Retrospective: 超時空要塞マクロス (Super Dimension Fortress MACROSS). Part One.

Introduction.
Part Two.

The Macross

Let's begin an analysis of Super Dimension Fortress Macross in earnest, beginning with a broad overview of the plot.

Fair warning.  In this analysis THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.  If you haven't yet seen the series, you have been warned and this analysis is written with the assumption that the reader will proceed upon his or her own discretion.  If you have seen the series, by all means, please continue reading.

PLOT OVERVIEW
The series opens with the crash-landing of an alien warship on South Ataria Island in a remote part of the western Pacific Ocean.  Earth is in the midst of a world war but the appearance f this alien vessel quickly unites mankind under the auspices of a powerful United Nations, which forms the U.N. Spacy.  Over ten years, the ship is rebuilt and remodeled, its technologies reverse-engineered, and is christened the Macross.  To support the massive undertaking of repairing and examining the ship and its technologies (including a spacefolding FTL drive), an enormous city springs into existence surrounding the vessel and occupying most of the island.

The story begins in earnest with the celebrations to launch the vessel.  It is here that we are introduced to most of the characters that will dominate the narrative.  Captain Bruno J. Global, an Italian submarine captain who had fought for the United Nations during the unification wars and whose appearance exemplifies the "Mustache Pete" stereotype.  His first officer is First Lieutenant Hayase Misa, a Japanese woman whose father, Admiral Hayase Takashi, was Global's superior during the wars.  Her coworker, companion and close confidante is Claudia LaSalle, an African American bridge officer.  The leader of the Skull Squadron, Roy Focker, is a heavily drinking, smoking, womanizing, American cowboy who started out as a stunt pilot before joining the United Nations forces during the U.N. Wars.  He is in a romantic relationship with LaSalle and hosts his young friend Ichijyo Hikaru, the son of the air circus owner for whom Roy flew before the wars.  Ichijyo Hikaru is introduced as an energetic, brash Japanese pilot of age 16 with a record of seven championship awards for stunt piloting.  Finally, Lynn Minmay is a 15-year-old, half-Chinese, half-Japanese girl from Yokohama who moved to South Ataria Island with dreams of becoming a star.

Britai's flagship

The celebrations and launch preparations are interrupted by the arrival of the Zentraedi, an alien race of giants who are searching for the crashed vessel since it is identified as belonging to the Supervision Army, an enemy force with whom the Zentraedi are at war.  Their commander, Britai Kridanik, orders an assault to capture the vessel, brushing aside all orbital defense platforms encircling the earth and bombarding the island before launching ground and air attacks.  Hikaru and Minmay are immediately swept up into the events and find themselves, along with many of the survivors, as refugees aboard the Macross when a space-fold operation goes wrong.  The Macross, with its precious cargo of civilian refugees, then battles its way across the solar system back to Earth.  Once it arrives, the crew and refugees alike must navigate the complexities of government policy and military command that wants to mitigate the impact of the alien attacks on Earth and use the vessel to distract the Zentraedi away from the home planet.

Left-to-right: Lynn Minmay, Ichijyo Hikaru, and Hayase Misa.

Throughout the story, interpersonal drama unfolds in the form of a love triangle between Hikaru, Minmay, and Misa.  Hikaru is initially attracted to Minmay who, although she finds herself drawn to Hikaru, is ultimately career driven and extremely capricious due to her youth.  However, the 19-year-old Misa and 16-year-old Hikaru, despite the intense dislike the two have for one-another, gradually find solace in companionship.  As the series progresses, years pass and they grow older and more experienced and mature.  As they age, Hikaru gradually detaches himself from Minmay and finds in Misa a more sophisticated and meaningful relationship.

THEMATIC DEPTH
What sets Macross apart from other "real robot" anime?  Mobile Suit Gundam arguably has a sophisticated plot full of intrigue and illustrative of the horror of war (especially involving advanced robotic technology and futuristic weaponry).  There are a great deal of similarities between the two, as well.  Hikaru appears to be much like Amro--both are excellent pilots who become leaders.  Both the Macross and the White Base are iconic vessels that serve as major targets for the enemy to capture or destroy.

Mobile Suit Gundam

The similarities are mostly surface.  Macross actually subverts many of the elements that are prominent in Mobile Suit Gundam.  In addition, Macross isn't as unambiguous about war.  Where Mobile Suit Gundam simply depicts war as bad, Macross demonstrates how war can often be unavoidable.  Nevertheless, Macross still tries to provide a positive message by exploring how misunderstanding and lack of communication can create military conflict and give methods by which negotiation can lead to peace.  Mobile Suit Gundam is far more pessimistic in its outlook.

The characters in Macross are multifaceted.  It is difficult not to care about them and find oneself deeply engaged by the narrative.  Actions have consequences.  People live, love and die.  They are beautifully, wonderfully flawed in the most human and believable ways.  Characters have real motivations that go beyond simply winning the war.  Unlike Mobile Suit Gundam, the characters of Macross have lives outside of the conflict.

The war against the Zentraedi is a catalyst for much of the drama but it is by no means a mere situational MacGuffin.  It forces characters to analyze themselves and become more introspective.  It provides a vehicle for experience.  They change, grow, and develop as people.  Kawamori Shoji invested a great deal of time and effort into creating these characters, their needs, desires, hopes, and motivations.

The narrative of the series is also challenging to the viewer.  There is no clear-cut good-guy/bad-guy dynamic.  Kawamori refuses to spoon-feed the viewer with a morality.  Instead, he uses the themes to make the viewer think.  One may not agree with the choices certain characters make.  They mess up, fail, fall down and occasionally some don't climb back up.  There is heroism and sacrifice, tragedy, foolishness and tunnel vision, blind ignorance, love, appreciation for beauty, loss, and triumph.

THE HERO
Ichijyo Hikaru is the hero of the tale.  He starts out as a kid.  Although he is an experienced air-show pilot he is unready to deal with the realities of air-combat and warfare.  Nor is he prepared to pilot a transforming mech.  He stands out as a protagonist because he, like us, is thrown into this conflict.  The viewer can identify with him very quickly.  He's not "the One," a Newtype, or the Kwizatz Haderach.  He's just a kid who gets swept up by events far beyond his control.  Hikaru is forced to adapt and grow in order to survive.  His journey becomes our journey through the series and we experience the story, the love, the loss, and the lessons vicariously through him.

He stands in direct contrast to Amro in Mobile Suit Gundam.  Amro is a Newtype, a sort of psychic whiz-kid at piloting robots.  Amro's alter-ego is Char Aznable and the two engaged in one of the most legendary feuds in all of anime.  Enraged at the destruction the Zeon forces are wreaking, he jumps into the cockpit of a Gundam, barely glances at the instructions and immediately starts piloting in a combat situation.  He is entirely untrained and untested, yet he successfully defeats the enemy Zacks.

View the scene here.

Hikaru's first experience is quite the opposite.  In fact, it's terrifying.  Hikaru is absolutely overwhelmed.  He ended up piloting a Valkyrie fighter entirely by accident and ends up escorted to safety by his mentor, Roy Focker.  Even this escort barely rescues him and he is instructed to transform in order to avoid colliding with the Macross.  He may have the skills and training to fly a plane but he is entirely incapable of piloting a bipedal robot, crashing into buildings and causing a lot of damage.

Amro is special by having an innate talent.  Hikaru isn't special.  He's entirely mundane.  He's a human.  The fact that he becomes an ace fighter pilot is not through virtue of being a Newtype like Amro but a result of hard work, training, courage, and willpower.

Next time, we'll take a look at the circumstances of war and its impact on Macross as a major theme.

Retrospective: 超時空要塞マクロス (Super Dimension Fortress MACROSS). Introduction.

Part One
Part Two.

Several years ago, I wrote this post, discussion the value of 超時空要塞マクロス(Choujikuu Yousai Makurosu = Super Dimension Fortress Macross) as a science-fiction drama.  If you've already read that post, please bear with me because I'm going to cover some similar ground.

