“No, George, no! Bad director, bad!”

I have mixed feelings about the news that the Star Wars movies are going to be re-released in super-duper 3D. Firstly, I don’t really care about 3D. But the main problem is George Lucas’ penchant for mucking around with Star Wars.

My feeling that Lucas should leave it alone started with the Special Edition of Return of the Jedi. I know many fanboys will shudder at the thought of the original release of ROTJ – ‘Brrr, Ewoks!’ But, at the risk of ruining my own credibility, I quite liked the Ewoks.

I wasn’t too bothered about the first two Special Editions. Having never seen the movies in the cinema before, it was quite fun. Yes, the extra CGI creatures, including Jabba, in A New Hope looked clunky and obvious, but I could live with that. And it had Boba Fett breaking the fourth wall. What’s not to like? Although, there was, of course, the whole 'Han shot first' thing. That was a pretty bad call.

Not much changed on Empire either. But for the Special Ed of Jedi, Lucas went off-piste with his ‘improvements’. Firstly he messed up the great song in Jabba’s Palace by Sy Snootles by adding in an annoying jumping around creature called Yuzzum. And then he bodged the ending by cutting away from the celebrations on Endor to show a crowd on the Imperial capital planet Coruscant puling down a statue of the Emperor.

It was an awkward and idiotic way to introduce the first ever shots of Coruscant and it messed up the post-film storylines that have been laid down with Lucas’ guiding direction. In the books, starting with Heir to the Empire, it takes 8 years for the Alliance to finally ‘liberate’ Coruscant from the remnants of the Empire. Lucas just binned all that for the sake of a scene that added nothing to the film.

The next sequence of disasters happened with the prequels. The Phantom Menace is almost universally derided among true fans, and yet I think it is still the best one of the three. True, it has no main protagonist. He should have toned down Jar Jar Binks a lot. Darth Maul was pre-hyped as a massive villainous character then had about three minutes of screen-time. The plotline is essentially feeble. But it’s a ‘set up’ movie – what would you expect?

There were two disasters, though. One was the ‘explanation’ of Anakin’s potentiality in the Force as being due to microscopic force-producing organisms in his blood called ‘midichlorians’ and the corresponding random decision to accord him a ‘virgin birth’ (seriously). The other was the repeated fudging of the monarchy issue. ‘Queen Amidala’ is a teenager, who has somehow been democratically elected queen. Yes, that’s right, the constitutional monarchist system of Naboo elects teenagers to positions of unquestionable power.

It’s ridiculous and has more to do with the American audience who presumably wouldn’t countenance an equation of monarchy with freedom. The USA is a republic after all and small-r republicanism matters.

The second and third prequels just built on these shaky foundations. There was no more nonsense about midichlorians, thank goodness, and Jar Jar was pensioned off to a role in the civil service. There was the godawful ‘romance’ sequence in Episode 2, and I never really got why Anakin embraced the Dark Side in Episode 3. I was expecting some kind of agonising / internal wrestling and at least a discussion about the merits of the Dark Side before he turned, but instead he seemed to have about two minutes talking about how worried he was about his pregnant wife and then went off to massacre children.

Again there was a continuity mess-up. In Return of the Jedi, Leia tells Luke she remembers their mother. Well, I doubt it, unless she was an exceptional newborn baby with facial recognition from the moment she drew breath. Because in Ep 3 Padme dies after saying her name.

By that point, I was past caring, really. As far as I’m concerned the prequels are non-canon; part of the apocrypha of the Star Wars universe, on a par with the Star Wars Holiday Special, the Marvel comic strips, the Droids cartoon series , the Ewok movie and the appearance of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker on the Muppet Show.

But then came the release of the Special Editions onto DVD and the true evil of the prequels was revealed. For George had decided to monkey about with them again and, boy did he monkey! In the daftest and most annoying of ways!

Firstly, in the Special Edition of The Empire Strikes Back, he revoiced Boba Fett using the New Zealand twang of the actor who played Boba’s ‘father’, Jango Fett.

