Star Wars on Trial (24 page)

LONG TIME AGO, in a decade far, far away (1978 to be exact), Alan Dean Foster wrote the very first Star Wars spin-off ,novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which is pretty much where all the trouble started. Intended originally as the basis of a potential lowbudget sequel, the story takes place entirely on a fog-shrouded planet, and stars only Luke, Leia, C-3PO and R2-D2. (Han Solo is noticeably absent, as Harrison Ford had yet to sign to return.) I remember the day my father brought it to the dinner table. I was impressed at the "legitimizing" of the film by seeing it rendered in so distinguished a medium as print. Of course, I lacked the vocabulary to express it in quite those terms then. But it wasn't until a decade later, in 1987, when West End Games began licensing the Star Wars Roleplaying Game, that the "expanded universe" of Star Wars continuity began to be codified and refined. This larger body of Star Wars canon grew through the popular Dark Horse comic book license that soon followed. Then, in the early 1990s, when Bantam published Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy, interest in the novelizations really took off, catapulting the universe of Star Wars media tie-ins to its current level-New York Times best-selling books and a gigantic cash cow for Lucasfilm and all of its subsidiaries.

Now, let's get something straight here at the outset. I'm not a big fan of media tie-ins and novelizations in general. I don't believe that they are a good thing for the genre, per se, and I frequently bemoan the fact that they are bought and consumed in numbers that dwarf the "real" stuff by many orders of magnitude. In short, anyone who equates Elminster with Gandalf or Merlin isn't going to rate too highly in my book. But despite all the above, I come neither to praise Star Wars novels nor to bury them. While I'd rather apply leeches under my tongue than have to read a Forgotten Realms novel, several of my friends have delved into media tie-in territory for love, not money, and I'll concede that not all of them are the utter drek they are so often characterized as being. As a reader, I've even enjoyed that guilty pleasure myself a time or two, though it's been a few years, and it is a guilty pleasure.

Still, meat loaf is meat loaf, and filet mignon is filet mignon. It's okay (and probably necessary) to eat both, but it's important that we can all tell the difference, whatever our subjective tastes. So, while we're defining our terms ... Star Wars is:

• Three good movies.

• One movie about violent teddy bears that seems much better now in retrospect.

• Two horrendously bad movies with unprecedented special effects.

• Some embarrassingly hackneyed Christmas specials (two with the aforementioned bears).

• A recent and very slick series of animated shorts much cooler than most of the above.

All told, and despite the aforementioned animated shorts, this is not a wonderful batting average when it's all laid out. That rival franchise with the same first word in its name at least had seventeen years of good television and maybe four good films before it started going south. Yet this uneven collection of celluloid tales-little more sophisticated at the outset than a 1930s Flash Gordon serial-is merely the hub of a media empire that spans comics, role-playing games, video games and approximately one hundred novels, many of which are, curiously enough, much better than their source material. Indeed, I cannot begin to count how many times a Star Wars fan apologized to me for liking The Phantom Menace, agreeing with me that the storytelling was inept, the plot ridiculous, the acting horrendous, the humor flat, the sexual politics dangerous and offensive, but shamefacedly maintaining that they liked it despite the fact that it wasn't any good. So great was their love of the enormous expanded universe of Star Wars lore that surrounded the franchise that they could love the body while admitting that the spine it hung on was flawed and rotten. It was as if, forgive me, Star Wars was in fact some vast galaxy of ancillary matter surrounding a center comprised of a vast black hole. In fact, it has been noted more than once that this greater body of continuity may be the point these days. As Neal Stephenson wrote in the New York Times June 17, 2005 issue, "These newer films don't even pretend to tell the whole story; they are akin to PowerPoint presentations that summarize the main bullet points from a much more comprehensive body of work developed by and for a geek subculture."

Geek subculture indeed. I admit to a certain geek attraction when I note the convenient timeline at the start of a particular novelization, tying all of the previous Star Wars novels together and showing me where they fall in relation to the six films. And the books come with icons on their back covers, identifying into which of the five major eras (Sith, Prequel, Classic, New Republic or NewJedi Order) the story falls. What self-respecting continuity lover wouldn't fall for that? And Star Wars comes complete with a galaxy of extemporaneous material that has built up over almost three decades! But that it ever would have come to this, where the words "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" are practically synonymous with science fiction in the minds of the general populace and both are franchises worth hundreds of millions of dollars (if not billions), no one could have foreseen.

So, more power to Mr. Lucas. Why be a Scrooge and begrudge him his science fiction empire? It's all in good fun anyway, right? Yes, but:

TO BEGIN WITH, IT ISN'T REALLY SCIENCE FICTION

In his introduction to The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20" Cen tury, Harry Turtledove writes that "Written science fiction is often thought-provoking; filmed sci-fi is more often jaw-dropping. The two usually appeal to different audiences, which aficionados of the written variety sometimes forget to their peril-and frustration." This frustration Turtledove notes is why some on the literary side of the fence have taken to distinguishing between "SF" literature and "sci-fi"-their somewhat derogative term for the flood of brainless action-adventure films and television shows which use science fiction iconography as a setting or backdrop for adventure without appropriating its sophistication or meaning.

James Gunn expands on this notion in his essay "The Tinsel Screen"
to say, "Printed science fiction and science fiction film seem to have little to do with each other, and there are virtually no good films that are also good science fiction. Star Wars is a simple and charming fairy tale set in scenes in which science fiction paraphernalia is lying about.... The problem with the science fiction film may be that it adds nothing to science fiction except concreteness of image-and that may be more of a drawback than an asset."

Wait a minute! Star Wars not science fiction, you say? Surely you jest. It's full of robots and spaceship battles, isn't it? What could be more science fiction than that? True enough, but from its opening moments, when the film tells us that it is set "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away"-a deliberate invocation of "once upon a time"-we know right where we stand. We are in a tale of knights with sabers fighting in a battle of good versus evil. A story of princesses and dark lords, torn from the pages of Ivanhoe, The Lord of the Rings and tales of King Arthur. In fact, early in Star Wars: A New Hope there is a scene in which C-3PO, newly acquired by the Owens, calls the young Luke "sir." Our hero responds with "Luke," to which the obsequious droid responds by immediately calling him "Sir Luke." The boy responds, "Just Luke," but the allusion to courtly titles is made. It's a clever bit of business to drive home the point that this is a tale of fantasy, which is what George "I don't have to know what a parsec is" Lucas has always maintained that it is.

Okay, so Star Wars isn't true science fiction. Why is this bad? A number of reasons, including:

THE PROBLEM OF WIDER PERCEPTION

Star Wars is seen as being indicative of the science fiction genre by the majority of moviegoers. In the October 14, 2005 issue of the Times, mystery writer Ian Rankin complained at the underrated status afforded writers of crime fiction, while noting, "We don't get as raw a deal as science fiction writers. Science fiction is dealing with some of the biggest ideas-where we are going to go as a race-but for some reason it's not taken seriously." Now why do you suppose that is? Stephen Baxter, one of the top talents of the current crop of hard SF writers, sees the gulf as existing at its widest point in its most public face.