Information vital to the Rebellion: Watching the Star Wars “making-of” documentaries

You've surely heard by now that there's a new Star Wars movie opening this week. I see that many people are marathoning the previous six movies in preparation.

As a kid I devoured every book, article, interview or documentary I could find about how Star Wars came to be, what its themes are, how the effects were done. Star Wars, to me, was always something that somebody made, and I was always on the side of the person who made it and interested in what he was trying to achieve.

But I think many other viewers prefer to accept invented universes like Star Wars at face value, and to acknowledge the writer or director only when it’s time to blame someone for something they didn’t like. This is aided by the fact that, more and more, science fiction and fantasy films and TV shows are based on existing properties, making it easier for viewers to feel that they know in advance how the story should go and that the filmmaker or showrunner will get it wrong. 

In defiance of this trend, I decided that instead of marathoning the previous six movies (something I’ve already done anyway), I would marathon the “making of” documentaries, and revisit the Star Wars saga from a behind-the-scenes perspective. In doing so I hope to champion the creativity and hard work of the people who made them.

(Disclaimer: I don’t have a player to watch the Blu-ray features, so my marathon will be limited to what’s on DVD, on the internet, or in my personal collection. Also, the prequel DVDs are loaded to the gills with bonus features, so in the interest of time and sanity I limited myself to one or two documentaries for each prequel.)

THE BEGINNING: MAKING EPISODE I (2001)

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is widely criticized for its lack of realism, so what’s fascinating about the making-of documentary The Beginning is how raw it is. It has no narration, no background music, no talking-head studio interviews, no fancy graphics or transitions. There is some occasional plain text telling you what the location is, what the date is, or how many weeks are left before the movie comes out, but otherwise this is fly-on-the-wall footage of the film’s planning, shooting and editing, presented without comment.

The upcoming Episode VII will be the first Star Wars movie made without its original creator, so it’s poignant that my marathon would start here. The documentary opens with Lucas being interviewed on 60 Minutes, explaining that the “auteur” theory is true, that movies resemble their makers, and that he to have a strong emotional commitment to these films in order to make them.

A scene in Episode I that’s grown on me over the years is the one where Anakin Skywalker’s loving mother sends her young son off to new adventures with the words “Don’t look back.” It’s a scene I now find moving, since the other two prequels have provided clearer knowledge of how painfully the adult Anakin would fail to live up to his early potential. I bring this up because The Beginning has the heartbreaking real-life equivalent – we see little Jake Lloyd excitedly signs the contract to play Anakin, while his female agent tells him how proud she is, surely assuming her young client is destined for stardom. (If you don’t know what later became of Jake Lloyd – who even changed his name! – I’ll just say that his Wikipedia page is a sad read.)

Contrary to Episode I’s reputation as an exercise in CGI overkill, we see the extensive use of audio-animatronic creatures, large physical sets, and arduous location shooting under difficult weather conditions. Lucas is seen to be a very hands-on director, consistently involved in every creative decision.

Still, rewatching this documentary leads me to suspect that many of Episode I’s problems result from Lucas’ preference for directing films in post-production rather than on the set.

When Lucas is reviewing the finalists for the role of the young Anakin, he says he is trying to decide between one kid who is pretty good all the time, and another kid who is more hit-and-miss but has brilliant moments that could be combined in editing. Later in the film, editor Ben Burtt sounds slightly frustrated by Lucas’ desire to try to re-direct a film in post-production; Burtt points out that in the old days one would reject a take that had something wrong with it, and that the ability to digitally combine different details from different takes has now made the editing process more challenging.

If Lucas likes a certain type of performance, and is able to cherry-pick every element of a take or scene that fits that preference, that may explain why the performances in Episode I seem so monotone. I would also argue that if the finished CGI had kept more of actor Ahmed Best’s on-set physicality, without exaggerating his character’s movements and facial reactions to such a cartoony degree, Jar Jar would have seemed less grotesque.

In any case, Burtt’s grumbling is one of only two scenes in the documentary that indicate creative difficulty behind the scenes (even though it was made for Episode I’s belated DVD release, by which time the film’s reputation as a disappointment was set in stone). The other, more famous moment is when Lucas and company review a rough cut of the film and are concerned about how to salvage it. Lucas is concerned that things move too fast (“if it’s fast for us, a regular person is going to go nuts”) and that it might be possible to reduce this. It’s unclear whether Lucas is referring just to the action climax, or to the movie as a whole. If it’s the latter, his attempts to slow things down might explain why the pace of the exposition scenes in Episode I feel a bit sluggish.

Lucas’ attitude through the film seesaws between optimism and caution. I’m fond of the scene where he pragmatically observes that the sequel to American Graffiti was a box-office failure, and that “you can destroy these things – it is possible.”

Fun fact: Swear words (mainly from producer Rick McCallum) are bleeped throughout the documentary, but they missed one. After executing a stunt, actor Ewan MacGregor says that when he was offered Star Wars his response was “Too f**king right!”

The Beginning won’t convince anyone to love Episode I, but it’s a good glimpse into the filmmaking process from beginning to end. Seeing and hearing a full chorus belting out “Duel of the Fates” is a particular highlight.

FROM PUPPETS TO PIXELS: DIGITAL CHARACTERS IN EPISODE II (2002)

"STORY" (2002)

The DVD for Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones doesn’t clearly identify one of its bonus features as a primary “making-of”. There are two “Documentaries” and three “Featurettes”, so I watched one of each.

The documentary From Puppets to Pixels has the same minimalist approach as The Beginning. The emphasis this time is on the challenge of creating convincing digital characters, specifically the new digital Yoda as well as Obi-wan’s four-armed friend Dexter.

My favorite moment is when Lucas and his animation director are arguing the subtleties of how sad or worried that the digital Yoda should look when delivering the line “Begun, the Clone War has.” This animation had apparently gone through several unsatisfactory iterations by this point, and Lucas seems to be struggling to keep his sense of humor about a shot that is now trying his patience.

Like The Beginning, this documentary provides glimpses into the filmmaking process from filming to editing. However, this time we only see two of the main actors at work (Ewan MacGregor and the late, great Christopher Lee) and that alone makes it feel less comprehensive than The Beginning.

By contrast, the featurette “Story” is a more conventional piece that has talking-head clips of Lucas and the main cast discussing the important story developments that occur in Episode II (a film that many fans like to insist has no story). Samuel L. Jackson states that this film will be a return to the swashbuckling spirit of the original films. I found this statement curious, since if anything Episode I was the more light-hearted film and Episode II is the one that plunges into darker territory. But it’s interesting as an indirect acknowledgement that the previous Star Wars film was not universally well-received.

WITHIN A MINUTE: THE MAKING OF EPISODE III (2005)

“THE CHOSEN ONE” (2005)

Within a Minute, the making-of documentary for Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, is an interesting departure from those for the previous prequels. Stylistically it’s more conventional in its use of interviews, graphics and music, but its content is very different. It follows a single minute-long section of the movie through the entire filmmaking process from beginning to end, taking pains to emphasize how many people are involved and how many decisions are made along the way – from scripting and planning and filming, to special effects and sound design and music.

Whereas The Beginning opened with Lucas discussing the auteur theory, Within a Minute celebrates all the individuals who contribute to making a film. Each subsection of the movie includes a scroll of all the names involved in that part of the process. The roll-call of animators actually includes two guys I knew at RIT – Brian Cantwell (who is interviewed on-camera) and Kurt Nellis. The film even covers the people who never get covered in making-of documentaries, such as the caterers and the people who handle payroll.

The section of Episode III that was chosen for analysis is a minute-long portion of the climactic lightsaber duel between Anakin and Obi-wan, as they fight atop a large structure that breaks apart and falls onto the sea of lava beneath them. This battle was a famous piece of unseen backstory for years before the prequels were made, and all involved seem excited at the prospect of bringing this legendary moment to life.

