Nerd Do Well (38 page)

Return/Revenge

R
p.

eturning home to begin writing the second series of
Spaced
, I decided to channel my disappointment at
The Phantom Menace
into my character, Tim, and use him to express my feelings on the subject. We were even able to channel some of that dissatisfaction into the first series during the editing process, hastily adding the caption ‘Three good
Star Wars
films later’ as passage of time after the characters spend an evening watching the original trilogy.

During the filming of the first series, we had approached Lucasfilm’s licensing department and asked permission to use various
Star Wars
merchandise for set dressing, as Tim Bisley, like me, was an inveterate fan. They said no to everything, presumably because they were gearing up for a whole new batch of products and didn’t want to generate any unnecessary nostalgia for the old stuff. I’m speculating there of course. The truth is, I think they were just being overcautious, in case we took the holy trilogy’s name in vain, which at that time seemed like an extremely unlikely event.

By the time the second series went into production, the first series had aired and Lucasfilm’s licensing people, seeing that our intentions were honourable and affectionate, were more than happy for us to use anything we wanted. By this time, however, the damage had been done and we didn’t really want to. Besides, it would have been hard to justify, since you have to supply context for usage and ‘we’re going to burn it’ doesn’t present a convincingly positive proposal. As it was we settled for a number of cardboard boxes pointedly labelled ‘Star Wars stuff’, as we mounted our scene-for-scene re-enactment of Darth Vader’s funeral, substituting
Star Wars
itself as the corpse burning before the grieving son.

Despite everything, I was still first in line for the second prequel,
Attack of the Clones
, even though the title, like its predecessor, sounded like an abdominal complaint. I don’t wish the following metaphor to come across as flippant, I must preface it by saying I am fully aware of the horror and hardships caused by domestic abuse in all its forms, but my relationship with
Star Wars
in later years is comparable, symbolically at least, to living with an abusive partner. No matter how let down and violently disappointed by it I felt, I would always return for more, as though nothing had ever happened, making excuses for previous transgressions and dismissing them as anomalous. So it was when I sat down to watch the film at the Odeon Leicester Square at a press screening I had somehow managed to blag tickets for. This film seemed to have the potential to abolish the memory of its predecessor. It promised more action and a more complex character in Anakin Skywalker, thankfully no longer a bowl-haircutted cutie saving the day by accident. There were lots of light sabres and a character that looked a bit liked Boba Fett. It claimed a darker feel, aligning it stylistically with
The Empire Strikes Back
, which could only be a good thing, right?

Sure, as I left the cinema, I had some of that youthful spring in my step and didn’t feel that bomb-shocked sense of unease I had experienced in New York. By the time I reached the other side of Soho, however, I realised it had all been an illusion and
Attack of the Clones
had been no better than the first prequel, in fact in some respects it had been worse. Told with the same clodhopping ineptitude, it attempted to win favour by trying to invoke the spirit of the original instalment by making direct references to it, while simultaneously distracting us with lights and flashes to draw focus away from the awful truth.

When
Revenge of the Sith
was released, I was ready to forgive it once more, despite the mountain of evidence to suggest the series was irredeemable. I had been present at the announcement of the title in San Diego on the day I met Carrie Fisher, and noted the slight desperation amid the fans who decided to see the sly reference to the original title of
Return of the Jedi
as a clever circular allusion rather than the desperate attempt to claw back credibility that it probably was.

By this time I had actually become friends with a few people at Lucasfilm, having found my vocal disapproval of the prequels had won unlikely support from people within the organisation. When the original theatrical cuts of the first trilogy were re-released on
DVD
, free of any of the tampering inflicted upon them in the run-up to the prequels, I received a parcel in the post, containing the discs and an embossed Lucasfilm postcard. The message simply read: ‘
We thought you might like these
.’

As a result of my new-found connections, I was invited to one of the first screenings of
Revenge of the Sith
at the Twentieth Century Fox building in London’s Soho Square. This was undoubtedly the most enjoyable of the three. Still beset by the same problems of style over content and story incoherence, it nevertheless scored points for drawing closer to the original trilogy in both storyline and aesthetics and the promise of seeing the birth of Darth Vader himself.

