We’re back for our last day of Star Wars Week. To find out more, head back to Monday’s review of The Empire Strikes Back.

Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy
Premise: (from IMDB) After three years of fighting in the Clone Wars, Anakin Skywalker concludes his journey towards the Dark Side of the Force, putting his friendship with Obi Wan Kenobi and his marriage at risk.
About: Revenge of the Sith was the script that Lucas had worked on the most out of the prequels and that is evident in the final product. He was originally going to open the movie with seven battles on seven different planets but eventually decided that the key to making the movie work was to focus on Anakin’s struggle to resist the Dark Side, so he rewrote the opening to focus on that.
Writer: George Lucas

There are many who consider Revenge Of The Sith to be the best Star Wars prequel. That’s a little like saying that Clarke is the best Hanson brother (MMMMMMMMMMMbop!) but it does happen to be true. The reason for this is that Sith has the cleanest storyline in any of the three films. Of course, since it’s Lucas, we have to wait half a movie to get to that clear storyline, but at least half of the movie has focus. I’m referring to when Palpatine goes after the Jedi. It’s the first moment in the prequel series where there’s some actual chasing going on, some actual urgency going on, and, most important of all, a storyline we can understand. So kudos to George for finally figuring that out.

In addition to that, for the first time in the prequels, we have a character with a genuine internal conflict. When critics or audiences talk about depth, the thing they’re usually referring to is a central character who’s experiencing an internal struggle. You do this by creating a dilemma, preferably something that pulls that character between the “right” way and the “wrong” way. This is, for instance, why Michael Corleone is such a compelling character in The Godfather. He doesn’t want to be a part of the family business and yet circumstances dictate that he has to be. That tug of war pulling at your character can be really fun to watch. We didn’t get any of that in the first two films. But we get it here and it’s a welcome addition to the series. It of course doesn’t work all the way because Lucas is a terrible writer and finds ways to screw it up, but it’s better than nothing.

That means Sith is basically divided into two halves, both of which sort of work. The first half is about Anakin battling who he should give allegiance to. And the second half is about the Emperor trying to eradicate the Jedi.

So then why is Revenge Of The Sith still sort of sucky?

Well, besides the obvious, it boils down, once again, to sloppy storytelling. Lucas cheats in a big way and as a result, what should be the most compelling part of the movie feels lazy and unsatisfying. You see, Lucas needs a way for Anakin to turn to the Dark Side. The only way he can really do this is if somebody very close to Anakin is in danger and Palpatine is the only person who can help save that person. Then, and only then, would it be believable that Anakin would join the Dark Side (at least with how the series has been set up). The problem is, the only person that’s really close to Anakin is Amidala and we can’t have her hurt because she still has to have babies. So Lucas creates a loophole. Anakin has a dream that Amidala is going to die……eventually, and this allows the best of both worlds, Amidala can still have her babies, and Palpatine can lure Anakin over to the Dark Side.

Remember, any time you can feel the writer’s hand reaching down and creating a plot convenience, the suspension of disbelief is gone. The audience becomes aware that this story isn’t “real” and no longer trusts what’s in front of their eyes. It’s no coincidence that the second Matrix movie uses this exact same story device (Neo has a dream that Trinity is going to die) and that that movie is also bad. I suppose that because Anakin’s a Jedi and can sort of see into the future, you can rationalize why this should work, but it’s such a false way to drive a story that we see right through it.

Another huge problem with this film is that things are just too easy for the characters. If you remember in Star Wars, when the Millennium Falcon was captured by the Death Star, the characters had to hide inside the cargo bays of the ship. They needed to lure storm troopers in and slip into their outfits. They needed to pretend like Chewbacca was a prisoner. There was some real thought that went into how they would sneak around this place. Now it wasn’t perfect. Sometimes people just hid in closets. But you still got the sense that the screenwriters were trying.

Here, you don’t get that sense at all. In the opening sequence Anakin and Obi-Wan fly into a ship and just start running around willy-nilly. Oftentimes they run through entire hallways where nobody is around. Even when they walk into the place where Palpatine is being held, there’s nobody there – no guards or anything. It’s like Lucas didn’t even consider how things would really be – or worse, ignored them. I mean the genius of Star Wars was that so much thought went into everything. I don’t know about you, but if I was thinking of a giant space station, the last thing I would’ve thought of was where the trash went. But the writers of that movie did, and integrated it into one of the most memorable scenes in movie history. We don’t get any of that here.

Instead, we get this strange sloppy sequence where they’re on an elevator and then Anakin slips off the elevator and then he hangs out in the elevator shaft and then the elevator goes down and then it goes back up and then Anakin gets back in the elevator and then Anakin and Obi wan run through a hallway where there’s nobody around and then out of nowhere a shield traps them. It feels very much like one of those fever writing sessions we all have once in a while where you write like 20 pages really really fast and at the time it feels amazing because you’re just blazing through it. But inevitably you read it the next day and realize that 90% of it is terrible. The difference between you and George is that you then start rewriting it to get it to a place where it’s good. George, on the other hand, just thinks well, it felt good at the time, so it must be good. And sticks with it.

Now the thing is, there is an arguably strong goal driving this sequence. Anakin and Obi-Wan are trying to save Palpatine. But here’s the problem. We have no idea who the two villains are that are holding Palpatine. I still don’t know who Count Dooku is. I have no idea who this General Greivious guy is. And I have no idea why either of them want to hold Palpatine hostage. That means the stakes for this goal are extremely murky. Logically we know that Palpatine needs to be saved. But since we don’t know why, we don’t care. And that’s why this sequence feels so empty.

Now I’ve actually argued that creating more than one villain can strengthen a screenplay, but only if each villain’s role is clear. If you remember, I pointed this out in The Shawshank Redemption, where there are three villains. But notice how clear each villain is. We had the rapist. We had the head guard who abused his power. And we had the Warden. If you can explain to me how Count Dooku is involved in any of this, I’ll personally send you a dollar.