I love Episode III but am aware that many people do not. This conflict made me squirm a bit at producer Rick McCallum’s obvious pride in the work on display here. I think his pride is justified but I could mentally hear Internet trolls snickering at his every declaration.

The shorter documentary “The Chosen One” is less about the production process and more about the creative development of the character of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, and how Episode III completes the story that is developed in the other five films to date. We get talking-head quotes from Lucas and Hayden Christensen, as well as on-set footage of Lucas directing Christensen and explaining the character’s motivation. The moment of Christensen walking on-set in the final Vader costume is understandably treated as a major event, with the crew applauding and Christensen later recalling the event as something he will not soon forget.

(Also, in a recap clip from Episode I, the puppet Yoda is replaced with the digital Yoda seen in Episode II and III. This was still a few years before was Episode I was re-released in 3D and on Blu-ray, with the new Yoda fully implemented by then.)

Episode III was not only the final Star Wars prequel, but – as far as anyone knew at the time – the final Star Wars movie ever. Many of the people in these documentaries – including Rick McCallum, Ben Burtt, and animation director Rob Coleman – had been working together for a decade. Within a Minute and “The Chosen One” show this project coming to its natural end, yet no one is seen to express emotion or melancholy at this. Instead, the filmmakers are excited to be part of a piece of history (as the Star Wars saga is finally complete) and express a sense of victory and accomplishment. It’s almost as if they knew that the story was just beginning.

Which leads me to…

STAR WARS BEGINS (2011)

I had originally planned to just marathon the official “making-of” documentaries – the DVD extras for the prequels, and the TV specials that accompanied the release of the original films. However, I remembered that a fan named Jamie Benning had made a series of documentaries about the original Star Wars trilogy, by intercutting each film with behind-the-scenes footage as well as audio-only interview material from various sources. I’d never gotten around to actually watching one of them, so I decided that now would be a good time. So I watched Star Wars Begins, Benning’s 2-hour-and-19-minute interlacing of the original Star Wars with behind-the-scenes content.

I’ve always been fascinated by the development of the original 1977 film, the one we now call Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. All the other films have had a successful proof-of-concept to follow, but this is the one that began as just a vague notion in Lucas’ head of swords and capes and ray guns, an ultimately world-changing idea that he struggled to develop through four very different drafts. Studio heads struggled to understand Lucas’ concept, the production of the film was famously difficult, the rough cut of the film was deemed a disaster and had to be extensively reworked, and entirely new special effects technology had to be developed in order to complete the film.

However, little of that seems to come through in Star Wars Begins. Occasionally an archive quote will mention how stressed and unhappy Lucas seemed to be during production, but the focus seems to be more on minor trivia – alternate takes, redubbed lines, what the camera and crew looked like when a particular scene was being shot.

The film doesn’t have an obvious point of view – it is basically other people’s documentaries and interviews stitched together in script order. Onscreen text (often with typos) will sometimes throw in an interesting factoid, and also identifies who is speaking in an audio clip and what year their quote is taken from. Any time a quote was from 2004 I recognized it from the original trilogy’s DVD release – either from the commentary track, or from the accompanying DVD extra Empire of Dreams – and I recognized a lot of behind-the-scenes footage from Empire of Dreams as well.

However, there were also some clips I didn’t recognize and some anecdotes I hadn’t heard. I was impressed to hear quotes from Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing, who seem to have seldom been recorded speaking about their most widely seen roles. So Benning and/or his Internet friends (thanked in the credits) did an impressive amount of research, even if the resulting “documentary” is no more than the sum of its parts.

The most interesting thing about Star Wars Begins is that it provides a glimpse of how the original version of Episode IV would have played with its most famous deleted scenes integrated back into it. These scenes include early cutaways of Luke Skywalker (before he meets Artoo and Threepio); a few shots of Han with an unidentified female companion who leaves when Luke and Obi-wan meet with him; and of course Han confronting the original, human, fur-wearing version of Jabba the Hutt.

Some fans would love to see the early scenes of Luke and his friend Biggs (who appears in the finished film only as a Rebel X-wing pilot during the finale) actually edited into the film. Seeing these scenes placed in their original context, though, I think Lucas (or the studio?) was right to cut them.

As released, the original film opens in the middle of a conflict that is only partly explained to the audience, and gets away with this by telling the story from the point of view of two robots who also are unclear what’s going on. To cut away to seemingly unrelated characters in a strange environment talking about the Academy, the Empire and the Rebel Alliance would probably have confused the hell out of 1977 audiences who – remember – had not seen Star Wars before and did not already understand this universe.

However, watching the dialogue between Luke and Biggs is interesting for another reason. After the prequels, Lucas gained a reputation as being inept at directing actors. It’s tempting to look back at some irreverent quotes from the original trilogy’s lead actors, and the knowledge that Episode IV had to be salvaged in editing (largely with the help of his then-wife Marcia), and conclude that Lucas was always deficient in this area. However, the Luke-and-Biggs material – which plays out in lengthy medium- and wide shots – is well-played by both actors, and the prequel documentaries show Lucas working closely with his actors (and animators, in the case of digital creatures) to shape a character’s performance. So this supports my aforementioned theory that the digital-era Lucas is not necessarily a bad director of actors while on set, but perhaps pushes out too much of their spontaneity in his editing choices.

Star Wars Begins was a little frustrating in that I wanted to see more of Episode IV’s birth pangs and not just random trivia. But I hadn’t planned to actually rewatch the movies in this marathon, so it was cool to find myself accidentally rewatching the original movie in this exploded, deconstructed version.

THE MAKING OF STAR WARS (1977)

This hour-long documentary aired on ABC on September 16, 1977. It was scripted by Time critic Richard Schickel, with narration by William Conrad and some jokey in-character commentary from Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio (well, by See-Threepio anyway). The Artoo/Threepio material is corny and inconsistent – sometimes the droids seem to be recalling the film’s characters and events as if they were real, and sometimes they are recalling the experience of being actors in the movie.

I probably did see this at a very young age. I have a dim childhood memory of seeing the droids on a white sci-fi set when Threepio makes some kind of meta comment about the movie, and while I long pictured that set as being the blockade runner from the beginning of Episode IV, I now believe I’m remembering the set on which the droids appear in the host segments of this documentary. I don’t know for sure whether this set was built especially for this documentary or was left over from something else, but it’s very detailed and retro-awesome.

The bulk of the film is narrated behind-the-scenes footage narrated by Conrad, framed by occasional cutaways to Artoo and Threepio. There are very brief interview clips of Alec Guinness (clearly made during shooting, as he’s in costume and on set), Harrison Ford (in a boat for some reason), Carrie Fisher (in a video arcade!), George Lucas, a VERY long-haired Mark Hamill, and producer Gary Kurtz.

Despite – or because of – the thermonuclear levels of cheese in this documentary, I found myself holding back tears at its extreme simplicity and innocence. When this TV special aired, Star Wars – though already the highest-grossing film of all time – was less than four months old. Its footprints in the world were still fresh. The narration re-explains the entire film to its audience, and every major scene is shown, in case viewers did not remember the broad outlines of the plot. Lucas explains – perhaps for the first time on-camera – his desire to tell a more innocent adventure story, as well the religious concept behind the Force. Clips of old movies helpfully illustrate Star Wars’ roots in Flash Gordon serials, WW II dogfight movies, swashbucklers, and Westerns.

Near the end, Fisher mentions that there is talk of the next Star Wars being set on “an ice planet”, and also “a tropical planet” similar to the moon of Yavin (the misty rebel base seen in the original film), which is a startling indicator of just how early the broadest outlines of The Empire Strikes Back were being determined.

The closing narration, accompanying the famous scene of Luke gazing at the twin sunset, ends with “The magic of Star Wars does not lie only in its brilliant special effects. Its power derives from something simpler and rarer: the romantic spirit that moves in it. Before it we are all young again, and everything seems possible.”

