Context matters in re-boots.
Which came first – Star Wars, Episode I or Star Wars, Episode IV? My apologies to the Jar-Jar lovers, but Lucasfilm Logic dictating that we go with The Phantom Menace really screwed the pooch on this one. It takes the magic away from that huge pivotal moment in The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader reveals he is Luke’s father when you’ve known for four movies ahead of time who Anakin Skywalker really was. How did this improve the franchise? It didn’t, and just confused an audience of kids about who were the bad guys and changed the context of how we look at the franchise.
What was better -Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek or J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek re-boot? Maybe old George could’ve taken a lesson out of Abrams’ book and have simply re-written the whole continuum, but the problem here is that you have a whole generation of kids who now discount all of the TOS episodes. It’s not all bad: at least we got to see this iteration of Uhura in her underwear. How did this improve the franchise? Well, at least Abrams paid homage to the effort and talent of all those writers who came before him by stating that they still existed – just in another reality, but he still monkeyed around with the continuum enough that established Star Trek canon is completely buggered.
Battlestar Galactica? I don’t think Ronald Moore knew where he was going to wind up in the end. It was an amazing ride until the last episode that contained a wide variety of absurdities and … okay, I’m ranting. But at least it keyed kids into realizing that there was a show called Battlestar Galactica in the 1970’s that, for all its hokiness, was still a series in some ways superior to the one that came out in 2004. It was just a shame that the newer one was the one that didn’t make any sense when, in the end, everyone turned into a cylon – and you see Richard Hatch in both versions – that will resonate in the minds of youth more prominently.
The original contextual value is the plight of humanity struggling to survive. I think Moore managed to capture that, but he lost the value when he lost sight of the show’s conclusion. In the 70’s, at least the Galactica actually found Earth by 1980.
Don’t get me started on The Hobbit. In class, one of my students swore to me that she could see Baby Legolas on the Elvenking’s knee. After sighing extensively, it took me the better part of an English period to explain to my students that The Hobbit was written as an independent story about thirteen years before The Lord of the Rings even existed. Jackson has presented The Hobbit as a true prequel to the Lord of the Rings – same music; characters from LOTR somehow make their way into The Hobbit as a sop to Hollywood investors. It’s a complete justification of the film which I think spoils the simple purity of a story written as an escape from the mundane nature of the realities of Tolkien’s world.
Jackson changes the context of The Hobbit by removing its independence and chaining it to the movie version of LOTR. In future, kids will wake up on future Christmas mornings to gift sets of not three Jacskonified Tolkien movies in their stockings, but four.
The Dark Knight Rises? Please … I’ve seen bread dough rise better than that three-hour monstrosity, but the more grandiose it is, that’s what the kids will remember, sad to say. Comic heroes are a common casualty of this phenomenon. How many times have we seen the interpretation and re-interpretation of these familiar characters in ways that defy years of their established behaviours and natures? So what happens when kids go looking for the graphic novel and get confused by this completely different version that was published over twenty years ago by some guy they’ve never heard of, called Frank Miller?
I’m all for reaching new audiences, but why does it have to be at the expense of what is already established?
Established canon is an integral part to the success of any franchise worth its salt. It is essential to pay heed to its history so that the sight of the original message or its significance is not lost. Star Trek was written at a time when America was fascinated with the romance of space exploration. It captured the minds and attentions of an entire generation who began to see the possibility of a utopian future borne out of this sense of exploration. It contributed to a sense of nationwide positivism that the future of the planet was good and America was going to play a major leadership role in it. Sure – American jingoism at its best, maybe, but it also included ideals of racial diversity and acceptance, the betterment of man and not his economy, ecological awareness and so forth. These are values that are still current today and contribute to the overall themes of the franchise that gives Star Trek its sense of cultural and literary permanence.
It’s not that the Abrams re-boot lost sight of these values; in fact, you could argue that they are part of the background. But what values – or even value – is being contributed to the Star Trek franchise from the re-boot? If you answer that he has re-started the franchise for a new generation, then that ultimately includes the de-valuation of all the work prior to it. I have to say, aside from improved special effects, a new generation of actors to carry the torch, and the chance to see these things in enhanced AVX theatres, nothing new of value has been added. With the destruction of the planet Vulcan and the death of Captain Kirk’s dad (who featured prominently as a character in a couple of Star Trek novels), you could say that it actually detracted something from the series.
That’s what Star Wars Episodes 1, 2, and 3 did to the Star Wars franchise. Instead of adding something to the established storyline, it took something away. It took away the mystery of the Force by making it biological instead of mystical; it took away the clarity of good versus evil with the invention of new conspiracies to explain the existence of the ones we already knew.
When I introduced my Star Wars film appreciation unit to my students, they had a hard time recognizing a consistent theme throughout the franchise or even seeing the simple thematic concepts of the young hero, the captive princess, invading the dark fortress and an underdog rebellion fighting a battle against an overwhelmingly powerful and corrupt establishment.
Episodes 1 to 3 are basically an extended “Origin of …” story. These are great entertainment, as long as the origin matches up with the established storyline. No, or little connection to the established storyline means a dis-connect with the intended audience. The other problem with reaching new audiences in this way is that while one audience group gets the message, the other gets the shaft.
When a writer or director tries to re-invent a version of something, the ideas behind the original inception need to be acknowledged somehow or the new audience is cheated out of the original value of the story. I’m not saying that the new version needs to be exactly the way it was, just be true to its original spirit.
Young people need to see meaning in history – context – which is how history is explained. The same holds true for films like Star Wars, or comic characters like Batman. Because of their age, kids are always behind the eight ball when it comes to re-boots. It’s hard for them to contextualize the re-boot because they are missing the context. A lot of times, kids don’t have the patience to go back and look up the originals which authors and imagineers fail to take into account, and that original significance of the story is then lost to them.
It’s like us being okay with the idea that, to these poor kids, Robin will be Tommy from “Third Rock from the Sun.”
Context. Please think of the children?
Filed under: Battlestar Galactica, comics, General, John K. Kirk, Miller, School Of Geek, Star Trek, Star Wars, the dark knight, The Dark Knight Rises Tagged: Battlestar Galactica, Frank Miller, Gene Roddenberry, J.J. Abrams, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Lucasfilm, Peter Jackson, Richard Hatch, star trek, star wars, The Dark Knight Rises, The Empire Strikes Back, The Hobbit, Third Rock from the Sun
