BEFORE: This one premiered in New York tonight (though I can't really say it was a packed house) - so two premieres in the last two weeks, nice! And even though this is a documentary, I can still link from last night - Jay Baruchel was in "Knocked Up" with Seth Rogen, who did the voice of an alien in "Paul", which also starred Simon Pegg, who appears here in some fan-film footage.
THE PLOT: A courtroom debate approach exploring the issues of filmmaking and fanaticism around one of the industry's most famous franchises and its creator.
AFTER: I can't really hope to be impartial here, since in addition to being a huge Star Wars fan, I'm actually IN this film! I was interviewed at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con - actually the film crew wanted to interview my boss, and he had just one Lucas-related anecdote, but he told the documentary's director that they really needed to interview ME, so they did - for about 45 minutes. I riffed on the prequels and "The Phantom Edit", taking care to point out that "Star Wars" had given me direction when I was a pre-teen, made me think about filmmaking as a career for the first time, and that it was the source of much inspiration. But since so many other people made similar points, what they ended up using from my interview, however, was about 10 seconds of me talking about the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special - which is a little like being a Civil War expert, getting interviewed by Ken Burns for several hours, and then realizing that the finished documentary only used your comments about battlefield dysentery. But hey, I'm in a movie! And since the filmmakers recorded about 600 hours of interviews, I'm lucky to be in there at all!
The film uses a LOT of fan-made footage - of course, since it's readily available, and they can only use a tiny amount of real "Star Wars" film footage without paying licensing fees. And there are some important points covered here about whether a filmmaker "owns" his films, or whether they belong to fandom in general. There are fans from the original trilogy who pontificate against the prequel films - who somehow fail to realize that in the 15-year drought between 1983 and 1998, the Star Wars saga didn't really change, but in fact they did. Most adults seem to hate the silliness of the CGI-generated Jar Jar Binks, but I never realized that kids don't seem to mind him that much. Does that mean that I need to be a kid at heart to appreciate him?
And, of course, people point out that people wouldn't hate (parts of) Star Wars films so much, if they didn't love Star Wars so much. As I (also) pointed out in my interview, the opposite of love is not hate, the opposite of love is indifference. People who don't love Star Wars don't watch the films, and they sure don't complain about them so much.
As for the trial, with George Lucas standing accused of his "crimes" against huge-fanity, which include altering the original films and not releasing the versions some of us grew up with, changing whether Han shot first (and thus whitewashing his rogue smuggling character - let's face it, the guy was a drug mule), producing "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" (which some people have equated with raping their childhood - might be a bit harsh) and creating Jar Jar Binks - who's to say? The man has entertained America - doesn't he deserve to also maintain control over the way that those films are viewed?
The film suggests that his early career resembles that of a young rebel, railing against a corrupt Hollywood system - while learning the mystical ways of his bearded mentor, Francis (Obi-Wan) Coppola - so Luke Skywalker = Luke S. = Lucas. But in the later years, in maintaining a strict tyranny over his own media empire, while living in isolation, and perhaps losing faith in his own storytelling power, he might have become more of a Darth Vader type. Perhaps that's a little extreme, but you can be the judge.
Also starring Neil Gaiman, Chris Gore, David Prowse, Jon Stewart, and many more...
RATING: A very biased 7 out of 10 action figures (perhaps it would be a 6 if I weren't in it...)
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