Star Wars- More than a Saga - Episode II - The Quiet Years and Visions of things to come.
Episode II – The quiet years…and the vision of things to come:
I spoke in part 1 about Star Wars and my love for it. How as a kid these movies inspired my imagination and that the characters seemed to leap off the screen and become friends to a lonely nerdy kid. I encourage you to read it if you you’re just finding this as I’m going to move past the original trilogy and speak more about my second decade of fandom.
It was about 1994 when Star Wars would invade my conscious mind again and I’d become just as fascinated and entrenched in the canon and story of a galaxy far far away that was rebuilding after galactic civil war.
I was dating this girl in college who introduced me to one of her friends who happened to be going to a college near my home town. She and I hit it off and during breaks when (because she was on a ‘quarters’ and not semester system) I was home…we’d hang out. One time I was at her college and she had on her night stand a Star Wars book called “Jedi Search”. It was the first part of a trilogy called the “Jedi Academy Trilogy” and while she was in class I asked if she’d mind if I read it. She didn’t so I opened it and was amazed.
They were back. It was Luke, it was Han. Leia, Chewie, Threepio, Artoo, Akbar, Mon Mothma, Yavin IV, the Empire and even Kessel. Han and Leia were married and had had twins. Luke was starting a new training school for Jedi. The empire was still a threat and there was a New Republic. The style that the author (Kevin J. Anderson) seemed to make it so the voices were in my head. There were stories to be told and I wanted more.
When my friend got back I asked her about the books and she told me that this was a new trilogy picking up after the Thrawn trilogy.
My puzzled look seemed to aggravate her in some way…and I’m pretty sure she wanted to take my “Nerd Card” right there. (We have them you know…they’re laminated. They entitle us to 10% off our next Blade Runner rental at Blockbuster and if I ever get up to that one store in Alaska…I’m using it.). She then told me that in like 91, Lucasfilm licensed the publication of novels to a company under the conditions that the novels be set in an ‘expanded universe’ and not contradict each other (Star Trek had had similar novels…however as there was no edict about ‘canon’, they tended to contradict each other and future ‘beats’ told by either the TV shows or movies they were based on). Since George wasn’t going to make the last three movies…they said this would allow the stories to continue for the fans (and of course…their bottom line. These novels made a MINT!). Their first ‘trilogy’ was written by an author named Timothy Zahn and that THOSE books were 1000% better than the first 50 pages she’d read in this book. She suggested that maybe I should get THOSE books and catch up and that when I was done with those she’d lend me her copies of this trilogy.
I couldn’t wait. When I went back home I borrowed the car and drove out to Eastview where there was a Waldenbooks. (Kids…Waldenbooks was a chain of stores similar to Barnes and Noble where one could go to purchase books (Kids…books were bound pieces of paper that contained either images or text that conveyed thoughts or ideas authors hoped would elicit either an emotional response or enrich us mentally through prose.) at a relatively modest markup and could even order hard to find books as well as pick up knick knacks, chachi’s and coffee mugs with Garfield on them). It was there that I saw ALL three novels in hard cover. I also saw the $25 price tag and did the math in my head of my own finances (I had 10 dollars in my wallet, maybe 2 dollars in change and about $375,201 in loose change on both the floor of my car and at least 10 square feet of carpet at my parent’s house.) and became somewhat sad. Luckily a lady in a lovely blue smock came up and asked what I needed. I told her I’d found it but was a bit out of my price range. She pointed me to another area with the paperbacks (Oh yeah…paperback) where she thought she’d seen at least the first book and that I could probably order the other two and pick up later in the week. Sure enough there it was. A blue cover with big gold letters embossed saying Star Wars and in simple text below that “Heir to the Empire”. It had a picture of Han and Leia next to each other. Chewie standing off to the side and Luke’s face. It also showed some sort of ‘old man winter’ with hands outstretched shooting lightning and some weird blue alien with red eyes and a snappy white uniform. I bought it up and drove back home to read it.
It was amazing.