One scene even involves the action occurring in the corridor of Princess Leia’s blockade runner, glimpsed at the beginning of the first film. This moment is doubly powerful in that it is a physical set and not a digital environment, which even enhances the effect of the
CGI
Yoda, framing him in a realistic setting, making him seem more solid, more present. I actually cried a little bit when Emperor Palpatine initiated Order 66 and wiped out the Jedi, giving kudos to Lucas for his use of cross-cutting, in a sequence reminiscent of the final stages of
The Godfather
. This one was definitely the best of a bad bunch.

Ultimately, though, the film served only to highlight a number of niggling inconsistencies that undermined the continuity of the saga and cast doubt on the credibility of Lucas’s grand narrative plan. It’s true that a larger, more complex story existed before
Star Wars
and that Lucas had lifted a manageable midsection to create the first film, but it seems hard to believe that the surrounding saga was anything more than a conceptual sketch or a very rough first draft. Oddly, despite the big-budget treatment, the prequels retained the feel of something being made up on the hoof without any regard for consistency and it would seem that nobody had had the scones to point it out.

No one ever said, ‘George, if Luke Skywalker is the son of Anakin Skywalker (now Darth Vader) and the forces of good are attempting to conceal him from his father, why didn’t they give him a new name or hide him somewhere other than the family home of Darth Vader’s stepbrother
²²
?’ Or, ‘Is a bit of bad luck and some mild teenage truculence enough to change a goofy kid into a murderous galactic tyrant?’ Or, ‘Do you think the big reveal that Senator Palpatine is in fact the evil Darth Sidious (soon to be Emperor) all that surprising, considering the same actor played a character called Emperor Palpatine in
Return of the Jedi
?’ Or even, ‘Isn’t it a bit unseemly to establish sexual tension between Luke and Leia if they are eventually going to be revealed as brother and sister? Are they from Gloucester?’ It seems strange that such a grand and expensive endeavour appears so undercooked at times, almost as though the whole venture was being presided over by one person, refusing to accept any outside input, despite knowing deep down that he had bitten off more than he could chew.

As determined as I was to enjoy
Revenge of the Sith
, having decided that was going to be the case before I saw it, the film ultimately let itself down at key moments, not least the hilarious Darth Vader/Frankenstein debacle, which so undermined one of the most anticipated beats in the story. Anakin Skywalker, having been mutilated and left for dead by the peaceful, monk-like Obi-Wan Kenobi, is rescued by the Emperor and rebuilt as the ‘more machine now than man’ badass we remember from the original films. When he regains consciousness, he asks how his girlfriend is, in that recognisable voice made oddly whimsical by the vulnerability in his tone, and when informed that she is dead, shouts a big long ‘nooooooooooooo’ and breaks free of his bindings to stagger clumsily across the Emperor’s lab in a wave of snigger-inducing grief. This frustratingly blurs the moment that Anakin Skywalker ceases to be and his evil alter ego takes hold. It seems strange to see the iconic visage of cool, impassive evil attempting to emote. In
Return of the Jedi
, Vader’s true humanity is implied in a few moments of stillness, when we can almost see confusion in his static visage, then witnessed fully just before he dies, the majority of his sentiment delivered with the helmet off.

If I had worked for Lucasfilm at the time, I would have strapped explosives to my body, burst into George’s boardroom and demanded that he rewrite the scene so that the last vestiges of Anakin’s humanity are displayed before the helmet goes on. He lies on the operating table, all but rebuilt, the mask hovering above his face. He wakes, disorientated, looking around, flexing his new cybernetic limbs, scared and confused. He demands to be told what has happened and asks about his wife and even Obi-Wan, clearly not yet fully recalling the events that brought him to this end.

