RE: Trailer Trash 49 pt 4

“Okay. So; what do you think about Tabitha joining Art Club?” Alicia asked, leaning heavily across the scuffed glass counter.

“I’m all for it,” Casey shrugged. “Is she coming back to Springton High, though?”

Monday nights at Family Video were slow. Aside from a bit of midday activity that consisted mostly of people returning their weekend rentals, there just wasn’t much to do. Casey was closing tonight, and although the Family Video franchise was technically open until midnight every night… Springton was a real small town. She was the only one staffed in the store until close, and close was gonna be nine o’clock if Casey decided it wasn’t busy enough—her manager, Doug, was a cool guy and left things to her discretion.

“Yeah, I think after Christmas break she’s coming back,” Alicia said. “Elena and I are kinda-sorta fighting over who gets custody of her? Elena’s doing cheer tryouts and Tabitha might go for that, but I wanna pull her into Art, instead.”

“Cheer?” Casey made a face. “Gawd, I hope not. Tabitha doesn’t strike me as the snooty rich bitch type?”

“I know!” Alicia clapped a hand on the counter in agreement. “And Elena’s like—she said she’s not going back to blonde, so like—?!”

“Right?!” Casey sniffed. “They should both come to Art Club, f’ya ask me.”

“Yeah,” Alicia bobbed her head in a nod. “They totally should.”

Casey let out a groan of frustration, out of habit checking the drop-off bin beneath the counter again. Just like last time she looked, it was still empty. There were no videos to rewind, nothing to put back away, nothing to do. When Alicia showed up, Casey had teased the freshman girl about making her vacuum the carpets for her before close, but at this rate Casey was going to plug in the cleaner and get started just to help kill time.

“Is it always this slow, here?” Alicia asked.

“Nah,” Casey blew out an exasperated breath. “When we’re busy we get slammed, just—when we’re not busy, it’s this, and I do homework or something.”

“That’s cool,” Alicia shrugged. “Get to get all your stuff done and get paid while you’re at it.”

“I guess,” Casey sighed. “Doug’s cool with me doing school stuff, but he won’t let me just play my Gameboy on shifts.”

“I mean,” Alicia gestured across the empty aisles. “How’s he gonna know?”

“Eh,” Casey made a face. “I’d know. So—yeah.”

“Hmm,” Alicia gave her a curious look. “I had you pegged for like, more or a rule-breaker? Like, a rebel.”

“I am, sorta,” Casey said. “If Doug was a dick, I’d blow off whatever he says and just do whatever, I guess. But, he’s cool. Letting me do my assignments and stuff when it’s slow is already cool, he’s chill about a buncha stuff. I don’t want to like, let him down for the rules he is serious about, you know?”

“Huh,” Alicia pondered that over.

“So,” Casey gave Alicia a look. “Tabs is from the future?”

The dark-skinned freshman girl gave a start at that, out of reflex glancing over her shoulder as if there might be customers who could have overheard. Family Video remained empty, and Alicia returned her attention to Casey with a sheepish smile and a shrug.

“I mean, yeah, kinda,” Alicia mumbled. “Elena doesn’t believe her.”

“But you believe her?” Casey asked, arching an eyebrow.

“I… yeah, I think I do,” Alicia answered with a helpless shrug. “But, it’s real complicated. Annnd—I dunno if I should ever even say anything, without her here to like… I don’t know? It’s so weird. Tabs is cool with letting stuff slip, but then Elena doesn’t even believe her and she’s all like you can’t go around saying stuff if it’s true, ‘cause government scientists will abduct you and dissect your brain or whatever.”

“It’s interesting,” Casey remarked. Is that why you’re interested in her, Alicia?

“Yeah,” Alicia nodded. “I love—uh, well I could just sit there and listen to her go on and on about all the future stuff for hours, I think. It’s all just so fascinating to think about, to get this like, outside perspective on everything. Whether or not it’s true there’s just this whole big ton of thought put into everything. She’s got song lyrics, she’s got movie information and books and video game stuff, fashion, like, cultural trends, internet stuff—social medium. No, media. Social media. I always get that wrong.”

“Movies?” Casey perked up. “That’s like—couldn’t we quiz her on stuff that’s about to come out? Super easy way of testing for if she’s telling the truth or not?”

“Kinda?” Alicia held up her hands in a helpless expression. “She knows some and it’s real legit, like it rings true, but then she just hasn’t seen a lot of stuff since she’s not all that into movies. Or, she wasn’t in the future.”

“What’d she know?” Casey couldn’t help but ask.

“She’d for sure already seen Pleasantville before we sat down and watched it,” Alicia revealed. “Elena thinks she might’ve heard spoilers from somebody else, but I don’t. Tabs is like… she doesn’t get out and around and talk to people all that much in the first place. She knows all the Star Wars movies coming out.”

“Okay stop, stop,” Casey warned. “I’ve gotta ask, but I also don’t want any spoilers, so—just tell me, is Episode One gonna be good?”

