I’m writing a three-part series for ‘Alternate Ending‘ exploring blockbuster movies of the 2000s. It’s a trilogy about trilogies! This is the last entry in the series, which previously covered The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix.
It’s hard to think of a movie (or series of movies) that has been analyzed, criticized, and reconsidered more widely and thoroughly in recent years than the Star Wars prequels (with the exception, perhaps, of The Last Jedi.) The degree to which the internet has dedicated itself to discuss George Lucas’s prequel trilogy since The Phantom Menace came out in 1999 is, frankly, ridiculous; but it’s also catnip for a series about the great movie trilogies of the 2000s. So far, we’ve looked at The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix movies, and in both cases I’ve approached them both as important historical artifacts and as examples of great, idiosyncratic blockbuster filmmaking. All of this gets a little trickier when talking about the prequels. As far as the filmmaking is concerned, I can hardly make a coherent case – not because there’s no art to be found in them (they are, at the very least, very “idiosyncratic” movies), but because the conversation about the artistic quality of the movies has reached a point in which everything has been said from every angle and ad nauseam. The historical case is easier to make. The prequels mark an incredibly influential step in the development of both computer generated effects and the use of digital cameras, both of which are cornerstones of Hollywood filmmaking in the 2020s. Even more remarkable, though, is the historical importance of the way in which the movies were received by movie-goers, fans, and the culture at large. The response to these movies may very well be the most important shift in film culture form the 20th to the 21st Century. The story of how George Lucas went from being perceived as a creative genius to an out-of-touch eccentric, a story that ended with Lucas willingly selling his creation to one of the biggest media conglomerates, encapsulates the trajectory of American blockbuster filmmaking almost too perfectly.
A recapitulation of events is probably unnecessary, but for formality’s sake, let me do a brief synopsis of the history of one George Walton Lucas Jr. As an up-and-coming filmmaker in the early seventies, Lucas tried to leverage the goodwill he had amassed for directing the very successful American Graffiti to finance a science fiction movie that was meant to be an homage to the space opera serials of his youth. The result was a little movie called Star Wars, which not only became a huge hit, but the highest grossing movie of all time. Though the movie was distributed by 20th Century Fox, Lucas retained the rights to the film, which allowed him to become extremely rich by making two sequels (and thus cementing the idea of the “trilogy” as an ideal form for epic cinematic storytelling), and more importantly, by selling lots and lots of merchandise. By the mid-nineties, the centrality of Star Wars in the cultural discourse had subsided, but a visionary Lucas, encouraged by the development of computer generated visual effects, decided to write and direct a “prequel” trilogy, depicting the backstory that leads into his original trilogy. These movies were huge commercial successes, but critical disappointments… to say the least.
Coco Hits New York 