The story of a military genius reforming the Empire, challenging the fledgling New Republic and using his mind more than military muscle to do it was wonderful. The addition of a mad Jedi, a smuggler, a female smuggler who hated Luke for some reason and even the reappearance of characters like Lando and others brought me back to those times I sat in my room with a tape recorder and my action figures making new stories of the Rebellion. Only these were canon. Lucas wasn’t going to go on and so this was how the stories would continue and one day end. I finished the first novel in two days and then the other two came to the store three days later. I used my last paycheck from Walmart to buy the last two paperbacks and to take to school and that started my love affair with the books. From then on I bought them all. I backfilled the ones I missed and then read each new novel as they came out. Some were just OK…others were amazing. However…it kept my interest. I wasn’t alone either.
In the Secret History of Star Wars, author Michael Kaminski stated that the success of the series of novels led to George Lucas pondering whether it was time to make movies again. He had started thinking about the prequels and whether to make them. It’s stated he started writing Episode I in November of 1994 and that by 1997 the script was completed. We were going to get the prequels.
Before that though…George had decided to prime the pump. In 1995, he’d released what he called ‘the last release of the Star Wars Trilogy to VHS’. They were three video tapes with special bonus features at the end. These movies were the classics and unaltered. I had owned the movies for years recorded from HBO…so of course I immediately went and bought these and taped episodes of the Simpsons over my old ones. I must have watched those tapes hundreds of times. In fact when I went to stay with my future wife and her roommate over Thanksgiving of 95…we must have watched the whole trilogy three times. They were prized possessions and I felt secure in the knowledge that these would be the last tapes I could have of them.
Then I went to the movies…
I was sitting in the theatre watching trailers for Star Trek First Contact…and I perked up when I saw a 20th Century Fox logo followed by the green Lucasfilms banner. Then a voice says “For an entire generation people have experienced Star Wars…on a TV screen. But if you’ve only seen it this way…you haven’t seen it at all” then an X-wing comes flying at you.
They were re-releasing the movies to theatres. Holy cow. This was awesome. By this point the news of the prequel trilogy had been broke and I could see that this was a way to put Star Wars in front of movie goers again and no doubt start generating some buzz and I think it worked. While I had been there for opening day of every other one…and that trend continued through the re-release…I was a child when they were last in theatres and the thought of seeing them on screen again and with enhanced effects, remastered audio and a few surprises…I was elated. Even though they were different and in some cases I had issues (Han shooting first, Mos Eisley looking like a film student’s first film after realizing what a macintosh could do and not being able to stop himself from filling the screen with gibberish) but they were easily overlooked. I was a kid again and the movies were in theatres.
I didn’t realize that this would be the only version (or another similarly modified one) of these movies going forward. Gone are the lower production qualities like transparent window bars on Snow Speeders, weird gel under Landspeeders, lightsabers that thin out if you look at them from the top, a claustrophobic cloud city, etc. What we get now is an over digitized world that is supposed to look a lot more like the prequel movies yet to come than the ‘ahead of their time but time has caught up to them’ look of the movies of my youth.
What’s weird…is this seems to be the start of the shift in fandom as a whole. The minute we saw Greedo shoot first in that cantina (and miss?!?!?!!), fans realized that these movies that were larger than life for some of us…and that transcended in some ways simple film to become a beloved part of our childhood and formative years, we realized that these films DIDN’T belong to us. That these films that seemed to speak to us so clearly and that touched a part of our souls…were another man’s creation and that that man wasn’t exactly happy with what he’d done and felt he could do better.
On the one hand…I don’t know any adult who wouldn’t love the chance to ‘redeem’ a work they’d done previously that they felt wasn’t what they wanted it to be. Even at the age of 45, I’d love to be able to revisit a paper I wrote, or a class I took. A time I lost data for an end user containing all their financial information or even that time I decided to try to sing I Will Survive in Gloria Gayner’s original key at a karaoke contest. Chances to revisit previous works don’t happen often in this life and if George Lucas seriously believed that his movies were below what he wanted them to be…I for one can get behind that.
On the other hand though…this is Star Wars. Like it or not, right or wrong, misguided or not to many people these movies are more than just a great popcorn flick. In the forty years since we first saw words floating through space leading to an epic space chase scene…Star Wars has been a part of the collective culture of America and even American excess.
