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?