No More Heroes...

Who are your heroes? Are they the same as they were when you were younger, or have you outgrown them? I've been pondering this myself for a while, since Michael Jackson died. Not that Jackson was ever a hero of mine...

What is a hero? To me, a hero is a person who exhibits qualities that puts them above others in any field, be it sports, music, art or writing. When I was younger I had a few heroes, people that I respected, who I felt had a talent that lifted them up to the highest heights, who became, for want of a better phrase, gods. Sadly, I now feel that most of those people have let me down.

Let's get down to specifics. Sixteen years ago, I wrote a list of "The Gods":

1. George Lucas
2. Jean Michel Jarre
3. Jim Henson
4. Green Gartside (from Scritti Politti)
5. Jim Aparo
6. Alan Grant
7. Gene Roddenberry
8. Nik Kershaw
9. Arthur C. Clarke

(Looking back, I would probably add Terry Pratchett and Madonna to that list, but didn't at the time. Poor old Nik Kershaw has "demi-God" in brackets after his name, so he wasn't obviously totally in favour at the time.)

Anyway, looking at that list now, would I still consider them heroes? By that tag, I mean that they are still as important to me as they were then, that they haven't put a creative step wrong, that they are still, well, Gods, and not mere... people. It's harsh, but there you go.

So, 1. George Lucas. Well, it was all going so well until 1999, wasn't it? His position in the pantheon looked assured, the Special Editions of the Star Wars trilogy could be seen as an indulgence, rather than a mis-step, but then Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace came out. The fall to mortality wasn't immediate, but the creeping feeling grew that the halo had slipped... (See I Blame Rick McCallum for more details!) Mortal.

2. Jean Michel Jarre.  In 1992, one of my favourite Jarre albums, Chronologie had come out.  In 1993 I went to see him at Wembley Stadium and I thought his reputation had been sealed, but in the intervening years, he's produced few albums of such magnificence, but has been reworking his old stuff, making little "art" albums and then the appalingly bad Téo & Téa "dance" album.  I blame the fact tha he's not married to Charlotte Rampling anymore.  The woman must have been a good influence which he's now sadly missing... Mortal (though fingers crossed for the future!)

3. Jim Henson.  Untouchable.  His sad and untimely death in 1990 meant that he could no longer prove himself fallible. (Unfortunately his death proved his mortality though...) The body of work created by him in his lifetime stands firm.  His legacy, and the future worth of the Henson Organization remains to be seen. Hero.

4. Green Gartside. Just when I thought nothing would ever be heard again from Mr. Gartside, in 2006, he pulled out his best album since Cupid & Psyche '85 in the form of White Bread Black Beer, a self-produced, minimalist album of pure loveliness. Hero.

5. Jim Aparo and 6. Alan Grant. Look, I was a big comics fan in the 1990s, especially a Batman fan, so this classic artist and writer duo got included. Still like their work, but haven't read a comic in anger for nearly a decade, so I can't really say if they're still heroes. Probably. Though I'd have to veer towards Frank Miller and Alan Moore for their work on The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke respectively.

7. Gene Roddenberry. The man had a vision and a commitment to get Star Trek made and to keep it going in the '80s and '90s with Star Trek: The Next Generation. His death in 1991 didn't stop the franchise, and his legacy, as proved by the huge success of J.J. Abrams' big screen reboot Star Trek this year. Hero.

8. Nik Kershaw. OK, so he's not as big a star as he was in 1984, but Mr. Kershaw keeps putting out songs of wit and intelligence on his own label, making albums such as 2001's To Be Frank and 2006's You've Got To Laugh. Hero, just for doing what he does.

9. Arthur C. Clarke. The greatest Science-Fiction writer ever. Prescient and talented and just a fantastic writer. Hero.

And Terry Pratchett.  His writing gets better and better all the time, despite a dip in the Soul Music/Hogfather years and unfortunately his Alzheimer's will probably get him before he gets a chance to make the fall from grace. Still a hero. Always a hero.

Madonna. The only woman on the list, but unfortunately now very much a mortal. Like Jackson, her heyday is well past now, but no one seems to have told her. She keeps churning out the same sub-R&B drivel, but people still seem to like it. So maybe it's just me, but she hasn't done anything good since 1998's Ray of Light (and actually, looking at the sales figures, a lot less people like it...). Mortal.

So, there you go. Most of my heroes are only still my heroes because they're dead. If I had to write such a list now, I'd definitely include Joss Whedon for his work on Buffy, Firefly/Serenity, Dr Horrible and Dollhouse and for being a funny, horribly talented genius. I'd also include John Lasseter and all the team at Pixar for neverfailing to entertain and amaze.

