Splinter of the Mind's Eye

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye by Alan Dean Foster (⅗)

Imagine a world where Star Wars wasn’t a genre-busting, blockbuster-inventing megahit.  Imagine if Star Wars were merely one in a long line of 70s sci-fi films beloved by a cult audience but mostly forgotten by the general public, such as Logan’s Run, Omega Man, Soylent Green, Silent Running, Rollerball, or even George Lucas’s own, THX 1138.  In this world, the dark challenging sequel, Empire Strikes Back, is never made, and instead, Lucas and Fox opt for a quick follow up to A New Hope by making a small scale movie that takes place on a single planet and includes only about half of the original cast.

We came much closer to this world than many realize.  Alan Dean Foster, author of countless movie adaptation novels, was first enlisted into the Star Wars universe after being commissioned to ghostwrite the first film’s novel adaptation.  Lucas also provided Foster with details regarding a possible sequel and asked him to write the novelization.  When Star Wars blew up, Lucas was able to fund Empire himself and no longer needed the compromised continuation, so Splinter of the MInd’s Eye was published in 1978, essentially becoming patient zero in the Star Wars expanded universe.

As Splinter of the MInd’s Eye begins, Luke and Leia are racing to Circarpous IV to convince the local populace to join the Rebellion when a giant energy storm forces them to crash land on Mimban, a fog-enshrouded swamp planet and a clear influence on Dagobah.  While looking for a means off the planet, Luke and Leia encounter an old woman in a bar who senses Luke’s Force sensitivity and tells him about the Kaiburr Crystal, a New Agey mineral that enhances its user’s Force power.  The old woman, Halla, is herself Force sensitive, but is only able to slightly move objects after a great deal of physical and mental exertion.  

Mimban is being used as an imperial mining operation, so Luke and Leia have keep a low profile, which becomes difficult after they become embroiled in a fight with the locals.  Halla manages to avoid capture, but Luke and Leia are taken to an imperial prison.  They’re lucky enough to become cell mates with Hin and Kee, two ferocious and furry Yuzzem, creatures who share more than a few similarities to Chewbacca.  With a little help, Luke and Leia perform a prison break and head into the Mimban wilderness in search of the Kaiburr Crystal.

Because Splinter of the Mind’s Eye sprung from ideas intended for a cheapie sequel, the novel at times feels restrained.  Foster had originally planned to open with a large space battle that would have grounded Luke and Leia, but this was deemed too expensive for the proposed sequel and excised from the novel.  The decision to make Mimban a foggy swamp planet had less to do with creating atmosphere than limiting the need to build more sets.  And, more conspicuously, Han Solo and Chewbacca are absent from the plot altogether (although Han is alluded to a couple of times).  When writing began, Harrison Ford had not yet signed on for any sequels.

While it’s unfortunate that Foster wasn’t able to fully indulge his imagination like most novelists, in other ways the novel benefits from the more limited scope.  Foster had the right idea initially to begin with a space battle, because, quite honestly, the story takes some time to gain momentum (for whatever reason, it takes days to get anywhere on Mimban, which may have been realistic but saps some of the energy from the plot).  Still, once events start rolling, the focused plot speeds our characters along, and I would have much rather read about Luke and Leia uncovering an archaeological MacGuffin than have them contend with yet another super weapon.  After escaping from the imperial prison, Luke and Leia are constantly on the run, often chased by aggressive indigenous life forms, including a giant worm, a cave-dwelling water creature, and a deadly giant lizard.  During the last half of the book, the two descend further into the caves of Mimban in what appears to be an echo of Edgar Rice Burrough’s second John Carter novel, The God’s of Mars.

Foster spends much of the novel detailing the sexual tension between Luke and Leia, a decision that has a certain ick factor considering that they are later revealed to be brother and sister.  Of course, it’s likely Lucas hadn’t come up with this plot twist yet, or he may have thought it a possibility but didn’t want to implement it in a world where the first Star Wars sequel is Splinter of the Mind’s Eye and not The Empire Strikes Back.  And even if Luke and Leia doesn’t go to the same length as King Arthur and Morgan le Fay and even if incest is a common theme in mythology, it’s still pretty damn creepy.  It doesn’t help that every now and then Foster offers up lines like this: “Even when bothered, to him that voice was as naturally sweet and pleasing as sugar-laden fruit.”  Most people can look past the chaste kiss between brother and sister in Empire, but I think produce metaphors are just a bridge too far.

The relationship between Luke and Leia is characterized by the difference in their social standings as, respectively, farmboy and princess.  This speaks to Foster’s understanding of the archetypal cutouts that form Lucas’s characters.  He even refers to the late Ob-Wan Kenobi as a “wizard.”  Unfortunately, Foster too often presents Leia not so much as royalty as stuck up.  There’s a sense throughout the first half of the book that she needs to be taken down a notch, which happens when Luke unilaterally comes up with a cover story for the two, which involves Leia being his slave.  In order to make the cover story work, Luke even slaps Leia around a bit.  (Yes, Luke actually slaps Leia in this book, or as Luke says to a local, “[S]he’s kind of amusing to have around, though she tends to get out of line at times and I have to slap her down”).  There’s an undercurrent of misogyny here, like a latter day retelling of The Taming of the Shrew or, if you prefer, an earlier version of Overboard.  Luke is the typical geek in the sense that he both elevates and resents the object of his affections.

