(narrator) Beginnings are tricky.
Where do you even begin with "Star Wars"?
If someone hasn't seen the films, where do they start?
Do they start with the first movie made,
which is really Episode IV--
Begin in the middle and just kind of loop their way around the saga?
That's a pretty clumsy way.
Or do they begin with Episode I,
which is really the fourth movie made?
It's a film which released 20 years after the first one,
which is the fourth one.
Nerds will argue over which way is better,
because, well, nerds are the lawyers of the internet.
But I'm not really convinced that there's a clean answer here,
just like I'm not altogether sure
there's a right way to begin "Stars Wars"
or even a "Star Wars" documentary.
So I guess I should just begin with my personal beginning,
you know, my introduction to the saga.
And if we're going to do that,
I'm going to need to take you all the way back to childhood.
And it's weird, you know?
When I remember childhood, I think of two things--
Movie nights and pillow forts.
(narrator) As a kid,
I watched "Star Wars" hundreds of times.
It didn't matter which episode.
I loved them all.
"Star Wars" was "Star Wars."
And I could feel the Force was with me, regardless
of which film was on.
But something changed.
Older and now exposed to the internet,
I learned that my view of "Star Wars"
was wrong-- that there weren't six films
part of one large saga but that there was
a good trilogy and an ugly one.
So I spent my post-adolescent years
abandoning films I had loved as a child.
But again, something changed.
Confronted with new ideas and a new set of "Star Wars" films,
I was forced to ask myself, what do I make of all this?
What is the "Star Wars" saga?
And what roles do the prequel films play in it?
I had a crazy idea.
I would go on an adventure.
I traveled thousands of miles, interviewing everyone
I could find-- film makers, theorists, psychologists,
actors-- everyone, all in search of answers.
This is my journey.
And it begins in the most familiar
of places-- the internet.
There's this story on the internet-- One passed on
from forum boards and comment sections,
a tale told in almost Dickensian fashion--
A tale of two Georges.
And it begins.
He was the best of directors.
(Joao Stinson) He's maybe one of the most imaginative people
in the last 50 years.
(narrator) He was the worst of directors.
(Ryan Britt) If a "Star Wars" movie were like an asteroid
or meteor, then "The Phantom Menace" would
be the kind that killed the dinosaurs.
(narrator) He was the idol for a generation.
(James Berardinelli) Teenage boys love this movie.
And then the toys started coming.
(narrator) He was the object for their scorn.
(Kevin Smith) This was ours.
We were children with "Star Wars."
How could he? And all this shit.
(narrator) He was the special effects wizard.
(Michael Barryte) It set and raised the bar
onto what everybody expected.
(narrator) He was the tech junkie
who ran out of magic.
(J.C. Reifenberg) Natalie Portman even said
in this interview once that she doesn't like
acting on green screens. So George Lucas is stupid.
(narrator) He was the renegade kid.
(Chris Gore) The reason he wanted to be an independent
filmmaker was because he didn't like working with corporations.
(narrator) He was the rebel
who became the evil empire.
(Matt Singer) He does sort of become the thing that he hates.
(narrator) Like the gods
in the mythologies he drew upon, George giveth,
and George taketh.
(Barryte) There is this very bad part of the internet
that loves to operate on extremes.
We don't have a middle ground anymore.
I think that the internet has become a soundboard
for negative fanboys.
(Singer) They write books.
They make songs.
They make films.
They re-edit the films.
Nobody hates "Stars Wars" like a "Star Wars" fan.
(Travis English) When people can sit in a dark room
and nobody knows who they are,
they will lash out like nobody's business.
(Justin Bolger) And the internet is such a rapid
opinion without a lot of exploration kind of place.
If you're not taking the time to really delve
into why you hold that opinion,
it becomes not dangerous but a little bit unfair.
(narrator) It's important to ask,
have fans been fair to George Lucas?
When looking at the source of fan criticism,
many will cite Lucas's inconsistency.
(Randy Davis) If you just listen to his interviews and stuff
over and over, I think that he kind of changes his mind a lot.
(Britt) "Star Wars" has so many different things,
going on and none of us were there.
And there's so many different things.
And Lucas says so many different things over the years.
And people say so many different things in interviews.
(Mike Klimo) I think there's definitely been
instances where he's contradicted himself.
(narrator) The poet Walt Whitman once mused,
"Do I contradict myself?
Very well.
Then I contradict myself.
I am large.
I contain multitudes."
I began to realize, in order to understand Lucas,
I needed to determine what were his contradictions
and what were his multitudes.
This began with asking questions.
(Berardinelli) Who is the audience for these movies?
There is such a misconception about who it should have been,
who it was, who Lucas thought it was.
(Davis) Yeah, the whole "Star Wars" is for kids thing-- in my opinion,
honestly, I think it was because of the negative backlash
of, like, Jar Jar Binks and Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker.