The thinking, presumably, is that Boba is a clone of Jango, and therefore he would sound exactly like his Dad. But, okay, some speech characteristics are probably genetic (tone, pitch etc.), accents aren’t ‘set’ genetically. It makes no sense for Boba, orphaned at a tender age, traveller of the galaxy, to have exactly the same accent as his Dad. It was a completely unnecessary change.

And then secondly, George managed to bodge the end of Jedi AGAIN! This time he replaced the ghost of Anakin Skywalker as played by Sebastian Shaw when Luke removes Darth Vader’s helmet on board the second Death Star, with the ghost of Anakin Skywalker as a young man, i.e. Hayden Christiansen, who played Anakin in Episodes 2 & 3.

There was no need for that. Maybe the thought was that having an old man next to Yoda and Obi-Wan was confusing for (stupid) kids. But Luke has never seen his father, except when he removes Vader’s helmet. How is he supposed to recognise a guy who looks about his own age?

And if you’re going to do it, why is Anakin the only one to return as a much younger version of himself? Why not replace all of Obi-Wan’s ghost scenes with footage of Ewan McGregor? It makes as much sense.

There does come a point where you begin to wonder whether George Lucas should be allowed near his own movies any more because he is slowly killing them. At what point should his underlings step in and say ‘Sir, in good conscience, we can’t allow you to exercise your ‘creativity’ on your cadre of work any more’.

‘Step away from the CGI machine, Sir. Thank you, Sir. Now, let’s leave the editing suite, and I’ll get Susan to make us a nice cup of tea...’

Big screen / small screen review, including Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3
I've taken a few days to blog about this film because I've needed to get my thoughts in order. Firstly, it's very good - the usual high Pixar standard. But I found it emotionally challenging.

The themes of growing up and moving on from relationships, as seen in Andy parting with his toys as he leaves for college, was arresting. There's a whole scene where the toys are trying to get Andy's attention, and can't understand why he has moved on. I'm not sure why that troubled me so much (maybe the fact that my house is full of toys plays its part), but it did.

There's a depth to this, that is far more than you'd expect from a 'kids' film'. I'm not sure kids would get it. Most adults won't either, I guess, because people don't expect to be made to think in movies...

Jongudmund's rating: 8/10

The Hurt Locker
The film that beat Avatar to the Oscar earlier this year. A lot of hype. And yet when it came down to it, not as much substance as I expected there to be.

It was very good and I'm glad I've finally watched it. Maybe it was more of a big screen movie rather than a DVD night in, although I'm not sure. There are some excellently shot scenes - a shoot-out in the desert; tense and confusing scenes in the city streets.

It also managed to show how war provides an adrenalin thrill that becomes addictive, without ever going gung-ho, or playing down the horror of war. When a character gets vapourised by an IED, there's a highly believeable atmosphere of shock and horror. People get shot and stay dead. Blood doesn't spurt in cinematic technicolor.

I'd say it's a good film, but I'm not sure it's a great film. But worth watching.

Jongudmund's rating: 8/10

Dead Man Walking
This is one of those films I'd never got round to seeing, and it was on TV last night. The story is well-known, I guess. Susan Sarandon plays a nun who visits a death row inmate played by Sean Penn, who is the 'dead man walking'. Gradually she brings him to the point of repentance when he finally admits his sins and 'saves' him even as he is killed by lethal injection.

The brilliance of this film is the closely observed funny moments that seem to interpolate into the narrative, the way things do in real life. A sign that says 'Have much rabbits' prompts a character to ask "Are they selling or bragging?" "Maybe it's a cry for help."

Again this was an emotional film. When Penn turns to his spiritual advisor and admits he'd never foudn love until she had loved him unconditionally, and thanks her for loving him, I was moved. Redemption comes in many different ways and yet it is always powerful.

Jongudmund's rating: 9/10

THX 1138
This was George Lucas' first film, recently re-released in a Director's Cut. It's set in a dystopic future where humans are enslaved by the state and are not allowed to fall in love. It's very much like other films of that ilk - Equilibrium, The Island, and so on.

