George Lucas' marketing empire strikes back

George Lucas' marketing empire strikes back

By Dini S. Djalal

JAKARTA (JP): A funny thing happened on the way to the movie
theater. Headed to see Star Wars, we were stopped in our tracks
by an elaborate spaceship.

Kids stood with glazed eyes around this shopping mall Death
Star. Onstage, actors mimicked the scenes on the screen behind.
We, too, were soon hypnotized by the lightsaber noise, and
skipped watching the film in the theater.

Our reaction, and that of the kids, is further proof that the
Star Wars marketing team is going for the hard sell. Armed with
shiny new Star Wars toys, they're saying to the kids and their
nouveau riche parents: Ignore us if you can, but we're not
waiting for you to come to us, we're coming to you every way we
know how.

The Star Wars trilogy's second re-release, The Empire Strikes
Back, has arrived and it's serious business. With nearly US$4
billion in merchandising tie-ins and $1.3 billion in box-office
receipts, director George Lucas has an economic portfolio bigger
than some African nations and is a true Hollywood mogul.

And a cunning one. Only Steven Spielberg matches Lucas in
business savvy, but even Spielberg is not planning a re-release
of E.T. And merchandising mania for Spielberg's Jurassic Park was
nowhere near the hyperbole accompanying the Star Wars trilogy.

As avoidable as a meteor in a meteor field -- that's Star Wars
hype, 1997. Big Brother is definitely watching you, and his name
is Darth Vader. At KFC, packaged meals come with Star Wars toys.
At Metro Department Store, Star Wars gadgets crowd the windows
and interiors, transforming it into an Imperial battleship -- and
the battle is for every dime in your pocket.

The hype is enough to make even Luke Skywalker faithfuls dim
their energy field. Lucas' marketing team is counting on
sentimentalists like me to relive our childhood memories. Indeed,
the force of memories rather than the Force of the Jedi is what
has Star Wars fans back in the theaters. But the films' over-
exposure makes loving Star Wars seem like a cliched corporate
pastime.

The hype wasn't as aggressive in the 1970s. Lucas likely had
no idea his $10 million splurge on a story about planet-hopping
freedom fighters, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Princess Leia
(Carrie Fisher), and Han Solo (Harrison Ford), would have kids
lining around the block. When Empire first showed in 1980,
audiences didn't think, oh no, not another sequel (but that was
before sequel madness threatened to make possible Nightmare on
Elm Street Part 17 or Rocky, the Geriatric Years). No, critics
and die-hards alike thought, wow, we didn't think it could get
any better.

Sophisticated sibling

And it is pretty damn good. If Star Wars is like a sweetly
bumbling kid dabbling in space travel, special effects, and
teenage rebellion, Empire is in every sense its far more
sophisticated sibling. Even the acting shows improvement,
although no Oscar nominations, please.

The film's strength was pictorial, not cerebral. Empire
coincided with the birth of MTV, and how it shows; its shuffle is
more hurried, its set lighting more vivid. The scenes where Leia,
Han, and Chewbacca take refuge with Lando Calrissian (a slick
Billy Dee Williams) at Cloud City are bathed in dramatic blue and
red light; Leia, not the most photogenic of princesses even
without her previous donut-bun hairdo, looks luminous.

The art direction is Oscar-worthy, and the Academy Awards did
nominate Empire for art direction, as well as awarding Lucas'
special effects team Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) a Special
Achievement Award. Every inch of the screen is arranged to
maximum, elegant effect. Its opening scenes alone, where the
rebel forces are attacked at their snow-bound hideaway Hoth, are
outstanding in visual and tempo terms. The special effects are
even more blinding now. With digital recomposition, ILM enhanced
the animation, notably that of the Wampa monster which Luke
wrestles with in an ice cave.

Luke wrestling? Down and dirty; if Star Wars is about Luke
chasing adventures, Empire is about Luke getting stuck in them.
This Luke is older and more heroic, confronting struggle at every
corner. With battle after battle after battle, Empire is war-
obsessed. No wonder then U.S. president Ronald Reagan named his
"Strategic Defense Initiative" against Russia "Star Wars".
Unsurprisingly, Lucas wasn't very happy with the Republicans'
bandwagoning and sued Reagan for copyright infringement.

Lucas should have thanked Reagan for the publicity, although
the film's aesthetic triumph remains all his own (the script,
however, was cowritten by Lawrence Kasdan, who went on to pen The
Big Chill). The most memorable of Lucas' creations is Luke's
diminutive mentor, the otherworldly Yoda, a cross between a frog
and Jurassic Park's Richard Attenborough. Training Luke in the
ways of the Force, Yoda offers both comic relief and California-
style wisdom. When he rasps solemnly "But beware of the Dark
Side", you want to simultaneously salute this ancient Jedi Master
and throw him a lozenge while holding back the giggles.

Yoda's star turn almost eclipses that of Darth Vader.
Inspiration to a dozen masked madmen (think Halloween's murder-
happy Jason or Robocop), Vader's evil in Empire is much more
complex. Vader's power is even strangely Javanese -- he's able to
command authority with few words and no facial expressions. So
cogent is Vader's enigma that the Official Star Wars fan club,
which today has 100,000 members, is allegedly counting the days
for the new trilogy's first release in 1999, which will reveal
how the young Anakin Skywalker crosses over to the Dark Side.

Lucas promises more staggering special effects for these
"prequels". Considering that ILM's Pixar division developed
three-dimensional computer graphics imagery, or CGI, it's a
promise worth waiting for. Lucas eventually sold Pixar to Toy
Story creator Steve Jobs, but ILM is still a leader in digital
animation, as proven by Jurassic Park's computer-generated
dinosaurs.

Will the prequels create a world even more fantastic than the
Dagobah swamps and Hoth glaciers of the galaxy-gazing Evil
Empire? Or more importantly, at least to toy manufacturers, what
kind of goodies can audiences buy?