Before Star Wars, a blockbuster was not a yearly occurrence. It was seen sporadically with big movies like Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and even some Hitchcock era films. Pop culture in the late 70’s was really something reserved for the last 5 minutes of the nightly news cast and publications you could pick up by the checkout at your local grocer. We didn’t have the influx of genre culture and hype we do now. With only 3 or 4 TV stations per geographic area and one or two newspapers and Walter Cronkite or other national news programs there wasn’t time in the day for such programming. It wasn’t until after Star Wars broke so big followed by Superman and Raiders etc that pop culture ‘news’ became a thing and Entertainment Tonight and other such programs started broadcasting nightly followed by CNN and other 24 hour news cycle programs. There was room for entertainment again, and like the romans of ancient times…we wanted to be entertained. We started paying attention to what was happening in Hollywood and we wanted the scoop on our favorite shows, actors and movies. After Star Wars literally busted the block…we started to crave information about our favorite movies. We looked forward to what was coming out the following summer be it a sequel, or screwball comedy or film about half naked fighter pilots standing around a volleyball court with a high powered Kenny Loggins song playing in the background (that was the plot right?)
Star Wars became a cultural phenomenon and with the release of the special editions…it brought new eyes to the old trilogy. Yeah…the musical number in Jedi was stupid and Mos Eisley was basically an example of what happens when you let a digital graphic artist with a blank check and apparently terrible ADHD loose of any oversight. Yet there were also good things. The look of Bespin in Empire is FAR better…(the windows and expansiveness), seeing Vader call for his shuttle (in one of the worst cases of ADR I’ve ever seen) and him arriving on the star destroyer after the Bespin escape fixed a plot hole. The Death Star battle in ANH was helped by the advancements and I’ve always loved the character of Biggs so having him restored was a good thing.
I was still young though…and a bit naïve. I didn’t realize what was coming with the re-release of the “original” trilogy and how it served more as a proof of concept for Lucas and what he hoped to accomplish with the prequels.
We’ll talk about that next. Thanks for reading.
I spoke in part 1 about Star Wars and my love for it. How as a kid these movies inspired my imagination and that the characters seemed to leap off the screen and become friends to a lonely nerdy kid. I encourage you to read it if you you’re just finding this as I’m going to move past the original trilogy and speak more about my second decade of fandom.
It was about 1994 when Star Wars would invade my conscious mind again and I’d become just as fascinated and entrenched in the canon and story of a galaxy far far away that was rebuilding after galactic civil war.
I was dating this girl in college who introduced me to one of her friends who happened to be going to a college near my home town. She and I hit it off and during breaks when (because she was on a ‘quarters’ and not semester system) I was home…we’d hang out. One time I was at her college and she had on her night stand a Star Wars book called “Jedi Search”. It was the first part of a trilogy called the “Jedi Academy Trilogy” and while she was in class I asked if she’d mind if I read it. She didn’t so I opened it and was amazed.
They were back. It was Luke, it was Han. Leia, Chewie, Threepio, Artoo, Akbar, Mon Mothma, Yavin IV, the Empire and even Kessel. Han and Leia were married and had had twins. Luke was starting a new training school for Jedi. The empire was still a threat and there was a New Republic. The style that the author (Kevin J. Anderson) seemed to make it so the voices were in my head. There were stories to be told and I wanted more.
When my friend got back I asked her about the books and she told me that this was a new trilogy picking up after the Thrawn trilogy.
My puzzled look seemed to aggravate her in some way…and I’m pretty sure she wanted to take my “Nerd Card” right there. (We have them you know…they’re laminated. They entitle us to 10% off our next Blade Runner rental at Blockbuster and if I ever get up to that one store in Alaska…I’m using it.). She then told me that in like 91, Lucasfilm licensed the publication of novels to a company under the conditions that the novels be set in an ‘expanded universe’ and not contradict each other (Star Trek had had similar novels…however as there was no edict about ‘canon’, they tended to contradict each other and future ‘beats’ told by either the TV shows or movies they were based on). Since George wasn’t going to make the last three movies…they said this would allow the stories to continue for the fans (and of course…their bottom line. These novels made a MINT!). Their first ‘trilogy’ was written by an author named Timothy Zahn and that THOSE books were 1000% better than the first 50 pages she’d read in this book. She suggested that maybe I should get THOSE books and catch up and that when I was done with those she’d lend me her copies of this trilogy.