There is a dream-like quality to the film. Characters seem to appear, quite literally, out of nowhere. Scenes jump around. I was never quite sure whether I was meant to be seeing reality or what the main character, THX 1138, was percieving the world to be.

I really don't think this is a film for everyone. But if you're into science fiction, it's worth watching.

Jongudmund's rating: 6/10

Planet 51
A knockabout animated kids' film about a human astronaut who causes chaos when he lands on the inhabited 'Planet 51'.

There isn't much depth to this, but the alien pet who looks a bit like the alien from Alien and pees acid onto lamp-posts is very amusing. Truthfully I didn't care much about the other characters, but the animation is good and the design of the film is very nicely done in terms of the 1950s retro style alien vehicles and things.

Jongudmund's rating: 4/10

Writers and editors

The next issue of the magazine is pretty much done from a writing point of view. Now it’s in for editing – a hugely important part of the process. I used to hate having copy I’d written neatened up by an editor, but over time you kind of get immune to it. And recently I’ve been reflecting on how it’s very useful to have someone cast a critical eye over what you write and make sure it’s tidied up.

It’s easy to spot the moment when a writer, or other creative, stops listening to the editor and begins to believe his or her own hype. Here are a few examples…

Example #1 JK Rowling
I risk the ire of Clare for daring to comment on the great JK, but truth to tell her books were better when they were edited to a readable length. But after ‘the Prisoner of Azkaban’, Rowling went stratospheric and no editor was going to tell her ‘look, love, you’ve got to cut this down a bit.’ Cue ‘Goblet of Fire’, which seemed to go on and on and had one of the most ridiculously unlikely twists at the end involving a character who was actually someone else in disguise.

Then the films came out and Harry Potter was suddenly accessible to the majority non-reading population. And JK Rowling decided at this point that she could write epics.

But she can’t.

At least, not if ‘Order of the Phoenix’ is anything to go by. A good editor would have cut about a third to a half of the 500+ pages, got rid of the side stories which added nothing to the basic tale, and produced a good book as a result. Instead all the lickle kiddies had to wade through pages of turgid filler to get to the good stuff. It was so bad I haven’t read book 6 and won’t be reading book 7 either.

Example #2 Oasis
Oasis’ first album remains one of the pinnacles of British rock. It’s got everything – soaring, powerful guitar riffs, Liam’s rock and roll snarl, clever lyrics, all wrapped up in a bundle of decent songs.

But then the Britpop bubble expanded, with Oasis at the centre. I didn’t personally like their second album as much, although it did contain the still-hummable Wonderwall, and one or two other classics. But they were more into slagging off their rivals, saying offensive things in NME, partying and sacking drummers by this point. With nobody around to rein them in, because they were Oasis and weren’t going to be told what to do by anyone, they were able to set their artistic sides free. And what have they done since? Absolutely naff all.

Example #3 George Lucas
Let’s not get into the ‘how did the prequels go so wrong’ discussion here. But let’s ask the question, why does George Lucas feel the need to go back and rework his original films? Not only did he stick a load of stupid animals into the Mos Eisley scenes for cheap laughs in Star Wars, he completely cheesed up the end of Jedi, and hashed up Sy Snootles’ best musical number ever with an annoying new character called Yuzzum.

Then to add insult to injury, in the special edition DVD set he replaced Jeremy Bulloch’s voice in Empire Strikes Back with the antipodean twang of the guy who played Jango Fett in Attack of the Clones.

But of course, Lucas is never one to miss a marketing trick. So, just when you thought you’d bought your last set of Star Wars DVDs, he releases a new set which contain the original versions as well as the ‘remastered’ (insert your own suitable description here) versions. Then he has the cheek to say "I don’t know why anyone would want to watch the original versions…" Because they’re better, George, that’s why. Now why don’t you go and get funky with the original cut of Howard the Duck or Willow.

Example #4 Peter Jackson
You take Lord of the Rings’, one of the most loved books ever written in the English Language. You manage to turn it into three films, which amazingly please the die-hard fans of the book and your average cinema-goer. Now the world is your oyster. You could do pretty much anything you want to.

You go and re-make King Kong…