Flights of darkness and reality: 'Star Wars' fell into childhood - and the eighties
Disney+ streaming service Disney+ has released the first two episodes of the highly-anticipated series "The Support Team" within the Star Wars universe. It's been over two years since it was first announced. The series offers a radically new look at the confrontation between the Dark and Light sides of the Force: for the first time, the main characters of Star Wars are four high school students. Among the authors of the series - the creators of the films "Mandalorean", "Everywhere and at once" and "Spider-Man", and the first two episodes so far like everyone who has seen them.
The new "Star Wars" is similar to "Alien"
"Alien," "Goonies," and "Explorers" aren't the only "Support Team" references. The new "Star Wars" series is somehow similar to all those numerous TV children's movies and series, which in the 90's were actively rotated on domestic television in the program "Disney on Fridays". At that time, they seemed insanely attractive exotic, they immersed the Russian child in the cultural space of overseas peers, and the fact that they looked inexpensive and were characterized by simple plots, only added to their charm.
A still from Star Wars: Rim of the Battlestar.
That's why Russia responded so well to "Very Strange Things," which drew on the same experience. But perhaps "Support Team" will be loved even more, because the Netflix series, like, for example, J.J. Abrams' movie "Super 8," are fairy tales for adults who want to remember their childhood. And "The Supporting Team" is a completely family-friendly product, it can and should be watched with children, and it has that generational connection that so many people lack today.
A still from Star Wars: Rim of the Battlestar.
Mixing, but not shaking the cocktail with different aesthetic spaces, the masters of "Disney" this time managed to achieve a filigree combination of the atmosphere of a peaceful American suburb of the 80's with "far, far away Galaxy", where the Empire is defeated, but the New Republic is surrounded by a huge number of external enemies, and internal it has plenty. How they did it is utterly impossible to understand, but it works!
This has nothing to do with Peter Pan and Pirates of the Caribbean.
So, imagine the suburb from Alien. The main character's name was Elliot, here it's about the same - Wim. Elliot lived with a single mom, Wim only has a father. In both cases, they are too busy with their own problems to pay attention to the children. Wim has Jedi dreams, he and his classmate and best friend are always playing lightsaber fights, and at the same time he shyly squints at the cute girls in the neighborhood. It's just like the 80's, but with droids, flying buses, and intergalactic technology. But he still has to do his homework.
In school - exams, and Vim and three friends find an abandoned spaceship in a ravine and accidentally fly on it into space. The autopilot leads the ship straight to a pirate hub, where no one will help the kids get back to their home and such a nice planet Attin.
A still from Star Wars: Rim of the Battlestar.
If not to go into details, this is the whole plot of the first two episodes of "Support Team", although there is room for a robot helper, and for the Force, and even for a full-fledged battle scene, violent enough to realize: the series is safe for children, in terms of cruelty it is inferior even to the first "Star Wars".
What is it that makes the series so fascinating? At the very least, it's not just the "Star Wars" brand, under which at least two rather controversial series have been released recently. And to be honest, "The Mandalorean" is the only undeniable success in this direction, and that in its latest incarnations, the space western series has begun to stall somewhat.
A still from Star Wars: Rim of the Battlestar.
The parallels and implicit narratives are fascinating. For example, the idyllic suburb on Attin leaves a strange aftertaste that one feels after watching. Why are there so many security patrols in the neighborhood? Why are children in school required to decide once and for all what their profession will be? What is the main character's father so busy at work? The prosperous facade of this planet may be hiding a totalitarian device or something worse underneath, and it's not for nothing that space pirates become visibly nervous at the mention of Attin.
Then there's the genre. Classic "Star Wars" is part samurai movie, part western, part peplum, the heir to "Ben Hur" and "Lawrence of Arabia. ""The Supporting Crew" is an adventure movie about kids getting caught up with pirates, and how can you not think of "Peter Pan" here. And with it, "Pirates of the Caribbean," a brand that, like "Star Wars," is owned by Disney. And, of course, Steven Spielberg's "Alien," which is quoted repeatedly at the level of general plans filmed in a certain way or plans with children racing, though not on bikes, but on futuristic scooters. But with exactly the same emotions and the same vitality.
A still from Star Wars: Rim of the Battlestar.
Pirates, by the way, are not so simple either. The "Mandalorian" line and the last "Star Wars" trilogy have accustomed us to the idea that the victory of the Jedi did not bring happiness to the galaxy. One dictatorship has been replaced by another, and true freedom (and with it, happiness) has remained only on the frontier, where the strong hand of the Republic cannot reach. There is a suspicion that in the next episodes the heroes will pick up the pirate romance and will not want to return to their native lands - except to destroy the world of lies and hypocrisy. And this inherently leftist idea will drive the plot forward, with the only difference being that here the class struggle will be revealed to be untenable, and the burden of true exploits will fall on the shoulders of loners.
A still from Star Wars: Rim of the Battlestar.
The mysterious stranger from the finale of the second episode, played by the main star of the series, Jude Law, is likely to be one of them. There is a temptation to consider him a Jedi, but it's best not to rush until the next installments of the show are released. Also, around the same time, somewhere on the fringes of the galaxy, the Mandalorean proper is supposed to be flying around in company with a little green Grogoo. Perhaps we'll meet him and find out what the path is.
But what we can tell for sure from the first two episodes is that the watershed runs between the world of children and adults. The latter are not to be trusted, and each has some different but absolutely palpable lie. And the truth is in the children who are ready to learn and wonder, and maybe in the many yurovids of the Star Wars universe who believe not that the Force is in the truth, but that the truth is in the Force. And that's exactly the kind of Christmas feeling that is just right at the start of a long, cold winter.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
