A young man from Tatooine sets out to find his malfunctioning droid and ends up saving the galaxy. A young man from Modesto heads to USC during the death throes of the studio system and ends up altering the course of Hollywood. “I set the goal of getting through film school,” George Lucas told an interviewer in 1999. “I didn’t know where I was going to go after that.”
You’re aware that the horizon is just the start of the adventure. You’re a “Star Wars” fan. What you want to know is which “Star Wars” artifacts are in the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (opening Sept. 22) and whether racing straight there solely for them is worth the trek.
Help you, I will.
Sorry, Yoda. For now, the green sage is merely a bronze statue on the lawn, posed to ignore the grinning Grogu behind him. (Otherwise, don’t even ask about the Disney sequels.)
Lucas could probably fill an entire museum with what he’s stored from his six “Star Wars” features, but he’s restrained himself to one gallery and one theme: vehicles. In the future, this gallery (merely one of 33) may rotate out its exhibit for work devoted to, say, matte paintings or costumes. Yet, as Lucas is a legendary lug nut, these hover cars and spaceships whisk you full speed into his creative process.
Original production art by Ralph McQuarrie and Doug Chiang guides visitors into the space, which gives equal treatment to the original trilogy and the three prequels. Each illustration features something with a motor or an alien creature that qualifies as transport. A TIE fighter hovers outside Alderaan‘s Imperial City. A yawning sandcrawler unloads cargo at a Jawa swap meet. A flying Aiwha carries a rider through the sky. At a glance, these framed works blend into the rest of the art at the museum, which may be the point.
From there, roughly 20 intricate models sit behind protective glass — including the tripped-up, four-legged AT-AT from “The Empire Strikes Back,” permanently face-planted into a petrified snowbank; Jabba the Hutt’s dashing sail barge from “Return of the Jedi”; and a menacing tank from “The Phantom Menace,” still streaked with smoky battle scars. A schnozzy Kaadu, saddled and ridden by a small Jar Jar Binks, is presented with nearly the same minimalist assurance as the miniature Millennium Falcon, which floats alone in a stark white display case that highlights the dirty streaks that make it look real.
No glass separates gawkers from seven full-size, screen-used vehicles. Young Anakin’s podracer, a striped cockpit strapped to twin shuttlecock engines, stretches down one side of an aisle. On the opposite half, two finned and muscular airspeeders from “Attack of the Clones” tailgate each other. Instead of being positioned before crisp backgrounds like static dioramas, they’re backed by blurry freeze frames that yearn to be in motion.
The sentimental standout is Luke Skywalker’s lozenge-shaped landspeeder from the very first movie. The iconic desert cruiser turns out to be just a chunk of rubber and metal with believable scratches and dents. But its modesty doesn’t ding our reverence. That first Tunisia shoot took place 50 years ago in the spring of 1976 when the sci-fi fantasy genre was perilously unhip and no one was sure “Star Wars” would be a hit. If anything, this humble prop adds to our respect that the budget-strapped picture would go on to become priceless (although technically, Disney paid Lucas $4.05 billion for it).
Another vehicle, General Grevious’ wheel bike from “Revenge of the Sith,” never existed in any form other than CGI, until now. Lucas wanted to see a life-size replica of the all-terrain unicycle, so the museum made one, fanged and ferocious. And if you detour to the second-floor library, you’ll get the best view of a banana-yellow starfighter from “The Phantom Menace” that dangles over the lobby with R2-D2 perched in the tandem seat.
Wax figures of Luke, Leia, Darth Vader and C-3PO stand around as if waiting to go through TSA before climbing aboard. (At least Samuel L. Jackson’s Mace Windu and Hayden Christensen’s adult Anakin are driving their machines.) A tour guide told me that every living actor besides Ewan McGregor has stopped by to approve of their likeness. I wondered if McGregor would have quibbled with his Obi-Wan’s patchy blond beard, but when I went back and double-checked the film, it is that scraggly.
While the characters have only a tenuous connection to the theme of vehicles, the original costumes they’re modeling are enchanting in their candor. Note the simple fabric-and-wire belly covering on C-3PO and the two ordinary lightbulbs that give the Jawas their hot glare. Darth Vader sports useless tape recorder-style buttons on his chest plate. R2-D2’s streaky blue accent stripes appear to be hand-colored as if by paint marker. Boba Fett finally holds still long enough for us to examine the braided Wookiee scalps slung around his shoulder. Be sure to crouch low and appreciate the Stormtrooper’s mundane white boots. If you wanted to make your own movie, you could buy a pair today.
Hold onto that idea. The “Star Wars” exhibit is button-lipped about the philosophy behind its assembled objects. Brisk labels credit individual creators including art director Joe Johnston and costume designers John Mollo and Trisha Biggar. Lucas’ name doesn’t appear once, the reclusive filmmaker pushing the spotlight onto his team.
Yet, as the building stands across the street from the campus where Lucas learned to direct, you’re always aware of being inside his brain. Right here is where Lucas made his first short film in 1965, an experimental one-minute montage in the style of innovative Serbian editor Slavko Vorkapich, who lends his name to a theater on the ground floor. Vorkapich inspired Lucas to trust that audiences would mentally connect his visuals.
In that spirit, having explored the entire museum, I suspect that Lucas’ goal isn’t just to invite people to view his treasures. He wants us to actively think like artists.
So once you check off the “Star Wars” exhibit, get lost in Lucas’ imagination by touring the rest of the collection with the X-ray eyes of a fan. Pass under the starlit ceiling of an ancient cave and contemplate the genetic connection between a horned tauntaun and a prehistoric bison painted a long, long time ago. Tilt your head at cock-angled paintings of sword fights that study how bodies and sabers can athletically fill a frame. Pay homage to a statue of the Egyptian god Horus, whose headdress recalls Natalie Portman’s Queen Amidala, and a Hopi katsina doll of an ogre with the same beak as Jar Jar Binks. Pause before a pair of warriors — one Knight Templar in a steely, squinty suit of armor, the other, a sparkly black samurai — and meld the two in your head until they look like Darth Vader.
“Star Wars” turns out to be everywhere: in the cover art of a Doc Savage pulp paperback with a flaming orange sun, in the grand scale fascist critique of Diego Rivera’s movie-screen-size mural “Man, Controller of the Universe,” in the half-dozen variations of Norman Rockwell’s “Triple Self-Portrait,” iterated again and again in sketches, oils, sculpture, even an Alfred E. Neuman parody, each creative progression insisting it has the right to build on what came before.
Rockwell showed Lucas how to tell a satisfying narrative in a single image. Now, Lucas is sharing everything he’s learned about storytelling at a time when the studio system is drifting off a cliff (again). Here’s hoping it inspires a new generation of rebel filmmakers to take the wheel.
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