What if Kubrick Made Revenge of the Sith?
It’s Friday and I feel horrible. I called in sick and for the last few hours I’ve been laying here, bored out of my mind, feeling flat out yucky. The germs my kids bring home from school are deadlier than anything NORAD can come up with, and I get to live through it. To get through days like this I usually flip on my XBox and start watching some bad old movies.
The good thing, however, is that today I’ve decided to let Stanley Kubrick nurse what ails me. I’m a “Filmy” – a great lover of the cinematic arts. And if there was a Jesus of cinematic arts (or Buddha, Elijah, Mohammed, or Moon) – it would be Stanley Kubrick. Normally I’d feel compelled to back this statement up with prose or example – but in this case I don’t think I need to.
For most of you this is like confirming that people cannot, in fact, breathe underwater. For many others, however, the realization of Kubrick’s audacious genius is relatively new. If you aren’t a fan – or if you’re ho-hum about the man and his works, I challenge you to find out a bit more about the man who has defined every movie ever made from 1970 on.
Late One Evening In June…
My wife and I have our shows we like to watch. 
Things like “Dexter“, “Entourage“, and “No Reservations“. Occasionally it happens when our faux-Tivo (that repulsive hunk of crap from Time Warner) forgets to record something and we do something else – but on this particular night I noticed that 2001: A Space Odyssey had just started on one of the HD channels. I beg my wife to watch some of it with me and she’s more than happy to - noting that she doesn’t really remember it.
I studied 2001 in school, so I jump at the chance to share this moment with her – to watch the film as a piece of art rather than the drive-by entertainment we’re used to. This film reeks of craftsmanship and the romance of what it is to share a cinematic vision. If you’ve watched 2001 (and likely you have), you’ll note that it’s a very methodically paced movie, with some patchy acting. When it was released, you either loved it hated it – nothing in between. In other words: it was art, in the purest sense.
We had a wonderful night and my wife put up with my waxxing poetic about a man I absolutely idolize. The best part is that the very next day I found myself in Costco, and there, in the DVD section, is a whole box set of Kubrick’s films – including a 90 minute documentary of his life. All for $35! Woohooo! I was so excited I bought one for me and one for my genius brother!
2001 Is More Than a Movie
As you’ve thought about 2001 just now as you were reading this, did you see in your mind the earth from a distance, with spaceships slowly waltzing around it? Did you hear Blue Danube? Most people have absolutely no idea what the film means, nor what it’s about (and the story is deep – ridiculously so). The cinematography, however, is the prize as your vivid memory is probably confirming right now (most people don’t forget vivid imagery).
What most people don’t recall about the film is that:
- Nothing like this had ever been done before
- Weightlessness in movies was never attempted and was considered “distracting”
- Classical music was never used a score to a film
- The film was released in 1968 – we had NO IDEA what the earth looked like from outer space (no color images)
The details of the film are the genius of it. If you watch it again – pay close attention to one of the first scenes inside the Jupiter mission when Dave descends a ladder and walks “down” the flight deck to to talk with his co-pilot Frank.
The mechanics of the scene involved Frank Poole (the actor Gary Lockwood) being strapped in, upside-down to the couch he was sitting on. When Dave (actor Keir Dullea) descended the ladder, the set began to rotate as he walked “around” it to meet with Frank.
This scene cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in man-hours. Contrast that with most “spaceship scenes” that, even now, are considered “acceptable” – even in Star Trek (with their “inertial dampeners”). Normally any scene involving a space ship is just a series of blinking lights, sexxy computer voices, and people in weird uniforms.
This scene depicted a centrifuge which simulated gravity, and hibernating astronauts. This is the genius of Kubrick.
Kubrick and The Human Condition
Cinematically speaking, no one can come close to telling a story with pictures like Kubrick did.What’s more astounding, however, is the relevancy of the story he’s telling. In every film he’s ever made, a facet of human experience is told, brutally and completely – all with imagery and sound (as opposed to oppressive dialog).
Kubrick believed in the imagery so completely, that he threw the whole narrative element of the movie form right out the window. In fact this is his trademark. Most people who watch 2001 come away with the idea that they just saw something special – but have no idea what it’s about. This is because the movie doesn’t narrate to you – it’s a series of vignettes that is loosely joined into a visual jig-saw puzzle. It’s an experience – not a story.
This is hard to deal with for some people – in fact one critic of 2001 stated that it was:
a regrettable failure, although not a total one. This film is fascinating when it concentrates on apes or machines.and dreadful when it deals with the in-betweens: humans.2001, for all its lively visual and mechanical spectacle, is a kind of space-Spartacus and, more pretentious still, a shaggy God story.
Kubrick’s devotion to the concept of “pictures of pictures telling a story” is clearly evident in one of his lesser-known films, Barry Lyndon. To film the movie, Kubrick hunted down and purchased a special Zeiss lens 
that was made for NASA for the Apollo moon landings, which had an F-stop of 0.70 – an extremely fast, low-light lens. This gave Kubrick two effects: he was able to film in candle light (which to him was important, since this was a period film) and there was no depth of field (sending distant objects out of focus). This turned the film, effectively, into a massive painting which moved.
Knowing this, Kubrick leaned heavily on costume design and set ornamentation. Everything was authentic and absolutely luxuriously oppointed. He won 4 Academy awards for this film – for costuming and cinematography.
The effects are stunning and absolutely dwarf the story – which is in fact very dull (which he admitted to).
So What About Star Wars Already?
One of the Star Wars movies (of the prequels) that I particularly like is the 3rd one: Revenge of the Sith. It deals directly with temptation and the corruption of power – a classic mythological topic and one that you see in anime and fim regularly.
This is the kind of film that would fascinate Kubrick (not saying he would have made it – just musing) – the diving into the dark psyche of a youth challenged in manhood who’s half machine and doesn’t know he has offspring. The dark superhero who lustfully sacrifices himself to his darker side “for the greater good”.
What if Revenge of the Sith wasn’t driven by pouty looks and cheezy dialog? What if it was handed to a master of imagery – someone that could capture the turmoil in the heart of a super-jedi as he struggled with is desires and his own power? Someone who could capture the audacity and scale of the Galactic Empire taking shape while the democracy melted silently away. Hmmm….
Kubrick would turn Annakin into another of his anti-heroes (”Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this Jedi’s head on the floor!”) who doesn’t try to keep some semblance of control during his rage.
I could see him treating a young Darth Vader as a quietly, insane, sadistic menace – somewhere between Alex (from A Clockwork Orange), Jack Torrance (the Shining), and maybe a touch of Gunny Seargent Hartman (Full Metal Jacket).
Kubrick’s Darth Vader would be necessarily evil from the start, but quietly so. He would be sociopath that fooled the Jedi Council, Padme, and even the Emperor himself into believing he was “a good little boy” who really wants to do right for others, while silently plotting their death.
A pivotal scene would be after the Emperor saves him from the lava fields – Annakin could quietly say, very controlled, “what took you so long” (or something like that) and then casually stride off into his ship, while looking over his shoulder at the Emperor, who would be left wondering “WTF have I done”.
I could imagine the film being much more operatic, with sweeping views of Coriscant, cast in a gray pall that reflects the dying bureaucracy. Oh there’s so much here to think about …
Time for chicken soup. I feel horrible still – perhaps I’ll watch Revenge of the Sith again and take some Vicodin… and as I half sleep I’ll imagine Vader cutting a path of destruction across the new Empire… all while “Singing in the Rain”…
Tags: Blather
