“Mentors have a way of seeing more of our faults than we would like. It’s the only way we
grow.” – Padmé Amidala
I really love Star Wars. Full disclosure. And Star Wars: Brotherhood by Mike Chen is an important cornerstone in the constantly expanding Star Wars series from Del Rey/Random House. After Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm, a controversial decision was made to wipe clean the pre-existing “Expanded Universe” (any Star Wars canon that is non-film) of books, novels, and comics, and to start fresh, thereby making the books released by Disney and Del Rey the “new” canon. Many of Del Rey’s books have garnered great acclaim, and Brotherhood––set within the “prequel era”––is one of them. But there’s more to Brotherhood than its quality, as it also plays a huge role in how we understand the Star Wars prequel era, not just in depth, but in atmosphere and audience. And to fully understand why it’s an important cornerstone, it’s worth taking a closer look at this era in which Brotherhood takes place.
The Star Wars prequels have always been a point of conflict among fans. Some praise the films as the “Star Wars of their childhood,” others say it’s the “Star Wars that ruined their childhood.” It gets messy. Everyone loves the music though. John Williams always knocks it out of the park. Love or hate the prequels, they’ve led to crucial longevity in Star Wars debate and discourse—a discourse that, I believe, kept Star Wars alive for the “dormant years” between 2005, when the prequel trilogy ended, and 2012, when Lucasfilm was acquired by Disney.
There’s a broad spectrum of opinion in that galaxy far, far away, and the prequels were met mostly with negativity. 1999’s The Phantom Menace (TPM) sports a fifty-one percent critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, and a fifty-nine percent audience score; 2002’s Attack Of The Clones (AOTC) improved among critics with a score of sixty-five percent, but dropped with audiences earning a fifty-six percent; 2005’s Revenge Of The Sith (ROTS) is the most well-liked prequel, with a seventy-nine percent critic score, and a sixty-six percent audience score. Still, hate permeated Star Wars for a long time post-2005.
Recently, the perception of the prequels has started to skew more positive, since the fans that grew up with them are now the ones writing reviews. However, that positivity doesn’t negate the hate that the films received––that the actors, notably Jake Lloyd (who played a young Anakin Skywalker in TPM) and Ahmed Best (who played Jar Jar Binks, a water-dwelling alien known as a “Gungan”) were subjected to.
I find it noteworthy, then, that this past May, twenty years after Attack Of The Clones’ release, a new “tie-in novel” has hit store shelves: Mike Chen’s Star Wars: Brotherhood. Set closely after the events of AOTC, Brotherhood follows Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi through the ongoing “Clone Wars,” a fight between the Galaxy’s Independent Systems (the Separatists) and the Galactic Republic––a war that has spread turmoil and anguish throughout much of the Galaxy.
Much of the Expanded Universe material has worked hard to expand on the prequels’ highly debated “weak spots,” specifically Anakin’s characterization and the political intrigue present in all three films. Brotherhood is another piece of ancillary media released in the wake of prequel criticism, yes, but here’s what I find intriguing: the book was released twenty years after the film that it is meant to supplement. A supplemental book was released twenty years after its sister-film, a film that was met with vitriol, a fifty-six-percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and countless dissections. In what other franchise would this happen? It’s bizarre to think about. But I’m not complaining, because Brotherhood is a fantastic book.
It characterizes Anakin and Obi-Wan with nuance and pathos. It paints a picture of the Galaxy-at-large so detailed and intricate that it’s hard to remember why criticisms were drawn against the film in the first place. In Brotherhood, Chen works incredibly hard to infuse life into a story that was panned and tossed aside twenty years ago. Chen takes every opportunity to add new layers to the events of the film and to deepen them and to develop them.
There are dozens of examples I could pull, but I’ll stick to just one: when a Youngling (a child training in the ways of the Jedi) makes a joke about Jar Jar Binks, Anakin responds by saying, “He taught me loyalty. And to never judge people. You say he walks funny. But to him, that’s just how Gungans walk. As a Jedi, you’ll encounter many different people, […] but you can learn from every one of those encounters. Because every being in the galaxy has something to offer. Sometimes […] it just takes a little bit of patience to find it” (Chen, 2022, pg. 93).
This quote is wonderful. Not only because it shows that Anakin is a kind, compassionate man, but because Jar Jar Binks and Ahmed Best were met with such cruelty from audiences in 1999. That Chen simultaneously shows Anakin’s nobility, deepens his relationship with Jar Jar (a character Anakin spent little time with on screen), and comments on the real-world perception of Jar Jar through a Youngling, asks the reader to re-evaluate their judgment of the character. Chen is expanding the lore of a story audiences already know through one line of dialogue––and he does it expertly. Brotherhood is brimming with moments like this. Or maybe I’m just getting too deep. I really love Star Wars, after all.
I’ll start to conclude with one more quote, from Mike Chen’s acknowledgements: “when I first signed with my agent, […] he asked about my pie-in-the-sky writing dreams. I immediately said ‘Star Wars.’ Not just any Star Wars, but specifically the prequel era. So it is not hyperbole to say that this is a dream project” (Chen, 2022, pg. 331). A dream project. The prequels have fans. The prequels are not just an asterisk in the history of Star Wars that everyone should forget about. For the better part of twelve years, critics, bloggers, and reviewers have said that there was no audience for prequel stories, that the prequels had ruined the franchise.
They were wrong.
Media changes and evolves over time. It’s why so many movies develop followings long after their initial release or a disappointing box-office run. The loudest voices don’t always represent what everyone is thinking. I remember wearing a Clone Trooper Halloween costume to school. I got made fun of by some kids for even liking Star Wars at all and by others for liking the “wrong kind” of Star Wars. Folks now are starting to soften on the prequel trilogy, but they’re attacking the recent sequel trilogy with the same vitriol that audiences did in ‘99. When will it end?
Film opinion is so subjective that I think the days of critics having final say on what is or isn’t a “good” movie is a dated concept; leave that to opinion pieces. Negativity sells, yes, but so will a tie-in novel based on a critically panned twenty-year-old film. It speaks to how many people love the prequels––there’s an audience for these stories. Maybe it wasn’t the audience that watched them in the theaters, but times can change. Citizen Kane was a flop at the box office, so was A Christmas Story––but now those are two incredibly beloved films. Maybe comparing Attack Of The Clones to Citizen Kane isn’t the best analogy (AOTC has its flaws), but it’s an apt one. Like I said, I really love Star Wars, and Brotherhood is a worthy addition to the franchise.