My discussion of Macross inevitably begins with Robotech.  For many Generation X'ers who were children during the 1980s, including myself, our introduction to Japanese アニメ (anime = "animation") was through the various work of Carl Macek (who passed away in 2010).  Macek is either a hero or a villain depending on to whom you speak.  While Macek did a lot to bring アニメ to North America and other Anglophonic countries, this often required mash-ups, heavy editing, and sometimes even complete and total rewrites of entire series.  The most notorious (and, indeed, his first big) project was Robotech for Harmony Gold, which took three unrelated anime, 超時空要塞マクロス (Super Dimension Fortress Macross), 超時空騎団サザンクロス (Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross), and 機甲創世記モスピーダ (Genesis Climber Mospeada), combined them into three consecutive generations and changed names, dialogue, and even edited out certain scenes in order to make the show more palatable to an audience primarily composed of American and Canadian children (and possibly their parents).

Carl Macek

Interestingly enough, Robotech was not the only program to receive this treatment.  Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years was a mash-up of two separate anime, 宇宙海賊キャプテンハーロック (Space Pirate Captain Harlock) and 新竹取物語 1000年女王 (Queen Millennia).  Both were taken from manga series written by 松本 零士 (Matsumoto Leiji), the genius behind 宇宙戦艦ヤマト (Space Battleship Yamato) and 銀河鉄道999 (Galaxy Express 999).  The reason for these mash-ups revolved around syndication regulations in the United States--in order to air a weekday television series, there needed to be at least 65 episodes (essentially a minimum-length run of five episodes per week over the course of thirteen weeks). マクロス (Macross) had 36 episodes, サザンクロス (Southern Cross) had 24, and モスピーダ (Mospeada) had 25.  Individually, they didn't have enough--combined they had 85 episodes, well above the minimum requirement for U.S. syndication.

The purpose behind the heavy editing was two-fold.  First, Macek had to rewrite names and dialogue enough to explain the progressive generations and put them into a narrative framework that would make sense.  Thus, for example, the Zor in サザンクロス (Southern Cross) were rewritten as the Robotech Masters, the overlords of the Zentraedi from マクロス (Macross).  In addition, dialogue and visual content had to be edited to make the show fit for children, since in the 1980s it was assumed that cartoons were strictly for kids.  Thus, dialogue that related to mature themes (such as sex or suicide) had to be sanitized for American child audiences.  The brief and occasional nudity also had to be excised.

What was shocking, however, to me as a kid, were the abundance of mature themes and ideas that persisted.  Characters died and the price of war was high.  There was a continuous narrative that flowed from episode-to-episode.  This was during a time when G.I. Joe and The Transformers were self-contained, independent stories and it mattered little if you missed a few episodes.  Robotech was the first show that I made certain I watched daily as a child.  If I missed episode 13 of G.I. Joe, I could still pick up and watch episode 14 the next day because Cobra Commander would be hatching a completely new and unrelated plan.  Missing an episode of Robotech meant that I missed out on character and plot development.

In addition, when a plane was shot down in Robotech, there wasn't always a parachute to let the censors know the pilot escaped.  People died, good and bad.  Robotech was about war and the cost of war.  Robotech challenged me far more than the other television cartoons that I viewed and it inspired me to a wider and more complex world of stories and storytelling.

I'm not writing this series of blog entries, however, to discuss Robotech.  I'm writing a retrospective that will analyze and review 超時空要塞マクロス (Super Dimension Fortress Macross).  To that end, I want to discuss first how Macross came about and then, in subsequent posts, explore the narrative elements and themes of the series.

Kawamori Shoji

The Genesis of Macross
Macross was the brainchild of 河森 正治 (Kawamori Shoji), an animator, designer, and conceptual artist who began working in the Japanese animation industry during the late 1970s.  His influence as a designer is extremely heavy--he's done designs for Matsumoto Leiji's Space Battleship Yamato and even had a hand in creating a number of Generation 1 Transformers.  If you've seen Eureka 7, the Patlabor movies, the Ghost in the Shell film, Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, Outlaw Star, or Vision of Escaflowne, you've seen mechanical designs by Kawamori.  Kawamori got his big start working as an intern and assistant artist at スタジオぬえ (Studio Nue), which produced Matsumoto's Space Battleship Yamato in 1974.  Kawamori would eventually come to helm 1996's 天空のエスカフローネ (Vision of Escaflowne) at Studio Nue before branching off to create many science-fiction and fantasy anime that would come out during the new century, particularly 2001's 地球少女アルジュナ (Earth Maiden Arjuna), 2005's 創聖のアクエリオン (Genesis of Aquarion), and 2012's AKB∞48.  However, he always seems to return to the universe of Macross from time-to-time, revisiting it with Macross Plus, Macross 7, Macross Zero, and most recently, Macross Frontier.

Macross is a foray into what is known as the リアルロボット ("real robot") genre in Japan.  The basic idea of this genre centers on somewhat explainable scientific and technological advances that make possible the construction and piloting of giant robots.  The first true real robot series is usually considered to be Mobile Suit Gundam, and Kawamori’s Choujikuu Yousai Makurosu helped to better define the tropes and characteristics of the genre.  This genre is noteworthy for its departure from other giant robot shows like Voltron because the core concepts are more realistic, don’t rely upon gimmicks like “blazing swords” and “monsters of the week,” focus on weapons that are known to be technologically possible, don’t have special attacks that are activated by voice-command, and so on.

What first inspired Kawamori to create his own "real robot" series was the immense success of 機動戦士ガンダム (Mobile Suit Gundam) during the late 1970s.  Combined with his experience working on Space Battleship Yamato and the immense success such space-opera programs had, Kawamori drew up plans for a space-opera of his own.  This time, he would incorporate a great number of themes absent from those series.  He would use the backdrop of interstellar war to galvanize the action but the real drama would always be interpersonal.  Thus, Kawamori teamed up with Studio Nue colleague Kazutaka Miyatake for mech design and Artland’s Haruhiko Mikimoto for character design.  By 1982 the result was an epic story of the power of music and love amidst the tragedy of futuristic space-war.

In Part One, I will give a brief overview of the plot for 超時空要塞マクロス (Super Dimension Fortress Macross) and initiate discussion of its more salient themes as well as occasionally compare it to other popular "real robot" anime, especially Mobile Suit Gundam.

The Mass Effect Debacle: My 2¢, PART THREE

Finally, The Rock has come back to Mass Effect 3's ending!

So, after finishing this semester's work, I've decided to finish what I've started regarding the ending of the Mass Effect saga.  I review the debate in Part One and I analyze the endings in Part Two.

Well, I'll begin with the statement that I've rethought a lot of what I had originally said in Part Two.  Indeed, I've come to the conclusion that I was wrong on several points, especially the point that the sameness of the ending invalidates the idea of choice being one of the major thematic elements of the game.  It doesn't.  No, the sameness of the cut-scene endings is not ideal.  Yes, it is lazy.  However, it does not ruin the experience nor does it invalidate the idea that choice matters.  I also withdraw my statement that Mass Effect and its ending fail as art.  It was a hasty conclusion.

After reviewing the climax of Mass Effect 3, discussing it with a few people, and refining my own ideas, I believe that the biggest problem with the Mass Effect 3 finale is how the dialogue with the Star Child fails to really explore the various complex themes with which the series wrestles.  However, these ideas are still touched upon in the dialogue, albeit ever-so-briefly.

However, even before I had rethought my statements and positions regarding Mass Effect 3, I still felt that the ReTake Mass Effect movement was extremely flawed and wrongheaded.  Indeed, the more I think about it, the more I end up agreeing with David Faraci of BadAssDigest.  Although I don't feel the ending is superb, I think that it does a good job of closing the story of Shepard.

See, Shepard's story is BioWare's story, not the players' story.  The player has some narrative input, making the tale more interactive.  However, at its core, the story does not belong solely to the player.  The players that want a new ending (or endings) absolutely do have an attitude of entitlement.  The more I consider it, the more I realize that the climax of Mass Effect 3 simply soared over their heads.  What they're asking for is totally and completely unnecessary.  As it stands, the Mass Effect saga is over, Shepard's story is complete, the thematic ideas regarding free will, determinism, existentialism, and dialectic are all resolved the moment the player chooses which path they will take, Green, Blue, or Red.  What matters here is not the consequences of the decision, but the decision itself.  At the resolution of each ending, the galaxy will be irrevocably different.