Funny, but all my heroes come from the creative world. No sports people and no politicians. Hmmm....

Friday-Night Blog: I Blame Rick McCallum...

So, I was watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the 3D animated series) yesterday, which seems to be showing on Cartoon Network here in the UK, after having been isolated to Sky Movies before, and I thought it was quite good, which got me to thinking... Where did it all go wrong for the Star Wars saga?

I used to love Star Wars - no, actually that's an understatement. I used to eat, drink and breathe Star Wars. I used to watch my VHS copies of the Trilogy on an old black and white TV in my room, snatching a few minutes of Jedi while I got ready for school in the morning. I used to read and re-read all the books I had, and hunt for old second-hand copies of annuals and storybooks - this was in the dark times, before the coming of the second merchandising wave, when there was, frankly, sod all new Star Wars around!

And then, Dark Horse Comics published Star Wars: Dark Empire, in 1991; Timothy Zahn's novel Heir to the Empire was published in 1992, and the ball started rolling again. More books, more comics... And my Star Wars reflex kicked in! I bought nearly everything I could that had the Star Wars name on it, spending all my available money on it. Everything was fantastic in the Star Wars Universe. Us fan boys were happy, very happy. And then...

And then, George Lucas announced that he would be making Episodes I to III of the series, and we would get the full story - we'd see Anakin Skywalker's fall from grace, his voyage to the dark side, Obi-Wan Kenobi fighting in the Clone Wars... The anticipation was immense. And before that, we'd get new, spanky, souped-up versions of the Original Trilogy IN THE CINEMA!

And that's where I think the rot set in. George Lucas had the chance to go back and "tinker" with our beloved films. Don't get me wrong, I like most of the changes made in the films - the attack on the Death Star needed sprucing up, Cloud City's windows do open up the landscape, and the um, well, no actually most of the changes in Return of the Jedi were totally unnecessary (and they got worse when Hayden Christensen was dropped into the film on the DVD...) Most importantly, GREEDO DID NOT SHOOT FIRST.... ahem.

To help with all the work on the Special Editions, and the Prequel Trilogy, Lucas enlisted Rick McCallum, who had worked with the Great Beard on the Young Indiana Jones series. Alarm bells should have rung then, quite frankly...

And so, in 1999, we got Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. God we wanted to love that film. I watched it two and a half times (fell asleep watching it on my stag-night...). I didn't mind Jar-Jar, Jake Lloyd as young Anakin was OK, Darth Maul was pretty cool with his double-blade lightsaber, Liam Neeson was solid and Ewan McGregor was over-keen as young Obi-Wan, but there was something a bit, well, hollow in the whole enterprise. It had Star Wars on the label, but it felt like something else was on the till.

Three years later we got Episode II - Attack of the Clones and we also got the afore-mentioned Christensen. Well, to say he was wooden would be insulting to trees, but he just didn't fill the role of the nascent Dark Lord of the Sith. He was just a whiney brat who apparently didn't like sand. The romance between Anakin and Padmé was risible, and you got the feeling the Natalie Portman was trying her best, but couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to deal with her love interest...

And then, in 2005, we finally got to see Anakin become Vader. Possibly the strongest film of the prequels (save for the fact that Portman seemed to have died inside somewhere - probably when she saw her script), it still lacked... soul. We knew we should be feeling something, we knew we should love these film like we loved the original films, and we've tried to convince ourselves to love them over the last four years, but we really can't....

Where are the heroes? What kid wants to be Anakin or Obi-Wan or Padmé, like we wanted to be Luke or Han or Leia? In what way were any of the ships cooler than the Millennium Falcon or the X-Wings (or TIE Fighters, come to that?) Even Yoda's gymnastics were a little bit, well, silly, if you think about it. The over-reliance on CGI for the special effects already looks dated in some cases, whereas the model work from the Original Trilogy still stands the test of time.

So why do I blame Rick McCallum? Well, I don't think the man had the cojones to say no to George Lucas. I believe that every artist needs an editor, a critic or an executive to stand up to them and tell them when something just isn't good enough. Prince hasn't really made a consistently decent album since he parted company with Warners as he's been allowed to indulge himself - even such celebrated writes as T.S. Eliot had editors to send them back to the drawing board. I believe that Lucas needed that, and Rick McCallum wasn't the man for the job.

I've given up on the majority of Star Wars products these days. There are too many books (I gave up after the New Jedi Order series), comics and video games to buy. I'm looking forward to the live-action series due to arrive in the next few years, because I'm an optimist. I hope I get to see more of the Clone Wars TV show, but it seems to be a bit random at the moment.

I still love Star Wars, I really do. I just wish the Prequels had been so much better.