He was like, oh, well, it's for kids.
What are you talking about?
(Berardinelli) Why are they saying "Roger, Roger"?
Roger, Roger.
Is this a tribute to Roger Ebert?
No, I don't think so.
They're going "Roger, Roger" because kids
will find it funny, not because-- What adult laughed
at "Roger, Roger"?
(Gore) I mean, look, it's my 40-year-old brain
that's looking at it and going like, uhh, this is for kids,
or this is kind of cheesy.
But you know, there's a lot of cheesy, cute stuff
in the original trilogy as well.
(Klimo) The primary audience of "Star Wars"
has always been young people.
You can go back to interviews before "Star Wars" even came out.
After "American Graffiti," he decided to go the Disney route
and make a children's film.
Lucas, in his original vision for "Star Wars," was,
I want to make a light fairy tale.
I want to give kids something.
He really intentionally wanted to make the original "Star Wars"
as a fantasy for kids, because kids
didn't have heroes.
(narrator) The opening shot
of 1977's "Star Wars," where we see
a rebel ship out-gunned by a massive imperial star destroyer,
is now famous.
It brings out the child in all of us, regardless of age.
But at the time, many adults were not as moved.
(Klimo) A lot of the critics just thought
that it was kind of a silly kids' picture.
(Berardinelli) Yeah, it looked to them like, ehh, "Star Trek" from TV.
(Bob Clark) Because at the end of the day-- And I'm a fan of this myself--
You're talking about a lot of stuff that is very silly.
(JAWAS CHATTERING)
(Gore) Here's what's so funny.
The things that we praise about the original trilogy today,
were totally criticized back in the day.
(Klimo) The acting, the dialogue,
the fact that they thought they were just silly kids' movies,
and, you know, there were annoying characters.
They were empty, hollow special-effects spectacles.
(narrator) Yet the first "Star Wars"
and its sequel, "The Empire Strikes Back,"
are now viewed as the saga's best.
Some fans even claim the films are more
"Star Wars" than the others.
(Britt) What I meant about "Return of the Jedi" is,
I know intellectually it's inferior to "A New Hope"
and "Empire Strikes Back."
And I think the prequels were like that too.
(Bryan Connolly) Once I was, like, 13, 14 with my movie friends,
it was always like, what?
You like "Return of the Jedi" best?
Like, that's so childish.
Like, "Empire Strikes Back"-- like,
when you get older, that's the one that you understand to know
is the real "Star Wars" movie.
Like, that's the one.
(narrator) But again,
the critical community had no problem dismissing
"The Empire Strikes Back."
Original reviews of the film were even worse
than its predecessor.
(Clark) If you're exposed to some of these movies in the right way,
you're always going to look at them as great cinematic works.
If you're ever exposed to a great movie,
sometimes though, in the wrong way,
it can really hamper your appreciation of it.
(Gore) It's made me re-evaluate the prequels.
It's made me think about, had I seen the "Star Wars"
prequels when I originally saw the first "Star Wars,"
if I was 12 years old and saw the "Star Wars" prequels,
I would have lost my mind.
I would have gone nuts.
(Austen Stoddard) When I saw Darth Maul pull out a double-sided light saber,
I was, like, in awe.
I just was like, that's a thing?
(CHUCKLES)
You know, as a seven-year-old, you're like, that's so cool!
(Britt) One of my best friends, who went to all the "Star Wars"
movies with me, his daughter is eight years old.
And he texts me.
And she'll say, the best part's on.
It's the Senate scene in "Phantom Menace."
Why?
She doesn't know what's going on.
She doesn't care.
She loves the way it looks.
She loves Queen Amidala.
She loves the way Queen Amidala looks and sounds and acts.
(Queen Amidala) If this body is not capable of action,
I suggest new leadership is needed.
(Greg Hartrell) A colleague of mine pointed out to me.
He's like, did you ever notice that
in every one of the movies, the perspective shot of most
scenes is done from the angle of a seven- or an eight-year-old.
Think of Obi-Wan talking to Luke or Padme
talking to Anakin or Han talking to Leia.
And you're basically at kind of, like, a little
above the waist height.
And I think what that does is it subconsciously
resonates with kids, because they see the world
from that perspective.
(narrator) Was Lucas using the camera
to resonate with children?
Or was he just positioning the camera
low to make the characters look more heroic?
Or even more, was his camera placement
an emulation of the cinematography
of Asian filmmakers he admired, such as Kurosawa or Ozu?
These are all legitimate possibilities.
And it's from ambiguities such as this,
that great film criticism often arises.
However, if we are to embrace this ambiguity
when looking at the works of filmmakers such as Kurosawa
or Hitchcock, why not Lucas?
To answer this, I decided to hit the road.
(MUSIC PLAYING)