The Emperor then coldly begins to explain, even as the mask begins to lower inexorably towards Anakin’s face. Half concentrating on the Emperor’s words but distracted, terrified by the claustrophobic fate drawing towards him, he becomes still only at the news that his pregnant lover is dead by his hand. Then the weight of emotion vibrates through and the furious, grief-ridden denial escapes his lips as the mask closes over him, muffling his agony into a protracted silence, then we hear that famous breath as he inhales for the first time and Darth Vader is born. Not that I have thought about it that much.

Despite my irrevocably damaged feelings about
Star Wars
and having already seen
Revenge of the Sith
, I jumped at the chance to go to the premiere in London’s Leicester Square, because I had wanted to attend such an event since I was a child and no amount of recent disappointment could eclipse the dreams of the seven-year-old me still filed away in my brain. I wore my Rebel insignia T-shirt and got giddy at the sight of forty imperial storm troopers walking down the red carpet and, in spite of everything, felt a huge surge of affection towards George Lucas when he got up on to the stage and made a short introductory speech.

At the after-show party, I rubbed shoulders with various
Star Wars
alumni, including Peter Mayhew who played Chewbacca (who was in a bad mood – typical Wookiee) and the diminutive Kenny Baker (who made up for it and proved great company). At one point, a friend from Lucasfilm approached David Walliams and myself and asked if we wanted to meet George. Of course we accepted the invitation and followed our contact through the crowd for an audience with his exultedness.

Lucas was deep in conversation with director Ron Howard who, in his days as an actor, had taken the lead in Lucas’s
American Graffiti
before going on to
Happy Days
. Our friend drew Lucas’s attention and informed him of our presence, at which point he turned and looked at me with the weary acceptance of a man about to be gushed all over by another thirty-something fan whose life he had changed. He seemed tired and slightly exasperated and in that second I regretted accepting the offer to meet him, but then luckily something cool happened. Ron Howard grinned at me, shook my hand and said, ‘Oh man, my kids just love your movie!’ I spluttered a thank you, slightly taken aback, and as I chatted to Ron, I noticed George’s expression change from bored to slightly more attentive. Suddenly, I didn’t feel like just another fan; thanks to Ron, I had been elevated to the status of fellow film-maker and as such found myself welcomed into the conversation. George asked about
Shaun of the Dead
and we chatted about film-making, then he said the most interesting thing, something that shed a surprising light on the artist behind the billionaire businessman. He asked if I minded him giving me a piece of advice. He leaned in towards me and said, ‘Just don’t suddenly find yourself making the same film you made thirty years ago.’ In that instance, everything made some kind of sense to me. Here was a man whose only significant failing was the inability to trust anyone else. He had always been a maverick, since he was a young avant-garde film-maker and sought to operate beyond the grip of any conventional means of production. However, a victim of his own colossal success, he had become the very thing he used to rail against and yet, still possessed of a furious self-reliance, had continued to doggedly guard his own creative output even at the expense of the thing itself.

I fully admit that without Jessica, Edgar or producer Nira Park’s significant talent and input,
Spaced
would have been a pale and insubstantial version of what it actually became. As much as you trust yourself in creating a work of artistic entertainment, it is sometimes vital that you find coalition with like-minded people in order to achieve an all-important objectivity, which is impossible to find by yourself. If George had only trusted those around him to nurture and temper his ideas with objective input, he might not only be wealthy but also blissfully content.

It’s a hell of a thing to meet your heroes, let alone find yourself working with them. I have been extremely lucky in this respect and, in true
ESTB
fashion, have found myself working for some of those directors that shaped my tastes as a child. In 2008, while out in LA shooting
Star Trek
for fellow film geek JJ Abrams, I drove down to Giant Studios in Santa Monica to meet Steven Spielberg. It was difficult attempting to summon the concentration required to negotiate the LA freeways while trying to comprehend the hugeness of my impending rendezvous. Steven had recently met with Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish (formerly one half of nineties media teddybearists Adam and Joe), about rewriting the script for his forthcoming film,
Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn
. Edgar had subsequently suggested Steven talk to me as well.