If you watch this old TV special and are able to hold it together at that moment, you are made of sterner stuff than I. But it is Threepio who gets the last word when he rhetorically asks, “Where will it all end? Perhaps, Artoo, it will never end.”

I will always defend the prequels for their ambition, and for taking the innocent Star Wars universe into more adult and troubling waters. But watching this hokey documentary put me in the right frame of childlike innocence to remind me what Star Wars means to the rest of my generation.

SP FX: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980)

I DEFINITELY remember watching this one as a kid, as it is basically Mark Hamill saying “Young Curt, I order you to make a movie” for forty-plus minutes straight.

Ostensibly a documentary about the special effects in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, SP FX is really a celebration of the art of special effects in general. Hamill’s narration (again written by Richard Schickel) frequently waxes poetic about the power of effects to transport us to realms of imagination, freedom, and possibility.

This TV special includes clips from many celebrated fantasy and science fiction films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, King Kong, The Thief of Baghdad, and even A Trip to the Moon (that’s the silent film where the rocket lands in the eye of the moon). But it’s the inclusion of clips from amateur stop-motion movies by child filmmakers (at about the 10- and 35-minute marks) that seared themselves into my young psyche. Rewatching those clips now, it’s startling to see that one of the films was made with paper cutouts and that the filmmakers named in the film were between 11 and 17 years of age. It so happens that, years later, I made a stop-motion paper cutout movie when I was between 13 and 15.

There are only a couple of brief interview clips, from Peter Mayhew (who played Chewbacca) and sound designer Ben Burtt. Otherwise it’s all Hamill talking about how inspiring and wonderful special effects are.

I’m sure many prequel haters will seize on Hamill’s closing speech that “In the end, a special effect is just a special effect. If it isn’t surrounded by people we care about, if it doesn’t serve a story that moves and involves us, and if above all it doesn’t help us to grasp some larger imaginative vision, then it’s just a trick, a gimmick.” But while I agree that the prequels falter on the first point they still manage the latter two, at least for me. Which I guess puts me in the role of Artoo-Detoo, who rolls onscreen at that point to tell Hamill to give it a rest.

“The Star Wars saga will continue,” concludes Hammer. “In the largest sense, it can never end, because imagination has no end.” Okay, Schickel, you’re starting to repeat yourself. Otherwise you did a hell of a number on my younger self. Good job.

FROM STAR WARS TO JEDI: THE MAKING OF A SAGA (1983)

In late 1983, two Star Wars documentaries aired within a few weeks of each other. The first was Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi, hosted by Carrie Fisher and Billy Dee Williams. But I couldn’t find a complete copy of that one on YouTube and thus had to skip it for this marathon. So I’ll stick with the second and far superior From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga.

Like the two earlier specials, From Star Wars to Jedi is narrated by Mark Hamill and written by Richard Schickel. And again, we see plenty of on-set footage of the latest movie (in this case Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi), primarily filming Jabba’s lair (with brief input from Jabba’s puppetters) and the Ewok village.

But compared to the two earlier TV specials, this one doesn’t gush about the wonder of cinema, or show any clips from older films in order to explain and justify the tradition it’s working in. Instead, Star Wars is now firmly established as an end in itself, as Lucas gives one of his first and most extensive platforms to explain his theories of what the overall Star Wars saga is all about. The film regularly cuts to Lucas sitting in front of a leafy plant somewhere, explaining his thoughts and ideas as well as his disappointment at things that didn’t live up to his aspirations due to technical limitations. “In his mind,” says the narration, “George Lucas was jumping to hyperspace long before he visualized the process for the rest of us.” Lucas himself also asserted to my younger self the integrity that artists must have when he said that “that’s the way it should be, and if the public can’t deal with it, then what can I do it? … The film is about human frailties, it’s not about monsters.”

While I only have dim childhood memories of the two previous documentaries, I was able to record From Star Wars to Jedi off cable TV on VHS and subsequently rewatched it many, many times while developing my own filmmaking. During those repeat viewings I was fascinated to hear Lucas describe the development process of Star Wars, to see abandoned concepts (this must be where the human-Jabba footage from the original Star Wars was first shown publicly), and to hear Hamill’s narration explain the themes and mythology behind Star Wars. So I’m always baffled to encounter those who loved the Star Wars movies as much as I did but whose love never drove them to explore what made them tick.

Lucas talks about his attempts to explore how fast-paced a movie can be before it becomes incomprehensible, which ties in interestingly with his reaction to the rough cut of the “earlier” Episode I. He then adds that success has made his personal life more intense, which is a sadder statement when you consider that the time and energy he devoted to the Star Wars trilogy led to him becoming divorced.

This docu-marathon began with an older Lucas describing how films are the embodiments of their creators. By contrast, From Star Wars to Jedi has a final post-credit shot of Lucas getting on a plane and waving goodbye. “As attractive as the Star Wars world is, sooner or later you have to leave home and go on to some other place.”

And so the saga continues, for others to tend.

Lessons learned in 2014

"[E]very time somebody opens their mouth they have an opportunity to do one of two things—connect or divide. Some people inherently divide, and some people inherently connect. Connecting is the most important thing, and actually an easy thing to do. ... I’m shocked that there are so many people that live to divide."

-Joss Whedon, 2013

"I want to spend time doing films and exploring ideas, with the opportunity to fail - which you don't have in the professional film business. You've got to win every single time, and it's very difficult because you end up making very safe movies: you know this works, so you do it. ... I want to try making some films that I'm not really sure will work or not."

-George Lucas, 1981

* * *

At the end of 2013 I wrote what I thought was one of my best posts to this blog. Then, some weeks later, I discovered that it had only gotten about a dozen hits (it’s had more since then) … and that the new blog entry I was about to post covered very similar ground.

So I took it as a sign that maybe this blog had reached its natural end. It had begun as an online tie-in to my then-new indie film Saberfrog, and I also used it to discuss topics that I felt were related to the movie. By 2014 the movie had been out for a while, and I figured it was time to move on.

Saberfrog still pops up anew from time to time – opportunities still arise to sell some additional copies to interested viewers. But in 2014, my focus has switched to an older project that I am now remastering – a Super-8 stop-motion animated sword-and-sorcery film that took me two years to make as a teenager, and that had languished forgotten for decades.

I spent much of 2014 reconstructing this old project – transcribing my old handwritten script into Celtx, getting the Super-8 footage digitally transferred, making a temporary soundtrack to sync with the rediscovered visuals.

Rediscovering this project has been an emotional experience. Whereas Saberfrog was the angst-ridden tale of an adult trying to get his life back in order, this older project was the more innocent work of a teenager who had his whole life ahead of him, and was absolutely confident of his purpose in life.

I felt that reviving this older project would be a way of reconnecting with my less jaded self, who believed wholeheartedly in a life of filmmaking, before adulthood intervened. It was an opportunity to set aside the cynicism I’d developed in recent years, and return to the joy and optimism and positivity that originally fueled my passion as a young filmmaker. I also set up a crowdfunding campaign with a friend of mine, after doing as much research as I could on the brave new world of social media and online fundraising.

Unfortunately, both I and my crowdfunding partner ended up going through major job changes at the time, and I was therefore unable to devote the necessary time and energy to promotion. Prioritizing my new day job was a major reason why I failed to commit more passionately to the campaign.

But it was not the only reason. Even after all the groundwork I’d done, I found myself extremely hesitant to promote the project on the Internet, even though I knew (from telling strangers about it in person) that this was a project that would probably interest people. I had to think hard about why I now had such cold feet.

I realized that – for the first time in my many years, off and on, as a filmmaker – I was now afraid of the audience. That fear was holding me back, and I needed to overcome it once and for all.