The problems of continuity (why doesn't the destruction of the Mass Relays destroy the systems they're in, why is the Normandy fleeing from an explosion, what happens to all those stranded in the Sol system, etc.) are all nit-picky nerd-rage that fails to see the big picture.  The forest is lost for all of the trees.  I'm reminded of MovieBob's review of Cabin in the Woods and the viewers' reactions demonstrating their inability to really think at all.  Who cares what happened to the characters?  They're only part of what's going on!  The ending broadens the focus onto the big, complex, philosophical ideas that underpin the entire series of games.  If you want to see everybody dancing and the ghosts of warriors past gazing on approvingly, go watch Star Wars.  Mass Effect, on the other hand, is striving to be good, meaty, complex science-fiction by dragging your attention from the nuts-and-bolts details to the immense, cosmic problems.  It puts the arbitration of those gigantic issues into the hands of one, single, human being and bids us judge.  That, by itself, should make us sit back and say, "Whoa!"

The people who want to ReTake the series have no appreciation for what's been done.  Even if I agreed that the entire thing was a train wreck, I'd want it to still stand as an example of how not to screw up an ending.  But now that I've realized just how elegant, though not perfect, the entire ending is and how it faces up to the big, complex existential issues it raises, I can't help but have very little respect for the ReTake movement.  They missed the point entirely.

NOTE:  Although he's not stupid and he's got some interesting information about the original script outlines, this guy is a great example of someone who just doesn't get it.  He's totally hung-up on having this long, detailed ending that takes attention away from the big questions.  He's absolutely focused on the characters and their interactions and completely missed the deep, existential and dialectic issues that the ending has raised.  He wants a typical "good video game ending."  As I listened to him describe his ending, I just put my head in my hand and sat in disbelief.  His ending is mundane, pedestrian, prosaic, and ultimately what everybody wants.  But it would absolutely ruin Mass Effect worse than what everyone thinks the current ending does.  If this is what the Mass Effect players want, then I honestly think they 1) truly do not understand narrative and storytelling, 2) do not understand how to think about a narrative, and 3) have tastes that are totally ruined by Hollywood.

The Mass Effect Debacle: My 2¢, PART TWO

In the first part of this essay, I discussed the origins and some of the current themes in the ongoing debate/debacle/scandal regarding the ending(s) to Mass Effect 3.  Here, I discuss my reaction to the ending(s).  In the third part, I will give my opinion on the fan reactions and the Retake Mass Effect movement.

First, I want to state the obvious.  I watched the various ending cut scenes both separately and all together at the same time.  They are all essentially the same ending with only minor divergences.  Someone may be tempted to say that the devil is in the details.  Not this time.  This is one ending with slight variations in order to mimic variety.

Secondly, I want to point out that I've watched numerous commentaries on the endings and even read Shamus Young's column on The Escapist.  I recommend it.  I also think that Bioware didn't necessarily lie about the ending, they just employed effective marketing (not necessarily ethical marketing--welcome to dealing with business majors).  It can be argued that there were six endings--would that hold up in a court of law?  I don't know, but they can try to rationalize it.  Advertising lies all the time.  Go watch 1990s Crazy People.  There's the implicit warning: caveat emptor--buyer beware.

Now, I want to tackle something a bit more important--the artistic merit of the Mass Effect 3 ending.  Frankly, the ending is an artistic failure.  It is the product of hubris.  The writers of the ending reportedly did not subject it to peer review like they had everything else in the games' development.  They've revealed themselves to be incredibly arrogant regarding the artistic merit of the ending, refuse to change it despite the outcry, and are only releasing DLC that will explain and contextualize the ending for fans and provide closure in a half-hearted attempt at appeasement.  However, when analyzing the actual ending, the actual artistic merit of the ending can be identified but the ending is marred by the sloppiness of its scripting and the laziness of the writers.  The cut-scene ending is incapable of actually situating the designers' themes and arguments in any meaningful manner.  It has this rushed, impatient feeling, as if it is in a hurry to get to the credits.  Couple with the fact that all of the endings are essentially one single ending with minor differences and you have a recipe for artistic failure.  There is absolutely no love, emotion, or real rumination upon the human condition--and this last point is something that I have to really emphasize.  There is no substantial challenge or question posed to the player regarding the human condition.  They make a half-hearted attempt at doing so and they fail.  Narrative art (i.e. literature) functions by giving us the ability to consider at least one aspect of the human condition critically.  The Mass Effect 3 ending fails to achieve this.

This is not to say that it is not art.  What I am saying here is very distinct: I'm not saying the Mass Effect 3 ending isn't art, what I'm saying is that the Mass Effect 3 ending is an artistic failure.  There's a slight difference and in this case the devil is in the details because upon this statement depends the actual framing and meaning of the conversation.

Not only does the ending fail as art, but it fails as science-fiction.  Science fiction is a legitimate branch of literature that deals with the future and ruminates upon the moral, ethical, and humanistic dilemmas that technological advancement present.  It should come as no surprise that Jules Verne and H.G. Wells helped to birth the genre during the Industrial Revolution, when technological advancement was outpacing the intellectuals' abilities to consider the human responses to such advancements.  Instead of dealing with current issues, science fiction attempts to predict advancement, stay ahead of the curve, and wrestle with difficult questions regarding the human condition in hypothetical situations that have not yet occurred.

The Mass Effect series displays these traits right up until the very ending.  Once the star child emerges into the narrative, however, all of this is completely thrown out of the window and the creators thrust us into The Epic of Gilgamesh.  Moral agency, free will, and humanism are all eschewed in favor of a heavy-handed preachy and ultimately unsatisfying ending.  It's similar to my complaints regarding Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos.

First, let me explain what is not wrong with the endings.  The lack of denouement is not a weakness or a problem.  We do not need it.  They're not really a part of the overarching issues that the ending is trying to tackle.  This is an artistic decision that is designed to put focus on the broader, more complex issues.  If we get to see each character's resolution, our attention is drawn away from the difficult discourse regarding evolution, survival, and dialectic.  Indeed, the brevity of the resolution is actually one of the things that the design team did right.  This, however, needed to be tempered by a sense of payoff for the player.  A longer, more complex and challenging climax would offset a lot of player frustration with the ending.

The other thing that they did right was to emphasize the dialectic struggle of the game.  Essentially, the question is "What form of life should inherit the galaxy?"  If the biological species in Mass Effect represent an existential thesis and the synthetic life-forms represent an existential antithesis, then the "Green Ending" represents a synthesis.  If you chose the "Green Ending," congratulations, you've just selected the Hegelian dialectic writ large.  The war against the Reapers and Geth was essentially a deliberative period and you, the player, designated a sort of union.  Go read Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx/Engles, and Derrida.  If your brain doesn't melt, I will applaud you.

The climax makes apparent that there's an existential, dialectical struggle going on.  The star child is engaging in thought experiments on a galactic scale.  This is incredibly poignant.  The fact that we're given the decision as to how to resolve this thought experiment is also magnificently powerful.  The fact that the star child exists introduces an epistemological problem for the player--what's the factual reality about this war against the Reapers?  Is it for our survival or something else?  What does the star child mean when he says we'll be preserved?  Is chaos a moral wrong, as the star child seems to believe it is?

The cut-scene ending, however, fails to deliver on the results of the choice the player makes.  This is absolutely damning of the entire affair because it nullifies not only the impact of player agency in the game but also the narrative, epistemological, and existential power that is introduced by revealing that this is all one gigantic experiment in dialectics.  Again, there is no payoff.  The design team had said they originally had the star child explain everything to the player but then decided that there was a lot of things that the player didn't need to know.  I accept that there are mysteries unsolved and questions unanswered--that's fine.  Indeed, depending on how it's handled, those enigmas can even enhance the experience of an ending.  However, there are enigmas upon which the ending depends in order for it to maintain narrative coherency.

I guess I'm damning the ending with faint praise.

Elements of the ending were certainly inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The Star Child in 2001 and the godlike boy at the finale of Mass Effect 3 are definitely artistically tied.  However, the god child is not the object or result of the game as it is in Kubric's and Clarke's masterpiece.  In 2001, the Star Child is the object of David Bowman's surrealistic and abstract journey--the unknown, unseen, and incredibly highly evolved entities evolve Bowman into something more similar to themselves.  The protagonist is humanity as a whole and the objective for Clarke and Kubric is to demonstrate our future and our evolution into something greater.

If evolution is the objective of Mass Effect 3, then it is actually stated incredibly poorly.  A deep, thoughtful analysis of 2001 is confronted with the Monolith from the very beginning--our australopithecus ancestors are gently pushed by the Monolith on their first steps toward critical thought and creative problem-solving, the very elements that make us human.  It is poignant that homicide is one of the side-effects of this.  The desolation of Africa, bereft of cities or development, is displaced by a ballet of orbital stations and spacecraft as humanity has achieved the ultimate zenith of homo sapiens' potential.  Into this milieu the Monolith re-emerges, this time on the Moon, and beckons our curious selves to evolve into the next step.

