there have spent months, years even creating and fine tuning these people they are playing, they have built them from the ground up/head down however you prefer to approach it and they really do own them as their creator. So when a director turns up and gives notes such as ‘do less’ or questions why a character is doing this the only really reasonable response from the actor is to say ‘fuck off.’

But old Boaby Fetid had five directors across seven episodes. Ok, they were all written by the same person (plus one with a co-author) but that’s still going to give moments of discontinuity in terms of character reading and revealing. I also don’t think it’s entirely coincidental that my favourite episode of it was directed by Bryce Dallas Howard who also directed my favourite episodes of the Mousealorian. There’s good storytelling and pacing there and she is really, really talented. Almost as if it runs in her family or something, eh?

And now we’ve got Andor – a sort of prequel to Rogue One and it’s got Diego Luna in it playing the character he plays in Rogue One and as we know because we read the earlier bit of this rant he doesn’t die until the end of Rogue One so he is never going to be in real actual jeopardy in Andor. No matter how hard they try to make his situation treacherous, trepidatious, terrifying, tantalising or tumultuous it’s never going to fool the viewer if they’ve seen the other work because they know what happens. Of course, saying that, you may get carried away, you may get really involved with the other characters and want to know what happens to them and that’s fine but the issue is that the problem with the central character, the guy that the show is about and built around is not going to get to meet his maker in it as it’s already been established that he doesn’t. Then again, lots of people were shocked at the end of that last Batman movie with Bale in it about Raas-al-Ghul having a daughter not a son. Honestly, even I knew that Talia was his daughter and I’m not a huge Batfan but I knew it from somewhere. And the other thing I know about that film is that Tom Hardy as Bane was just doing Peter Ustinov from Disney’s 1960s version of Robin Hood. Honest. Just imagine Bane going on about presents and how much he loves them.

But, aside from that digression, I think that there’s also something here about the age of the characters as they are in your head. Now, bear with me on this one, but I’m enjoying seeing McGregor play Kenobi a lot more now than in the prequel films. I think this is mostly because he’s nearer in age to Ben Kenobi in Star Wars[6] and this is a bit odd. I’m not saying that McGregor is now a better actor than he was in the prequels, he’s certainly more seasoned and more experienced but that does not mean better per se but there is something a bit more acceptable (that’s just not the right word, is it?) about the character in the series. He’s much more like he is in the films, because he’s much nearer the right age. The right age, of course, being the age we first saw Kenobi at. When he was a very different person to the one he was when he was younger. We all are and we all will be. It’s natural. But that’s not to say that that’s the only reason I didn’t take to McGregor in the prequels, we all know there are many, many factors involved in making a film and we cannot single one element out as being the reason it doesn’t work, really.[7] But there is something about Obi-Wan that is working and kept us both engaged with it – even though there is absolutely no jeopardy in it.

Oh aye, photo of the dog[8]:

 

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John Ritchie is a Post-Doc Research Fellow and works as an actor and has two kids, a stupidly large rabbit and a puppy with no off switch. He’s so busy he had to eat yogurt with a fork recently as there was no time to rectify the lack of cutlery. Always make sure you have cutlery kids.

 

Footnotes

[1] It’s picking up again, look out for another blog from me soon!

[2] Ask a Scottish person what this means.

[3] Yeah, I’m not getting into the whole what is Bantha pudu/poodoo thing here…

[4] Ok, if you don’t know what this is about then please google “Eddie Izzard Death Star Canteen”

[5] Update! It’s called Succession. I still haven’t seen an episode. The bit about the book is just me being silly, it’s called something like Putting the Rabbit in the Hat. Not as good as I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen but few things are.

[6] That’s its name, none of yer ‘Episode IV’ pish, ta muchly.

[7] IT WAS GEORGE LUCAS. It’s fine, he won’t cast me anyway, and certainly not now…

[8] And yes, it is real, I do live just down the road from this sort of natural beauty and I’m very f**king happy that I do as it’s all relaxing and that, eh?