Of course, the films themselves have always had difficulty using Leia.  The film that treats her with the most respect is probably A New Hope where she gets to bark orders to the men and handle a blaster.  Splinter of the Mind’s Eye does slightly make up for its earlier mishandling of the character by giving her a lightsaber fight with Darth Vader at the climax of the story.  The novel also deals with the PTSD Leia suffers from being tortured on the Death Star, something that Vader later brings up to taunt her and adds menacingly, “one can do some interesting things with a saber, you know.  I’ll do my best to show you all of them if you’ll cooperate by not passing out.”

The novel does pick up after some of these early missteps, and there are some interesting additions to the Star Wars mythos.  The Kaiburr Crystal was apparently detritus from an early draft of A New Hope.  Lucas decided that he wanted to make the Force more ethereal and mysterious, which I think most believe was the right call.  But I still like the implication that the crystal was used in healing rituals by the natives generations ago.  The novel also introduces the idea that even long, long ago there was a time even farther in the past.  The Knights of the Old Republic’s Korriban section also relies on the idea that Force related relics are buried throughout the galaxy, which makes George Lucas’s universe even more expansive.  

Hin and Kee, the Chewbacca stand ins, are also a great addition to Star Wars.  At one point they take a stormtrooper’s helmet to shield their hands while trying to break through a security door and also swing a droids body around to club stormtroopers.  The native Coway, who eventually battle with the Empire with the help of Luke and Leia, are also an interesting precursor to Return of the Jedi’s Ewoks.  The Coway are pulled directly from an H. Rider Haggard novel, and are presented alternatingly as savage and noble savage.  Naturally, Luke must fight one of their champions in order to earn their respect and avoid execution.

In an odd choice, Vader receives scant time in the story.  Perhaps Lucas didn’t want to overuse the character and instead treat him like Boba Fett, a mysterious figure of evil who is only more intriguing because we know so little about his backstory.  If this was the intention, then the prequels ruined it on both counts.  

It is interesting to see how Vader is represented prior to the shocking reveal in Empire.  Foster refers to Vader as a henchmen at one point, which is an accurate representation of his character in A New Hope before he started running through admirals at an alarming rate in Empire.  Tarkin is the main villain in the first film, and Leia describes as “holding Vader’s leash.”  Vader is still represented as an imposing figure, and is referred to as a “dark lord of the Sith,” a concept that I didn’t realize entered into the Star Wars mythos this early.  (Apparently, the term Sith is also used in Foster’s A New Hope novelization). In a weird continuity error, Vader accuses Luke of shooting him out of the sky during the Death Star battle, but we all know it was Han Solo.  Come on, Vader!  Luke was in front of you.  That doesn’t make any sense.

Reading Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, I couldn’t help but imagine how this might look as a low budget Star Wars sequel, and while I think we can all agree it’s good this never happened, there are

moments that might have translated nicely to the screen, especially when Luke and Leia float across an underground lake on a giant leaf.  It makes sense why Dark Horse would later create a comic book adaptation of the story.  At its best, the novel reminds me of another beloved fantasy story that takes place in a swamp and involves an old crone and a crystal: The Dark Crystal.  Splinter of the MInd’s Eye is not a lost masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a fun read (even the terrible moments are enjoyable), and for anyone who wants a different perspective on the Star Wars phenomenon, it offers a fascinating glimpse into a world that could have been.  Besides, without the novel we wouldn’t have had Ralph McQuarrie’s genuinely kickass paperback cover.

Broken Age

Broken Age (4/5)

Since its announcement, Broken Age has become a talking point in how games, films, music, and other projects are financed today through crowdfunding.  At first, Broken Age appeared to showcase the incredible potential of asking fans to pony up for a project that might not have the kind of audience necessary to garner the approval of the bean counters.  Initially, Tim Schafer and his Double Fine Studios asked for $400,000 on Kickstarter in order to make their new adventure game.  They ended up pulling in nearly three and a half million dollars.  This was a massive haul, and the initial success helped establish Kickstarter as a legitimate platform for crowdfunding.  Of course, not just any video game developer could pull in seven digits through crowdfunding.  Tim Schafer’s time in the nineties knocking out stone cold classic adventure games such as the first two Monkey Island games and Day of the Tentacle likely helped.