If the choices and struggles in Mass Effect 3 are designed to present the flip-side to this coin--the fear of the unknown, the xenophobia and distrust of the "other," and the struggle to maintain homeostasis in the comfort of remaining simply homo sapiens--all couched in a situation where the player actually believes he's fighting for the survival of physical and biological life in the galaxy, then there's some serious artistic merit here!  The potential is staggering.  The creators, writers, and designers of the Mass Effect saga have engaged our primal, less-evolved cave-man faculties and convinced us that we're the good guys.  Instead of 2001, we thought we were playing Babylon 5!  All of a sudden, these existential and dialectic questions are being thrown at us at the ending and we're faced with the sort of choice we never expected we'd have to make!

The problem is if this is what the designers were after, it's not spelled out enough.  The Mass Effect saga hasn't employed the same narrative conventions as 2001.  Kubric used film to tell a story in which humanity is the protagonist and the taciturn David Bowman is a stand-in for all mankind.  You need to pay attention to 2001 because dialogue was not the primary vehicle for storytelling, image was.  In Mass Effect, dialogue was equally (if not more) important than image in telling the story.  There was little or no image or dialogue pertaining to human evolution at the end.

However, the star child simply doesn't have enough dialogue with Shepard, doesn't describe the purpose behind what he's doing well enough, to make anything actually matter.  When confronted by the star child, Shepard basically has as much knowledge about what's going on as he would have had the star child never materialized in the first place.  The only difference is, now the door's been cracked a few millimeters into the 2001 evolution question and the dialectic experimentation theme.  But a few millimeters is not enough.  At least leave the door a foot ajar.

I'm reminded of the ending to The Matrix Reloaded, where Neo encounters the Architect.  Granted, the Architect represents heavy-handed philosophical wankery of the most poserish and pedantic caliber.  The star child doesn't.  However, the brevity of the scene is simply too short.  The star child insists that organics have choice, "more than they deserve," and then puts the decision regarding how to deal with the Reapers in Shepard's hands.  Therein is the thread that the designers needed to expand--the moral authority that the star child represents and the implications as to where the star child, the Catalyst, gets his morality.

One of the purposes of society and the ultimate dilemma of free will is the very struggle between order and chaos.  We surrender our freedoms willingly in order to live together in a society and avoid the Hobbesian nightmare world.  The star child seems to imply that the "chaos" that organic life represents is this sort of conundrum writ large--where does the good of the individual end and the good of all begin and vice-versa.  This spectrum is dealt with in the series, but the resolution of this very human puzzle is relegated to one or two lines.  So, too, is the inevitability of synthetic and organic life in perpetual conflict--this is relegated to a single line.  I'd be tempted to argue that this entirely ignores Asimov's Three Laws, but the star child seems to be the embodiment of the Zeroth Law.  While this is interesting, it's another idea that's discarded without adequate expansion or discussion by the final dialogue.

This is all nit-picking, so far.  The dialogue with the star child is only the tip of the iceberg and it, alone, doesn't condemn the entire existential dialectic upon which the ending has come to rest.  The decision that Shepard is faced with is excellent and reflective of the very meaningful premise of the series.

The agency of choice is nullified by the sameness of the cut-scene endings.  What was needed was a far more conclusive exposition of the very existential results of Shepard's choices producing greater variety in the endings.  One of the basic tenets of narrative structures is to provide a reward or payoff for being the audience.  There needs to be some sense of satisfaction.  The player's thirst needs to be sated in some manner.  The brevity of the ending is essentially a cop-out--the uniformity of the endings cheapens the experience even further.

The build-up to the ending should have included cut-scenes that demonstrate the impact of the player's choices as the great battle for Earth is joined.  This was Bioware's opportunity to stun and amaze us with incredible space-battles, futuristic ground combat on a titanic scale, and a sense of grandeur like a Cecil B. DeMille epic set in space.  What we should have seen was the greatest space battle ever put on a screen.

Similarly, our decisions should impact what we see once Shepard makes his ultimate choice--Green, Blue, or Red.  I understand that decisions made in the game determine which endings are made available.  That's great.  However, the sameness of all three completely undermines our choice.  The payoff is gone.  Of the three red, two blue, and one green ending we're given, the differences that our decisions in-game have made are so minor, so forgettable, so inconsequential as to minimize the very value of free will in the narrative.  Basically, if Bioware is making a case for determinism and fatalism, they're doing it in an extremely heavy-handed and brutal fashion without any real substance or introspection, Zeus-like in the arbitrariness of where they fling their thunderbolts.

As for the Indoctrination Theory, given the coherence of the ending, I'd say that this theory is a product of over-rationalization on the part of fans.  This is not 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン (Neon Genesis Evangelion).  The ending isn't so full of abstraction and intertwining plot threads and semiotic notions.  Indeed, the entire game is presented incredibly straight-forward in comparison to Eva.  Indeed, Eva's ambiguous ending was largely the bi-product of Hideaki Anno's self-reflection after emerging from a deep depression, although rumors that Gainax was running out of money (resulting in increasingly rudimentary animation culminating in rough still-frame shots).  This ambiguity made the ending incredibly open-ended (both of the TV and of the film endings), especially since it was entirely psychological, leading to a plethora of interpretations.

It's also worthwhile to mention the lack of artistic integrity among the developers in designing elements of Mass Effect 3.  This image demonstrates the sloppiness and lack of creativity regarding their ending.

In sum: the sloppiness of the final cut-scene's composition and execution which is why the end is an artistic failure.  I understand some arguments that say it is because Shepard's story is at an end and we're not supposed to see the consequences of his choice.  I understand but disagree because the ending violates basic narrative demands for a richer exploration of the ramifications of his choice.

Next, I'll discuss my opinion on the Retake Mass Effect movement.

The Mass Effect Debacle: My 2¢, PART ONE

Unless you've been living under a rock when it comes to videogames, you are probably aware of the massive backlash against Bioware regarding the storyline and ending of Mass Effect 3.  If you aren't, I'll give you a quick synopsis: Many fans/customers who purchased the game felt disappointed by the lack of impact previous decisions had on the storyline and downright robbed by the lackluster endings to the game.  They went so far as to create a Retake Mass Effect 3 organization that has actually resulted in Bioware announcing an extended cut for the game.  Even the Better Business Bureau has weighed in on the subject.  The protestors/disgruntled fans/cheated customers claimed victory but numerous voices have warned that this may not have achieved the results for which they were hoping.

In the midst of all of this, a few prominent voices on The Escapist have entered the fray, essentially on opposing sides.  They've not really engaged one-another in direct debate, instead choosing to respectfully attack the issue itself as opposed to one-another's arguments.  I'm talking about Jim Sterling and Bob "MovieBob" Chipman.

Jim Sterling at first wasn't a supporter of the Retake Mass Effect movement.  He did note that the very existence of such a powerful backlash, comparable to the backlash against Lucas' hack-scripted Star Wars prequels, was a sign that games were actually becoming significant as a storytelling medium.  After reviewing the endings to Mass Effect 3, he actually came around to sympathizing with the protestors and arguing in support of their grievances.  He asserts that "art has no rules," therefore it is constantly fluid and changing.  He also seems to agree that the ending to Mass Effect 3 is, in no way, artistic or deep.

MovieBob's position is that the Retake Mass Effect movement is threatening the artistic integrity of video games as a storytelling medium.  Bob sums up his position in this post pretty well:

I don't accept the premise that gaming is fundamentally different from film or literature because of the manner of user-engagement, nor that choose-your-own-adventure structuring and letting you adjust the visual look of a main character makes Mass Effect some kind of sea-change, NOR that any of this represents some kind of important shift in the relationship of audience to artist - and if it does, it's a bad shift. Good art and good stories are not made via democracy. The artist is the superior of his/her audience, with the sole caveat that they may choose to render said artist powerless by withholding support. You take that away and all we've got is made-to-order bullshit, which is where cultural stagnation comes from. People who only ever get what they WANT will never discover what the didn't know they NEEDED.