I couldn’t wait. When I went back home I borrowed the car and drove out to Eastview where there was a Waldenbooks. (Kids…Waldenbooks was a chain of stores similar to Barnes and Noble where one could go to purchase books (Kids…books were bound pieces of paper that contained either images or text that conveyed thoughts or ideas authors hoped would elicit either an emotional response or enrich us mentally through prose.) at a relatively modest markup and could even order hard to find books as well as pick up knick knacks, chachi’s and coffee mugs with Garfield on them). It was there that I saw ALL three novels in hard cover. I also saw the $25 price tag and did the math in my head of my own finances (I had 10 dollars in my wallet, maybe 2 dollars in change and about $375,201 in loose change on both the floor of my car and at least 10 square feet of carpet at my parent’s house.) and became somewhat sad. Luckily a lady in a lovely blue smock came up and asked what I needed. I told her I’d found it but was a bit out of my price range. She pointed me to another area with the paperbacks (Oh yeah…paperback) where she thought she’d seen at least the first book and that I could probably order the other two and pick up later in the week. Sure enough there it was. A blue cover with big gold letters embossed saying Star Wars and in simple text below that “Heir to the Empire”. It had a picture of Han and Leia next to each other. Chewie standing off to the side and Luke’s face. It also showed some sort of ‘old man winter’ with hands outstretched shooting lightning and some weird blue alien with red eyes and a snappy white uniform. I bought it up and drove back home to read it.
It was amazing.
The story of a military genius reforming the Empire, challenging the fledgling New Republic and using his mind more than military muscle to do it was wonderful. The addition of a mad Jedi, a smuggler, a female smuggler who hated Luke for some reason and even the reappearance of characters like Lando and others brought me back to those times I sat in my room with a tape recorder and my action figures making new stories of the Rebellion. Only these were canon. Lucas wasn’t going to go on and so this was how the stories would continue and one day end. I finished the first novel in two days and then the other two came to the store three days later. I used my last paycheck from Walmart to buy the last two paperbacks and to take to school and that started my love affair with the books. From then on I bought them all. I backfilled the ones I missed and then read each new novel as they came out. Some were just OK…others were amazing. However…it kept my interest. I wasn’t alone either.
In the Secret History of Star Wars, author Michael Kaminski stated that the success of the series of novels led to George Lucas pondering whether it was time to make movies again. He had started thinking about the prequels and whether to make them. It’s stated he started writing Episode I in November of 1994 and that by 1997 the script was completed. We were going to get the prequels.
Before that though…George had decided to prime the pump. In 1995, he’d released what he called ‘the last release of the Star Wars Trilogy to VHS’. They were three video tapes with special bonus features at the end. These movies were the classics and unaltered. I had owned the movies for years recorded from HBO…so of course I immediately went and bought these and taped episodes of the Simpsons over my old ones. I must have watched those tapes hundreds of times. In fact when I went to stay with my future wife and her roommate over Thanksgiving of 95…we must have watched the whole trilogy three times. They were prized possessions and I felt secure in the knowledge that these would be the last tapes I could have of them.
Then I went to the movies…
I was sitting in the theatre watching trailers for Star Trek First Contact…and I perked up when I saw a 20th Century Fox logo followed by the green Lucasfilms banner. Then a voice says “For an entire generation people have experienced Star Wars…on a TV screen. But if you’ve only seen it this way…you haven’t seen it at all” then an X-wing comes flying at you.
