SDG here (NOT Jimmy!) with a rare foray from guest-blogging limbo.
I’ve been more than usually busy and had no time to hang out here at JA.o, but I always hope I’ll be back here.
This morning I woke up and read that Irvin Kershner had died, and that seemed to me reason enough.
Why? Because Kershner is best known as the director of The Empire Strikes Back, and it happens that I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking at length about what a great film The Empire Strikes Back is.
In fact, on Friday I blogged at NCRegister.com on the greatness of The Empire Strikes Back as well as the virtues of another middle film, Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers — in contrast to another penultimate film now in theaters, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. My piece is called “Harry Potter’s Empire Strikes Back? Don’t Make Me Laugh – 12 reasons why Deathly Hallows: Part 1 is no Empire Strikes Back … or even The Two Towers.”
See, it seems that Deathly Hallows: Part 1 has been racking up critical and fan comparisons to The Empire Strikes Back. Like Kershner’s film, it’s a dark, penultinate film with an ambiguous ending, setting up the triumphant finale.
Now, in a way The Empire Strikes Back invites this sort of comparison, not only because it’s a great film — the best of all the Star Wars films — but also because it’s an archetypally great sequel; the sort of sequel that all sequels want to be, but precious few even approach. It builds on the first film but goes beyond it; it’s a darker and more mature film, but seamless with the world of its predecessor.
George Lucas’s strategy of going darker in the middle chapter has been widely copied, and when you’ve got a darker middle chapter (or penultimate chapter), especially if you’re a fan of the material, it can be an easy leap to make.
But enough is enough. The Empire Strikes Back isn’t just a moodier, grimmer Star Wars. If it had been only that, it might still have been successful, but it wouldn’t be the touchstone that it is today.
What makes The Empire Strikes Back is that it’s grander, more heroic, more romantic, funnier, richer, and in practically all ways more ambitious than its predecessor. And Irvin Kershner, along with screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Silverado) is a big part of the reason why.
The success of Star Wars was enough to earn George Lucas a lot of leeway to make the sequel he wanted to make, but he wasn’t yet so powerful to simply have his own way. Other people — notably Kershner and Kasdan — were able to contribute other perspectives, to help shape Star Wars into something even richer and more satisfying.
The Empire Strikes Back is a collaborative effort, and it’s better for that. The sloppiness of the prequels, and even to an extent Return of the Jedi, is probably significantly because Lucas was increasingly able to do whatever he wanted without having to consider other points of view.
Why is The Empire Strikes Back so much better than Deathly Hallows: Part 1?
I’d love to hear people’s ideas on how the Star Wars prequels could have been made better.
Very good analysis, interesting and insightful.
One question: if TESB is the “archetypal sequel”, what move would be an “archetypal finale”?
Great analysis indeed. May Irvin Kershner rest in peace for all the joy he brought to unknown numbers of nerdy kids like me.
But Patricio Acevedo asks an interesting question. I’d like to know Mr Greydanus’ thoughts on that.
A few years ago, I would have answered “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” without any hesitation. In the Indiana Jones trilogy, the first one was great, the sequel followed the “darker and grittier, gorier and bloodier” formula but pretty much failed by being too bleak (as Spielberg himself admitted) and then the last one redeemed the entire saga by providing us with a back-to-basics, Nazi-fighting, Judeo-Christian-artifacts-seeking, uplifiting finale with a great new character (Henry Jones Sr of course) and perfect “riding into the sunset” last vignette… until the fourth one ruined everything (it wasn’t terrible, IMO, but completely unecessary and pretty bleak actually (Marcus Brody and Henry Jones are dead, Indiana Jones lost 20 years during which he could have been married to the love of his life and raised his son because he pretty much abandoned his fiancé at the altar the first time…).
Come to think of it, although many series had great sequels, on par or better than the original (The Godfather, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, etc), it seems to me that very few mananaged to have a great finale : The Godfather 3 has its moments (Michael Corleone’s arc and his confession to John-Paul I are pretty successful in my book) but pretty much fails overall ; I loved Return of the Jedi as a child, but I must admit now that it has many flaws (though Vader’s and Luke’s arcs’ conclusions are almost perfect) ; I have a soft spot for Back to the Future III, which I must have watched thousands of times but I must admit it is far from flawless ; Terminator 3 destroyed the franchise which had a perfect conclusion with Terminator 2 ; and so on. It really looks like a trend to me. I bet you could name a few others series with a “great sequel but only so-so finale”.
How about the Highlander series?
“There should only have been one!”
The phrase “shot its wad” is totally inappropriate for this blog. I don’t care what historical usage it has. In modern parlance, that phrase has very explicit sexual meaning. It was so jarring to me reading this post, in fact, that I had to question whether SDG should have carte-blanche access to JimmyAkin.org.
SDG–Part of the problem may be that Lucas wasn’t allowed to have other voices of input on the later films, from a certain point of view. 🙂 I believe he and the Star Wars films remained a pariah with regard to the Hollywood directors’ union regarding the issue of credits on the Star Wars films, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other unions had similar issues.
It’s the guys who wait to have everything perfect that drive you crazy