The "Lucas and Leone" effect

Rating: Null/10 (15 September 2007)

With the first "Star Wars" trilogy, creator George Lucas borrowed from Leone, Kurosawa, Ford, Tolkien etc and created one of the best slices of pop art, a bouncy myth (at once futuristic, medieval and topical - ie Vietnam), which resembled the kind of postmodern comic book that the "Kill Bill" movies would beat like a dead horse decades later.
Fast forward some years and Lucas decides to revisit the universe of "Star Wars". He wants to create a prequel trilogy. Problem is, he's a different guy now. He's grown and matured. End result, he decides to give us a Greek Tragedy rather than a Hero's Journey. The heavy, darker side of the myth.
And so the Taliban-like rebels of the first trilogy are replaced and contrasted by showing us the evil workings of the American Empire. And yes, the prequels are overtly anti-American. In this context we can almost read the destruction of the Death Star as a 9/11 event.
George Bush, I mean Senator Palpatine, comes into power, assumes executive control and promptly wipes out the Jedi (who are stand ins for America's exoticized enemies). The democratic Old Republic then gradually dissolves into a far reaching Imperial state, whilst the beauty of their spaceships, the artistry of their cruisers and the elegant designs of their cities (as shown in the prequels) is slowly replaced with the cold, bland, mechanical or bureaucratic look of the Empire (originals). Free thought and individuality is then removed (clones/stormtroopers) and the Imperial Empire is born.
Note also how the logical, scientific approach to the Force (medichlorians - a play on the word mitochondria) present in the Old Republic, gives way to the mythical religions and rationalisations of the Force in the originals. The Prequels are the "age of Reason", populated by thinkers, scientists and agnostics. But when society crumbles, the age of mystics (of hope and religion) is reborn.
How does something founded on beautiful ideals (The Old Republic/America) become so evil? Lucas hits the nail on the head throughout the prequels. Politicians and people ignoring the plight of small nations and species. Large Trade Guilds exploiting and bullying the weak (notice that the enemy is merely a conglomerate of super-businesses, traders and corporate monopolies). Power is centralised. The media is blacked out or fed lies. Arms deals are conducted in proxy (Afghanistan, Lebanon, Vietnam, Iraq are all proxy wars) and everyone not of your religion (Lucas' Empire is comprised of stuck up Brits) is swept aside.
Today, the American Empire has military bases in virtually every country in the world. No other country has this privilege. It also has the CIA, not only a body which is completely unchallenged and unanswerable to anyone but the President, but one which has become quite adept at instigating coups and installing puppet leaders in foreign countries.
Anyway, despite all the interesting thematic stuff present in the prequels, they're all hokey failures. Lucas fell into the trap that a lot of authors fall into. Authors often develop a series of books which become successful and connect with an audience. But great artists don't like to repeat themselves. So as the author progresses and grows as an artist, the tone and content of his series changes. Eventually the reader no longer identifies with or likes the way the characters (or author's voice) has changed.
Audiences want familiarity. Artists want to experiment, to challenge perceptions...but they love their fan-base too. So in an attempt to win back the reader, the author then reverts back to his simple minded, fun storytelling, while subversively inserting "intelligence" into the thing. The result is a strange mix which again doesn't go down well with the reader.
Because of his financial success with the originals, Lucas is one of the few directors to have a "series" of his own. His evolution as an artist is exactly as described as above. His prequels are an odd mix of old George and New George, of adult smarts and teen fun.
Of course the second problem is that an "adventure serial" just can't hold the weighty themes and Greek myth overtones that he wants to insert. The prequels had to be far darker (like the Godfather trilogy) in both tone and style, less roller coaster and kiddie oriented, for his story to work dramatically.
My point with all of this is that Sergio Leone went through the same artistic evolution. He started out making a group of fun, cartoonish pop westerns, and then transcended the genre with his masterpiece, "The Good The Bad and The Ugly". But no one took him seriously. No one would finance his "serious projects". So throughout the rest of his career he gives us over-long, somber pictures which try to be both fun and light, while also being political, Marxist, historical and important. This results in a weird cocktail of flawed movies peppered with greatness. Of movies at once childish but longing for an adult sensibility.
It's also interesting to compare Leone to John Ford. Ford's "action westerns" became dated and stupid the moment Leone started his "Dollars trilogy". Leone then went on to emulate Ford with "Once Upon a time in the West", a melancholic pastiche of countless other westerns which uncomfortably jumps from somber meditation to comic book spaghetti. Meanwhile, Ford had dropped the "action western" and started making meaningful, subversive westerns (Liberty Valance) of his own.
8/10- A masterpiece with a bit of an identity crisis. It has it's flaws, but I'd argue (I can't due to IMDb word limits) that it's better than both "Once Upon A Time In America" and "Once Upon A Time In The West", both of which are suffused with nostalgia, yearning for the tropes and images of the western and gangster movies of Leone's childhood. They're Tarantino territory: films about films.