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Picture it. The middle of November. Hundreds of movie-goers line up outside a movie theatre. Paying nearly $8 to get in, they sit through an approximately two-minute trailer (a preview for an upcoming movie) and, following the conclusion of that single trailer, promptly rise from their barely warm front and back row seats and make their way toward the doors -- exiting before the main feature even begins. Now, what makes this behaviour all the more extraordinary, however, is not just that similar scenarios were reported in theatres all across the greater area of Los Angeles, Calif., where the trailer was first released. Nor, for that matter, is it the fact that the movie these people were paying to preview is not actually due in theatres for another six months. No, what makes this rather unparalleled behaviour extraordinary is that the movie these people cannot seem to contain their better judgment to get a glimpse of is, in fact, predicated upon a storyline that is known by just about every movie-goer who has ever tried smuggling contraband into the back row of a movie theatre. I am referring, of course, to the recently released, fanatically received, trailer for the newest instalment of the Star Wars saga -- Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace set for release in May 1999. What everybody knows (or at least everybody and his girlfriend knows) is that the instalments of the original trilogy -- Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi -- were actually the fourth, fifth and sixth episodes of a nine-chapter epic and that the next movie, the fourth in terms of cinematic release, will begin in the beginning, following the epic of Darth Vader, then Anakin Skywalker before he became Darth Vader. If then, as we all know, Vader is going to fall (from grace -- his days as a Jedi knight), and fall hard before, chronologically speaking, Star Wars even begins, why, given early response, are we so compelled to see a story whose eventual outcome we already know? Is it merely that we, growing up in the age of technology, have become so calibrated for anything super hi-tech -- Star Wars has always been the mountain peak of special-effects innovation -- that we will gobble up anything George Lucas and company throw into a framework of spaceships and intergalactic laser shows this spring? No, that isn't it. The appeal of Star Wars has always been deeper than that. Star Wars is essentially a myth, the same myth that has been told throughout time immemorial. It is the story of what author Joseph Campbell called The Journey. Just as Luke Skywalker journeyed from his home planet to do battle with the evil forces of the universe, so too did Arthur from Camelot and Beowulf to do battle with monsters. As Campbell said, "The hero has a thousand faces." It is always the same basic story, only this time we will be witnessing the journey and the making of the filmdom's most famous villain, and because of that, in 1999, Darth Vader is going to be the biggest draw in movies -- not bad for a guy who has only showed his face once in three movies.
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