Another big mistake Lucas makes is that he brings us into Amidala’s pregnancy right at the beginning of it. That means that Revenge Of The Sith takes place over a timeframe of 7 to 8 months, by far longer than any other Star Wars movie. If you want to talk about a lack of urgency, have your movie take place over 7 months. This forces George to try and cheat and pretend like things are moving along faster than they actually are, but those moments are always fighting against themselves and it just adds to the clumsiness of the movie. What he probably should’ve done was have her eight months pregnant and make it so that Anakin already knew this. That way, when he first comes back to see her, we have a relatively tight time frame.

Also, once again, Lucas plagues his screenplay with an endless number of scenes of death. Once we get back to Coruscant after saving Palpatine, we have a scene where Anakin talks to Amidala. We have a scene where he talks to Yoda. We have another scene where he talks to Amidala. We have a Council meeting. We have another scene with Anakin and Amidala where they talk about how much they love each other. He has a scene with the Senator where they talk about I don’t even know what. Obi-Wan, Sam Jackson and Yoda then talk about Anakin (characters talking about other characters – scene of death!). We have a scene where Anakin tells Amidala how he had a nightmare about her. We have a scene where Anakin and Amidala talk about if they’re on the “right side” or not. I mean seriously. You gotta be kidding me. This is the very definition of scenes of death where characters are just talking to each other about their feelings or about other people or about their opinions.

Once again, somewhere in all of this is Anakin becoming confused about his allegiance, which is the only potentially interesting thread in the movie. But instead of two or three powerpacked scenes where we explore this and it really resonates with the audience, we get 12 to 14 scenes where it’s brought up in bits and pieces and is therefore diluted. You always want to combine scenes that are saying the same thing so you have one strong scene as opposed to two or three weak ones.

This is the hardest of the three prequels to judge because it does have its moments. But all of the things that plague the previous two films are unfortunately still on display here. We have full sections of the movie that have no engine driving them at all (mainly the stuff after the opening rescue sequence). We have strange tonal inconsistencies (having somebody slaughter a bunch of four-year-old kids in a Star Wars movie?). We have a story that doesn’t really make sense (who are these villains?). We have a timeframe that’s too long. We have entire sequences that don’t matter (the Wookie planet battle). Every one of the prequels needed to be majorly simplified. As much of the politics as possible should’ve been eliminated. Lucas needed to make things fun and easy to follow, like the earlier films. Instead we had a screenwriter who doesn’t understand the craft trying to pull off one the most complicated types of stories there is. The second half Jedi stuff gave this movie just enough of an edge to climb out of the rating gutter, but it’s still pretty bad.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The Anakin-Palpatine dialogue scene during the opera is actually a good scene to study for creating subtext in your screenplay. Whenever you have one character who’s saying one thing but trying to get something else across, you’re creating subtext, which will usually make the scene more interesting. So if Palatine had done what Lucas had been doing for the majority of these prequels, he probably would have said something like “Look Anakin. I’m actually a Sith Lord and I really think it would be cool if you joined me,” which, of course, would’ve been on the nose and boring. Instead, he tells him a story about a Sith Lord who once had the power to bring people back from the dead, preying on Anakin’s need to save the woman he loves. It’s by no means the best example of subtext, but it’s good enough to work.

We’re back for Day 4 of Star Wars Week. To find out more, head back to Monday’s review of The Empire Strikes Back.

Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy
Premise: (from IMDB) Anakin Skywalker shares a forbidden romance with Padmé Amidala while his teacher, Obi-Wan Kenobi, makes an investigation of a separatist assassination attempt on Padmé which leads to the discovery of a secret Republican clone army.
About: Lucas was a little shaken by the response to his screenplay for The Phantom Menace, so was reluctant to write Attack Of The Clones. He ended up writing a couple of drafts and then gave off the final draft to Jonathan Hales, a writer on Young Indiana Jones, who had little experience writing theatrical films. Hales finished his draft a week before production began.
Writers: George Lucas and Jonathan Hales (story by George Lucas)

Of the three prequels, Attack Of The Clones probably had the best chance of becoming a real movie. There’s definitely a lot more going on here than in Menace. You have an assassination attempt. You have a much more interesting dynamic in your Jedi pairing. The set pieces are more interesting. But much like The Phantom Menace, there’s too much junk you have to sift through to find the gems. By far, the biggest fault of the screenplay is its treatment of its love story. If you ever plan to write a love story, watch this movie to see how not to do it. Lucas has referenced numerous times how this storyline was his “Titanic.” And that’s a great place to start because I want to show you just how inferior this love story is to Titanic.

Probably more important than what happens during the love story, is how you set up that love story. Your job as a screenwriter is to set up a situation that mines the most drama out of the relationship. In Titanic, we have a poor drifter falling for one of the richest women on the ship, who also happens to be engaged – and oh, they’re on a ship that will eventually sink and kill most of the people on it. I can safely say that’s a situation that will bring out a lot of drama. Now let’s look at Attack Of The Clones. Anakin and Amidala are told to go hide out on her planet.

I want you to think about that for a second. Hiding out on a planet. There is no goal here. There’s no engine driving the story thread. There’s nobody after these two. There is no urgency. There are no stakes. You’re simply putting two characters in an isolated location and asking them to sit and wait. Is there any drama to mine from that situation? No. This means that before our characters have a single conversation, their love story is doomed. There is no way for it to be interesting. Contrast this with The Empire Strikes Back, where the entire love story takes place on the run with our characters constantly in danger. That’s how you want your love story unraveling.

Next up is the dialogue. This is a huge mistake that a lot of amateur screenwriters make. They believe that if the characters are telling each other that they love each other, that the audience will by association feel that love. Wrong. Actually, the opposite is true. We feel love through actions. We feel love through subtext. The time when we least feel love is when two characters are professing it to each other (unless we’re at the end of the movie and you’ve earned that moment).