But the studio ran into trouble when it realized that as their funding increased, so did their ambition.  Realizing that they would run out of money before finishing the game, Schafer decided to release Broken Age in two acts.  The internet did what the internet does best and started grumbling.  Unfortunately, the second act was release over a year after the appearance of the first.  And to add insult to injury, Schafer made it clear that, unlike the Telltale adventure games, Broken Age was never developed to be played in two halves and that those who have already played act one should go right back to the beginning following the release of Act 2.  For some, these delays and miscalculations have impacted their experience playing the game, but if you can put the game’s funding strategy aside and just play the damn thing, I think you’ll find a visionary experience that could have only come from the mind of Tim Schafer.

As its name implies, Broken Age is split into two halves: in one we follow Vella Tartine who lives in a fantasy world where maidens are sacrificed to monsters and people live on clouds; in the other we follow Shay Volta who lives in a spaceship where his every waking moment is monitored and controlled by the ship.  The player can switch back and forth between characters, so when a puzzle trips you up while playing Vella, you can play Shay for a while in order to give yourself some intellectual distance.  The game starts you off playing Vella, and I pretty much ran right through her entire story for the first half before shifting to Shaw.  But the second act is more difficult, and I appreciated the ability to switch between the characters.  There are also a handful of moments in the second half where it’s necessary to switch between characters in order to gather the right information in order to solve certain puzzles.  (It doesn’t go as far as the indie adventure game Resonance where switching between characters was an integral means of solving puzzles).

Vella lives in the small town of Sugar Bunting, which used to be called Steel Bunting and was once a warrior town but now has become a town of bakers.  Vella has been chosen to take part in “The Maiden’s Feast” in which a handful of select young women are offered up to a giant monster known as the Mog Chothra.  While most of Vella’s family—with the exception of her grandfather—tacitly accept the necessity of The Maiden’s Feast as a means to stave off Mog Chothra, Vella herself comes to doubt whether this ritual is the only way to save her town.  

Vella begrudgingly accepts her own sacrifice until she’s finally faced with Mog Chothra himself and decides to escape near certain death.  This sends Vella on an extended quest to once and for all defeat Mog Chothra.  In order to kill Mog Chothra, Vella visits several other towns that have their own version of The Maiden’s Feast.  Perhaps the most imaginative locale in the game is Meriloft, a town nestled in the clouds and ruled by a buffoonish cult leader named Harm’ny Lightbeard.  The clouds are awash in the colors of a summer sunset while the rest of the town is composed of pastels.  

Shay’s side of the narrative has sci-fi trappings.  You begin his story by completing what at first appear to be dangerous missions on other planets, such as rescuing people from an avalanche, but you quickly discover that these are fully controlled playtime scenarios that occur on ship.  The avalanche, for instance, is made out of ice cream, and Shay must eat enough of it so that his robotic friends made out of yarn are freed.  Shay’s every waking moment is monitored by mom, an A.I. that encourages him to participate in his playtime activities, eat regular meals, and keep a regular bedtime.  However, a secret stowaway eventually punctures this numbing routine.

Both Shay and Vella’s stories share thematic connections.  They are both teenagers trapped in a world where their destiny appears to be out of their control, but they are determined to break away from cultural strictures.  It is important for the story that the two main characters are teenagers, a period in your life when you are capable or even encouraged to question and buck social bonds.  Eventually, as you might assume, the connection between Shay and Vella become less metaphorical and more real, but you could imagine a nice little game where the parallel adventures never intersect.

Perhaps Broken Age’s greatest strength is its unique aesthetics.  The world looks as if it is built from intricately cut construction paper.  The children’s book imagery gives the game a sense of instant nostalgia, and it’s hard to overstate how beautiful the game is.  And like a great children’s book, you could imagine pulling this game out now and again just to flip through some of the images.  There’s something tactile about the look of Broken Age, as if you could touch your computer screen and feel something other than a flat surface.  Broken Age is a kind of artisan video game, something only possible thanks to the internet’s ability to reach niche audiences.

Like Schafer’s earlier creations, the world of Broken Age is dotted with quirky tertiary characters, and the story is aided by a fine cast of voice actors, including household names like Elijah Wood, Wil Wheaton, and Jack Black.  Throughout the game you will encounter Harm’ny, a cult leader who lives on a cloud, Curtis, a hipster lumberjack, and a set of talking utensils (it kind of makes sense in the context of the game).  In fact, I enjoyed the characters so much that one criticism of the game is that I wish I could have spent more time with these people.

***Warning: Ahead there be spoilers.  I can’t really discuss the second half of the game without revealing some major twists in the story.  Since discovering each new wrinkle in the game’s world is one of the more enjoyable aspects of Broken Age, I would recommend that if you haven’t played the game, turn back now.***

When images of Broken Age were first released, they immediately brought to mind The Longest Journey, a seminal adventure game in which the protagonists flits between a fantasy world of magic and a Blade Runner inspired megalopolis.  These two halves of the game are parallel worlds whose destiny are intertwined, even if few are conscious of this connection.  But this is not the case in Broken Age.  In fact, not only do Shaw and Vella live in the same universe, they live on the same world.

