Remaking movies is hardly news in Hollywood; good films and bad films have been remade or “re-imagined” for more than a century, and more often than not, with embarrassing critical and commercial results. What makes today’s announcement that the complete nine-film sci-fi spectacular is going to be done over from the very beginning employing full HIT (holographic image technology) is not yet another studio thinking “multi-tentpole” and ensuring hundreds of industry jobs for years to come, but that the project will be financed and produced by the government of the People’s Republic of China.
“My country and its people have undertaken an incredible quest—to bring an international interpretation to an immortal saga,” declared Zin Wang, the Minister of Culture. “Ours will be the Star Wars for a new time and a new world—the story George Lucas would have told had he been Chinese in the twenty-first century.”
“I have a very bad feeling about this,” said Luke Skywalker. He’s not alone.
“We are disappointed that the Chinese government would choose to imitate George Lucas’ definitive work rather than creating a new, original legend for its people,” said Joanna Sperling, executive vice president of Lucasfilm which has been quashing Hollywood efforts to redo the franchise for more than fifty years.
“It’s the biggest heist in history! And in broad daylight in front of billions of witnesses,” said a long-time Lucasfilm employee promised anonymity. “Clear as day I can see George’s ghost with Anakin, Yoda, and Obi-Wan and he’s not smiling. He’s pissed as hell!”
“There’s nothing Lucasfilm or anybody else can do to stop it, in court or on the street,” said Hollingsworth Stanton, the CEO of International Entertainment Management, a big-time player in Hollywood deal-making. “After more than a hundred years, the copyright has run out and even if it hadn’t, what action could Lucasfilm take? An expensive public relations campaign aimed at discrediting the Chinese government? That’d let loose more electromagnetic pulse than a neutron bomb!”
A boycott could be launched at the grassroots level when the first film opens in 2087, but such an action could set off a lose/lose entertainment trade war. An injunction to stop the beaming of the product into American megaplexes would have the Chinese responding in kind. The US has 300,000,000 potential ticket buyers. The Chinese have two billion. Nobody wants to lose out on those kinds of numbers. If Hollywood is looking for Europe and Latin America to cover its back, it’s living a fantasy.
“All the world is a stage and we want everyone to buy tickets,” goes the business adage. The studios have long been cashing in on Dickens, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Poe, Doyle, and hundreds of other copyright-expired writers and never paid their heirs a dime. Exploitation is the backbone of a heartless business and the studios will stop at nothing to control the show. If Hollywood sees this Chinese production as “a small moon,” they’re about to find out it could be a Death Star aimed directly at them. But the Tinsel Town culture has been caught up in its “center of the universe” hubris for decades on end. In the New Millennium Reality, that’s “a long, long time ago in a Galaxy far, far away.”
“We knew this day would come,” said Roberta Glass, president of the Star Wars Society (SWS), an international club claiming 10 million members and thousands of “re-enactors” who stage hundreds of live shows at conventions around the world. “Our productions have always been multi-racial and always will be. It’s not that SWS is against Star Wars being remade or re-imagined, but reinterpreted. For generation after generation, the child in all of us has watched and played and read about white people saving the Galaxy. Are the Chinese saying, ‘Now it’s our turn and we’re going to do it better?’”
“The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner, now I am the master," said Darth Vader. What goes around comes around.
“This is the best thing to happen to science fiction since the original Star Wars premiered more than a century ago,” said Walter Callahan, the president of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA). “The genre has been in a funk since the start of the New Millennium. Fact continues to show up fiction, especially after the US established a permanent colony on Mars. Now the Chinese have thrown down the gauntlet, challenging American leadership in science fiction. Our writers are determined to usher in a new renaissance and reap untold rewards.”
“No reward is worth this,” said Han Solo. Makes you wonder.
“Stars Wars revolutionized science fiction by not being science fiction,” said John Clute IV, the renowned genre historian. “George Lucas incorporated some of the oldest storytelling staples plus Freud and Jung, mythology master Joseph Campbell with dashes of King Arthur, Gilgamesh, Theseus, Beowulf with obvious nods to Oedipus and Odysseus. Fantasy in a science fiction setting.”
"I've made what I consider the most conventional kind of movie I can possibly make," said George Lucas.
“There’s a strong Asian influence at work in Star Wars, but not from China…Japan!” Clute continued. “Especially the ‘jidai geki’ films of Akira Kurosawa. Is A New Hope a sci-fi fantasy remake of The Hidden Fortress, Kurosawa's classic samurai epic? Flash Gordon plus Buck Rogers, Errol Flynn, World War II films, Westerns, swashbucklers, a litany of adventure elements, but it was Lucas’ down-to-earth American teenage wish fulfillment that brought the genie out of the bottle.”
"All I wanted to say in a simple and straightforward way is that there is a God and there is a good and bad side," said George Lucas.
“Star Wars’ pacing was excellent, but its timing was perfect,” Clute went on. “Coming out on the heels of Watergate scandal and the Vietnam tragedy, this gritty, industrial-strength fairy tale caught the American psyche desperately trying to find its way out of the darkness.”