One of the best ways to convey love is through subtext. Characters are saying one thing but they really mean something else. The best example of this is in The Empire Strikes Back. During that movie, Han and Leia are arguing with each other nonstop. Yet we can feel the desire each has for the other in every argument. Even when Han is directly trying to make a move on Leia, he does it by challenging her. He’s constantly telling her that she likes him, which is far more interesting than if he would’ve sat her down and professed his love for her, which is exactly how all of the love scenes happen in Clones.

Another thing you need with any good love story is conflict. You need things constantly trying to tear your leads apart. Whether it be something between them, an outside force, a battle from within the individual. The more things you can use to tear your lovers away from each other, the more those characters have to fight to be with each other, and those actions will translate over to the audience as love. So look at all the things keeping Jack and Rose apart on Titanic. First they’re from different classes. A poor kid like Jack just can’t be with a rich woman like Rose. It doesn’t happen today and it definitely never happened back then. Also, Rose is engaged. Even if the class thing weren’t an issue, she’s getting married. Also important to note is how much is at stake with that marriage. Rose’s mom needs her to marry to save their financially crumbling family. The two are also constantly being chased by her fiancé’s Henchman. And on top of all that, they’re on a doomed ship, a ship that will sink and likely kill one of the people in the relationship. I mean if you want to talk about things that are trying to rip a couple apart, all you have to do is watch this movie.

Let’s compare that to all the things keeping Anakin and Amidala apart in Attack Of The Clones.

(insert long silence here).

I mean I guess if you were to push me on it, I could argue that there’s something about how Jedi’s are not allowed to love. That, to me, is the only element of conflict keeping these two apart. But the thing is, there are no explained consequences to this conflict. It’s never explored in anything other than words. And Lucas never commits to it. As we’ll see in the next film, their “secret romance” has Anakin sleeping over at her apartment every night. Yeah, they’re trying really hard to keep this a secret. This leaves us with absolutely zero conflict in any of their scenes, putting all the heavy lifting on the dialogue, and since the dialogue is mostly Anakin professing his love for Amidala, this storyline turns out to be one of the worst love stories ever put to film.

This also highlights something I brought up yesterday – the scene of death. Every single scene on Naboo between these two characters is a scene of death. The characters are either talking about their feelings or talking about politics. You will never be able to make those scenes interesting because, again, there’s nothing else going on in the scene and none of these scenes are pushing the story forward.

These scenes of death are everywhere if you look for them. Remember, when you’re writing a story and trying to convey any sort of character development, you want to show and not tell. Now George does a pretty poor job of this in an early scene with Obi-Wan and Anakin, but he does do it. After Obi-Wan and Anakin chase an alien into a bar, the two get into a series of disagreements on how to handle the matter. It’s sloppy and it’s on the nose, but at least we’re showing their problems and not telling the audience their problems.

However, a few scenes later, we’re up with Amidala in her apartment and the entire scene is dedicated to Anakin telling Amidala how he feels about Obi-Wan. This scene of death (two people talking about another person) is violating three screenwriting rules at the same time. First of all, it’s not pushing the story forward at all and therefore is unnecessary. Second, it’s telling us and not showing us. And third, it’s repeating information we already know. Lucas has given us a few scenes now that have shown us that Anakin has a problem with Obi-Wan’s authority. This is the kind of mistake a screenwriter who is writing their first screenplay would make. It’s that bad.

As for the structure of the screenplay, all you need to do is compare it to Empire to see why it fails so spectacularly. Remember how in that movie, we were cutting back and forth between Han being chased and Luke training to become a Jedi? In this movie, the two threads we’re cutting back and forth between are a love story on a planet where there’s no urgency whatsoever, and a procedural where Obi-Wan plays detective, a sequence that also has little urgency. That means instead of two threads with high horsepower story engines, we have one thread with just a tiny bit of horsepower. No wonder the movie feels so slow.

The funny thing is, there’s only a single interesting scene from a screenwriting perspective in the entire movie. And the reason for this is probably that Lucas ran into it by accident. Good screenwriters deliberately structure their screenplays to create these scenes. Bad screenwriters stumble upon them luckily every once in a while, wondering why they’re the only scenes that feel right in their script. The scene in question is when Obi-Wan meets Jango Fett in his apartment. This scene is a good one because there’s so much subtext at play – one of the few times in the prequels that we actually have subtext. Obi-Wan suspects that Jango Fett is the one who tried to assassinate Amidala. Jango Fett knows that Obi-Wan is on to him but must act aloof. This is what creates the subtext. The two are having a somewhat normal conversation, but both are hiding some critical pieces of information that they know about the other.

The only things that actually work in the film are things that were born out of the original films. We’re excited to see Yoda fight for the first time. We’re excited to see a bunch of Jedi’s take on another Army. We’re excited to see Obi-Wan battle Jango Fett. But none of those things are generated through the dramatic components of this particular story. We enjoy them based on nostalgia. Attack Of The Clones is a little better than The Phantom Menace but not enough to garner a better rating.

[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: What I’m realizing with these prequels, especially after yesterday, is that there’s no urgency to them whatsoever. I mean look at this stretch of four scenes early in the movie. We have a scene of the Jedi Council telling our characters what to do. We have a scene where Sam Jackson and Obi-Wan and Yoda discuss how Jedi’s have become arrogant (scene of death). We have that scene where Anakin and Amidala talk about how Obi-Wan is mean (scene of death). And we have a goodbye scene at the ship station with Obi-Wan and Amidala (scene of death). That’s four scenes in a row where the only thing that happens is the Jedis order Anakin to protect Amidala. There are no story engines driving these scenes whatsoever. Everything just sits there. Go watch the first act of Empire. After the 15 minute “Luke kidnapped by Wampa” sequence, we get a fun little scene where the crew jokes around about what happened, and then the very next scene they find out the Empire has spotted them, beginning the next sequence where they have to escape the planet. If Lucas would’ve wrote that sequence? He probably would have added three or four scenes with Han and Leia talking to each other, with Han and Luke talking to each other, and God knows who else talking to each other. When people say to keep your story moving, this is what they mean. They mean don’t write all these unnecessary scenes that you don’t need.