“She, uh,” Alicia winced. “She said she liked it? But… but then, she also said most Star Wars fans didn’t like it.”

“Shit,” Casey swore, more convinced than ever. “She really is from the future. That sounds… depressingly realistic?”

“Yeah,” Alicia turned glum. “It’s like that with a lot of things.”

“What’s bad about it?” Casey pressed. “Wait, no—what’s good about it?! I’ve gotta, like, I need to—do I havta bring my expectations way, way down before I go see it? We were gonna—Matthew and I were gonna do the big fan thing, gonna camp out overnight for the day Sandboro theater puts tickets up. Is it—how bad is it?!”

“I don’t know?!” Alicia threw her hands up in frustration. “You want to like, have her come hang out?”

*     *    *

“Okay, you’re from the future?” Casey blurted out. “Is Phantom Menace good, or bad?”

“Um,” Tabitha flushed. “Both?”

“Both?” Casey turned a skeptical look from Tabitha to Alicia and back again. “Explain.”

“Without spoiling?” Tabitha asked.

“As much as you can, yeah.”

“Alright. So… where do I even start?” Tabitha floundered.

“Story? Like, is the movie good? Yes, or no,” Casey crossed her arms.

“It’s… alright?” Tabitha hemmed and hawed. “Okay, let me think about it for a second. Try to remember everything—it’s been a while.”

As she gestured to the girl to take all the time she needed, inwardly Casey found herself skeptical. Tabitha didn’t really seem like she’d been to the future before or seen the Phantom Menace before already. When someone liked a movie it was usually pretty easy to determine why, and when someone hated a movie it was usually for pretty clear-cut reasons. Episode One was shaping up to be a big memorable event—it was Star Wars, after all, so Casey was of the mind that it would make a big impression on everyone either way.

“Okay, so—The Phantom Menace, right?” Tabitha clarified. “I enjoyed it, I think it’s a good movie, but it also has a lot of flaws. Some might find those flaws to be crippling? It might depend on what your expectations for the movie are.”

“Flaws?” Casey frowned.

“One of it’s biggest problems, I think, was that it was a Star Wars movie,” Tabitha explained. “Which meant it did not have as much freedom or leeway in what it could do. It needed to feel like it was cut from the same cloth, it needed to connect to the old movies, and at the same time, it needed to be it’s own thing, it needed to be fresh and new and innovate.”

“Okay,” Casey nodded. “That’s, like—you mean it has to be kinda familiar to the Star Wars movies, and that’s good and bad?”

“Yes,” Tabitha admitted. “From what I remember, that became one of the bigger talking points about Star Wars down the line with the other films, but for even worse reasons. If George Lucas only shows these new ideas and places, the uh, styles of architecture and spaceships and all of that—then you’ll have all of these hardcore fans who feel like it’s not Star Wars anymore. If he goes in the other direction, it’s, well, it feels derivative, it’s like he’s just retreading the same boring things again. Does that make sense?”

“Kinda?” Casey quirked her lip.

“Now, to me—and this is just my views,” Tabitha warned. “The Phantom Menace struggled a bit because there wasn’t a clear protagonist to connect to. It bounces around, for the first act it’s Obi-wan and Qui-gon, then in the second act they introduce Anakin, and it feels like it’s his show for a bit. Then, going into the climax who we follow jumps from person to person and it feels like—like, whose story is this, exactly?”

“Okay,” Casey slowly parsed all of that information. “That’s—that doesn’t feel like a deal-breaker, just yet.”

“Jar-Jar Binks was universally panned by audiences,” Tabitha said, cringing. “You may have seen him in the trailer? He was this slapstick, comic-relief goofy alien character… and everyone hated him.”

“Oooh,” Casey made a face, taking a glance at Alicia’s anxious expression. “Okay.”

“Additionally, pretty much all of the aliens in that one faced some criticism for possibly being racist caricatures,” Tabitha remembered. “I don’t know how much of a deal that would be here in 1998, but there got to be more of a fuss over it later on. Jar-Jar I think was vaguely Jamaican, I know the fat junk dealer fairy guy was clearly supposed to be Jewish, and then the corporate baddies with the mannerisms and way they talked was kinda leaning on these tropes, uh, chinaman tropes of Chinese-American speech patterns and how it was done in an insensitive way.”

“Alright, that’s—that’s alright,” Casey gave a small shrug. “Throughout the original movies it’s like all the Empire has British accents and they’re all in like, quasi-nazi looking uniforms and have stormtroopers and all that. While the Rebels are all like, American accents and all that jazz. All that sort of culture vibe’s gotta come from somewhere originally. What else?”

“Um,” Tabitha appeared to be racking her brains.

“Is the chariot-racing thing dumb?” Alicia asked.

“Chariot-racing?” Tabitha blinked. “Oh, uh, the pod-racing?”