Also, I still say that the precedent this will set is one of the worst things that could possibly happen to this increasingly-ridiculous industry - YES, it's possible that Bioware's back-to-the-drawing-board approach will yield a "better" ending for this ONE game... but that won't be the end of it. This being so high-profile will have an automatically-disasterous effect on fans, telling them that if they throw a tantrum they'll get their way, and on publishers especially: they're already disgustingly risk-averse, and "Remember What Happened To Bioware!" will be a convenient cudgel to bludgeon the ambitions of any creative team that wants to do something risky or unconventional in the medium...

His two videos on ScrewAttack back up his argument rather well.  It's well thought-out, articulated, and defended, just like Jim Sterling's.  In his Game Overthinker Episode 68: "Crass Effect," he argues that in order for storytelling to be good the story needs to be controlled by the storyteller and that the players/protesters have an attitude of entitlement over their control of the game's story.  The players/protesters have stepped out-of-line by claiming Bioware owes them a new ending.  In his Game Overthinker Episode 69: "AfterMass," Bob explains that by caving to fan demands, Bioware is setting a dangerous precedent that threatens the artistic possibilities of the medium of video gaming.  In addition, he identifies a few films where focus-groups and test-audiences actually ruined films because they didn't like endings that had far more artistic merit in favor of bubble-gum endings that didn't challenge them (I Am Legend is discussed in detail).

But all this dialogue rests on one single premise: Mass Effect 3's ending is bad.  This begs the question--is it?  Objectively, artistically, is the ending actually bad or did people fail to understand it?  Is it challenging in a way that I Am Legend's original and alternate ending was, thereby resulting in confused and illiterate plebians demanding a more pedestrian ending where the good guys win and dance with Ewoks?  Or is the ending simply underwhelming, poorly presented, anti-climactic, and overall empty?

Devin Faraci of BadAssDigest found the ending to Mass Effect 3 to be "spectacular."  He writes:

The endings of Mass Effect 3 are, essentially, infinite. You see the decision your Shepard made - domination, destruction or co-existence - and a quick glimpse of how that immediately plays out. But what happens next is for you to chew on, to mull over. What does it mean that you chose to control the Reapers, and how will that impact the galaxy? What does your decision to destroy all synthetics tell future generations about your Shepard? And what does your decision to co-exist say about you, as a player? These are exciting, fun questions. Just as the ending of 2001 doesn’t bring the Starchild all the way to Earth, the ending of Mass Effect 3 doesn’t follow the impact of the final choice all the way through history. The game designers at BioWare assumed that you’re smart enough to understand that they’re leaving the next steps unfollowed on purpose.

He goes on to say this at the end:

In the end Mass Effect 3, like any other narrative video game, is a story being told to us. We have some control over the peripheral business but the meat of the story belongs to BioWare. This is the tale they’ve been telling. This is the culmination of what they’ve been doing since the beginning of Mass Effect. And I love it. This is true scifi, a story that examines the nature of conflict and humanity through the prism of imaginative, speculative fiction. I’ve never played a game where the decisions I made felt so powerful in the abstract; I wasn’t worrying about whether or not one choice would give me a better power up, I was worrying about the moral and ethical implications of the choices. And after all of that the final choice was so obvious, so true to what had come before, that I was kind of irritated at how slowly old Shep moved.

Perhaps MovieBob has a point.  Ken Levine, creator of BioShock, expressed disappointment over the whole debacle.  And he's not alone.  According to Casey Hudson, the executive producer and director of Mass Effect 3, the endings were intended to "polarize" the audience.  If the endings were meant to be deliberately ambiguous and generate so many theories (such as Shepard is actually indoctrinated by the Reapers or is actually dead) and spur discussion and multiple interpretations, there's a lot of artistic substance there.

If the indoctrination theory is correct, well, I'll let Phil Hornshaw and Ross Lincoln at GameFront explain:

Indoctrination is a long-standing and very big feature of the Mass Effect universe and the Reaper war itself. The idea of loss of control, manipulation and subservience to the enemy comes up a lot, in the games and in the expanded universe of the novels. This is a huge theme; it would make lots of sense to find it in the ending.
Furthermore, if the endings as they stand are fake, then the resulting vitriol regarding them may well have been planned. Think about that one for a minute — BioWare might have manipulated us into hating the ending of the game. In essence, BioWare would have indoctrinated just about every Mass Effect player into thinking, like Shepard, that the events as they stand are what happened, when that assumption is actually untrue. It wasn’t just Shepard, a cartoon you control, who was indoctrinated — you were indoctrinated, forced to make the Reapers’ choices just as he was, whether you wanted to or not.

Your video game would have basically brainwashed you. Welcome to the only possible situation in which that would be simply awesome.

If that’s BioWare’s design, it’s a staggering feat of gaming. Mass Effect has always harped on player choices, interactive storytelling and immersion, and this would take those ideas to a level never even attempted before. But it only works if there’s more to the story. And that means a hidden ending somewhere, or further DLC releases. Because without additional material for the ending, an indoctrinated Shepard makes things even worse, not better.

That's got some pretty damn heavy artistic merit, there.  After discussing some of the plans, scripts, and storyboards the design team had and the decision to omit a lot of stuff about the Mass Effect universe that the player "didn't need to know," Hornshaw and Lincoln had this to say:

It looks a lot like whatever plans they had were scrapped along with a lot of important dialogue for reasons that may never be known. It’s probably wise to bet that the Indoctrination Theory isn’t true because there is no true version of events at all.

That's pretty heavy.  And it kind of contradicts what Devin Faraci said above.  Hell, the entire premise that you'd have choice and those choices would have visible, definite, tangible consequences on the games' universe kind of disprove Faraci's belief that this is "Bioware's story" and not the players'.  If there is no true version of events at the end of Mass Effect 3, then there is no official ending therefore it's up to interpretation.

This is awesome... if it's done right.  The question is, do we have a Stanley Kubric or a David Lynch at the helm of Mass Effect?  Or do we have a Hideaki Anno?

In the end, I had to just cave in and watch the endings myself.

I'll talk about that next time.

Book Review -- REVELATION SPACE by Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds likes two things: Chekov's gun and the Big Dumb Object, and he uses them prolifically throughout Revelation Space, his 560-page debut novel, published in 2000. Reynolds holds a PhD in Astronomy and Physics from St. Andrews, and worked for the European Space Agency until retiring in 2004 to pursue writing full-time. His depth of knowledge in astrophysics plays an enormous and defining role in his work.

One of the biggest issues with early science-fiction as a genre is the lack of hard science in conjunction with the fiction. There's always been a great deal of hand-waving and the futuristic equivalent of "wizards doing it" in regards to many of the realities of interstellar travel and communication. The best writers tackle concepts, but rarely ever incorporate actual science into their works.

In contrast, numerous science-fiction authors can, and often do, incorporate accurate science and technical know-how in their books, giving them a very authentic feel. However, these writers often fail to create dynamic, believable characters or meaningful stories.
This is where Reynolds sets himself apart. Reynolds never resorts to inventing hyperdrives or warp engines. He brings actual physics to bear on the realities of space-travel, colonization, and futuristic technology. And he not only creates an interesting story that sucks the reader in, but he creates deep, dynamic characters that feel alive. A decade after publishing the first novel set in his Revelation Space universe, he's developed a solid following and been signed to a 10-book contract in return for £1 million.

Revelation Space begins by jumping back and forth in time and space to the viewpoints of three different and seemingly unrelated characters--Dan Sylveste in 2551 on planet Resurgam (Sigma Draconis system), Ilia Volyova in 2540 on the lighthugger Nostalgia for Infinity bound for Yellowstone (in the Epsilon Eridani system), and Ana Khouri in 2524 in Chasm City on Yellowstone. One is a xeno-archeologist, scholar, and ultra-wealthy socialite (Sylveste); one is an Ultra--a heavily modified human who lives on vast merchant-ships sailing between stars (Volyova); one is a former soldier turned assassin (Khouri). All of the characters seem to have nothing in common, and indeed, they are drastically separated by time and space. Khouri's story starts 26 years before Sylveste's and 16 before Volyova's.

