Signature Moves

Why is Walt Disney’s signature on Star Wars?

Not just his name; his signature. As though he was the architect of its design. Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, right? Tinkerbell, sparkly glitter, and magic castles. Horrible TV-movies every Sunday. That’s Walt Disney. Around 1980, I was into Star Wars to get away from all that corny shit.

Now you’re telling me it’s Walt Disney’s property?

As far as I know, Star Wars exists because of another man: George Lucas. He began the saga in 1972, as “The Journal of the Whills”. Five years later, he released a film that changed the world forever, which was parodied so often the spoofs became a cottage industry. Lucas’ favorite parody, Hardware Wars, was made by a fan named Ernie Fosselius. Ernie went on to provide voices like the pilots of Lao Che Air Freight in Temple of Doom, and the controversial “Lapti Nek” sequence from the original Return of the Jedi. 

(“Lapti Nek” was written by composer John Williams’ teenage son*, much like M*A*S*H‘s “Suicide Is Painless” was written by Robert Altman’s 13-year-old son Mike. Maybe Lucas or Williams wasn’t thrilled with the piece by the time 1997 rolled around, and replaced it with “Jedi Rocks”. But like I say, hell hath no fury like a moviegoer who memorized a movie as a child.)

(*Teenage Joseph Williams also wrote the “Yub Nub” music that the Ewoks originally sang at the end of ROTJ. Did you complain when that was cut out of the Special Edition? I’m betting you did not.)

George Lucas made six Star Wars episodes, all of them great. The genuine reason anyone complained about The Phantom Menace is that they fucking memorized Empire Strikes Back, dubbed themselves an authority, and rejected anything new or different. The blind zealots are the ones who were disappointed in the Prequels. They couldn’t stand to be put in their place regarding a property that is not their own. 18 years later, you still can’t tell them shit. Hey- does anyone still talk about The Matrix? Wasn’t that where they all ran when “Phantom Menace sucked”? Whatever happened with that “masterpiece” of science-fiction?

The rest of us enjoyed ourselves. It was new Star Wars, asshole. From the man who built it in the first place. He showed us the Clone Wars, Darth Vader as an innocent boy, and the greatest lightsaber duel in the history of the galaxy. We got to see the legendary Obi-Wan Kenobi, as an unsure teenager who’s still learning to be a “Jedi”, and contemptibly refers to Jar Jar Binks as a “pathetic lifeform”.

Ewan MacGregor and Hayden Christensen actually performed the aforementioned duel, without film-speed fuckery. Early on, they had to be constantly told not to make the “lightsaber noise” with their mouths, while fighting. That’s how natural this fantasy form of combat is for men of a certain age.

I do not tolerate criticisms of Hayden Christensen’s acting, in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Why? Because of two factors, both of which the haters ignore.

1. Christensen is over six feet tall. At this height, he has the proper presence, and by cosmic coincidence, he looks like Mark Hamill could be his son.
2. Every single line that Christensen speaks as Anakin matches the cadence of James Earl Jones as Vader.

Never noticed that, did you? You were too eager to call Hayden a shitty actor. Just like you didn’t with Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher. Because you memorized a movie they hammed up when you were 5. The original Star Wars defined your intellectual reality so acutely that you couldn’t even accept new material from the same source. 

Anakin talks funny because he hails from a made-up desert planet, and his mother was Swedish. Oh, also, because you’re used to hearing that voice through a made-up life support system. That’s how you were introduced to villainy (and James Earl Jones) in the first place. Not Megatron, not Skeletor, not even fucking Dr. Moriarty. This one character, created by one George Lucas.

Who, at the time of this writing, is still living. How come his written signature isn’t on Star Wars?

Ah, right, because of business. Lucas sold the property to the Walt Disney Co. for $4 billion. What did this man that so many deride, despite his influence on their mental DNA, do with that money?

He donated it all to our broken education system.

Broken by Disney.

What’s the first thing that pops into your head when you read the word lemmings? Suicidal creatures diving off a cliff en masse, correct?

Wrong. And it’s Disney’s fault. 

Back during the “Wonderful World of Disney” days, the company “contracted” a Canadian wildlife documentary crew. The story and blame vary wildly depending on who tells it, since this egregious incident happened before Internet watchdogs existed. But make no mistake.

A film crew scared a herd of lemmings off a cliff, to their deaths, for the footage. 

Thanks to this, the public image of the lemming has been irrevocably slandered. I myself wrote a comic strip for five years using the implied death wish of the creatures as a metaphor. You probably use the lemming incorrectly in conversation. Often.

All thanks to Disney, and one company’s overwhelming desire for money and the power of a naturally beloved intellectual property.