“Yeah, that was one of the things that worried me, from reading articles about it all,” Alicia admitted. “The whole pod thing seems kinda ehhh, and then using rockets instead of horses or space-future animals just seems—honestly? Absurd.”

“Well—no, actually,” Tabitha shook her head. “The pod-racing part was really cool, in my opinion. I would give it full marks. Great sound design, it was filmed well, had a lot of tension, the CG holds up really well even on into the future, it was all pretty brilliant.”

“...Really?” Alicia rose up on her tiptoes a bit in excitement.

“Yeah,” Tabitha gave her a serious nod. “There was—oh wait! No, there was one real bad part about it. The two-headed announcer guy for the races, he was awful. Like, the official race guy giving commentary for the people in the stands. He looked bad, sounded bad, they, honestly they should’ve just cut him out. The whole rest of the race sequence was phenomenal.”

“Okay, pod-racing; good,” Casey noted.

“Really good,” Tabitha confirmed. “George Lucas was—I don’t know if you know, but he was really into cars and racing for a big part of his life, and so then he managed to incorporate that into his films finally. It was really well done.”

“How about the new Darth?” Casey pressed for details. “Cool? Lame? How is he?”

“Very cool, but—um,” Tabitha paused. “I don’t know that I can comment on him without really spoiling a lot. He’s used very sparingly, so it doesn’t give us much of anything in the way of character or motivation or backstory or anything like that, but he has amazing screen presence and the action scenes with him are incredible.”

“Okay. So that—” Casey bit her lip. “He dies?”

“Don’t spoil it!” Alicia exclaimed.

“Cover your ears, quick,” Casey said with a grin. “So, he dies in this Phantom Menace movie, or…?”

“He… does, yes,” Tabitha whispered, giving Alicia an amused look as the girl clutched both hands over her ears and turned away. “So, in my opinion, he was fine if you consider Episode One as a standalone film! Perfectly fine. But, then when you consider it as the overall prequel trilogy… they wasted him too soon. They had to set up a new darth for the next one, and I think between some characters dying in Phantom Menace and some characters like Anakin needing to be recast with different actors, it felt like it hurt continuity from film to film, for me. I honestly struggle to connect Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones mentally even, because even the consistent characters that go through like Obi-wan just feel too different.”

“They recast Anakin for the next one?” Casey made a bewildered face. “Why?”

“Um…?” Tabitha shrugged. “I don’t know why, really? I think it might have just been one of those things, where a child actor doesn’t develop into the sort of teen actor they wanted? Maybe? The kid that plays Anakin in the first one never really gets roles in anything else, and then for Episodes two and three they have Hayden… Hayden something or other. He was alright-ish? The acting kinda became the low-point of the prequels in general.”

“The acting is bad?!” Casey gaped.

“It’s… awkward, yeah?” Tabitha flinched back a step. “This all happened when full green screen sets were first becoming a big thing, so you just have actors on this big empty set reading lines, with no real firm idea of who they’re talking to, a lot of the time; where they are, or what the atmosphere is even like. So, and uh—Lucas isn’t the best screenwriter to begin with—a lot of the delivery is real wooden.”

“Ouch,” Casey felt like she’d taken a physical blow. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Tabitha gave her an apologetic shrug. “I remember Ian McKellen I think, on the set of one of the Hobbit ones, he broke down crying during takes because he just couldn’t work like that. With all of the everything being greenscreen and there only being like, placeholders for the people who were supposed to be there with him in the scene.”

“They make A HOBBIT MOVIE?!” Casey cried out, clutching at her heart with both hands.

/// I camped out in line for Phantom Menace tickets with fans, so there is def gonna be a chap where Tabitha does the same with her friends. I think part of the magic of the late nineties was being a fan of something and just being so in the dark about it, outside of magazine articles and bits flashing by on TV.

Readers who experienced otherwise may complain, but fact is; the internet didn't make it into a lot of homes until the early - mid 2000s. Library / school access was limited with my circumstances (not having a car in pre-internet days made every kid a frog in a well pining for that small circle of sky they could see).

I actually had my stepdad print out the entire Star Wars website and all of its pages in 1999 and kept it in a binder, (nowhere near as impressive as it sounds, probably was $4 in printing at ten cents per page) I rediscovered a lot of those papers while going through all the stuff I had stored that got waterlogged when the pipe burst. Friends and family clipped out all the newspaper and magazine articles they found about Star Wars, I have a big pile of those that 13-year old me collected and hoarded.

Life as a young teen there on the of THAT kind of major change was mysterious and exciting. Everyone talked about it, there was always that kid down the street who had wild claims about knowing what was going to happen with a franchise because he heard it from his brother's friend's dad who works somewhere or other. He was obviously lying, we even knew that back then, but we also couldn't PROVE he was lying. There was no way of knowing until it came out.

One of my big goals is to attempt to convey those feelings to new readers, many of which actually struggle to imagine life without 24/7 internet access.