They were re-releasing the movies to theatres. Holy cow. This was awesome. By this point the news of the prequel trilogy had been broke and I could see that this was a way to put Star Wars in front of movie goers again and no doubt start generating some buzz and I think it worked. While I had been there for opening day of every other one…and that trend continued through the re-release…I was a child when they were last in theatres and the thought of seeing them on screen again and with enhanced effects, remastered audio and a few surprises…I was elated. Even though they were different and in some cases I had issues (Han shooting first, Mos Eisley looking like a film student’s first film after realizing what a macintosh could do and not being able to stop himself from filling the screen with gibberish) but they were easily overlooked. I was a kid again and the movies were in theatres.
I didn’t realize that this would be the only version (or another similarly modified one) of these movies going forward. Gone are the lower production qualities like transparent window bars on Snow Speeders, weird gel under Landspeeders, lightsabers that thin out if you look at them from the top, a claustrophobic cloud city, etc. What we get now is an over digitized world that is supposed to look a lot more like the prequel movies yet to come than the ‘ahead of their time but time has caught up to them’ look of the movies of my youth.
What’s weird…is this seems to be the start of the shift in fandom as a whole. The minute we saw Greedo shoot first in that cantina (and miss?!?!?!!), fans realized that these movies that were larger than life for some of us…and that transcended in some ways simple film to become a beloved part of our childhood and formative years, we realized that these films DIDN’T belong to us. That these films that seemed to speak to us so clearly and that touched a part of our souls…were another man’s creation and that that man wasn’t exactly happy with what he’d done and felt he could do better.
On the one hand…I don’t know any adult who wouldn’t love the chance to ‘redeem’ a work they’d done previously that they felt wasn’t what they wanted it to be. Even at the age of 45, I’d love to be able to revisit a paper I wrote, or a class I took. A time I lost data for an end user containing all their financial information or even that time I decided to try to sing I Will Survive in Gloria Gayner’s original key at a karaoke contest. Chances to revisit previous works don’t happen often in this life and if George Lucas seriously believed that his movies were below what he wanted them to be…I for one can get behind that.
On the other hand though…this is Star Wars. Like it or not, right or wrong, misguided or not to many people these movies are more than just a great popcorn flick. In the forty years since we first saw words floating through space leading to an epic space chase scene…Star Wars has been a part of the collective culture of America and even American excess.
Before Star Wars, a blockbuster was not a yearly occurrence. It was seen sporadically with big movies like Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and even some Hitchcock era films. Pop culture in the late 70’s was really something reserved for the last 5 minutes of the nightly news cast and publications you could pick up by the checkout at your local grocer. We didn’t have the influx of genre culture and hype we do now. With only 3 or 4 TV stations per geographic area and one or two newspapers and Walter Cronkite or other national news programs there wasn’t time in the day for such programming. It wasn’t until after Star Wars broke so big followed by Superman and Raiders etc that pop culture ‘news’ became a thing and Entertainment Tonight and other such programs started broadcasting nightly followed by CNN and other 24 hour news cycle programs. There was room for entertainment again, and like the romans of ancient times…we wanted to be entertained. We started paying attention to what was happening in Hollywood and we wanted the scoop on our favorite shows, actors and movies. After Star Wars literally busted the block…we started to crave information about our favorite movies. We looked forward to what was coming out the following summer be it a sequel, or screwball comedy or film about half naked fighter pilots standing around a volleyball court with a high powered Kenny Loggins song playing in the background (that was the plot right?)
Star Wars became a cultural phenomenon and with the release of the special editions…it brought new eyes to the old trilogy. Yeah…the musical number in Jedi was stupid and Mos Eisley was basically an example of what happens when you let a digital graphic artist with a blank check and apparently terrible ADHD loose of any oversight. Yet there were also good things. The look of Bespin in Empire is FAR better…(the windows and expansiveness), seeing Vader call for his shuttle (in one of the worst cases of ADR I’ve ever seen) and him arriving on the star destroyer after the Bespin escape fixed a plot hole. The Death Star battle in ANH was helped by the advancements and I’ve always loved the character of Biggs so having him restored was a good thing.
I was still young though…and a bit naïve. I didn’t realize what was coming with the re-release of the “original” trilogy and how it served more as a proof of concept for Lucas and what he hoped to accomplish with the prequels.
We’ll talk about that next. Thanks for reading.
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