"I mean, there's a reason this film (A New Hope [1977]) is so popular. It's not that I'm giving out propaganda nobody wants to hear," said George Lucas.
Might the Chinese have other plans? The Communists have never been fully trusted since the birth of the party in Russia more than 250 years ago. Could their retelling of Star Wars be a thinly veiled "conversion by the cinema" plot? Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet party, called film “the most important media of the twentieth century.” Instead of Jung and Campbell, will the Chinese sprinkle in entries from Mao’s Little Red Book and Marx’s Manifesto?
"The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded,” said Obi-Wan. Was he trying to warn us?
“The Chinese may have bitten more than they can chew,” said Barney Clive, the award-winning film reviewer of the New York Times. “As a nine-course meal, Star Wars is best served with the middle three courses eaten first. Jar-Jar Binks is hardly an ideal appetizer. For all their ambition and expertise, however pure their intent, they could wind up with a fire drill on their hands.”
A five-alarmer. What’s missing from this new Star Wars is the new George Lucas—the fierce independent who loathed the studios’ committee approach to filmmaking. Star Wars was his story. The first three films weren’t just mega-hits. They took over the world. Still, Lucas wasn’t satisfied with them and went back and corrected their flaws as he saw them in a ceaseless quest for perfection.
With the second trio of films (Phantom Menace [1999], Attack of the Clones [2001], Revenge of the Sith [2003]). Lucas was creating a detailed backstory. His audience knew how the story would end, but jumped at the chance to go along for the ride.
This led to inevitable disappointment, even rebellion by the most loyal fans. What did they expect? Lucas was ridiculed by critics and almost quit Star Wars. He had more money than anyone in Hollywood and could have been quite content to make small, personal films, love his kids and pursue education projects, but there was no abandoning his life’s obsession. Lucas had created Star Wars and Star Wars had made him. It was as if a siren-like voice called out to him—“I am your father.”
"I was trying to get fairy tales, myths, and religion down to a distilled state, studying the pure form to see how and why it worked," said George Lucas.
The concluding trio (The Fallen Hero [2010], The Republic in Crisis [2013], Victory of the Force [2016]) took the Skywalkers and Jedi heroes on a series of fantastic adventures which brought 1,000 years of peace and prosperity to the Galaxy. What more could anyone want?
With the end of the Star Wars movies, the TV shows, the cartoons, the games and books kept coming and the toys kept selling. All the world kept wanting more. The Force lived on.
"I wanted to make a kids' film that would strengthen contemporary mythology and introduce a kind of basic morality. Nobody's saying the very basic things; they're dealing in the abstract. Everybody's forgetting to tell the kids, 'Hey, this is right and this is wrong,'" said George Lucas.
“Star Wars is not an artistic endeavor for the Chinese, though I’m sure that they will redesign and refit, rearm and recostume the entire epic, it’s an investment,” said Peter Cooper, a Wall Street financial counselor. “As strictly movies, I’d rate the originals from ‘Triple-A blue chip’ all the way down to ‘junk bonds’, but as merchandizing platforms, they were all pure platinum.
“Even figuring in cost overruns for twenty years, the Chinese will be laying out anywhere from five to eight billion dollars in the hope of netting some three hundred to four hundred billion in box office and tie-ins over the next hundred years. When you think of all the new Star Wars toys, books, discs, clothes, games, and whatever else they can stick the logo on---China will monopolize the license and produce everything in-country—that’s millions of jobs!”
“Do or do not. There is no ‘try’,” said Yoda.
“If the films fly,” countered Frank Williams, a veteran investment planner and stock option expert. “States, nations, even blocs of nations have invested taxpayers monies in public and private companies big and small going back centuries as a way of boosting revenue, cutting taxes and reducing unemployment. Not all have paid out. Should the new Star Wars crash and burn, it’ll be a national disgrace the People’s Republic will never live down.”
“Had this been a public offering, I’d be reluctant to recommend buying stock in it,” added Michael Wilson, who’d made and lost billions playing the market. “On the face of it, Star Wars is a sure-fire, can’t-miss brand name, but, and this is the key ingredient, what made the thing work in the first place was the obsessive, uncompromising vision of an individual. That’s what art is. You could feel the unique individuality in Lucas’ work, his soul and spirit in every frame. That’s what separated Star Wars from all the imitators that followed it and failed. Can a bureaucracy create bankable art?”
The definitive question? During the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt invested scarce government funds in a public works program to put food in the mouths of starving American artists and writers. Most of their creations have long since gone to dust, but he may have saved the national culture.
“You are all the missing the point,” said Charles Shuman, noted expert on international affairs and advisor to the White House. “This new Star Wars is not about money or art or even prestige…window dressing…it’s about image!
“China is out to define the future—to stick the rest of us in the past. With Star Wars as their flagship symbol, the People’s Republic will jump to the forefront--The Force will be with them and the Communists will usurp the leadership of the world!”
Do you have a bad feeling about this?
Ekvin Ehaner
(A Chinese-American, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter [‘Two for Taiwan’ 2057] now serves as senior media consultant for the Times-Werner Corporation.)
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