It turns out that Shay is not floating through space.  In fact, his “spaceship” happens to be the same Mog Chothra going from town to town abducting maidens, and an elaborate system has been developed in order to keep up the illusion of space travel.  Shay and his family come from beyond the Plague Dam, a giant wall separating modern cities of Shay and his people from the agrarian world of Vella and her people.  In a twist that never quite makes sense, Shay’s mother is not actually an A.I., but a flesh and blood parent who was merely using the ship’s system to watch over her son while she maintains the ship.  He also has a father, but he doesn’t appear until Act 2.

Shay and his family were actually being manipulated by the Thrush, an advanced race of beings who have genetically modified themselves.  But, in a plot point that appears to be borrowed from Dark City, the Thrush need to diversify their gene pool so they abduct young women from what they call “the badlands,” and it turns out that young children have a certain amount of purity that allows them to make the right picks.  (This was Shay’s job, but don’t worry, the Maidens aren’t dead.  They’re just locked up on the ship/Mog Chothra).  

The twists on top of twists makes for a somewhat convoluted second half, but there’s something admirable about taking Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and doubling down on it.  In Act two, Shay and Vella switch places, so while Shay discovers Meriloft and its quirky denizens, Vella explores Shay’s damages ship.  Both Shay and Vella seem oddly at ease with this change of scenery.  Shay doesn’t seem perplexed by people living on clouds and advanced technology doesn’t seem to phase Vella.  Both are decidedly non-nonplussed.  Not addressing Shay and Vella’s unusual situation in Act 2 is something of a missed opportunity.

Broken Age’s second half doesn’t quite live up to the promise of its first, but it’s still a wonderful experience.  Because of the layers of twists, not everything gets explained.  The game repeatedly insinuates that there’s a special connection between Shay and Vella, but this is never fully spelled out.  The game also ends after the worlds of Shay and Vella are quite literally bridged, which makes me wonder how their societies will handle knowledge of each other.  The world of Broken Age is so rich with possibilities that I would love to see a sequel.  But even if we only get one Broken Age, it still stands out a unique visual and emotional experience.

Mikal Cronin - MC III

Mikal Cronin – MC III (4.5/5)

            Born out of the California garage rock scene—with its loose style and buzzing guitars—Mikal Cronin’s solo material has unexpectedly veered towards more orchestra laden power-pop.  His second album, simply titled MC II, opened not with muscular guitars, but with light ivories on the undeniably catchy “Weight.”  Cronin’s third album, naturally titled MC III, expands on these light flourishes of strings and piano, transforming his songwriting into something approaching Beach-Boysesque pocket symphonies.  And while most rock and roll musicians would be buried by all of these additional instruments, throughout the album, Mikal Cronin’s superb songwriting always shines through.

            There’s a certain airiness to Cronin’s songwriting, whether it comes from his heavy use of acoustic guitar or the gusts of violin that greets the listener.  It is this open sound that allows him to incorporate further instrumentation without overburdening his songs or burying his songwriting chops.  “I’ve Been Loved,” for instance, is a memorable acoustic ballad enhanced by a building wall of strings that leads into an echo-affected whistle reminiscent of vespers through a grove of birch trees. The album also happens to be well sequenced.  The lush “Turn Around” leads into the hooks-focused “Made up My Mind,” which in turn leads into the propulsive “Say.”  It’s clear that Cronin is thinking not just in units of songs but also whole albums.

But as an album, MC III is split in two.  The first half is a collection of pristine pop songs where the second half aims to comprise a single song cycle known collectively as “Circle.”  Much like the first half of the album, this six song opus reaches for a diverse array of impressionistic and emotional resonance.  I can think of no other album where a song’s tail end jam session includes the unlikely addition of a tzouras as happens in “Gold.”  From the way it is situated in the liner notes, “Circle” is supposed to function as a single unit, but while it is, again, well-sequenced, each track works as an individual song.  Tellingly, “Ready,” with its immediate chorus “I’m not ready for December,” stands out as one of the album’s most radio ready songs, and yet it is fitted within a larger song cycle.  Instead of viewing the first half of the album as a loose collection of songs and the second as a single entity, it is probably easier to view the album as either two E.P.s released together or an L.P. with a distinct A and B side like artists used to crank out in the 60s and 70s.

            Mikal Cronin’s roman numeral naming strategy might seem like a lazy way to avoid coming up with a title, but this choice actually demonstrates an awareness of ways in which each iteration expands on the last.  Some might miss the more guitar focused MC II, but I prefer to watch an artist continually build on what has come before.  MC III is one of the best albums of 2015 so far, but I’m also confident that it represents one stop in Cronin’s larger musical journey and not his final destination. 

