“The Phantom Menace” and The Crisis of Faith
Over on the website “Zero Punctuation,” a video game critic named Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw posited that life must be hard for “Star Wars” fans, as the bulk of movies, books and video games based on the property are pretty much horrible.
I think it was Blaise Pascal who first coined the phrase “the God-shaped hole.” He implied, even in the 17th century, that Enlightenment thinking had used empirical evidence and a new-found intellectual stress on reason to explain away the theological mysteries of the universe. Natural Philosophy was giving away to the proper scientific method, and the movement of the planets was soon seen as a natural phenomenon rather than a divine one. Pascal, though (along with more recent philosophers like Will Durant and Salman Rushdie) argued that worshiping was inextricably enmeshed with human consciousness, and that, however reasonable your explanations, humans will still have the drive, the need, the capacity, to worship something greater than themselves. Durant, who did not believe in God, still felt that humans were driven more by their will, their emotions and their instinct, more than their reason, and that no mode of thought or major philosophy had arisen that can fill the God-shaped hole in humanity’s lives.
This may be a roundabout way of getting there, but this is, I feel, why films like “Star Wars” are so popular. As America has become increasingly secularized, and more and more hipster atheists crop up, our need to worship something has turned increasingly toward pop culture. Teenagers have put their rock heroes on religious-like pedestals for as long as there has been rock ‘n’ roll. One of the most popular TV shows of recent years has the word “Idol” in the title. The thinking used to be “I don’t know much, but I know God exists.” The thinking these days is more along the lines of “I don’t know much, but it cannot be argued that “Star Wars” is great.”
Which brings me to “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.” For people who worshiped at the alter of George Lucas since childhood, and who lived for “Star Wars,” the announcement of the “Star Wars” prequel back in the late 1990s caused a rush of enthusiasm from an army of “Star Wars” geeks. Fans waited outside of theaters for days in order to eagerly witness what can be chalked up to the geek’s version of the Second Coming. It was another, brand-new “Star Wars” theatrical feature which used the latest in special effects technology to tell the origin story of some of our beloved, sainted characters. And it was written and directed by the creator of the original “Star Wars,” so it’s pedigree was impeccably pure.
I don’t need to describe to you the enormous backlash surrounding this film; it’s pretty well documented all over the internet, and I think it’s widely accepted that “The Phantom Menace” is considered “bad” by the majority of fans and critics. All of a sudden, those who worshiped “Star Wars,” those who had unflagging faith in their object of affection, found themselves in a position that all people of faith will inevitably find themselves in at several points throughout their lives: a position of question. What “The Phantom Menace” offered was a pop culture version of the crisis of faith.
All of a sudden, you had “Star Wars” fans questioning whether or not their worship was worth it. Had they been duped by a cunning clergy (Lucas)? Were they going to accept this new film as canon? It was written and directed by the original creator, so they must. Schisms began to form. Some people dropped “Star Wars” altogether. Some people spoke out against the franchise entirely. Some people began writing – like some famous Catholic priests – elaborate apologetics explaining away, or merely apologizing for “The Phantom Menace.”
Camus said that one needs to find the swirling vortex of doubt, look down over the precipice, and sit oneself down in the painful chaos. Kierkegaard argued that one need to look over the same precipice, and then make the Leap of Faith.
Fans of other geek properties never had something comparable, which is why I site “Star Wars: Episode I” in particular. Sure there have been plenty of bad moments in “Star Trek” along the way (“Spock’s Brain,” “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier,” Wesley Crusher, “Voyager,” the final episode of “Enterprise.”), but Trekkies have always been a bit more laidback and egalitarian about the weaknesses in their object of worship. Sure, they say, Shatner may have overacted in a lot of his scenes, but it doesn’t effect the largeness of Kirk as a character. In a way “Star Wars” is an Old-Testament Roman Catholic geek church, while “Star Trek” is a laidback, modern day multiculti Protestant geek church.
To further this comparison, the 2009 “Star Trek” film was The Book of Mormon. The same characters written by a new author, proclaiming an entirely new testament. It was also looked on with skepticism by we Trek true believers. “Doctor Who” was the original Church of England, the new “Battlestar Galactica” was Vatican II, “Lord of the Rings” was a quiet Pentacostal church, and “Dungeons & Dragons” was Judaism, i.e. God’s chosen geeks.
In more than one review, Jar-Jar Binks was the crux of the problem, and comparisons to Judas Iscariot were in the offing; he was the one that betrayed us all. Wesley Crusher may have been a little annoying, but he was a far more well-rounded character than Jar-Jar.
What’s more, “Star Wars” fans had a harder time processing something bad, as “Star Wars” never had a prequel before. “Star Trek,” with the exception of “Enterprise” and the 2009 film, had never had a grand origin story of the franchise; it was largely chronological, and could be seen as a central canonical timeline. “Star Wars” made the mistake of going back to the beginning and trying to undercut and redefine exactly the things that everyone had grown to love over the last several decades.
Every believer must go through a crisis of faith, and they will all eventually come down on the side that works best for them. Some turn their backs on God and embrace the larger mysteries of the universe. Some embrace God, and the gentle anima that binds humanity. Some remain skeptical, and find that doubting is what defines humanity. The same could be said for “Star Wars.” Some have turned their back on Geroge Lucas altogether. Some have tried their hardest to accept the entire canon of “Star Wars.” Most, I feel, accept that these bad films are canon, but are skeptical of their quality.
Let us pray.
Witney Seibold is a hard-working movie-lover and church-goer living in Los Angeles with his gorgeous wife and an overflowing library of books and videos. He thinks a lot about popular culture, and occasionally writes about it. He has been writing film reviews for over a decade, in both a professional and non-professional capacity, and maintains his own ‘blog, Three Cheers for Darkened Years.” You can read the 700 articles he’s published to date at the following address: http://witneyman.wordpress.com/
