If Lucas had directed Serenity
I saw Serenity last night and liked it. But I woke up wondering if I would have liked it as much if the credits had read “Written and directed by George Lucas,” keeping all else exactly the same.
I am so disposed to like anything Joss Whedon does. His stuff is compassionate and witty, fantastic and character-based, admits of complexity, and is more true about the love and weakness that binds social groups than what comes from hardly any other popular, mainstream director. Plus he treats his fans like human beings. Not to mention that he wrote the music and lyrics to the musical Buffy episode himself. (How he didn’t get an Emmy for that still stumps me. I guess there must have been a Very Special Thanksgiving Episode of Everyone Loves Raymond or a Hallmark TV movie about an intelligence-challenged school crossing guard who teaches her town the true meaning of dignity.)
So, even though I found the Firefly series to be too formulaic — granted, it mixed a couple of formulas — I was eager to see Serenity. But I can’t tell how much I liked it because I was pre-charmed by Whedon. Hence my Lucas thought experiment.
[Mild spoilers ahead. Very mild.]
So, if Lucas had directed it, I think I would have been amazed that I cared about the characters. In fact, simply having characters not carved out of birch stumps would be a big advance for Lucas. Did he take a crash course in directing ensembles? The movie wasn’t as visually imaginative as usual, but, thankfully, the special effects were appropriate, not show-stopping dance numbers. The big, multi-hundred spaceship battle was surprisingly inept for a Lucas film — who was shooting at what? The dialogue wasn’t fake witty repartee, a la Indian Jones, but was actually pretty witty repartee. The blending of genres was a breath of fresh air, although we were stuck with the question why in an age of hyperspace travel they can’t make weapons that never miss, not to mention how a six-shooter could still be an effective weapon. It was good to see Lucas get a little more complex about the Rebels vs. the Dark Side battle. But there were some typical Lucas plot weaknesses, such as stipulating that a single video player can insert information into broadcast streams throughout the universe. Also, I’m getting oh so tired of Orcs as bad guys. Three other big improvements from Lucas’ previous movies: No ethnic-racial stereotypes, no embarrassing faux-religious themes, and no dead spots. Lucas is fun again!
Of course, he had to become Joss Whedon to do that.
[Tags: serenity sf JossWhedon GeorgeLucas StarWars]
Categories: Uncategorized dw
I don’t particularly like Joss Whedon, or at least, I didn’t before watching Firefly (although I suspect that the quality had much to do with being produced by none other than Ben Edlund).
Still, I enjoyed the movie far more than I liked Revenge of the Sith, and I found it very refreshing. The fight and space choreography and effects weren’t over the top, and proof that you don’t need “BIG” to get “believable”. They were what they were, it was possible to follow the action on the screen, and it worked. The big secret that the bad guys were killing to protect seemed, uh, yeah… pretty much worth killing to protect.
More than anything else, the pacing was good. George Lucas is, at his core, an editor, and his recent attempts at directing show that he feels that problems in the script can be solved with convenient and dramatic wipes. From that perspective, Mr. Lucas could not have directed this movie – it’s too rough, and lets the story speak for itself.
On top of all that, George would never touch the phrase “betwixt my nethers” with a pole of any length.
Which begs the question…if he has the equipment to do that, why did they have to deliver said recording in person at all, rather than just “wave” it? Clearly the end-to-end network (err…sorry…cortex) of the future still needs a bit of work. Think the alliance sub-contracted to AT&T?
He didn’t get the Emmy because they mistakenly sent out the Emmy ballots without Buffy on them. They realized the mistake and sent out corrected ones, but by that time many people had already sent theirs back (and others, presumably, didn’t see them or didn’t bother).
(I am a huge Joss Whedon fanboy; and a rabid Lucas anti-fanboy, if such a thing exists.)
If you had seen George Lucas’s name on the credits, you would have scoffed and said, “Ha! He had a ghost writer!” Because Lucas is biologically incapable of writing dialogue that is not stilted and wooden.