The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton

The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton (2.5/5)

With the exception of the books from the X-Wing series, as a kid my favorite Star Wars novel happened to be The Courtship of Princess Leia.  I don’t think this particular book gets a lot of respect from Star Wars fans these days, so in my bid to further explore the Star Wars Expanded Universe, I decided to revisit the continuing story of Han and Leia’s romance to see if my twelve-year-old self was onto something or if the general consensus was correct.  It turns out that there are some potentially interesting ideas in The Courtship of Princess Leia, but they’re mostly marred by poor execution.

Like most early Star Wars novels, The Courtship of Princess Leia begins by dealing with the detritus of warlords that have risen out of the destruction of the Galactic Empire.  While the New Republic has started to reestablish itself, it’s still looking at a series of lengthy and costly battles against these remnants of the Empire.  A possible solution presents itself by the arrival of a delegation from the Hapes cluster, a wealthy and powerful collection of systems that offers to aid the New Republic in its fight, but on the condition that Princess Leia marries the Hapan Prince Isolder.  Naturally, this doesn’t sit well with Han Solo.

Many readers might rightfully scoff at the idea that Leia would drop her affections for Han Solo to marry a dreamy prince.  The author, Dave Wolverton, does suggest early on that Leia might marry the Prince out of a sense of duty to the New Republic and the lives that might be saved by a potential alliance with the Hapan cluster.  But this tact is quickly dropped, and it appears that Leia is genuinely falling in love with the Prince because he’s totally hot.  In one of the novel’s sillier conceits, because of planned breeding everyone from the Hapan cluster are super attractive. (There’s a weird undercurrent of evolutionary psychology in the novel.  Later, Prince Isolder suggests that monarchy is a suitable form of government because it pairs the best and the brightest and their brood as rulers, something that struck me as really silly even when I was twelve).  The Hapans are also a matriarchal society, so if Leia were to marry Prince Isolder, she would eventually become queen of the Hapans. 

Out of jealousy and desperation, Han enters a high stakes card game in the bowels of Coruscant and ends up winning an entire planet, Dathomir.  I do kind of love that Han could win an entire planet from a card game, just like he apparently won the Millennium Falcon.  But when even this doesn’t win over Leia, he eventually abducts her and takes Leia to his newly acquired planet.  The kidnapping plot might, rightfully, leave a poor taste in many readers’ mouths.  While there is common trope of women falling in love with their captors (which may very well go all the way back to Tristan and Iseult), I think this cliché has become more difficult to justify in the new millennium. 

It’s when Han and Leia get to Dathomir that things get really bizarre, mostly for the better.  Dathomir is under the control of the Warlord Zsinj, making it impossible for Han and Leia to flee the planet after making their way through an Imperial blockade.  They’re followed by Luke Skywalker and Prince Isolder who have teamed up to retrieve the Princess.  On the surface of Dathomir, Han, Leia, Luke and Isolder have to contend with matriarchal clans of Force sensitive women.  In fact, there is a particular clan of witches that have been threatening other inhabitants of Dathomir and are seeking an alliance with Zsinj in order to leave the planet and wreak havoc across the galaxy.  Oh, and these clans of women not only ride Rancors, but they also appear to keep men like property.  This is the kind of pseudo-feminism that could have only occurred in the nineties.  When one of the women decides to keep Prince Isolder as a mate, the book threatens to turn into the Futurama episode “Amazon Women in the Mood.”  In other words, Wolverton’s idea of feminism not so coincidentally doubles as a male fantasy.  Still, the concept of Rancor riding Force witches is pretty damn cool.  And while it might diminish Luke’s unique status in the universe, the invention of the Witches of Dathomir manages to expand the fantasy/mythology aspect of Star Wars when so many authors at the time approached the world strictly through a sci-fi lens. 

I probably genuinely enjoyed The Courtship of Princess Leia as much as I rolled my eyes.  But Wolverton’s novel has contributed to the larger mythology of Star Wars.  The Witches of Dathomir have become a permanent, canonical part of the Star Wars Universe thanks to their inclusion in The Clone Wars TV-show.  And the one thing I remember enjoying about the novel was the fact that C-3PO does whatever is in his power to help out Han Solo win over Princess Leia, including uncovering Han’s supposed aristocratic ancestry and writing and performing a song about the greatness of Han Solo.  So if you ever wanted to read about C-3PO playing wingman to Han Solo, then this is the book for you.  

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Seasons 1-6)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Seasons 1-6) (5/5)

Technically, Star Wars: The Clone Wars is not a part of the Expanded Universe.  When Disney executed their own version of Order 66, unequivocally banning the EU from the canon, they exempted all six theatrical films and The Clone Wars animated series.  But because it serves as neither quite sequel nor prequel, the series still seems like more of an addendum to the prequel films, even if it exceeds them in quality.  So I’m calling Star Wars: The Clone Wars fair game for my series of Star Wars Expanded Universe reviews.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars got off to an ignominious start.  The theatrical film was dumped into theaters at a time when the general public had fatigued on the prequel films.  The film was panned and its box office was a mere pebble next to the boulder sized hauls of the proper films.  It didn’t help that The Clone Wars movie was uneven at best.  The film made a number of mistakes that didn’t bode well for the eventual series, for which it was, in part, serving as an advertisement.  The film had Anakin take on a Padawan of his own, Ahsoka Tano, a strong headed teenager.  The two are charged with recovering Jabba the Hutt’s infant son, Rotta, who is a poorly conceived bundle of “comic relief.”  Among other missteps, the film also includes the character of Ziro, a purple Hutt who not only speaks English (or Basic in the Star Wars Galaxy) but does so in an obvious imitation of Truman Capote for no reason at all.  Although the film boasts some great action (which was true of the prequels as well), it feels undercooked.

