A sub-set of Star Wars fans, those who consider the last two installments of the franchise a crime against the greater myth, have clutched to the concept that George Lucas possessed a gran plan for the series of movies and if those had been made everything would be to their love.

In my opinion there never was a detailed gran plan for the interconnected stories of Star Wars. I was a teenager who the first film hit the theaters of 1977 and I remember desperately waiting for the film to come to town so I could see it. In those pre-internet days and before the time of 3000 screen opening weekends, movies opened in big cities and slowly, over the course of the entire summer, moved into new markets. Since I was stuck waiting for the movie to arrive I read the novel. While credited to George Lucas, the talented Alan Dean Foster, who worked closely with Lucas on that manuscript, wrote the novel. In the novel the Emperor is describe as someone who has become capture by the bootlickers and yes men of his court simply another cog in the great machine that is the evil empire. Lucas had no grand design for Palpatine and his role in the coming story. During the famous cantina scene, when Han shot Greedo from under the table, we are treated to the point of view from others watching who were bemused that Greedo allowed Han to get that hand under the table because that sort of ambush shooting was something Han had done to others. And yet when the 1999 Special Edition came out Lucas defended his re-edit with Greedo shooting first as his original vision and that poor editing, way to throw you ex-wife and her team under the bus, cause people to be confused as to who actually shot first.

Moving away from the novel, in the film Obi-Wan tell Luke that Vader betrayed and murdered father, then helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi. The father bit is Obi-wan being tricky, but when we get to Revenge of the Sithwe’ll learn that Vader killed the children, Jedi in training, while storm troopers dispatched the mighty Jedi by shooting them in the back.

When The Empire Strikes Back hit theaters the scope of the canvas grew and the story deepened. I think it was clear that Lucas always intended for Vader to be Luke’s father. The groundwork for that had been laid down in the first film, but it seems to me that Lucas had no clear conception of Vader’s relationship to the rest of the empire. In the first film Lea refers to Tarkin as ‘holding Vader’s leash’ and yet from the second film onward Vader is the Emperor’s man and carries his authority wherever Vader goes, hardly someone on a leash. Also the Emperor has now morphed from a bureaucrat to a powerful force master.  By now the Emperor had become a central story element but from that description in the novel it is clear he was originally conceived in that role.

In The Return of the Jedi we are told that when Obi-wan first met Anakin Skywalker he was already a great pilot and that Obi-wan was amazed at how powerful the force was with Skywalker. He though he could teach Anakin the ways of the force as well as Master Yoda, but he was wrong. A power story of hubris that is contradicted by the events in the film The Phantom Menacewhere Obi-wan is a student himself, Anakin is a child/slave, and it is Obi-Wan’s master who wants to train young Anakin.

The conflicting story elements between the first trilogy and the prequel one makes it clear that there was not only no detailed plan for the events but that Lucas didn’t hold even a passing interest in continuity. I find it strains credibility to believe that he had a detailed outline for the next series of movies. And would not have flow by the seat of pants, as his history shows was his most preferred method.

Last night I attended a 70mm screening of the classic science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Released in 1968 2001 represents what might be considered the pinnacle of cinematic SF before the K/T event eight years later, Star Wars. While there continued to be released a number of low brow monster and invasion films throughout the 1950s and 1960’s, cinematic SF was, until Star Wars, moving towards a more idea centered adult focused set of stories.

Directed by Stanley Kubrick and written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, 2001 deals with the gigantic themes of the origin of humanity and our possible fate. In other essays I have discussed the difference between story and plot with 2001 I want to introduce another approach, the Idea Centered Narrative.

Where story is chiefly concerned with the evolution of a character and that character’s eventual change, and plot is focuses on objectives and the barriers impeding the achievement of those goals, idea driven narratives are concerned with big thoughts and exploring theoretical landscapes. With less focus on individual characteristics idea centered narrative are often more symbolic, impressionistic, and, particularly with film, strikingly visual. This definition fits 2001perfectly.

2001 can be broken down in five acts; 1-The Dawn of Man, 2-Clavius, 3-The Discovery, 4-The Horror of Hal, and 5-Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite. Others has noticed that each act makes a reference to birthdays and births a central and recurring motif throughout the film as it deals with the up-lift of humanity, symbolically shown by way of Bowman’s transformation, into a post-singularity species. Across the five acts there is no single character to follow, Bowman is in three but only in two acts does he service as an audience Point of View. Instead of a singular character, 2001, presents humanity as a whole as its character and the vehicle for its ideas. Humanity transforms, first from a pre-intelligent hominid into a thinking and reasoning animal, then into a complex but divisive species cooperating and competing as individuals and nations, and finally into the cosmic, alien, and unknowable ‘star child.’ This is a movie that is not concerned with any individual’s problems or challenges, not Moonwatcher the hominid, not Hayward the administrator, and not the doomed astronaut Bowman. Rather the central ‘character’, much like how a landscape or a city can be a ‘character’ in a film, is humanity itself and these various individuals stand in for humanity at key moments in its evolution, an evolution that is directed by unseen, unimaginably power, alien intelligences. I find it fascinating that of the five acts it is act that where Kubrick swore off the Hollywood mainstay, the close-up. Bring the camera right into the subject’s face has been thoroughly accepted mechanism for creating intimacy and empathy between the subject and the audience. Across the entire film we have close-up of our heroic astronauts, Bowman and Poole, of non-human characters such as Hal and Moonwatcher, but not when we are with the most human centered aspect of the movie, the discovery of the lunar monolith and the elaborated conspiracy keeping it secret. Instead keeps us at arms length, emotionally distant from all of these characters. I am not sure what I think about this choice; it’s one that I shall ponder for quite awhile.

There’s no doubt that 2001: A Space Odyssey deserves if venation as a cinematic masterpiece. One of the most thoughtful and though-provoking films of any era 2001 stands as giant and seeing it in 70mm was a real treat.