We’re back for Day 3 of Star Wars Week. To find out more, head back to Monday’s review of The Empire Strikes Back.

Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy
Premise: (from IMDB) Two Jedi knights uncover a wider conflict when they are sent as emissaries to the blockaded planet of Naboo.
About: It is said that Lawrence Kasdan was approached to write the script for The Phantom Menace but that Kasdan felt Empire and Jedi were a step away from Lucas’s vision and believed that Lucas should write and direct the prequels so that they would remain in his voice. Hmmm, that personally sounds like a clever brushoff to me. Other rumors include Frank Darabont and Carrie Fisher being approached to write the script. But in the end, we got George Lucas. Hooray.
Writer: George Lucas

The Phantom Menace is such a poorly told story that as I started compiling the screenwriting mistakes to highlight in this review, I realized there were too many to choose from.

I guess we’ll start at the top. The first problem is the backstory. In the backstory for the original films, rebels were trying to defeat the Empire. It’s simple. It’s powerful. It’s focused. In this movie, we get the taxation of trade routes. In other words, it’s complicated. It’s confusing. It’s unfocused. Now complicated can be good if you have a screenwriter who knows how to navigate complications and who’s dedicated to the extra work required to write something of this magnitude. But George Lucas is neither. He’s openly stated that’s he doesn’t like writing. And since writing even a simple story can take 20-30 drafts to get right, you can only imagine how much effort and how many drafts something complicated would take. And if you’re not committed to all that extra effort, your screenplay’s going to suffer. And this is the main reason the prequels are so bad. Everything here is a first draft idea that was never developed.

Something feels wrong about The Phantom Menace right from the start. We’ve talked about storytelling engines all week and there is an engine here. But unfortunately that engine lacks horsepower. The goal is for two Jedi’s to convince the trade Federation to leave Naboo. In the opening of Star Wars, Darth Vader storms a rebel ship in search of the stolen Death Star plans. In the opening of Empire, Luke Skywalker is kidnapped by a monster and must be rescued. These are both strong and clear engines. Removing a trade blockade from a planet? Borrrrrrrr-ing.

Now to Phantom’s credit, there is one point in the film where things get kind of interesting, and that’s when Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon discover an invasion army. This creates mystery. And it gives our characters purpose. They must now get down to the planet and figure out what’s up. When they get there, they realize the Naboo people are going to be attacked and therefore have to save the Queen. Okay, we actually have a little bit of story going on here. Saving queens is exciting. Right?

Unfortunately, once they escape, they get marooned on Tantooine and things start falling apart quickly. They do actually have a goal on Tantooine, and that’s to get off the planet. But you’ll notice there’s something missing from this sequence that’s been present in every single Star Wars movie up to this point. Urgency. Star Wars added it by making sure the bad guys were always on our tail. Empire did the same, with the Empire always right behind Han. Nothing is chasing them here. We feel like they could be here for months and there would be no consequences.

The thing is, George has a ticking time bomb for the Tantooine sequence – they need to get to the Senate to tell them what’s going on on Naboo before it’s too late. But he doesn’t do a very good job of reminding us of this urgency and the goal itself is so muddled and confusing, that even if he did, we still wouldn’t feel the importance of it. I mean, hasn’t the Trade Federation already taken over Naboo? What does it matter if they get there now or two years from now?

But The Phantom Menace truly dies when our characters arrive on Coruscant (the city planet). This is where I’ll be introducing a new term on Scriptshadow: Scene Of Death.

The Scene Of Death is any scene that exists only to…

a) Convey exposition.
b) Have characters talk to each other about their feelings.
c) Have two people talk about another person.
d) Have two people talk about their views or opinions on things.

Now let me be clear. You can have all of these conversations in your movie. But you have to have them during scenes where the story is being pushed forward. If the only reason the scene exists is to show one of these four things, that scene will draw your story to a complete stop. Now if you’ve had an incredibly intense stretch of really solid storytelling, you can sometimes get away with one of these scenes. But I wouldn’t recommend it. I think there’s always a way to get this stuff in while the story is being pushed forward.

Now your screenplay is in trouble if you write just one of these scenes. But imagine if half the scenes you wrote were scenes of death. Welcome to The Phantom Menace.

This is what happens on Coruscant. The main characters convene in a room and talk about the upcoming discussion they’re going to have with the Senate. Then we go to the Jedi Council where Qui-Gon Jinn says they need to teach Anakin. Then Anakin goes to tell Amidala that he’s saying goodbye. Then we have a boring Senate meeting. Then they go to the Senate committee to ask permission for something. Then Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn talk. Then Anakin gets tested by the Jedi Council. Then Amidala talks to Jar-Jar about their planet. Then Amidala talks to the Emperor about going back to her planet. Then Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon and Anakin talk to the Jedi Council yet again. Then Qui-Gon Jinn explains what the force is to Anakin. I might nominate this as the worst stretch of scenes in a big-budget movie ever. Out of these 11 scenes, maybe half are scenes of death and the other half so barely move the story forward or are so muddled in their execution, that they destroy any bit of momentum the movie had left. There is no engine underneath this sequence driving the story forward. And there is definitely no GSU. I mean what happened to the storytelling of the first two films?? If somebody wanted something in Star Wars, they went after it themselves. They didn’t go to a Senate committee. Choices George. You have to make interesting choices. Debating anything in a Senate is not an interesting choice.