The Clone Wars film didn’t accurately represent the complex world that the series would eventually create.  If anything, Star Wars: The Clone Wars demonstrates how rich and rewarding the prequel universe can be.  First and foremost, The Clone Wars managed to both tweak traditional elements of Star Wars while also maintaining the general aesthetics of George Lucas’s creation.  Each episode opens with the usual Star Wars fanfare along with some added arpeggio as the series title withdraws from the screen.  This is followed with a rotating series of aphorisms in the color and typeface of “A long time ago…”.  Each episode begins in media res, and a stilted, slightly campy announcer speaking in the style of 1940s newsreels brings the audience up to speed.  Within the first minute or two, each episode demonstrates that it is exploring the moral power of myth, recreating the thrills of those 30s and 40s serials, and producing stories that are diverse but also clearly a part of Star Wars. 

Although the series would continue to improve over the years, the first season is still largely confident, and the multipart “Malevolence” episodes signal early on that The Clone Wars is interested in more than simply recreating a Saturday morning adventure of the week cartoon.  But if there is a single moment in the first season that showcases the series’s ambition it might be in “Innocents of Ryloth” when two Clone Troopers form a bond with a young refugee Twi’lek orphan.  The episode briefly explores the devastating effect of war and demonstrates what happens when people become trapped between the Republic and the Separatists.  The Ryloth three-parter does not shy away from violence, and it is shot in the cinema verite style of Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan.  (George Lucas also used simulated hand held photography to film some of the large battles in the prequels, a style that was modeled off of World War II footage.  Lucas also showed documentary footage of World War II dogfights to his special effects team when creating the first Death Star run.)  What’s special about this episode isn’t merely that the series isn’t afraid to show violence when necessary (plenty of episodes would probably be rated PG-13), but that it was also willing to grapple with morality and war. 

The Ryloth episodes also expand on perhaps my favorite new element from the prequels: the clones.  In the prequels, the clones were cannon fodder or they were a plot point, but they weren’t actual flesh and blood characters.  The Clone Wars actually imbues the clones with their own personalities, and although they have the same genetic makeup, each clone purposefully attempts to differentiate himself from the others by styling his hair or getting unique tattoos.  The image of nearly identical grunts striving for individuality is more telling, more heartbreaking than you might expect.  There are a number of reoccurring clone characters who have slightly different personalities: Rex, Echo, Fives and Cody all become important characters in the series. And because each clone is genetically identical to the one another, they are quite literally Shakespeare’s “band of brothers.”

The fifth episode of the first season, “Rookies,” focuses almost solely on a handful of Clone Troopers manning a distant outpost, and from here it becomes clear that the series, unlike the films, isn’t interested in just following members of the Jedi Council and the Republic Senate.

 In fact, several of my favorite story arcs focus mostly on the Clone Troopers, including a confrontation between the Clone Troopers and a bigoted Jedi, General Krell as well as a season six arc that takes some of its cues from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and grapples with the notorious Order 66.  Episodes focusing on the clones also try to tease out the paradoxical role of a military grunt.  To be a member of the armed forces, you have surrendered yourself to a purpose much greater than yourself, whether it is the Galactic Republic or the U.S. government, but you have little input into the goals and policies of these overriding institutions.

The series also allows for a further exploration of the Jedi and their place within the galactic conflict.  I’ve always maintained that the prequels included some tremendous ideas that were hindered by poor execution.  One of Lucas’s cleverer conceits was to stage a war where no matter who wins, the galaxy loses.  Palpatine has engineered it so that he is the hidden power behind both the Separatists and the Republic.  In most narratives, and especially in large blockbusters, wars are always divided between the good guys and the bad buys, but here Lucas presents us with what is close to a no win scenario.  It’s made clear in both the show and the films that the Jedi are not warriors.  They’re a monastic order who occasionally must rely on violence, but only if it will prevent some greater evil.  But the Clone Wars series suggests that they have compromised their values by taking on military positions within the Republic.

