[For my annual
Valentine’s follow-up, I wanted to keep the FilmStudying going and
highlight some non-favorite filmmakers and films. Share your own non-favorites,
film or otherwise, for what is always the most fun crowd-sourced
post of the year!]
On two
fundamental flaws with prequels revealed by the Star Wars and Hobbit prequel
trilogies.
I know this
could be said by many people, especially those of a certain age and/or of a
certain level of science fiction/fantasy fandom, but it feels on the surface like
the Star Wars and Hobbit prequel films were more or less engineered to appeal
to this AmericanStudier. I’ve loved
the Star Wars films since I saw Empire
in theaters at the age of four, and the films (past and present) have become a central
multi-generational through-line for me, my parents, and my sons over the
last few years (so much so that we really missed having a new Star Wars movie
this past holiday season). The Hobbit was
one of the first books my Dad and I read together when I was old enough to take
part, the Lord of the Rings trilogy
some of the first big books I read to myself and some of the first
of that type I shared with my sons, and I count Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films among my very
favorite movies ever made. If that’s not enough, I’ll add that I mean the
Extended Editions of the LOTR films, which
are the only editions I own and want to watch, and the only ones I’ve shared
with my sons. Think that establishes my cred sufficiently!
So it pains me
to say it, but both the Star Wars and Hobbit prequel films are among my
greatest disappointments (and I say this based on the experience of having
watched both trilogies multiple times, as my sons when they were young were,
let’s say, not as discerning). Moreover, I think each reveals with particular
clarity a central problem
of prequels more generally. While there are many (many) problems with the
Star Wars prequels, I would say that one of the most glaring is a tendency to
over-explain (or really feel the need to explain at all) elements from the
original Star Wars trilogy. By far the worst example of this is the Force—I can’t
imagine there are very many viewers of the original films who felt that they
needed a great deal more explanation of what the Force is and where it comes
from, as we get just enough explanation from Jedi characters like Obi-wan and Yoda without making this
mystical concept too mundane. And then George Lucas came up with the brilliant idea
of midichlorians—I’ll admit that every time Liam Neeson’s Qui-gon starts
talking to young Anakin Skywalker about these tiny organisms that inhabit
us all and can give us the Force if they start doing who the hell knows what,
my eyes glaze over; and I submit to you that the Force is one of those pure
storytelling elements that should never make our eyes glaze over. I might be able
to forgive the prequels Jar Jar, but never that.
The Hobbit films
don’t suffer from quite that problem, but among their many flaws is another one
common to prequels: the need to resemble the movie(s) to which they serve as a
prequel too closely. Anyone who has read The
Hobbit knows that it is a very different book from the Lord of the Rings novels, and those differences can be boiled down
most succinctly to tone: The Hobbit
is a light-hearted children’s adventure, full of mystery and darkness to be
sure but filtered through that tonal lens; while it does get more complex and
fraught in its final chapters, even there it maintains a tone quite distinct
from what we find in most of LOTR.
But because Peter Jackson had made LOTR
first (and because he ended up directing the Hobbit films as well, although he
had not intended to), it seems that he felt obligated to make the Hobbit
films very similar in tone to LOTR.
And so we get all kinds of giant battle sequences, Sauron and his minions as
major villains, recurring characters like Legolas and Saruman shoe-horned in,
and many other choices that (among other problems) make the Hobbit
films so bloated that three of them were required to tell the story Jackson
wanted to tell. I’m not saying it’s impossible for prequels to work—Daniel Craig’s
James Bond films are in many ways prequels, and they’re among my favorite Bonds—but
they have to navigate these and other problems if they’re gonna do so.
Crowd-sourced
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. So one more
time: what do you think? Responses to this post or other non-favorites you’d
share?
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