* * *

Like many teenagers, I was a bit of a misfit and an introvert. But I loved movies, and I loved sci-fi and fantasy. And it seemed like those things came from a world that was somehow better – a world of artists and thinkers, a smarter and more tolerant community than the “mundane” world of regular people who weren’t fans.

When I first became an aspiring filmmaker, it was a time when people loved movies, and admired and respected filmmakers. Creating an entire world from one’s own imagination, and sharing that personal vision with an audience, was a celebrated achievement. Filmmakers were praised for pursuing their own visions, rather than allowing focus groups and studio conservatism to tell them what they could and couldn’t do.

Today is actually not a bad era for movies. Mainstream Hollywood has fully embraced the once-marginalized world of geek culture, creating ambitious and interconnected stories. Independent films continue to explore brave new territory. VOD has made acclaimed, limited-release films available even to people without specialty theaters in their neighborhoods. And even if none of that were true, DVDs and Blu-rays and VOD continue to make the riches of the past as available as those of the present.

And yet, nowadays I often sense a deep hatred and resentment of movies and the people who make them.

When people badmouth certain films and filmmakers – as well as other storytellers working in TV, literature, or comics – they do it with such a swell of pride, as if the highest demonstration of intellect was to be unmoved by a creative work.

That is not an attitude I’ve ever identified with. Even as a kid, I always thought that seeking out and appreciating the good work was more important than dwelling on lesser work.

And the people who made the good work were my heroes and role models. I always respected people who did the work more than I respected people who could only find fault with the work of others.

Has Internet culture turned this value system upside down? Is it now the social role of artists and storytellers to simply be punching bags for people whose self-esteem needs a boost?

I hope not. Especially when promoting this new (old) project, I want to believe that audiences are open and accepting, that they will give a movie the benefit of the doubt instead of deciding in advance that it sucks.

* * *

I guess I’ve always seen sci-fi/fantasy movies as a more expensive type of experimental film. Movies like Star Wars and Tron and The Dark Crystal seemed like someone’s personal, creative vision – passion projects that a studio was somehow convinced to pay for.

When I was real little – we’re talking late 70s / early 80s – the line between mainstream and experimental was a lot blurrier. Underground filmmakers did animation for Sesame Street. Oddball short films were regularly shown to the public, projected on 16mm in schools and libraries, or used as filler between movies on cable. Stand-alone animated specials would show up randomly in prime time. UHF stations and fledgling cable networks showed any obscure movie or foreign TV show they could get their hands on cheap.

That great churn of the weird and wild and unexpected had just as much impact on my interest in filmmaking as the more universally recognized hits like Star Wars. You would see these strange things as a kid, not knowing where they came from or who made them or why they were being shown. Maybe years later, you could finally look them up on the Internet or ask someone else if they knew what the title was. But the stuff you remembered less well would always be out of reach, and probably not easily available on video even if you could identify it.

Maybe a part of me is still wedded to that time when movies were mysterious and magical, when seeing a movie was an ephemeral privilege. Perhaps the permanence of home video was what enabled the modern nerd instinct to collect and categorize and rationalize. Like a villainous computer in an old Star Trek episode, we now try to explain away anything strange or unexpected as simply incorrect or impractical.

I guess I still crave the experience of seeing a movie I don’t know that much about, in a dedicated cultural venue, in the company of actual humans who shared my curiosity enough to go see it too. You don’t get that by watching a movie at home on VOD. Even with video stores you had to go somewhere, browse the shelves, and talk to the weirdo behind the counter.

Roger Ebert once pointed out that Starbucks offers not just coffee, but also a trip away from the office. He meant this as an analogy to argue that Netflix and video on demand would not supplant the experience of going to video stores. But clearly he was wrong – a lot of people are happy to watch movies at home, or on portable devices, without having to go someplace or interact with other people.

Is that antisocial attitude now manifesting itself in the tone of Internet culture?

* * *

In the last few years I’ve been to a fair number of independent filmmaker conferences, and read many articles about indie filmmaking, in an attempt to keep up with a changing industry.

One of the major messages that keeps coming up is that filmmakers need to be marketers and self-promoters. The days of a Kubrick or Kurosawa being allowed to concentrate simply on creating his art, and let distributors and critics do the work of convincing people to go see the finished product, are over. With the decline of brick-and-mortar cultural hubs (not just video stores, but also record stores and bookstores), it’s become more important for the artists themselves to maintain an online presence. You need to be on social media. You need to engage with your audience in a personal way.

But to me, interacting with strangers on the Internet is a daunting prospect. The Internet is where people seem to drop all real-world pretense of civility and politeness, and vent their frustrations and hostility at length. And major media outlets feed this climate with their clickbait headlines, generally phrased in terms of disdain and rejection: Why You Shouldn’t Watch This Movie, Why You Should Stop Watching This Show, Why This or That Person is a Hack or a Jackass.

Perhaps it’s mainly the big Hollywood productions and franchises that generate that kind of hostility, while smaller independent production are relatively safe. But should artists really stay small – never leaving the garret or the garage – to be safe from criticism? Is that really how we should think? Are we not supposed to be bold and strive?

* * *

The original Star Wars was one of the films that inspired me to become a filmmaker. I certainly enjoyed watching it as a kid, but when I was old enough to read accounts of how blown away people were in 1977 – by the opening shot, by the cantina scene, by the jump to hyperspace, by Han’s heroic return at the end – I thought, I want to do that. I want to make something that amazes people. Not by making a Star Wars fan film, but by learning the craft well enough to come up with something of my own that would have a similar effect.

Is that still a realistic goal today, when so many people seem to hate movies before they even come out? Or does it only seem that way on the Internet?

* * *

These thoughts have led me to at least one positive lesson. I never thought of myself as particularly social or outgoing or extroverted. But Internet culture has forced me to realize how comparatively well I thrive in real-world situations. When I introduce myself to strangers, I hear myself speak with much more charm and confidence than I ever feel when I’m brooding in isolation, staring at a computer screen, reading hostile text written by trolls.

This revelation has motivated me to go to the movies more often than I’d been doing lately, and to attend social and cultural events even when I’m not quite in the mood. The Internet might often seem like a race to the bottom, but the real world is a place where skill, accomplishment, and distinctiveness are still somewhat valued. And realizing this has helped me to reconnect with humanity in a way that the Internet – seemingly designed to connect people – has not.

When you go to a movie, you have to leave the house. You are watching, on a big screen, something that took a lot of effort and expertise to complete.

And more often than not, it tells a story of a goal-driven person who accomplishes something difficult.

(Maybe that's why Internet trolls hate movies.)

So that refuels me as an audience member. But what about as a filmmaker? In the digital age, what kind of film can you still reasonably aspire to make, that has enough of a sympathetic audience to make it worthwhile?

* * *

I think a mistake I’ve made in this ol’ life is looking mainly to the big successes for inspiration. I was a precocious filmmaker at an early age, and I went to one of the most celebrated film schools. So I’ve allowed myself to believe that I was destined for big things, and that if I didn’t achieve that then I was not successful.

But there are other frames of reference, and other models of success. Completing projects is success, regardless of their scale or profile. Doing what makes you happy, no matter what other people think, is success.

You can make something very commercial, and be dependent on the approval of a large number of strangers … or something low-budget enough that you don’t need everyone’s approval.

The purpose of being an independent artist is not to keep up with the Joneses, or to bow to peer pressure, or to try to appease audiences who don’t get it. The purpose of being an independent artist is to be true to yourself, to be unique and different, and to have faith that there are audiences who do get it.

And if I do better in real-world situations than I do online … well, then I should tell more people in the real world about my work, and show it to them.

The audience is however many people you can get to be interested, in whatever walk of life, online or in reality, whether it’s 50,000 or 500 or 15.

Just make your art, and be happy.