Gradually, the timelines start to resolve, due to the vast distances of space and the passage of time in cryogenic sleep and at near-relativistic speeds. By midway through the book, all three timelines have merged into one. This is one of the factors that marks Revelation Space as good science fiction. The author should contemplate issues of technological advancement and the limitations of physical reality and their effect on the human experience. Reynolds meets the challenges of space-travel and time dilation head-on in this novel, and conquers.
That is just the beginning. Revelation Space is not a simple, straightforward novel. Reynolds, like Simmons, creates a universe in which he considers the problems of vast distances in space on travel and communication, meaning that planets are, for all intents and purposes, are heavily isolated from one another for years (sometimes even decades), leading to distinctive cultures, governments, and political issues arising on each world. Through groups like the ultras, he explores transhumanism through genetic modification and cybernetic implants. Nanotechnology is explored, as is the over-dependence on it (when nano-machine epidemics such as the Melding Plague are released, posing an enormous threat to anyone or anything possessing cybernetic or nanotechnology).

When it comes to extra-terrestrial life, Reynolds confronts the Fermi Paradox directly (indeed, the Paradox is actually the entire point of Revelation Space). He also explores the morality of cloning, artificial intelligence (he even invokes the Turing test), and the concept of immortality-via-uploading your psyche into a computer simulation.

What Reynolds also does incredibly well is the set-up and execution of plot-points. Like I mentioned at the beginning, Reynolds loves Chekov's gun, and sprinkles the item throughout his novel. What seemed to originally be interesting details can become very important later. As I progressed through the book, I started to get a feeling of completeness--as if Reynolds was using every single piece of his world constructively to further the plot.
The plot itself is well-written and executed, for the most part. Reynolds lays out characters and setting, then incorporates them into the rising action, and the action most certainly rises. Every development generates a suction-effect on the reader, as characters' pasts return to haunt them, puzzle-pieces are snapped-together, and more details about the setting and the overall mystery are revealed. The Big Dumb Object doesn't really come into play until later in the story, but when it does, it's pretty-much the focal point of all the mysteries that have been explored up until this point in the novel.

The characters, at first, are not really very likable. In fact, Sylveste and Volyova both come off as callous and willing to sacrifice others' lives or well-being in order to see their goals met. Only Khouri really seemed likable to me, at first. However, as the story progresses, I found myself starting to like the characters. Sylveste's callousness is driven by a need to prevent a possible future catastrophe. His keen intellect, his adaptability, and his determination actually turn him into an admirable character, although many of his traits develop into near-fatal flaws as the climax of the novel approaches (although he does, interestingly enough, have the last laugh). Volyova becomes something of a major screw-up, and it becomes apparent that she's outclassed by some of the more antagonistic characters on board her ship (such as Sajaki). However, she's quick-witted enough to overcome her mistakes and adapt, and when she and Khouri finally work together as equals, they make a very potent duo.

The weaknesses of the book are minor, but noticeable. First, the ending is far too tidy. It is admirable that Reynolds does his best to make sure all holes are tied shut, but some of the threads he uses come off as extremely weak. Too many questions are answered by the end of the novel, and I would have preferred many of them to have remained unresolved in order to keep a degree of mystery in the setting (such as the nature of the Shrouders). Not all questions are answered, mind you, leaving plenty of room for sequels, but some of the answered questions just disappointed me. I would have found different solutions to have been stronger and more satisfying than the ones that Reynolds offered.

Secondly, Reynolds' has a terrible tendency to remind the reader of certain plot points repeatedly. Granted, he usually does this from different characters' perspectives, but overall, it seems unnecessary. It's not as if he were really writing three separate novels (despite what I said earlier). The reader does not need to be reminded three times from three different perspectives.

Thirdly, Reynolds tries to weave character description into the story. While this is admirable, it comes off strange. We don't get a description of Volyova until we are two-thirds of the way through the novel. By this point, I've already pictured her (based on her name) as a Slavic Russian, but Reynolds seems to conceive her as a Russian of Asiatic origin. It's not debilitating, but just annoying, and a nice, simple description of her when she's first introduced would have been better.

Finally, there are parts where the story takes an incredible turn, and where your jaw drops right open and you can't helped but be stunned, but then Reynolds turns around and basically invalidates everything that just happened. This doesn't happen often, but when it does, it is really disappointing. For example, there was one part of the book where Sylveste is met with one of his antagonists, and he destroys the object that this antagonist needs. The destruction is something that costs Sylveste a great deal--he essentially wastes an incredibly valuable and irreplaceable asset, and says, "F--k you" while he does it. I had to re-read that section three times. The character displayed such assertiveness and, frankly, such balls that I was thrilled to see what would happen next. But it turns out that a copy is found and Sylveste's amazing action is completely robbed of its significance. Reynolds just took a moment of incredible character growth and invalidated it. This was highly disappointing to me.

As for prose, Reynolds' writing is not incredibly evocative or flowery. There are parts of the book when he does describe things wonderfully, creating impressions drawn from modern, cold, sterile imagery--fitting for a science-fiction novel. It's not as iconic as the first line of William Gibson's Neuromancer ("The sky was the color of a television set tuned to a dead channel").

Through the three characters, Reynolds starts off telling three separate novels. Sylveste's is an obsession with a long-extinct alien race that nearly costs him everything, Volyova fights to survive being stalked by a madman on her ship while the rest of the crew sleeps in cryogenic fugue, and Khouri finds herself forcibly recruited by a mysterious benefactor and ends up involved in a plot that is far, far above her understanding. That Reynolds can write in three different moods, then fuse the three threads into one thread is a pretty ringing endorsement for his ability as a writer. That he can do it while writing a mystery story about the Fermi paradox, artificial intelligence, and first contact (of a sort) full of exciting plot-twists and exploring/incorporating a dozen different science-fiction themes is a testament to his skill as a writer and the amazing breadth and depth of knowledge with which he infuses his story.

There's a lot more to say about the story, but I'm trying to keep the spoilers to a minimum. Any deeper analysis of style or plotting will require me to give much of it away, although I hope this gives you a pretty clear picture of the sort of novel Reynolds has woven for the reader. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and am kind of surprised by the slamming Reynolds' Pushing Ice got over at the Alexandrian. As a literary work, Reynolds' Revelation Space is far more space opera than deep exploration of the human experience in a science-fiction context. He does incorporate those themes into his novel, but not with the literary finesse of Dan Simmons' Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion. Nevertheless, Revelation Space is very much the sort of novel that I want to read when I browse through the SF section at Borders.

Check out this post over at the Wertzone for more information on Reynolds' other novels in his Revelation Space series. Indeed, Adam Whitehead has written a nice little profile on Reynolds in case you are interested.

In summary, this book was a really enjoyable read. As hard science-fiction goes, it's all about big ideas and it develops them pretty well. The resolution is a bit weak, but everything fits together well. It's not the best science-fiction novel I read. Reynolds is no Frank Herbert. But he's still a darn good writer, and I found this book to be worthwhile.


Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
Style B
Substance B+
Overall B+

On the Devolution of the STAR WARS Franchise

Popular culture represents the faddish consumption of the masses. The great bulk of society consumes, radically, from the trough of corporate America. As popular entertainment usually goes, most of it is dreck, but occasionally there gleams a diamond in the rough. Sometimes, too, the virtues of popular forms of entertainment are oftimes overlooked (my own fascination with Shakespeare and the pulps of 1930s is an example of having discovered beauty in a form of popular entertainment from bygone eras). Due to the nature of this mass, bovine feeding, popular culture generally passes through society with the speed of fodder through a cow. To beat the analogy to death, one might discuss the possible merits of the refuse of such a consumption as fertilizer for the imagination, I will instead consider that certain things have a tendency to pass through unblemished and untarnished, only to be discovered by the unsuspecting farmer, cleaned off, and treasured, as if said agricola came upon a gold coin on the blade of his manure trowel.

Star Wars is, undoubtedly, one of those treasures. Popular culture swallowed it whole and happily when it was released in 1977. A massive marketing campaign, complete with toys, T-shirts, and lunchboxes was launched to seize the opportunity to turn a tremendous profit from the fad. These events need hardly be recounted, indeed, they should be common knowledge. However, what is interesting is that Star Wars maintained a sort of cult following in the years following The Return of the Jedi. Although there had long been Star Trek fandom, a strange, counter-culture began to develop based not on Kirk's but on Lucas' enterprise.

This fringe group cleaved to the imaginative Star Wars universe. In the absence of films, comic books and novels began to be released. These represent the explorations of fans in the universe that George Lucas had evoked. Some of these forays sought to reveal the origins of the Sith, the early years of the Republic, and to gradually fill out the galaxy far, far away with races, planets, corporations, spacecraft, and people.