Expanding on the morally tangled choices made by Jedi only deepens our understanding of Anakin’s fall to the dark side.  In a third season arc, Anakin, Obi-Wan must sneak into a nearly impenetrable Separatist prison known as the Citadel in order to rescue captured Jedi Even Piell and Captain Tarkin.  Fans of the original trilogy know that Tarkin would go on to command the Death Star alongside Darth Vader in A New Hope, and in the Citadel arc there’s an interesting exchange between him and Anakin about the lengths the Jedi should go to in order to win the war.  Tarkin believes that Jedi shouldn’t serve as generals, because their code of ethics gets in the way of victory, a point of view that Anakin, who is seen throughout the show bending the rules, appears sympathetic to.  This scene suggests that Anakin’s turn to the dark side is born out of the corrupting nature of war as much as it is his own personal circumstances.

Perhaps The Clone Wars’ greatest contribution is that it finally got the character of Anakin right.  He’s no longer the petulant teenager that we saw in  Attack of the Clones or the naïve innocent from The Phantom Menace.  Here Anakin is more impulsive and known for working on gut instinct.  A common complaint about the prequels is that there are no rogue characters like Han Solo in this trilogy, but the writers on The Clone Wars realized that Anakin could fill this role.  Because Anakin is allowed to be charming, the audience actually feels a sense of loss and foreboding knowing about his ultimate fate, which is alluded to a few times throughout the series.

The Clone Wars expands on the mythology and world of Star Wars in a number of new and exciting ways—including the introduction of strange force-like beings that are more gods than men—but perhaps the greatest contribution to the Star Wars universe is the character of Ahsoka.  When she was first introduced, most people pegged Ahsoka as the annoying sidekick, but over the course of the series she demonstrates that she’s smart, talented and resourceful.  We are given only a few glimpses into Ahsoka’s past.  We do know that her force sensitivity was first recognized by the Jedi Plo Koon when Ahsoka was a child, but who she is mostly becomes apparently through her actions.  Over the course of the series, she demonstrates some of Anakin’s more impulsive tendencies, and the two are often competitive, sometimes acting more like friends than master and padawan.  Ahsoka also adds a necessary female character into the mostly male dominated world of Star Wars.  While the Star Wars movies aren’t completely devoid of empowered women—in A New Hope Leia ends up playing the role of her own rescuer in her escape from the Death Star—but it’s evident that most of the important characters in the Star Wars films are male.  With this in mind, Ahsoka serves as a sort of gender corrective.

The Clone Wars does so much right that it’s easy to forgive some of its flaws.  One problem the series never quite figured out was what to do with Padme.  Obi-Wan and Anakin get to fight massive space battles, but she’s stuck playing the role of the diplomat, which by comparison isn’t nearly exciting.  There are a handful of strong Padme episodes.  In “Heroes on Both Sides,” Padme and Ahsoka attempt to broker a secret peace and stop the war.  The episode showcases Lucas’s ability to use myth and fantasy to interrogate contemporary topics, and in “Heroes on Both Sides” he takes a look at the financial crisis as well as the war on terror.  It’s a smart episode that illustrates that the only way out of impossible situation engineered by Palpatine is to find a non-violent, peaceful reconciliation between the Republic and the Separatists.

But I believe the biggest misstep is the resurrection of a character who should have stayed dead. [Spoilers ahead].  In season three, we are introduced to the character of Savage Opress, a vicious force powered brute given abilities by the Nightsisters, a coven of force sensitive witches.  We later learn that Savage has a brother, Darth Maul who had been chopped in half at the end of The Phantom Menace.  It’s not clear why Maul is still alive, or why the writers thought it was a good idea to bring him back.  Darth Maul was an admittedly cool villain, thanks in large part to Ray Park’s physical performance.  But he was interesting precisely because we knew so little about him.  But we finally get to hear Darth Maul speak at length, and it turns out that he’s kind of whiny.  It doesn’t help that Savage and Maul are responsible for killing a character with deep emotional ties to Obi-Wan, but in a matter that is cheap, unnecessary, and wholly unsatisfying.  There are times when I’m not sure whether I hate the Darth Maul or the Jar Jar Binks episodes more. 

Still, The Clone Wars series is an important part of Star Wars lore that expands the story of the prequels in exciting and complicated ways.  Even when his filmmaking skills weren’t up to snuff, Lucas’s ability to conjure up worlds from his imagination always remained strong.  The prequels might falter more often than they should, but the universe Lucas created with those films is still vibrant, and this is clearly evident in The Clone Wars.  In the series, Lucas managed to take the Manichean divide between light and dark and weave a more complex tale of good people going towards damnation even as they have the best intentions.  And he accomplishes this in a universe interspersed with 1930s serials, space samurai, and World War II tough guys.  