And the scariest thing? That’s not even the worst part of the screenplay. The worst part of the screenplay is the characters. Even if Lucas had cleaned all this plot stuff up and made each sequence as tight and focused as Star Wars and Empire, it wouldn’t have mattered because we don’t like the characters. Let’s take a look at the six key characters and why they suck.

Qui-Gon Jinn – The mentor character is rarely flashy, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be interesting. I’ll admit that the Obi-Wan Kenobi from the first films wasn’t exactly the coolest character ever. He didn’t do anything outrageous or shocking. But he had this intriguing mystical quality about him and he was very warm. Qui-Gon Jinn is as cold and as boring a character as you’ll find. Part of this is the way Lucas set up the Jedi. He implied in the original films that Jedis were sophisticated and ordered and honorable. Unfortunately, those are all traits that make a character boring. I would probably want Qui-Gon Jinn mentoring me in real life. But I definitely don’t want to put him in my movie if my goal is to entertain people.

Obi-Wan Kenobi – Much like Qui-Gon Jinn, there’s very little going on with Obi-Wan Kenobi. He doesn’t seem to have any character flaws. He listens to and attentively follows everything his mentor tells him to do without argument. And that’s where this dynamic falters. Whenever you pair two people together for an entire movie, you need there to be some sort of unresolved conflict between them. Without conflict, the characters aren’t struggling to find balance. If the relationship is already balanced, then there’s nothing for the characters to fight. That’s going to equal a lot of boring scenes. So you have two characters, both of them with no internal struggles, and no conflict between them. How the hell are you going to make that interesting?

Amidala – Queen Amidala is the worst character in this movie and may be the worst character Lucas has ever created. George tries to create this whole disguise storyline where Queen Amidala disguises herself as a handmaiden. The problem is, there’s absolutely no point to it whatsoever. Had she never disguised herself, absolutely nothing would have changed. This goes back to the use of stakes. If you’re going to disguise someone, ask yourself, what are the stakes to them getting caught? If there are no stakes, then there’s no point in disguising them. If it any point Amidala is discovered when, say, they’re hanging out on Tantooine, what happens? Maybe Qui-Gon Jinn smiles slightly and says, “Wow, you got me.” And that would be it. Look at a movie like Pretty Woman. Watch the scenes where Julia Roberts goes out with Richard Gere to a high-class dinner or a polo match. In those scenes, Roberts is masquerading as one of them. If she gets caught, and somebody realizes that Richard Gere is with a hooker, there are real consequences to that. Maybe the other businessmen don’t deal with Gere. Maybe his reputation takes a shot. Julia Roberts will be humiliated. The fact that George doesn’t realize the importance of stakes in this situation shows how little he understands storytelling.

Anakin – Anakin is a tough character to dissect. Much of our thoughts regarding Anakin have to do with our knowledge of what’s going to happen to him in the future (dramatic irony). Lucas is hoping that just seeing this young happy kid who we know will later become one of the most sinister dictators in the galaxy is going to stir up enough emotions that we’ll be interested in him. And the truth is, Anakin does have some stuff going on. He’s a slave. He ends up having to leave his mother. The seeds are here for a good character. Unfortunately, Lucas really botched the casting. The kid who played Anakin wasn’t a good actor and therefore we just never believed him. I do think that a better casting choice would’ve helped this film tremendously. But it’s also a reminder of a screenwriting tip I’ve mentioned before. It’s probably best not to include a major character under 10 in your script. Finding a good actor who can play a major role at that age is the equivalent of trying to win the lottery.

Jar-Jar – This is going to shock you. Jar-Jar is actually the deepest character in the story. Or I should say, the character whom George Lucas intended to be the deepest. He’s the only character in the group who has a flaw. He doesn’t take life seriously enough. And he doesn’t believe in his worth. That’s what’s led to all of the problems with his people, and why he was ultimately kicked out of the clan. So when you’re talking about unresolved conflict, there’s actually a lot of unresolved conflict going on with this character. Unfortunately, George undercut this with such a goofy annoying character that it didn’t matter. We’re not going to care if a character is able to overcome anything if we don’t like him. So remember, just adding a character flaw isn’t enough. You still have to make that character someone we’ll root for.

Darth Maul – A huge critical mistake that George Lucas made was not including a dominant villain. Not every movie needs a villain. However, if you’re going to write a sci-fi movie, you need a villain. And Lucas actually created a really cool villain here, but ended up portraying him as a nuisance more than a genuine threat to the Republic. The guy barely spoke. He didn’t do anything unless he was told to. He was a weak villain. And if you don’t have someone to point to as the ultimate threat in this kind of movie, then you’re never really scared for the characters. Lucas really should have made Darth Maul a major character with a lot more power. It would’ve helped this movie a lot.

Like I said, I could go on forever with this movie. I didn’t even get to the ending where the bad guys were destroyed by a baffling series of lucky coincidences. I’m just shocked at how much time and effort and money was put into something that was so poorly constructed. If there’s any lesson to come out of this, it’s that this is what happens when you don’t commit to rewriting your script until it’s great. As I struggled to figure out a rating for this film, I realized I couldn’t recall a single moment in the script that worked. For that reason, I have no choice but to give it the lowest rating.

[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: This is why you shouldn’t try and write a complicated multifaceted multi-character epic with politics and secret objectives and dozens of vastly different locations. These are the most difficult movies to write by far. And this is often the result. A bunch of muddled objectives in a muddled plot that’s desperately trying to seem important but none of that importance comes through because it’s all so sloppily executed. To me, The Phantom Menace is an argument for the power of a simple plot. Keep the character goals clear. Keep everybody’s motivations clear. Keep the story goals clear. The first two films were basically bad guys chasing good guys. Even Empire could be boiled down to that. As long as you have that simple structure in place, you can try to find the complications within it. But if you start with an overarching complex story that lacks focus, it’s likely doomed from the get-go.
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We’re back for Day 2 of Star Wars Week. To find out more, head back to yesterday’s review of The Empire Strikes Back.

Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy
Premise: (from IMDB) After rescuing Han Solo from the palace of Jabba the Hutt, the Rebels attempt to destroy the Second Death Star, while Luke Skywalker tries to bring his father back to the Light Side of the Force.
About: Return of the Jedi had an extensive director list which started with Steven Spielberg, who had to decline the invitation because he was still part of the Directors Guild, one of the guilds Lucas had a bitter falling out with after Empire. His next choice was David Lynch, who ended up declining because he felt the movies were specifically George Lucas’s vision. All I can say is, thank God for that. Lynch would later go on to direct “Dune,” which may be one of the worst sci-fi films ever made. Unfortunately, the winner of the director’s derby wasn’t much better. Richard Marquand was chosen in part because he was not a Guild member. Unfortunately, it also meant he was inexperienced, a problem that would plague production. Many of the actors became frustrated with Marquand and that forced George Lucas – if the rumors are to be believed – to take over directing duties for much of the film.
Writers: Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas (story by George Lucas)

Return of the Jedi starts much like Empire, with a movie before the movie. Now nothing is going to beat that stupendous Hoth sequence, but the Jabba The Hut thread is still pretty awesome. Picking up where we left off yesterday, you’ll notice a strong storytelling engine powering this storyline – Rescue Han Solo.

Now it’s important to remember that just having a goal isn’t enough. Your goal needs to have horsepower. The more horsepower you have, the longer the goal can be sustained. Saving Han Solo is a huge goal with a ton of horsepower, but for arguments sake, let’s change the goal to see how it would’ve affected the story. Let’s say Han Solo had already escaped by the time the film began and simply wanted to kill Jabba The Hut to rid himself of the headache. That storyline still would’ve had some juice to it, but notice how the absence of necessity hurts the goal. It’s not imperative that he kill Jabba The Hut, and therefore the stakes aren’t nearly as high. It is imperative that they save Han Solo, hence why that storytelling engine has so much horsepower.

Now after the Jabba The Hut sequence, we’re in almost the exact same territory as when they got off Hoth in Empire. But here’s our first example of why the screenwriting in this film isn’t as good as that one. In Empire, after a short scene where Luke tells R2-D2 that they’re going to Dagobah, we jump immediately into the Empire chasing Han Solo, then intercut that with Luke looking for and eventually training with Yoda. In Return Of The Jedi, George Lucas begins a trend of inserting scenes with no storytelling engine underneath them whatsoever.

Here in Jedi, we go back to see Yoda die. Now Yoda dying is a somewhat interesting development I guess, but George doesn’t really know what to do with it, so he uses it to dole out a whole bunch of exposition about Luke being Vader’s son – information we already know. If you’re only writing a scene to convey exposition to the audience, you are failing as a screenwriter. Exposition should always be secondary to something else going on in the scene. And that something should always be pushing the story forward. You might be able to argue that Yoda dying is pushing the story forward (I would question that since it has no bearing on the rest of the film whatsoever), and so if this were the only scene here, I might give the writers a pass.

But where Lucas really screws up is that he follows this scene with an additional scene (with Obi-Wan) giving us virtually the exact same exposition. Luke is Darth Vader’s son. We get it. Now what it seems like Lucas is doing here is a major screenwriting faux pas. He feels like he has to explain why Obi-Wan told Luke that Darth Vader had killed his father back in Star Wars. Whenever you’re using entire scenes to explain inconsistencies from other parts of your screenplay, you’re writing a bad scene. Period. Those scenes never work. But the point is, we get two long expositional scenes in a row that total 8 minutes, and neither of them push the story forward. Bad use of exposition is one of the easiest ways to identify a bad screenwriter.

Luckily, Star Wars hasn’t died yet. That won’t happen for another 15 years. After this scene, we introduce a huge storytelling engine that will drive us through the rest of the movie. That’s the new goal, to destroy the Second Death Star. This is actually the earliest a major goal has been introduced into a Star Wars movie – at the 50 minute mark. In the first Star Wars, we didn’t know the goal (destroy the Death Star) until 20 minutes left in the movie. The Empire Strikes Back never had major goal. So this is a pretty monumental moment. It’s also why, even though Lucas makes the uninspired choice of adding Ewoks, that the final hour and 20 minutes of Jedi worked so well. I don’t think you’re going to find a storytelling engine with more horsepower than destroying the Death Star.

But since we’ve discussed structure so much already, I’d like to move over to the characters, because Jedi is the first film in the Star Wars franchise where the character development is noticeably weak. Whenever you write a character into a film, the idea is to create something unresolved in that character’s life. That unresolved conflict can be something inside of him. It can also be something between him and someone else. Good writing usually has both.

In the first Star Wars film we had a lot of this going on. Luke was struggling to believe in himself. Han was selfish to a fault. Luke and Leia had an unresolved issue (a potential relationship there?) Han and Leia had unresolved issues (they hated each other). Some of the most notable unresolved conflict was between the droids. C-3PO’s flaw was that he was too cautious. R2-D2’s flaw was that he was too reckless. And of course their relationship was always striving to find balance. What this meant was that every scene had some sort of unresolved conflict going on in it, whether it be internal or external. The more of these conflicts you add to a story, the more drama you’re going to find in each scene.

In Empire, Kasdan does a really good job of redistributing these unresolved conflicts. Luke’s conflict becomes his impatience. He constantly struggles with the amount of time and effort becoming a Jedi requires. He believes he’s ready now. Because Han’s flaw of being too selfish was overcome at the end of Star Wars, Kasdan shifts the unresolved conflict over to his relationship with Leia. That unresolved conflict of “is there or isn’t there a relationship here?” was so strong, that they didn’t even need to add internal character flaws for the two.