The employees of the Walt Disney Corporation know that nothing Walt Disney actually drew is worth a shit. No one cares about Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck in a new movie. Those days are ash. Disney Co. even produced new Mickey Mouse cartoons, rendered at great expense in Walt’s “old style”, and still nobody cared. Mickey Mouse couldn’t open a grocery store. By the time a child becomes an adult, they’ve seen The Mouse so many fucking times they have to break from it. It’s potty-training stuff. Disney has to put Mickey in a video game with Cloud from Final Fantasy if they want anyone at all to play it.* Disney monopolized “kid stuff”, now they reap what they sowed. They want to have their princess-pink birthday cake, and sell it too.

(*I’ve been corrected on this. Disney held Mickey back from Square deliberately, until later giving in. In the meantime, a generation or two of Nintendo players lost all connection to the Mouse. Then suddenly it was time for Mick to be a video game star.)

While Walt’s denatured signature has been on Star Wars, his soulless devotees have done everything they can to sink the once-great property. Even though girls and black people have been part of the saga since “the beginning”, now it’s a social triumph we’re all supposed to recognize and publicly celebrate, or risk looking “prejudiced”. Disney hired the pan-flash responsible for making Star Trek look like Star Wars, and acted like the garbage this supposed genius contributed to their sequel was good for anything but derision. Since 1983, I had dreamed of how George Lucas might continue after Episode VI. We all did. Except J.J. Abrams, apparently. There is no way in hell that you could wonder for 30+ years, and come up with a stale retread of what came before, featuring the most uninteresting, cookie-cutter characters conceivable. Literally indistinguishable from videos of fanatics in costume.

That’s Disney in the 21st century. No wonder. 

Before I ever saw The Phantom Menace, I gazed in wonder at the poster, and the trailer. I can’t explain the excitement I felt, at 27 years old in 1999, as the opening crawl began. I didn’t know what was going to happen. It was all new. From the original creator. A man who’d been penning the backstory since the year I was born.

Star Wars and “wonder” once went hand-in-hand. The wonder of Dagobah, of Hoth, of Tatooine. Mysterious places familiar, yet outside of our understanding. The excitement of what we do not yet know.

That was all eclipsed by sullen nerds who like to memorize things that others don’t understand. (See also anything signed Tim & Eric.) Hey, everybody, I’ve seen Star Wars over 100 times! Buy this book of Star Wars trivia I wrote and self-published! What, you don’t know who R5-D4 is? What the fuck kind of Wars fan are you, anyway?!?

George Lucas donated $4 billion to education because he saw what our generation allowed it to become. He saw us favor these stupid space-operas over actual world history. He witnessed us ignoring current events so that we could escape into a galaxy he created while literally everyone hated his guts. He watched as we and the generation that came after called him a loser, an imbecile, a feeble-minded nerd.

George Lucas was born during a war that has not been equaled since in its destructive power. Obi-Wan Kenobi talked about the Clone Wars in Star Wars because Lucas grew up around men who survived WWII. That’s what the Clone Wars were. That’s why there are whiners who complain about the focus on that conflict, following Attack of the Clones. They’re people whose lives have never been touched by real strife, in any significant way. Spoiled, peacetime brats who can’t tolerate the inherent meanness of human existence.

To create the incredible dogfights in space at the climax of the original Star Wars, Lucas and his crew used actual newsreels of combat footage from WWII. That’s where their emotional resonance springs from. To conjure the unfairly-maligned podrace scene from Phantom Menace, Lucas studied the chariot race from Ben Hur. Not the Charlton Heston one; the one before that. 

For new “Star Wars”, Disney spent a good hour hunting down whomever has seen Star Wars the most times, and doesn’t have any pesky scruples about “the future of sci-fi” or suchlike. No need to bring in a heavy hitter from Boeing, like Ralph McQuarrie, or a puppeteer trying to keep a venerable family institution afloat, like a Henson*. No name, not Lucas, not even Abrams, must supersede the scrawl of the dead hand of Disney.

(*Until they can be bought out.)

You know, Disney, whose work has to be placed on “moratorium” every few decades, thanks to his depictions of stock “nigger” characters. He put his signature on that stuff too, and he was alive when he did. How do you think ol’ Walt would have reacted to Lando Calrissian, or Mace Windu, or a Stormtrooper popping off his white helmet to reveal a Negro head?

I don’t know. All I can think of is those poor innocent creatures, herded off a high cliff to their doom, by a heartless company selling a false image of moral purity. And at the masthead, the signed affidavit of a long-dead, long-since-relevant icon. A cartoonist who utterly pales in comparison to contemporaries like Segar, Herriman, McCay, Sterrett, Schulz, or anyone else you could name.

That’s why some artists feel a compulsion to sign everything they do, and some don’t. Some legacies are strong enough to exist unsigned.