Into this milieu, amidst special re-releases of his trilogy, Lucas announced the story of Anakin Skywalker would be told via three prequel films. Excitement built to near-hysterical levels until the day The Phantom Menace was released. Although the general public enjoyed the movies, a large portion of the fans, many of whom had contributed to the universe through their own publications as novelists and comic book artists, had watched the original films in the theaters as children, and had grown up thinking they knew Star Wars, were suddenly thrown into a world they did not recognize. Grumblings of discontent flamed into outright hatred. Fans rarely had a choice to remain ambivalent--the prequels were either travesties upon Lucas' vision and the proverbial axe which "killed the goose that laid golden eggs." The masses consumed the prequel trilogy as readily (if not moreso) than they had devoured the original films, thus the goose can be seen to have continued to lay away, happy and healthy.

But for some, Star Wars was ruined. Lucas had killed it. What had originally begun as a great Wagnerian saga in space had become "kid's stuff." But is this truly accurate? Did The Phantom Menace truly "kill" the Star Wars universe? Besides, what does it mean to actually "kill" an imaginary universe? How can Star Wars be any more dead than Cervantes' Don Quixote or Homer's Iliad? So long as the story and the setting are remembered, it must survive in a way.

The sense of betrayal, however, comes from feeling that Lucas had created something much more substantial, and then debased it. It is as if took a gold doubloon, and instead of keeping it, melted it down and mixed it with enough copper to produce three or four "gold" coins. Or perhaps it is as if Raymond Chandler had decided, after a break, to take up his pen again and instead of writing Philip Marlowe story scrawled a dull and predictable Hardy Boys paperback and expected his fans to enjoy it.

However, is this an accurate assessment of Lucas' creation? Besides, it is, after all, Lucas' own world, his own story? Can he not change it as he sees fit? Fortunately for you, dear reader, I shall abstain from waxing philosophic, and avoid coma-inducing discussions on postmodern literary criticism and the death of the author. I will, however, encourage one to read The Secret History of Star Wars for a frank and unbiased account of Lucas' own eccentricity (which fame and fortune has perhaps brought near to dementia).

The crux of my discussion is that Star Wars has not been "killed" by The Phantom Menace, nor any of the other prequel films. Indeed, the saga survives through its adoring fans and through the continuing production of cartoon episodes and films (despite the occasional insubstantial and disappointing plot and dialogue). However, it has been transformed. Indeed, through his Orwellian attempts to rewrite history (again, see The Secret History of Star Wars), Lucas has even managed to transform the very conception of the original trilogy from the saga of Luke Skywalker into the redemption of Anakin Skywalker. Many feel that, by transforming Star Wars, the original vision of what Star Wars had been is now dead, and indeed, that most certainly is the case. However, I do not pinpoint the death of that original vision to have been The Phantom Menace. A horde of Jar-Jar Binkses could not kill what is already dead, nor could a "whiny teenage Anakin Skywalker," any more than Ewan McGregor, Christopher Lee, or Liam Neeson could resurrect it (though they made commendable efforts).

That original vision was killed by Leigh Brackett when she penned the script for The Empire Strikes Back.

---

To understand how Brackett murdered Star Wars, one must examine Lucas' purpose for creating the original film.The original movie was by no means a very original work. In all honesty, it was immensely derivative. That is, by no means, a flaw in the story. The entire film is cliché, but well written cliché (or if you prefer, trope). Those literary tropes were essential to Lucas, enabling him to tell precisely the sort of story he desired.

Let's isolate what Lucas had wanted to achieve with Star Wars:

1. He aimed to show an episode, in media res, of a space pulp serial à la such pulpy serials as Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers. He wanted space ships, dogfights, laser swords, weird aliens, daring rescues, narrow escapes, and everything that would have made an excellent Flash Gordon episode.

2. He wished to tell a good story. Inspired by Joseph Campbell, Lucas utilized a number of tropes that would develop a compelling heroic tale, including a family heritage, a young hero, a black knight, a mystic power, a wise mentor, damsels in distress, etc.

The original Star Wars was a success on all counts. Not only did it committ Lucas into the annals of science-fiction history for all time, enrich him and the motion picture industry, the film accomplished precisely what he had intended. It is an exciting film with elegant pacing, juxtaposing smooth plot and character development with lively science-fiction and fantasy action sequences. Each scene presents the viewer with something to rivet his attention, be it a new robot, a strange lifeform, a vehicle, or some source of danger or tension. Even expository scenes, where plot is introduced and characters developed, strange and interesting aspects of the universe are presented to intrigue the viewer on a visual and visceral level, and pull him into the scene.

The plot itself is divided well, with a prologue (the battle above Tatooine), three acts (Tatooine, the Death Star, and the Battle of Yavin), and an epilogue (the awards ceremony). Throughout these acts, we watch our youthful hero, Luke Skywalker, develop from an innocent, inexperienced farm boy into a great pilot and warrior. A dark knight is introduced, Darth Vader, who is responsible for the death of Luke's father, and subsequently, the death of his mentor. The film is often compared to Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, for the two films share many literary tropes.

Star Wars is a fantastic study in cinema craftsmanship. It is a perfect (in the sense of completion) product. All the dross has been swept away and left on the cutting room floor, leaving nothing but a refined, glistening reel. It is not pretentious. It doesn't take itself too seriously, but just seriously enough. It is to the space opera what Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep is to a hardboiled film noir. It is cool and confident in what it is. Star Wars does not present us with moral quandaries or ethical dilemmas. The heroes overcome their challenges through virtue. Courage and friendship are enough to overcome the greed and cynicism of the Empire. Although outgunned and outnumbered, the Rebel Alliance, with Luke's help, have a chance of overthrowing the tyranny of the Empire because of the bravery of the main characters, Luke and Leia, Chewbacca and Han. Good and evil are sharply defined. There is no grey area, no ambiguities. Darth Vader is "a master of evil" and Obi-wan represents selfless sacrifice for a cause. It is the ultimate heroic yarn, only set in space.

The Empire Strikes Back is an entirely different animal. If Star Wars is like The Big Sleep, then The Empire Strikes Back is like L.A. Confidential or Roman Polanski's Chinatown. Whereas the first Star Wars had a purely linear plotline, The Empire Strikes Back divides the action after the Battle of Hoth, sometimes following the exploits of Han and Leia while they flee from the Empire, and other times chronicling Luke's rigorous training. Throughout the story, the characters and their depth become much more challenging to the viewer.

Why does Vader fanatically pursue The Millenium Falcon with the strength of an entire Imperial war fleet? Why is he so obsessed with finding Luke Skywalker? Shouldn't he be busily hunting down the escaped Rebel fleet to finish them once-and-for-all? Why is it more important to capture Han Solo and Princess Leia so he can lure Luke into a trap?

The original film doesn't inspire so many questions. That is because it is far more simple and straightforward. However, its sequel is more dynamic and demands more from its audience than simple passive viewing. It demands an emotional investment.

The training that Luke undergoes is strenuous. Suddenly, we see him doubt himself. The good, honest, hardworking young hero that we saw in the initial film has turned into an impatient, aggressive, reckless avenger. Suddenly, he is no longer the "model hero" that he had been in Star Wars. As Yoda trains Luke, our hero's experience and "failure" in the cave forces not only Luke to question himself, but us to question him as well. Before, we were only worried that a lucky laser blast might kill him. Now, we are worried that Luke might actually be capable of falling because of himself. This is a tremendous shift in both tone and temperment.

The rising tension culminates with the tremendous sense of treachery and the development of moral and ethical ambiguities. Lando Calrissian is forced to betray Han Solo in order to preserve Cloud City, and realizes that it was all in vain. Han and Leia's bourgeoning love is cut short by his encasement in carbonite. And, possibly most importantly and traumatically, Luke learns that Obi-wan, that wise, serene, selfless sacrifice of the first film, had lied to him regarding the fate of his father. All of the formerly clear, distinct lines between right and wrong are now blurred, indistinct. Who is a friend, who is a foe? Why would Obi-wan lie? Once you begin to question, you cannot stop--you can only follow the quandaries down the slippery slope to the inevitable "what if the Rebel Alliance is wrong and the Emperor is right?"