Three big lessons I've learned about writing

So I've got a draft of the first novel done, and I've gotten some feedback from friends. It's been surprisingly positive. I say 'surprisingly' because writing the book was a slow and difficult writing process, and getting it above novella length has been a struggle. Being much more used to writing screenplays, I knew that there would be a learning curve, and that by the time I got to the final book I would know a lot more about writing, knowledge that I could then apply to revising the earlier volumes. (I'm not gonna think about publishing – self or otherwise – until I'm sure the books are as good as I can make them.)

Now I'm starting to write the second book, and I find it's flowing a lot better. Thinking about why that might be, and thinking about things that I and other people have written, has made me think about some lessons that I've learned about writing.

These are lessons I learned by doing. Some of this is stuff that I've always believed but couldn't articulate until now, and some of it is stuff that I learned only after making mistakes.

LESSON ONE: Your character needs to be active. He or she needs to have a goal, and be willing to do something to achieve it.

The biggest mistake that people seem to make when they first start writing is having a character who doesn't do anything, who is introverted, alienated, lonely, and passive.

Everybody does this when they start writing. Everybody. Even people who are proudly anti-art and anti-independent in their tastes, who never watch a movie with subtitled dialogue that isn't spoken in Klingon or Huttese, seem to want to write an Antonioni film on their first attempt. If they ever go to film school or take a writing class, and have to read or watch the equivalent efforts by their fellow students, they would probably discover how boring that is for the audience, and it might make them realize that their own version is probably just as bad.

Why do new writers tend to fall into this trap? I can think of two possible reasons. One is that, as a new writer, you are trying to Express Your Personal Self, and writing is an internal process anyway. So it just feels good to write a character who is caught up in his or her thoughts, cut off from the world.

The other, and much worse, reason is that they allow themselves to think that being weak and passive and doing nothing is somehow … deep. I'm not sure how this attitude caught on. Once upon a time, even punks and hippies and grungies wanted to actually do things and make things. But nowadays I notice that a lot of people – especially on the Internet – really can't identify with anyone who had a dream and put in the effort to make that dream come true.

Somehow the people who strive and aim high, and pick themselves up when they fall, are the villains that deserve scorn whenever they do even a single thing wrong … while the people who just sit back and do nothing but complain about everything have somehow convince themselves of their own superiority.

All I can say is that when I was first trying to teach myself to write screenplays, I tended to look at movies that I liked, and try to figure out how they work and what made me like them. I know that many other people have done that also, but it might be less common than I thought it was. How else to explain why people who take pride in only liking genre films – movies about characters who DO THINGS – keep wanting to write dramas about navel-gazers who are helpless and passive?

When people write, they reveal a lot about their own psychology. People who are unambitious, and see life as one big conspiracy against them that they can do nothing about, are unlikely to be able to lead a main character through the process of changing the world. The people who write one page of something, and then can't think of what happens next, are perhaps struggling to understand how a person might go about making things happen.

Sometimes I hear people say “Well, I want to write about character rather than plot.” But here's a secret: Plot is what reveals character. What your character does to achieve a goal, how s/he treats people, how s/he responds to challenges … those are the things that reveal character. Not just sitting around spouting monologues.

So if you're thinking about writing about a character who does nothing, try writing about a character who does something. If that's not true to who you are, then watch some movies or TV shows, or read some novels or comic books. See how fictional characters respond to stuff, and try to learn from that. Study some successful models and try to follow them. Get your character off the sofa, wipe the streaked mascara off her face, and send her out on a journey!

And just having your character do what other people tell him to do? Not quite enough. It's a step in the right direction, but it's not quite enough. Ever heard of the “refusal of the call”, that Joseph Campbell moment when the hero doesn't want to accept the mission he's been given, before eventually agreeing? Until now, I never thought about why that trope is there. But now I realize why it works: It shows the character actually doing something. By choosing the life that's familiar to him over the one that's being presented to him, he is taking a stand. And when he decides for himself that the mission is actually important and that he is willing to take the risk – often for personal reasons other than the ones initially presented to him – he is again taking a stand. Without this element, the character is merely a pawn.

I've certainly written – and even filmed – scripts about a character who is introverted and alienated, as a vessel for my own feelings at that particular stage of my life. So I can't be too smug about this. However, a trick I used to compensate was to surround my alienated protagonist with more assertive and colorful characters who get pulled into his or her orbit.

Which brings me to ...

LESSON TWO: Your character should have, or make, friends.

I'm calling this a “should” rather than a “needs to” because it's certainly possible to tell a decent story about someone who is alone on his or her journey. However, it's damn hard to do this well.

And why do you want to? When have you ever seen a movie that you liked, that did this? I guess it gets back to the “I'm alienated, no one understands me, so I'm going to write about loneliness” approach again, so I won't repeat points I've already made, except to add one thing: Stories with multiple characters are more interesting.

You know how a lot of people say that TV is now better than movies? Why might that be? One reason is that there's more time for big story arcs, but another reason is character. A modern TV drama tends to have an ensemble of characters, each of whom gets his or her moment in the sun, and viewers often have a particular character that they love (or hate).

An important thing about writing for an ensemble, rather than a solitary protagonist, is that you have to write characters who aren't you. Rather than just having a sullen loner who is meant to represent your own sad-sack viewpoint, you have to imagine characters who stand on their own merits as fictional creations, who have their own hopes and dreams and quirks and strengths and weaknesses.

Maybe it's just me, but I always liked movies where there was a gang. I always liked it when there were a lot of characters with different abilities or personalities. You know, obscure arthouse fare like Star Wars and Aliens and, I don't know, The Goonies.

Having a gang means that your characters can talk to each other about the plot. When something happens, they can all have different reactions. The brave one, the fearful one, the smart one, the naïve one, all can have different perspectives on the action. Also, you can split them up and send them off on different subplots. This might be a challenge if you have difficulty coming up with one plot, let alone two or more, but that's part of why you should try it.

What can I say … As a writer, I guess I've always found the Wizard of Oz template more appealing than the Eraserhead template. Even though I like both of those movies.

LESSON THREE: Having a story is more important than having themes or a message.

You might be expecting me to drop the Sam Goldwyn quote “If you want to send a message, call Western Union,” but I personally think that's too cynical and discouraging. Film and literature are certainly capable of having something to say.

I prefer a quote from Orson Welles, who said that “most movie messages … could be written on the head of a pin.” I take that to mean: you can put a message in a movie if you want to, but it won't actually amount to that much. It won't be as important and earth-shattering as you think it will.

There certainly have been moments when it seemed like movies could change the world. The late 60s/early 70s has been widely hailed as such a period. I would argue that the late 80s through the 90s – an indie-friendly period stretching from Blue Velvet and Do the Right Thing all the way up to Fight Club – was another one.

I'm not sure we're living in a time like that right now. Maybe once upon a time it was oh-so-shocking if a movie made a political statement or criticized something about our society. But now we have blogs, talk radio, and entire cable TV channels devoted to decrying how much worse things have become since … well, since the last time people said how much worse things have become.

With indie cinema seeming to become ever more marginalized by franchise Goliaths, I don't really like to discourage anyone from consciously putting a personal philosophy or political viewpoint in their scripts. However, I'm not sure any philosophy is likely to be compelling enough to compensate for the lack of a decent story.

First of all, with all the chattering going on out there on the Internet, the chance that you genuinely have an absolutely unprecedented opinion about something is somewhat low. If you think you do, then by all means go for it. But you can't just (to paraphrase Team America) read the news and then repeat it like it was your own opinion.

And usually what people have to “say” is grouchy and negative. Every once in a while we get an Amelie or a Ferris Bueller's Day Off or something that tries to convey a positive philosophy, but usually we get A Hard Hitting Satire rooted in anger. To some degree that's the rebellious spirit of youth and/or art … but man, we are so knee-deep in that toxic negativity now. It used to be a brave thing to create art that challenged the status quo, but that hostility is now so omnipresent that it has become the status quo.

