Little Orphan Anakin
4: The Mask of God
We started singing:
My, my, this here Anakin guy
May be Vader sometime later but right now he's small fry
He left his home and kissed his mummy good bye
Singing "Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi."
"Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi."
Return of the Jedi ends
with Luke Skywalker removing Darth Vader's mask and seeing his father face to
face for the first time. This scene could stand as a symbol for the whole
series.
From Luke's point of view, the
unmasking of Vader represents the transformation of the Evil Father back into
the Good Father, the Jedi-daddy he always wanted. In terms of the narrative of
the trilogy, it represents the defeat of the Empire, as the technocratic
superstructure is stripped away to reveal a human being beneath it. From the
point of view of the audience, it is the redemption of Anakin Skywalker, the
villain of Episodes IV - VI renouncing his evil and revealing himself as
the hero of the whole saga.
Some people claim to be
disappointed that under the mask, Darth Vader turns out to be 'just an old
man'. But that surely is the point. For the story to work, we have to believe
that Anakin and Vader are two different people. Anakin was consumed by the Dark
Side of the Force: when that happens, says Ben, the good man who was Luke's
father ceased to exist. When he turns back to the Light Side, Vader doesn't
exist any more; and Anakin is just ordinary—just a fat old man. So the
unmasking of Vader also represents the end of the golden age. From now on, all
the heroes are going to take off their masks and reveal that underneath, they
have feet of clay.
Attack of the Clones
constructs a line from this 'Unmasking' scene and extends it out to infinity
and beyond. Episode II amounts to an unmasking of the entire setting; a
deconstruction of the Star Wars universe.
The 'clones' of the title are
Palpatine's cloned army, who will become the Stormtroopers of Episodes IV-VI.
It transpires that they are clones of one Janga Fett, the clone-father of Boba
Fett. Boba Fett is a mysterious figure in the original trilogy: clearly an
important person (even Darth Vader treats him quite politely) but never given
an origin or a background. The Stormtroopers, of course, are purely iconic;
organs of the Emperor who the heroes can kill without compunction.
In Episodes IV-VI,
neither Boba Fett nor any Stormtroopers are ever seen without their helmets on.
In Attack of the Clones, we see their faces. Out of costume, Bobba-Jango
is under-acted, about as unassuming person as you could imagine, living in an
anti-septic bed-sit and wearing a bland prison uniform. There is not a hint of
rapport or affection between Jango and his son. The clone warriors are rather
pitiful figures in a training camp that recalls the slave-world in THX 1138.
They are stated to be 'docile and obedient'; and even when we see them in their
armour, you can't quite shake this original image. Two key icons of the
original trilogy have been brought down-to-earth with a resounding thud.
This debunking and
de-romanticizing happens consistently throughout the movie. The opening 20
minutes of the movie are full of images of falling: from the cloud-capped
heights of Coruscant into the seedy under city. In Coruscant the Jedi are
addressed as 'your grace'. But once they descend to ground level, they are
little more than plain clothes police officers, and not treated with much
respect. 'Gang way….Jedi business' says Anakin, to work his way through a
crowd. Is this really how legendary knights were treated in the golden age?
When Luke went into a tavern, it
was a Wild West saloon, full of aliens who have the death sentence on 12
systems, and a cool Clint Eastward smuggler who wins gunfights without getting
out of his chair. The equivalent scene in Attack of the Clones is of a
nightclub, with video screens showing sports matches and drug dealers offering
'death sticks' for sale. The Emperor, who spends Return of the Jedi as a
dark lord with his face cloaked in shadow, is represented in Attack of the
Clones as a lying, scheming politician. When we first met Yoda, he was a
mysterious, distant figure who had once instructed Obi-Wan. In Attack of the
Clones we catch a glimpse of what that 'instruction' might actually have
been like. A wise old man studying at the feet of a holy mystic? Hardly. Yoda
has become a friendly, patronizing schoolmaster observing a class of primary
school children. Is how heroes were trained in the golden age?
(Of course this scene's primary
purpose is to write Lucas out of an inconsistency: Yoda was stated to be Ben's
teacher long before Qui-Gon was ever thought of; so we have to show that Yoda
trained everybody to stop Alec Guinness being caught up in yet another porkie.)
Even the central psychological
plot of the movie is substantially debunked. The process which will culminate
in Vader being consumed by the dark side of the Force is here represented as an
adolescent sulk, a series of temper tantrums. 'He never lets me do anything. He
always criticizes me. It's not fair. Yippee.'
Watching A New Hope, we
imagined that the Old Republic which Ben and Darth Vader inhabited would be
something more epic, grander and more operatic than Star Wars. (The Old
Republic was the republic of legend; no reason to ask why it existed, only to
say that it was the Republic.) But the republic which we see is in fact rather
banal: skyscrapers and Jedi temples, bickering politicians…finally, seedy
nightclubs, coach stations, coffee bars and car chases. Star Wars was a
fairy tale: this is just a sci fi movie. Corsuscant: is only New York with
flying cars. Mos Eisley might as well have been Shangri La.
Watching Phantom Menace
and Attack of the Clones we feel nostalgic for a romantic past, 'before
the dark times', when everything was clear-cut and simple, before the Force
went out of balance. But that romantic past is the age of Luke Skywalker: an
age which is nominally located in the future. The golden age of the Old
Republic turns out to be a time of cynicism and betrayal; the Dark Times turn
out to be, in fact, the heroic age. Does that mean the hoped-for-time of
innocence will come after the fall from grace? And that the 'lost past' of
Luke's childhood is actually located in the future?
It is perhaps very natural to
locate the lost golden age in the future, given that this futuristic sci fi
movie is supposed to be happening 'a long time ago.'