This is not like a Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon episode. There was never any doubt in Flash's mind that Ming is as Merciless as his epithet implies. He is constantly confident in himself and his ability to wage the great fight against his enemy. He is the quintessential hero--more than human, a demigod. In contrast, Luke has just been defeated in battle and has certainly fallen short of full-fledged demigodhood. The schemes of the Emperor and Darth Vader have actually borne fruit, despite all of the valor and moral virtue that Luke and his friends could muster. The entire universe had been overturned--not just the universe that plays setting to the saga, but the very concept that Lucas had established. The tone of the series has radically diverged from that of a straightforward serial.

Leigh Brackett’s script had seized Star Wars and demanded it to change into something higher and more meaningful than a simple “clash of good and evil.” While writing The Empire Strikes Back, she brought forth her considerable talents as a science-fiction author. One of the vehicles of science-fiction is exploring the implications of moral and ethical dilemmas that might be presented by advanced technologies and knowledge. These issues comprise the kernel around which any good science-fiction story can build itself. Thus, it is why Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books were so fantastic, as well as Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. Leigh Brackett may have been so steeped in science-fiction authorship that she was incapable of writing a simple episode in a heroic duel between good and evil. It is entirely possible that she felt the overwhelming need to turn Lucas’ universe on its ear for the express purpose of exploring what those characters would do when faced with treachery and defeat.

In so doing, Brackett’s The Empire Strikes Back emboldened viewers and fans alike with the possibilities of the Star Wars universe. She created a set of expectations for the audience that the original Star Wars could not live up to itself. Overall, The Return of the Jedi is a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. It resolves Han Solo's debt to Jabba and subsequent capture by Boba Fett early on, and with a good deal of excitement. Luke Skywalker has reached a level of self-assurance and control due to his training and experience fighting Vader. He walks the thin grey line between good and evil.

That singular resolution of character development is proof that The Empire Strikes Back had thrown Star Wars upon its procrustean bed. That unambiguous divide between light and darkness presented in the initial film had been blurred. Luke's brush with the Dark Side and his battle with Vader have taken something from him. He dresses in black. He speaks in grave ultimatums ("Jabba, this is your last chance. Free us or die."). He is torn between his desire to redeem his father and the possibility that he may fall to the Dark Side if he does not kill him. He has become a much darker character, even though his outward appearance projects the calmness and serenity of a bodhissatva.

However, many of the elements of a Flash Gordon serial persist. There are kitschy elements found throughout The Return of the Jedi. They seem somewhat subdued, however. The tension is higher and the mood of the film is much more serious than the original movie. The building tension takes on a sinister vibration as the Rebels prepare for their final, desperate assault on the Emperor. And then, the audience is introduced to the Ewoks.

Their inclusion disrupts the attitude of the films immediately, and are evidence that George Lucas has lost his focus and direction for these films. As previously stated, the original Star Wars sought to marry elements of the 10 cent afternoon adventure serial with heroic myth--a sort of Volsungsaga meets Buck Rogers. But often, heroic myth is far more serious, speculative, and full of tragedy and loss, compared to Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. Thus, Leigh Brackett's screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back downplayed the pulp serial aspect of the story, and emphasized the darker and more speculative elements of heroic myth--elements that Lucas had never included in his original story. This confusion began to bloom into full-blown schizophrenia when Ewoks first made their appearance.

The Ewoks made Star Wars schizophrenic, but the schizophrenia is merely a result, or perhaps, a symptom, of the disruption The Empire Strikes Back created both within Lucas' conception of Star Wars and the expectations of fans and viewers. When one studies The Secret History of Star Wars, one rapidly discovers that the story Lucas wants to tell changes over time. This explains a number of key plot elements that were redactively edited to make things simpler. One example is the identification of Leia as Luke's twin sister. While the identification of Vader as Father Skywalker was a brilliant fusion of a number of loose plot threads, resolving a number of script problems while producing a powerful moral and emotional reaction within both the audience and the Star Wars setting itself, the incorporation of Leia as Luke's twin might functionally resolve a number of plot holes, but they fail to satisfy the audience. The original conception of another young Jedi trainee on the opposite side of the galaxy, a female who may have to face (and perhaps provide a romantic interest for) Luke before he confronts his father, was much more appealing a concept, but was beyond the abilities of Lucas or his scriptwriters to facilitate effectively.

In other words, Lucas is no longer capable of telling the story he originally wanted to tell. Either he had lost interest in the original themes, tone, and/or mood, or his own creation had grown so far beyond his original design concept that he was incapable of reining it back in. His attempts to do so (with the Leia-Luke resolution) only succeeded in debasing his creation. His attempt to diversify his film's appeal (as per the Ewok inclusion) is more of a reflection of his marketing savvy (by that point, Star Wars had become a juggernaut in the toy industry). While it was not a bad idea from a financial standpoint, from a literary perspective, it weakened the plot's credibility. When a clan of stone-age teddy-bears manage to destroy armored mechanized assault platforms and space-age soldiers with onagers (tortion catapaults), suspension of disbelief is terminated. Until that moment, Star Wars functioned as a believable universe. Tortion catapaults require a minimum of early iron-age construction techniques and mathematics to operate, and once that is realized by the viewer, he is no longer watching a space-opera science-fiction, but instead an episode of Looney Tunes.

This dischord only intensifies throughout The Phantom Menace. Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back had reached their perfected forms. Both movies had achieved their objectives brilliantly, without flaw or error. The utterly pedestrian resolution of the Luke-Leia problem reveals that The Return of the Jedi was not a perfectly whole creation. It could not achieve every possible goal. It did, however, succeed at some. The confrontation of Luke with his father was masterfully handled, as was his father's redemption. The destruction of the second Death Star and the defeat of the Imperial Fleet was an intensely thrilling and visually spectacular battle sequence. Luke's choice of the third path, that thin grey line between the light and dark halves of the Force, satisfies the deeper, inner battles of the heroic journey that Leigh Brackett had invoked in the previous film. Despite it's flaws, The Return of the Jedi succeeds far more often than not.

The Phantom Menace, however, is a wholly confused experience. The elements of the pulp serial are so subdued as to be virtually nonexistent (with the exception of the opening escape of the two Jedi from the spaceship). However, the emphasis on the heroic journey has now been transferred to young Anakin Skywalker. But the heroism has been reduced at the expense of the mythical (cf. his "virgin birth"). Despite claims to the contrary by modern theorists, the concept of the virgin birth is virtually absent in most of mythological and religious beliefs (with the exception of Christianity). Rather, the father is almost always a god who seduced the mother, a maiden. The inclusion of the Gungans is a far cruder, and indeed more absurd, version of the Ewok angle, and assumes that the audience is comprised not of just children, but stupid children.

Throughout the film, we are pushed and pulled through a variety of tones, moods, and atmospheres that do not set well together. At times the film is serious and political, other times it is vapidly whimsical and absurd. As a child, young Anakin Skywalker courageously races a pod and destroys an enemy starship, but, paradoxically, the Jedi Council finds him full of fear and is hesitant to train him. Lucas' screenplay has aimed at far too many targets to be able to satisfy them effectively. Thus, The Phantom Menace gives off an impression of obtuseness, especially when compared to the acuity of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. The Attack of the Clones and The Revenge of the Sith showed improvements, with each crawling closer to a balance between Lucas' original vision and Brackett's adaptation of it. Yet they were unable to achieve the same tightness of plot and flawlessness of storytelling. Star Wars had become far too self-aware, and felt obligated to provide more than it was capable. Lucas, also, has shown an inability to handle fame and fortune well, and has descended from being a mildly eccentric introvert to an erratic delusional who has fanatically taken it upon himself to rewrite past history and suppress all information regarding his franchise that does not comply with his "official party doctrine." Lucas' own introversion and eccentricity undoubtedly have a role to play in the degradation of Star Wars, but they, too, are but a facet of the problem.

But these are points that have been made many, many times by folks far more verbose than I. What is important to note here, however, is the fact that The Phantom Menace is not the cause of Star Wars' disruption and devolution. Indeed, most dissatisfied fans have a tendency to blame the symptoms and never consider the source of the illness. Lucas himself is only part of the problem. In truth, he never killed Star Wars. The reality is, with Leigh Brackett's screenplay, Star Wars left George Lucas. And, despite his strongest efforts to recapture it, Lucas has repeatedly fallen short of the simple perfection that he had achieved in 1977. Star Wars had grown and "taken its first step into a larger world." Brackett had injected plot elements and an epic feeling of tragedy and triumph that Lucas was not capable of controlling. The Empire Strikes Back is the pivot-point of the saga, the fulcrum around which Lucas' career, franchise, and universe turned.