For me the absolute worst is when people write a script or make a film that merely exists to criticize something ephemeral ... like a particular politician or celebrity who's going to be out of the limelight before you know it anyway, or a current pop-culture trend that you find annoying (often for no better reason than that it differs from the pop-culture of your own childhood). When I see something like that, I tend to think: Come on, dude. You had a chance to make something cool. You could have been part of the solution. Instead you gave the problem free publicity.

I guess it's easy for me to say all this stuff now that I'm more experienced. I've done much of the above, and have now gotten it (largely) out of my system. Maybe people need to do it wrong first, not just for practice but because you need to get those things off your chest somehow. But what motivated me to write all this up was encountering a lot of scripts recently that are about self-absorbed inaction.

Two decades ago, indie filmmaker Hal Hartley complained about the “empty formal posturing” of suburban film students trying to make urban gangster films. He said that, instead, they “should be writing stories about sitting on their couch watching gangster films.” But since then, we've gone so far in that direction. We've had so many Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino wannabes who've embraced the “dude, we can make a whole movie just about guys in one place talking” aesthetic of both directors' debut films without demonstrating the wit or cleverness of either. Spouting opinions has become a substitute for actually doing anything or having any ambition.

So I think a little of the “formal posturing” that Hartley complained about 20 years ago – understanding how drama and storytelling and genres work, rather than just snobbily rejecting them or nerdily critiquing them – would go a long way toward making off-Hollywood scripts and movies better.

And novels, too. Speaking of which, time to get back to work ...

Figuring out sci-fi timelines

Happy Towel Day, and Happy Birthday to that other franchise too!

So I have Book One of the Saberfrog novels more or less completed, and I'm compiling my notes to figure out the storylines for the other four. One of the things I'm having to do is nail down how much time passes between each book, and how old the characters are at the time.

Doing so has gotten me thinking about other franchises, and how much time is supposed to pass between installments. You've probably all seen movies where the sequel is supposed to take place only months or days after the original, even though the sequel was made years later and the actors are therefore older. Or sometimes they don't say how much time has passed, so you sort of assume that the same amount of time has passed for the characters as for the audience.

Occasionally it's hard not to wonder. Did the Peanuts characters live in a universe where little kids never age, or did all 50 years of it actually take place within a few years (say, in the late 1960s and early 1970s)? If the eleven seasons of M*A*S*H took place during the three years of the Korean War, is it possible to figure out what seasons took place in what year?

Of course, usually these series just make stuff up as they go along, without worrying about how things fit together or whether the actors are aging faster or slower than the characters they play.

But such franchises, if they last long enough, may eventually reach a point where they want to make prequels, or they want to have spin-offs that take place between existing installments. That's when the ret-conning begins. That's when some canon-keeper has to sit down and determine, once and for all, when these various installments took place, and how much time took place in between.

I decided to do some research and find out what the proper timelines are for some of these franchises. I figured knowing how much time was “really” passing, and how old the characters were at the time, would cause me to see these stories in a new light. Kind of like watching Memento in correct chronological sequence.

Anyway, read below for some occasionally-surprising chronologies,  in a shamelessly cracked.com-style format. I was never hardcore enough about any of these series to memorize every date or follow every spinoff, so a lot of this is new to me.

STAR TREK

The Star Trek timeline apparently went through various changes before being arbitrated by writers Michael and Denise Okuda. This Wikipedia article was my main source. Ignoring most of the various time-travel episodes, and focusing on when the “present” of the various TV shows and movies were supposed to be (as well as some backstory that is/was in our own future), here are some fun things I've learned about the Trek chronology:

1. Some of you reading this might live to see World War III.

The Trek TV shows and movies contain references to Earth's history getting worse before it gets better. The famous villain Khan is a product of the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s, which at the time were still in the future. World War III and the resulting apocalypse apparently take place in the 2050s (something to look forward to). The time-travel plot of Star Trek: First Contact puts our heroes at the end of this, in 2063, when humanity launches the first warp-drive spaceship and makes contact with the Vulcans.

2. The Enterprise was sloppy seconds by the time Kirk and the gang came aboard.

An early Enterprise, glimpsed in a picture on the wall in the first Star Trek movie, launched in 2123 according to a reference book that came out when that movie did. I don't know if other sources have stuck with that.

I never saw much of the show Star Trek: Enterprise, but apparently its four seasons take place in 2151-2155, with a series finale set in 2161, the year the United Federation of Planets is founded. Most of the original series characters are born in the 2220s or 2230s. (The timeline of the new J J. Abrams movies splits off at the point of Captain Kirk's birth in 2233.)

And after all that, the Enterprise we know and love, the good old NCC 1701, apparently had not one but two five-year missions with other captains – the first commanded by some guy named Robert April, the second by Christopher Pike. (Pike was the lead character in the first, rejected Star Trek pilot, called “The Cage”; it's considered canon because its scenes were used as flashbacks in a later episode.) So the old girl was in service for a good 9 or 10 years before Kirk took over. Who knew?

3. The original-series actors were older than the characters they played … except Spock!

The Wikipedia article states that Kirk's famous five-year voyage was from 2265 to 2270. I measured these dates not only against the birthdates given for these characters, but against how old the actual actors were at the time the show was made. If we assume that the first season of Star Trek in 1966 took place in 2265, then are the actors playing above or below their age?

At the start of the five-year voyage, Kirk would have been 32, while William Shatner was 35. Spock was 35, the same age as Leonard Nimoy (ironic since Spock is an alien and therefore the one character who could get away with being much older or younger than he looks). Sulu was 28 while George Takei was 29 – also pretty close. Scotty was 43 while James Doohan was 46.

But the hazards of space travel must have physically aged some of these characters just a bit beyond their chronological years. Uhura was 26 while Nichelle Nichols was 34. Dr. McCoy was supposed to be only 38 even though DeForest Kelley was 46. The biggest gap: Chekov was 20 while Walter Koenig was 30 (he was a year older than Takei, even though he was playing the young guy in the crew).

Also, I wasn't under the impression that the 1970s Star Trek animated series was considered canon, but according to this timeline, the three seasons of the original series and the two seasons of the animated series really do add up to comprise the famous five years.

4. There's a whopping 12 years, including another five-year mission, between the first and second movie.

In the real world, there was a ten-year gap between the end of the 1960s TV series and the first Trek movie, and I always assumed that there was a similar gap for the characters. But apparently, Star Trek: The Motion Picture takes place in 2273, only three years after the original mission ended. So while the characters have only aged eight years since the start of their original mission, the actors have aged 13 years.

But by the time of the movie Star Trek II, we've jumped ahead another twelve years, to 2285. This fits since Khan mentions being marooned by Kirk “fifteen years ago”, which is about how old his TV episode would have been when Star Trek II was made. But it also means that the characters are 20 years older than they were when the original series began, even though only 16 years had passed for the actors.

This Wikipedia article also claims that there was another five-year mission in between. No idea if that's just speculation based on the final scene of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, or if there are a bunch of novels or comic books or something that I don't know about.

5. When the last of the Kirk-era movie came out, the aging actors had actually aged less than their characters (though not by much).

Trek II and Trek III take place in the same year, with Trek IV the year after that and Trek V the year after that. We're up to 2287 now, and while only 2 years have passed in the Trek universe, the actors have aged 7 years. By now the actors are pretty much in sync – the characters are 22 years older than when they first started enterprising, while the actors are 23 years older.

Six years supposedly pass before the events of Trek VI in 2293, even though the movie only came about two years later. So the 1960s Trek cast, much mocked for their oldness when their last film came out in 1991, had aged only 25 years in real life while their characters had aged 28 years.

The opening prologue of Star Trek: Generations – in which Kirk, Scotty and Chekov christen the new Enterprise B – takes place in the same year as Trek VI despite coming out three years later. So those three actors end up breaking even.