In Return of the Jedi, all of the excellent unresolved character conflict from the previous films is eliminated except for Luke and Darth Vader. That means whenever we’re not with them, the story struggles. Lucas actually makes the critical mistake of applying a new flaw to Han’s character – jealousy. Jealousy is the least flattering character flaw there is and it almost ends up destroying one of the best characters in movie history.

We also get a neutered imitation of the Han-Leia love story from Empire. In that film, the love manifests itself with a series of ongoing arguments, all with the underlying subtext that these two love each other. In Jedi, all that subtext is gone and the characters say to each other exactly what’s on their mind – always a recipe for disaster. For example, a jealous Han will ask Leia straight to her face if she likes him or Luke. Good Lord. Talk about bad screenwriting. This is another good reminder to always scrutinize your choices. If the writers had just sat down and asked themselves, “Do we really want to take away everything that’s cool about this character and make him act like a jealous teenager?” there’s a good chance we would’ve gotten a much cooler Han in Jedi.

This leads us to one of the most critical mistakes of the franchise, and the reason why Jedi is not held up as highly as Star Wars or Empire. The Ewoks. Now there are a lot of opinions as to why the Ewoks were such a bad story choice, but it can be boiled down to a single reason. The mythology of this universe doesn’t make sense if a bunch of cute furry creatures can take down the most imposing force in the history of the galaxy. If a bunch of glorified puppies can defeat an army that is supposedly technologically superior to them in every way, then how dangerous was the Empire all this time?

Not only that, but the Ewoks demonstrate one of George Lucas’s biggest weaknesses as a screenwriter, his inability to manage tone. The Emperor is one of the scariest and darkest villains ever put to film. Once you do that, you have to create a film that stays tonally consistent with that kind of enemy. By introducing a bunch of cuddly creatures that make C-3PO a God, you jump into Saturday morning cartoon territory. It’s too sharp of a tonal shift, and it confuses the audience as to what kind of movie they’re watching. It just goes to show that one bad story choice can have catastrophic effects on the rest of the screenplay. That’s why it’s important to hold up all of your choices to the highest scrutiny and ask if they’re the right choice. I’ll remind you of some important advice that I learned a long time ago. If a choice doesn’t feel right for any reason – if something’s telling you, “this doesn’t feel right” – don’t use it. Think of something else. Because I guarantee it will never get better.

Jedi held on to just enough of what made this franchise great to still be a solid movie. But a few lousy story choices, tonal inconsistencies, and the lack of moments with a true storytelling engine are the beginning of what will be the undoing of this franchise, which I’ll begin to get into tomorrow.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Avoid writing a scene if the only reason you’re writing it is for exposition. Pop in your copy of Empire and watch the back to back scenes where Yoda dies and Luke talks to Obi-Wan. Notice how both scenes talk about the past and don’t push the story forward. Now remember, not all dialogue scenes are exposition scenes. You can have two people talking in a scene if it’s pushing the story forward. When Luke talks to his aunt and uncle at dinner in Star Wars, his uncle tells him that he’s going to need him to stay on the farm, and that the droids memories will need to be erased. This information is dictating future actions (and actually adding tremendous tension – if R2-D2’s memory is erased, the Rebels hopes to defeat the Empire will be lost forever), therefore pushing the story forward. Or when Luke speaks with Obi-Wan at his place on Tantooine. Sure, we get some exposition about Luke’s father, but the point of the scene is to show Obi-Wan the message from Princess Leia and for him to ask Luke to join him, again, pushing the story forward. Lucas and Kasdan should’ve looked for more clever ways to dole out the exposition from these scenes. It admittedly would not have been easy, but nobody said screenwriting was easy.

Although it’s much more popular to bash Star Wars these days than stick up for it, I have to say I’ve always been a big Star Wars geek. So with the new Blu-ray release of the Star Wars films next week, I decided to dedicate an entire week to the Star Wars franchise, breaking down why these movies did or did not work. I already reviewed Star Wars: A New Hope about a year ago, so I’ll be starting with The Empire Strikes Back, going to Jedi, and then moving to the prequels, which should be interesting. For those of you who are big Empire fans and haven’t been on the site for very long, you’ll also want to check out my review of Leigh Brackett’s original Empire draft. It’s quite wild.

Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy
Premise: (from IMDB) While Luke takes advanced Jedi training from Yoda, his friends are relentlessly pursued by Darth Vader as part of his plan to capture Luke.
About: Considered by many Star Wars fans to be the best in the franchise, Empire has the distinction of being the only Star Wars film not to gross more than $300 million domestically. Still, it was the highest grossing movie of 1980. Lucas bankrolled the $33 million dollar production all by himself.
Writers: Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasden (story by George Lucas)
Details: 4th draft – 169 pages (This appears to be a production or shooting draft, which may explain its length. The film is 124 minutes long)

As someone who loves breaking down screenplays, Empire always terrified me. It has such a funky structure, with its main battle happening within the first 40 minutes and the lack of any clear defining goal for its heroes. Coming back to it over the years, I’ve never been able to completely understand why it works. But recently, as I’ve strengthened my critical eye, I feel like I’m finally ready to figure out the secret to Empire. Imagine my surprise when I watched the film and realized that while it does do things differently, as long as you divide it up into segments, it’s quite easy to figure out. But I’ll get to that in a moment. First, here’s a short summary of the story.

Darth Vader is in hot pursuit of Luke Skywalker and the new hidden Rebel base, blanketing every star system in sight to find them. When he locates the Rebels on the remote ice planet of Hoth, he sends an army down to destroy them. But the Rebels are able to escape, and our heroes split into two factions. Han and Leia head out in one direction with Darth Vader hot on their trail, and Luke heads to the Dagobah System to be trained by an elusive Jedi master named Yoda. Before it’s all said and done, the groups will reunite at a city in the clouds, and Darth Vader will reveal his true connection to Luke in an epic final battle.