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (4/5)

At this point everyone hates Frank Miller.  You hate Frank Miller.  I hate Frank Miller.  All your friends hate Frank Miller.  Your grandmother, if she knows who he is, probably hates Frank Miller too.  After many years of contributing to the development of American comic books, Miller’s talent and credibility hit a serious wall sometime in the 21^st century.  His output has been so bad that people have started to wonder whether or not he was ever talented.  To top it all off, in addition to putting out lazily written drivel, he also released a bizarre anti-Occupy Wall Street rant that fully revealed his inner neocon.  Miller’s politics were never exactly subtle—in fact, if one of his characters came upon nuance, he would have likely socked it in the jaw—but there was a certain complexity to his political positions, which often camped out somewhere in the borderlands where liberals and libertarians have achieved an uneasy truce.  So judging merely by Miller’s involvement, there was little reason to be optimistic about a long delayed sequel to the original Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller collaboration, Sin City.

But, surprisingly, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For has turned out to be a worthy sequel to the stylish and brutal original.  Despite the diminishing quality of both Miller and Rodriguez’s work in recent years, there must be something about working together that brings out the best in both artists.  Like the first movie, A Dame to Kill For is split into several distinct but vaguely interrelated tales.  Two of the film’s stories, the eponymous “A Dame to Kill For” and “Just Another Saturday Night,” are taken straight from Miller’s funny books where the other two, “The Long Bad Night” and “Nancy’s Last Dance,” were written by Miller exclusively for the film. The events of Dame occur before and after the events of the first film, making it a sort of pre-sequel and allowing Miller and Rodriguez to resurrect fan favorite characters like Marv.

“Just Another Saturday Night” is little more than a cynical smirk of a story that serves to set the stage for the rest.  The film’s meatiest tale is the titular “Dame to Kill For.”  Taking over for Clive Owen, Josh Brolin plays Dwight who gets pulled back into a world of seduction and double crosses by his old flame, Ava.  Played by Eva Green in various stages of undress (she’s French), Ava is the femme fatale turned up to eleven.  Able to transform herself into varying female archetypes so she fits the desires of any single man, Ava is a consummate manipulator. 

 

The femme fatale standard is highly problematic, but in certain films she has been made to symbolize female agency within a patriarchal world.  It would be difficult to redeem Ava, and there’s no confusing the writing of Frank Miller for a feminist treatise, but I’m not quite willing to call Miller an outright misogynist.  (Perhaps Ava’s ability to transform herself is a critique of the kinds of boxes men wish to box women into?)  And to complicate matters somewhat, A Dame to Kill For brings back the women of Old Town, an area of Sin City controlled and policed by its resident prostitutes.  If anything, A Dame to Kill For arguably tests the limits of third-wave feminism.

The two stories written specifically for Dame feel a little trim compared to those first written for the page.  In the first Sin City, there was a sense that each individual yarn could have been expanded into its own film, which is not the case in the sequel.  “The Long Bad Night” follows the preternaturally lucky Johnny (Joseph Gordon Levitt) as he weasels his way into a high stakes card game and makes enemies of the unrelenting big bad, Senator Roarke (played with gusto once again by Powers Boothe).  I naturally love the noir inspired irony that for someone with unerring luck, Johnny still has a horrendous time in Sin City.  (I also thoroughly enjoyed the scene stealing cameo from Christopher Lloyd.)  By contrast, “Nancy’s Last Dance,” a more direct sequel to the first film, suffers somewhat.  The story of Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) and her attempt to avenge the death of police officer and her savior, John Hartigan, played once again by Bruce Willis, only this time, well, dead, seems too undercooked to have much of an impact. 

If A Dame to Kill For lacks some of the more memorable elements of the original—a dead Benecio Del Toro speaking from the grave while part of a gun sticks out from his head or Elijah Wood’s trophy room—each story seems to slide into the next more easily for a more cohesive whole.  Plenty of critics have claimed the film has come too late and audiences are used to its box of tricks by now.  I impolitely disagree.  Dame may not be as good as the first film, but I think it injects something much needed into today’s genre of comic book movies: a sense of visual experimentation. 

Here Rodriguez expands on what he accomplished in the original film, mixing in metaphorical images of a tiny Johnny sliced apart by Rourke or staging a car chase around Marv’s head as he remembers what happened earlier in the night.  If anything, today’s comic book films are far more conservative visually then they were a decade ago or more ago.  Marvel, the most financially successful maker of comic book films, appears to be uninterested in fusing the distinct visuals of film and comic books lest it muss up their plans for franchise domination.  (I wouldn’t be surprised if this was part of the reason for the departure of Edgar Wright, a unique visual stylist, from Ant Man).  Compare the relatively safe imagery of the Marvel films to the hyperkinetic camera movement of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies, or the disorienting use or split screen in Ang Lee’s Hulk, or, to stretch back farther, the infusion of German Expressionism into Tim Burton’s Batman films.  Hell, even the now forgotten 90s superhero film The Shadow has some wonderfully bizarre imagery that would be deemed too out there in 2014.  I’m a fan of Marvel’s movies, but I’m also somewhat nostalgic for that period of time in the aughts when comic books were providing a new template for what was possible in Hollywood films.  In 2005, the original Sin City seemed like the culmination of a series of experiments, but in 2014, A Dame to Kill For seems wholly singular.