I also notice that this is quite near the end of the 23rd century. I wonder if Starfleet celebrated the transition, or if there was a Y2K3C bug of some kind to worry about.

6. Compared to all of the above, the timeline of the later TV shows is a lot less nuts.

Skipping past the ill-fated Enterprise C (seen in the time-travel episode “Yesterday's Enterprise”, set in 2344) brings us to the era of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as Deep Space Nine and Voyager. Each of those seasons is a year, with Picard's crew of the Enterprise D have their adventures from 2364 to 2370, with the other two shows persisting into the 2370s. So all of those seasons (bar the time-travel ones, of course) apparently take place exactly 377 years in the future from when they first aired.

I haven't bothered to check how the dates of the Picard movies line up with the amount of time passing for the actors, but those movies take us to the end of the 2370s. And apparently, when the elderly Spock leaves his own time period in the J.J. Abrams Trek movie, the year is 2387 … and Spock is 157!

7. During the original series, Kirk and Sulu were deadbeat dads.

As you may recall, we met Kirk's grown son in the film Wrath of Khan, and Sulu 's grown daughter in Star Trek: Generations. The thing is, we never heard mention of these characters before their appearances in those films. So when the heck did Kirk and Sulu conceive these people?

Well, the simplest approach seems to be: figure out how old they were when we met them, and then work backwards. Unless there's some official source I don't know about, I don't think the age or birthdates of these characters were ever given, so the best I can do is assume that the actors were the same age as their characters.

Merrit Butrick, who played Kirk's son David Marcus, was 23 when Wrath of Khan came out. If that film took place in 2285, then David was born in 2262, when Kirk was 29 and still three years away from starting his famous five-year mission. So Jim Kirk and Carol Marcus (who was probably about five years younger than Kirk) got it on before the 60s TV show, not during or after it. I kind of assumed that, but it's nice to have figured it out for certain.

But what about Demora Sulu? Actress Jacquelin Kim was 29 at the time of Generations, set in 2293. If we assume that Demora was therefore born in 2264 … well, OK, she was also born before the TV show.

But where's her mom? It seems logical to assume that David was raised by Carol as a single mom, since he's got her surname and not Kirk's. But Demora is, well, a Sulu. So when Sulu was running around with his Enterprise friends, he had a daughter at home that he wasn't taking care of. Or maybe he was divorced and lost custody of her anyway.

Where was Demora during the third and fourth movie, when Sulu risked his career to save Spock and thus ended up in exile? Well, if Trek III was in 2285 and Trek IV the year after, then Demora was 21 … OK, that's not so bad. She would have been in college by then.

An extra wrinkle: According to http://www.startrek.com/database_article/sulu, Kirk had previously met Demora 12 years prior to the time of Generations. That would have been 2281, in between the first two movies. Sulu must have reconciled with her by then. She would have been about 17, so hopefully Kirk didn't make a pass at her.

STAR WARS

Star Wars would seem to be a simpler timeline, since we've got just the six “Episodes” to worry about. (Well, and a Clone Wars movie and some TV episodes and a zillion books.) But there are still some surprises.

1. Man, there are some novels set WAAAAY back in the past.

This Wikipedia article gives dates for all the Star Wars novels, including the novelizations of the six movies. Assuming the novels to be even remotely canon, we can use these dates to make sense of the Star Wars timeline.

I've read very few of the SW novels – none since the first Timothy Zahn book 20 years ago – so I'm gonna stick mainly to stuff that relates to the six movies. But I couldn't help but notice that there are some book series set thousands of years before the movies. It makes me wonder what kind of world they're set in. Was the Star Wars universe still hi-tech back then, or do those stories take place in a time before spaceships and talking robots? Is there an Also Sprach Zarathustra moment when someone invents the first lightsaber? I suppose I could read them and find out, but it kind of blows my mind just to think that such books were written at all.

2. “Weird Al” Yankovic correctly guessed how old Anakin and Padme are in Episode I.

“Oh, did you see him hittin' on the queen / even though he's just 9 and she's 14”, sang Weird Al in his famous Episode I parody “The Saga Begins”. Well, apparently that's how old Anakin and Padme actually were during the events of that movie. Michael Kaminski's The Secret History of Star Wars, an exhaustively researched book chronicling Lucas' revisions to the Star Wars backstory from the 1970s to 2005, gives those ages for Anakin and Padme in Episode I. The Wikipedia articles for Darth Vader and Padme Amidala also agree, unless someone's since changed those articles just to piss me off. (You knew Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader are the same character, right? … um, spoiler.)

3. Obi-wan Kenobi seems a bit old to be a student.

I have long wondered how old Obi-wan was supposed to be in Episode I. Filming began around June 1997, when Ewan McGregor was 26. I seem to recall the blurb on the VHS box saying Obi-wan was 30, but VHS has now gone the way of Clive Revill's Emperor so perhaps we should no longer consider that statement to be canon. Kaminski's book says that Obi-wan was 25, and I'm prepared to accept that. At the very least, all evidence seems to point to Obi-wan being in his mid-to-late 20s.

In our world, though, 22 is old enough to graduate from college. (Also – to skip ahead a bit – that's how old Anakin is in Episode III, by which time he's clearly been a full Jedi for a while. And Luke, after what appears to be maybe a year of training of most, achieves Jedihood at age 23.) And we know from the prequels that Jedi training normally begins during childhood. So what is Obi-wan's problem? Why is he still following Qui-gon around as an apprentice at age 25?

Here's a thought. In The Empire Strikes Back, you may recall Yoda saying that Luke had “much anger in him” and the ghostly Obi-wan replying “Was I any different when you taught me?” You may also recall fans being annoyed when the young Obi-wan in Episode I seemingly contradicted Yoda's statement by turning out to be kind of a wallflower.

Well, here's my fan theory. I think Obi-wan was not a good student. Maybe he got held back a bunch of times due to bad grades, or getting in fights with other younglings or something. We know from Episodes II and IV that he likes to go to the pub more than you might expect a Jedi to do, and that he's friends with some dodgy characters. So maybe when we see him in Episode I, he is as square as he is because he's been trying hard to put some youthful mistakes behind him.

It's also possible that the plot of Episode I was originally intended to have Obi-wan in the Qui-gon mentor role, but Lucas changed his mind and decided to make Obi-wan an apprentice. But I like my theory better.

4. The Emperor is REALLY old by the time he meets Luke.

The actual Star Wars films never say what kind of calendar the characters use in this universe. However, Star Wars spinoffs apparently date everything relative to the Battle of Yavin, i.e. the attack on the first Death Star in the original Star Wars (Episode IV).

So the prequels take place in the years BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin), while The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi take place in the years ABY (After the Battle of Yavin). I don't think this is supposed to be the dating system actually used by the characters, merely a way for authors and fans to keep track of the time scale.

Anyway, Episode I takes place in 32 BBY. According to http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Palpatine , Palpatine was 30 years old in 52 BBY, so that would make him 50 years old during Episode I. (Actor Ian McDiarmid was about 53 when the movie was filmed.)

Episode II takes place ten years later, in 22 BBY. Anakin is now 19 (about a year younger than Hayden Christensen was), Obi-wan is 35 (about 6 years older than Ewan McGregor), Padme is 24 (about 3 years older than Natalie Portman), and Palpatine is 60 (7 years older than Ian McDiarmid).

Episode III, made three years later, takes place after another three years, in 19 BBY. Since Luke and Leia are born at the end of the movie, and Episode IV (the original film) is set in 0 BBY, it doesn't take a math genius to work out that Luke and Leia are 19 during the original film (about right for Carrie Fisher, though Mark Hamill was about 4 years older during filming). By then Vader (nee Anakin) is 41, the soon-to-be-late Obi-wan is 57, and Palpatine – though we don't see him in that film – is 82!

As in the real world, Episode V is three years after Episode IV, but only a year passes between Episodes V and VI. Nonetheless, when Luke confronts Emperor Palpatine, he's dealing with a dude who is 86. No wonder he walks with a cane.