In order to understand how The Empire Strikes Back works, you need to understand what a storytelling engine is. A storytelling engine is any storytelling tool that pushes your story forward. If you think of each scene and each sequence and each act as its own unique car, then you’ll understand that the only way to make that car go is with an engine. In addition to that, the more horsepower your engine has, the faster that scene, that sequence, or that act will go. While The Empire Strikes Back does not have one giant storytelling engine driving the entire story like, say, Star Wars, it does have a bunch of smaller storytelling engines, and these are the key to making the movie work.

The most common storytelling engine and the one with the most horsepower is one we talk about all the time: the character goal. If a character is trying to achieve a goal, his storyline will have purpose, because we’ll want to see if he does or does not achieve that goal. But there are other storytelling engines you can call on as well, and Empire uses a few of them. So let’s look at the structure a little more closely and see how these storytelling engines come into play.

Empire starts with the Hoth sequence, where Luke gets taken by the Wampa monster, an act which requires Han to go out looking for him. That makes this (Han needing to find Luke) the first character goal (storytelling engine) of the film. After finding him, they discover an Imperial probe droid, which signifies that they’ve been spotted. This results in the next storytelling engine, or “goal,” and that’s for the rebels to get off the planet before the Empire catches them. You can even extend the storytelling engine over to the bad guys, as they have the dominant goal – to destroy the rebel base and capture the rebels. Within this battle sequence, our heroes’ tasks are divided up twofold. Han and Leia’s goal is to get off of the base, and Luke’s is to slow down the Empire’s assault. This is why this opening sequence is so exciting. Everybody has a clear and strong directive. This is also why the character goal is considered the strongest storytelling engine you can use.

Now when this sequence ends, things get a little tricky. Luke goes off to Dagobah to find Yoda, and Han and Leia are pursued by Darth Vader. It can certainly seem jumbled when you first look at it, but when you break it down, we actually have two very simple but powerful storytelling engines in play here. With Luke, we have a powerful goal – to train and become a Jedi. His entire training sequence is in service to that goal, so whenever we cut back to that storyline, things are always moving forward.

On the other end of the galaxy, we have our first non-goal storytelling engine driving a sequence, a chase. While a chase doesn’t have as much horsepower as a character goal, it’s still an extremely powerful storytelling engine because it’s so active and exciting. As long as we like the characters being chased, we’re going to be engaged because we don’t want those characters to be caught.

Now if you want to spin things around a little bit, you could turn this chase into a character goal. That’s because if you look at it from Darth Vader’s perspective, there is a goal: Capture Han Solo. Also, you can look at Han Solo’s goal as trying to escape the Empire. But that’s not the same as a true character goal. A true character goal would be like Star Wars in that they’re not just being chased, they’re trying to get the Death Star plans to the rebel base. That’s why Star Wars was such a great film. It had two storytelling engines driving the story at the same time (highly recommended if the opportunity presents itself – and don’t stop there – if you can get three storytelling engines going at the same time, all the better).

Once these two cross-cutting sequences draw to a close, the script does a funny thing. It bookends its story with another sort of mini movie, the Cloud City sequence. Just like its opening mini movie (the Hoth sequence), Cloud City is pretty long – around 40 minutes. Cloud City introduces a third storytelling engine into the mix, one we don’t talk about as much on the site, but one that’s still very powerful – the mystery.

A mystery may not be as intense as a goal or a chase, but a good mystery achieves the same thing – driving our interest forward – because we want to know the answer to that mystery. “Lost” built an entire six seasons around this storytelling engine. We kept watching because we wanted to know the answers to those questions. The mystery here is: What’s going on with Cloud City? Almost immediately we’re getting a bad vibe from this place and suspect something is up. So the storytelling engine that keeps this sequence moving forward is our desire to find an answer to that question.

It’s an odd choice because it’s so different from the rest of the movie. But it should be noted that about a third of the way through this sequence, the mystery is answered – Lando has made a deal with Darth Vader. Now the key to any story is that when a major storytelling engine stops, another must be introduced, or else your story will stall. This is really important to remember for when I get into the prequels later in the week. The new storytelling engine that fuels the rest of the story is Darth Vader’s. He’s using Han and Leia to lure Luke here so he can destroy him. This leads to a series of strong character goals for everybody else. Leia and Lando must escape. Luke must save his friends. And this is why the end of the film is so exciting, even though we don’t have that great big battle that we’re used to seeing in all the other Star Wars movies.

Empire does have a few faults. I thought the Luke training sequences got a bit repetitive. Just because you have a strong goal for your character doesn’t mean you can extend the pursuit of that goal beyond what the audience is willing to sit through. But I also get the sense that I’m in the minority on this one and that most people think the training sequences are perfect. Empire’s biggest fault is its very strange dissolve crosscutting ending between Luke and Darth Vader once the two have separated. It’s really cheesy and doesn’t work at all. What happens up on that giant fin inside of Cloud City was such a great place to end their communication, and the writers had to screw it up by adding that extra dialogue scene. And you can tell when the writing is bad because the actors don’t show any confidence in it. Mark Hamill is not a great actor by any means, but his discussion with Darth Vader on that ship is some of his worst acting in the series.

But hey? What movie is perfect? The Empire Strikes Back is one of those rare awesome sequels. It is also the end of great screenwriting in the series. As you’ll see tomorrow with Return Of The Jedi, the writing begins to get noticeably sloppier. This will seep into the prequels in a huge way. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s just celebrate for a moment when Star Wars was still awesome. :-)

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[xx] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Although I strongly advise following the three act structure (it’s just easier to navigate through), the truth is, it doesn’t matter how funky your structure is or how many different threads are happening in your film, as long as you have a series of continuous storytelling engines pushing the story forward. Whether it’s finding Luke in the snow. Whether it’s getting the ships out before the Empire shows up. Whether it’s learning to become a Jedi. Whether it’s escaping the Empire through an asteroid field. As long as you string together a series of compelling storytelling engines, your story will be in good shape.