nimblemarlin6
Active Member
228 messages
joined Aug 2012
Star Wars episodes 1-3... a completely unpredictable trilogy.
First off—each of these three movies is unpredictable on its own merit, mostly because throughout their run, we’re essentially dropped in as witnesses to a series of events that seem to lack any internal logic or connection to one another.
We try to connect the dots, but after a while, you realize that—well, actually—the events in the film don't have much logic or cohesion at all. Things just happen chaotically, but I guess that’s fine; isn't that how life works? Things around us don't always have a clear cause. The events in the movie are unpredictable, much like life itself.
And yet, we realize—or at least we think we do, since the film tricks us into thinking we've grasped something—that all three films, as a whole, are actually a single story about a young man and a girl trying to build a traditional marriage in an unpredictable world full of crises. We follow this guy's career in government service; he's basically a sort of undercover federal agent. His job is incredibly high-stress. You have periods of peace followed by war and various national emergencies, so he's constantly out on assignment. His colleagues are hardened veterans, and his best friend is clearly a dysfunctional type dealing with PTSD. (At no point in the trilogy do we ever see him hanging out with his wife outside of work.)
The guy tries to establish a normal relationship and a conservative marriage, even though his job makes it nearly impossible, and by the end of the film, he actually pulls it off! He achieves a stable union. His superiors release him from duty despite the state of war. It looks like a happy ending...
And then comes the most unbelievable plot twist in cinematic history! When I saw it, I couldn't believe my eyes!
By the end of the film, the guy starts swinging wildly at everything! He even strangles his pregnant wife! Some mild, pleasant little guy—a minor character, a Senator—completely flips his character; suddenly he turns into a psychopath, a monster, even in his physical appearance! The young man and this gentleman establish this strange master-servant dynamic. Throughout the film, this little guy wasn't dominant at all, nor did the young man show any inclination toward being submissive to anyone, let alone a middle-aged gentleman. This shift happens abruptly, without warning, in less than a minute!
The film concludes by showing all the characters dead, that the Senator staged a coup d'état out of nowhere, and that the entire once-monolithic government structure collapsed into chaos overnight... It's totally unbelievable because we know things like that don't just happen in a stable, organized nation, and the film showed us that this was a very orderly, advanced state. Is the ending just a vision—a nightmare in the mind of the young man, broken by everything he experienced during his service? That would be a good explanation, except the films never gave us any hint that the guy was on the edge of madness. But no, throughout the films, he was quite composed—deadpan expressions, almost (as if he weren't even acting)—and he seemed to have no inner life at all. So, an ending like this is completely unexpected.
This film trilogy ends so... surrealistically. It's a totally unpredictable and confusing narrative for its duration; just when you think you've finally figured out some kind of structure and that it's ultimately just a love story with a happy ending—albeit an atypical one—it all veers into surrealism.