ALIEN VS. PREDATOR VS. PROMETHEUS

Now here's a fun one. Take two franchises that were never intended to be in the same universe, make a couple of unloved movies to unite the two, and then make a prequel to one series that actually takes place in the future of the other series.

If we put all these stories in chronological order, then …

1. What happens in gang-ruled, near-future 1997 L.A. stays in gang-ruled, near-future 1997 L.A.

We begin with the movie Predator (which came out in 1987, so presumably took place then), followed by Predator 2, set in the then-future L.A. of 1997 (it was released in 1990).

Then … we get Alien vs. Predator in 2004. That film's sequel, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, apparently also takes place in 2004. In neither film do I recall the characters recollecting the not-so-long-ago days when L.A. was a post-apocalyptic hellhole. But I haven't seen those films since they came out, so I don't remember.

The Predators go it alone again in Predators, released in 2010. I haven't seen it but am assuming it took place in the present. Apparently the Predators stopped bothering us by the time we mastered space travel.

2. The crew of the Nostromo really were the absolute last people to find about these aliens.

One thing I've noticed is that when a past-its-prime franchise gets an overdue reboot, the last and most hated installment before the reboot actually seems to lead directly into the reboot. The TV show Enterprise wasn't very popular, but it's an attempt to be a grittier prequel to the Kirk era, and in hindsight it seems entirely fitting that it would be followed by the J.J. Abrams' Trek film, which brings us to the era of a young Kirk. Similarly, everything Doctor Who fans criticized about the 1996 TV movie – the Doctor-companion romance, the slick production values, the bombastic score, the baffling and sentimental deus ex machina ending – in hindsight seems to predict the exact formula that made the modern series an instant hit under Russell T Davies.

What I'm getting at is this: The Alien vs. Predator films aren't gonna top any Sight & Sound poll any time soon, but what seemed like the silliest thing about them when they came out – the idea that Earth already knew about these aliens years before Ripley and company discovered them for the first time – ended up being the very same idea that Ridley Scott's eagerly anticipated prequel Prometheus bet all its chips on.

So 2010's Predators is followed, 13 years later, by Peter Weyland's TED Talk from 2023 – you know, that viral promotional video that came out before Prometheus did. The actual movie Prometheus – apart from its infamously cryptic opening – apparently begins in 2089; the ship takes until 2093 to arrive at the planet where they first discover the aliens. (Who already visited Earth in 2004 – did I mention that?)

According to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446714/faq and http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2012/06/filling-blanks-tying-prometheus-to.html , the original Alien takes place in 2122, so it's just a mere 29 years after Prometheus that Ripley and the gang encounter the aliens on a different planet. The Weyland-Yutani corporation must have done an excellent job covering up both of humanity's 21st-century encounters with these aliens, or else the Nostromo crew might have been better prepared.

3. Ships can travel faster than light, but not that well.

As I indicated above, the crew of Prometheus leave Earth in 2089 and arrive at LV-223 in 2093. That's four years. So obviously it takes a long time to get from one star system or another. You can't just hit the hyperdrive and get there quickly.

Or can you? Consider that in the real world, the nearest star to our sun (Alpha Centauri) is more than 4 light-years away. Meaning that's how long it takes light – the fastest thing in the universe – to travel that far.

Dialogue in Alien indicates that the planet they're visiting (later christened LV-426 in Aliens) is in the vicinity of Zeta Reticuli, a star which in reality is 39 light-years away from Earth. But as one of the commenters here points out, in the film it apparently is considered possible to get home to Earth from there in 10 months. (And when that estimate is announced in the movie, it's greeted with a groan, indicating that that's actually an unusually long time.)

Without faster-than-light travel, you probably couldn't even get out of the solar system in 10 months, so it seems safe to assume that faster-than-light travel is involved. It's just not as advanced as the faster-than-light travel seen elsewhere in the sci-fi genre, since traveling between the stars seems to take months or years, rather than days or hours. It's more like going on a ship would have been in the days of Columbus. So 4 years is considered a reasonable travel time, but 57 years is not ...

4. This saga spans a huge time frame, during which not much seems to change.

Aliens, of course, takes place 57 years after Alien, since that's how long Ripley has been told her shuttlecraft had been drifting in space. Since we only hear that information in a scene that turns out to be a dream (something that confused me as a kid, frankly) I wouldn't be at all upset if someone decided to ret-con it away, but it seems to still be considered canon.

57 years ago in our world, hard drives and videotape were brand-new inventions. Segregation still existed. So did the Soviet Union. We hadn't yet put a man on the moon. Someone who'd been in hibernation for 57 years would have a lot of catching up to do. But in the Alien universe, there don't appear to have been any giant advances in that time. Space travel seems to be the same. Androids seem to be the same.

We're never quite told when Alien 3 takes place, but Alien Resurrection apparently takes place 200 years after that. Again, no big technological, cultural or political shifts seem to have occurred in the three centuries since the time of Prometheus and Alien.

I don't have any witty point to wrap all this up with, except this: They should do an Expendables-style teamup of the various main characters from this double franchise. Bring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny Glover, Sanaa Lathan, Lance Henriksen and Noomi Rapace out of cryosleep to team up with the cloned Ripley so they can fight off the Aliens and Predators at the same time. I can't remember if Ron Perlman's character was still alive at the end of Alien Resurrection, but if not then clone him too.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

If you think you know who's buried in Grant's tomb, or how long the Hundred Years War lasted, then you probably feel brave enough to hazard a guess as to what year 2001: A Space Odyssey took place in. (Clue: the title.)

Well, not so fast, wiseass. There's a big old “18 MONTHS LATER” intertitle separating the early Heywood Floyd scenes (in which the monolith on the moon is discovered) and the later scenes of Dave, Frank and HAL aboard Discovery. So which part takes place in 2001?

It seems reasonable to assume that the Dave/HAL stuff, which makes up the bulk of the drama, is the part that takes place in 2001. If so, then when did the Heywood Floyd stuff take place? If the HAL stuff is in the second half of 2001, then the Heywood stuff is in early 2000. But if the HAL stuff is in the first half of 2001, then the HAL stuff is in late 1999.

The movie itself doesn't offer many clues, other than Heywood being told by a colleague that she hopes to see him at a conference in June. Which doesn't necessarily help. However, an easily forgotten fact is that 2001 is actually a minor franchise – it spawned a series of novels, one of which was made into a cinematic sequel. So let's see what the movie 2010 has to tell us.

The opening titles tell us that, yup, the monolith was discovered in 1999, and that Discovery was lost in 2001. Later dialogue in the film says that the order given to HAL which led to his breakdown was dated January 30, 2001. I'm guessing this was slightly before the HAL scenes shown in the movie, so the HAL scenes have to take place no earlier than February 2001 ... but also no later than June 2001, in order for the Heywood stuff to take place in late 1999 rather than 2000.

Which raises the next question … when does 2010 take place? As in the previous film, there are scenes set before and after the long journey to Jupiter. In an early scene, Heywood tells his son that it will take two and a half years to go and come back. So half of that round trip is 15 months (fuel efficiency has apparently improved since 2001). Assuming that the bulk of the drama is in 2010, when does the beginning of the movie take place?

There's a big honking close-up of a Time magazine cover during the latter part of the movie, but the date is out of focus. The month looks like a long word – so it's either one of the ones ending in “ary” or one of the ones ending in “ber”. If it's an “ary” month, then it's early 2010, so the opening scenes could be late 2008 or early 2009. But if it's a “ber” month, then it's late 2010, so the opening scenes would be late 2009. Screw it, let's just say 2009 and call it a day, especially since it's a future vision that never came true anyway.

Well, that was a fun waste of time. But if you want to know the correct chronologies of River Song, Jack Harkness or the Daleks, you're on your own.