Posted on 06/20/2015 11:05:05 AM PDT by rickmichaels
One day in the 1970s, George Lucas screened a rough cut of his new movie, Star Wars, for his influential Hollywood friends. And almost none of them liked it. The plot seemed incomprehensible, the made-up fantasy names absurd. Director Brian De Palma, who had just had a big hit with Carrie, made fun of everything about the film, including Princess Leia’s hairstyle: “Hey, George, what were those Danish rolls doing in the princess’s ears?”
Almost 40 years later, De Palma is mostly making low-budget movies, and the most-anticipated film of the year is Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the first Star Wars movie since Lucas sold the franchise to Disney. In June, Empire magazine published its “500 greatest films of all time” list, chosen by a poll of 250,000 readers; the winner was the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, with the original also making the Top 10. You won’t hear people today making fun of Leia’s hair or Luke Skywalker’s disco haircut.
Instead, we have The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams, who quit the Star Trek movies to defect to the franchise he’s always loved more. “Star Wars is probably the most influential film of my generation,” he said in 2006. “Everything that any of us does is somehow directly or indirectly affected by the experience of seeing those first three films.” This would have surprised Alec Guinness, who wrote to a friend from the set of the first movie: “New rubbish dialogue reaches me every day, and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable.”
It would also have surprised earlier generations of critics, who were raising doubts about George Lucas’s talent even before his second trilogy of Star Wars films proved them right. While the first Star Wars got mostly respectful reviews and even an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, the bloom was mostly off the rose by the time The Empire Strikes Back came out. With its heavy tone and the implausible plot twist that the bad guy is the hero’s father, the movie was widely dismissed as a money-making machine that had lost the first film’s charm: “The Force is with us, indeed, and a lot of it is hot air,” wrote the New York Times’ powerful critic, Vincent Canby. “The Empire Strikes Back is about as personal as a Christmas card from a bank.”
By the time Lucas re-released the first Star Wars in 1997, many critics were willing to point out that even the original film didn’t hold up. “What’s stunning is simply how bad it is,” wrote Salon film critic Charles Taylor, while The New Yorker writer John Seabrook suggested it was “a film with comic-book characters, an unbelievable story, no political or social commentary, lousy acting, preposterous dialogue, and a ridiculously simplistic morality. In other words, a bad movie.”
Even if you liked the movies, you might not have liked what they were doing to moviemaking around the world. Alex Leadbeater, editor of the film site What Culture, wrote an article earlier this year on how Star Wars negatively affected cinema. He says it was one of the films, along with Jaws, that “led to the introduction of the blockbuster model and the weakening of the auteur model,” making studios less willing to take chances on Lucas’s edgier director friends such as De Palma and Martin Scorsese. That’s become such an unpopular sentiment to express, one forgets that mainstream film books used to say the same thing, but more meanly; film critic Glenn Kenny points to Peter Biskind’s book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls as a proponent of what he calls “the ‘Star Wars ruined everything’ line”; the book never misses a chance to portray Lucas as a sellout and Star Wars as a silly children’s film.
But today, you can barely criticize Star Wars at all. Actor and writer Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) made a mild attempt this year when he argued that Star Wars might have killed off “gritty, amoral art films” and resulted in us “consuming very childish things.” The Internet attacked immediately, with Gawker’s pop-culture site i09 asking, “Is he trolling, or has he really gotten so little out of years of science fiction?”
And don’t even think about an artistic criticism: when Joss Whedon (The Avengers) criticized The Empire Strikes Back for not having a clear ending, his remarks stirred up the kind of Internet outrage usually reserved for people who make racist jokes. There was a time when even fans could be critical; today, the debate is not over whether those first two films are great, but just how great they are.
There has even been a shift in the way fictional characters react to Star Wars. In popular culture, being a fan of the trilogy used to mark a character as being nerdy, even behind the times. On the 1990s sitcom NewsRadio, the lead character (The Kids in the Hall’s Dave Foley) was mocked by the other characters for loving Star Wars. His ability to identify Boba Fett, the intergalactic bounty hunter from The Empire Strikes Back, marked him as having very different interests from everyone around him. Today, Star Wars is used in pop culture in the exact opposite way, as a cultural touchstone almost every sympathetic character loves. Liz Lemon on 30 Rock was a Star Wars fan; so were the characters on How I Met Your Mother (a woman who jilted the hero at the altar was a Star Wars hater). If a character likes Star Wars, you know he or she has good taste.
So what happened to change the way we looked at these movies? Leadbeater, who critizes the franchise’s influence, but admits the first two movies are among his favourites of all time—“I love Star Wars,” he says—thinks the changing reputation of the franchise is partly about generational change: “That shift came when those who grew up with the series came of age. They became a more vocal voice in the media, which shapes perceptions in many ways.” For filmmakers and critics of Lucas’s own generation, the movies were recognizably bigger, more expensive versions of things they had outgrown, like old serials; even the cliffhanger ending of The Empire Strikes Back, now seen as daring, just seemed like a ploy out of a Flash Gordon serial.
Younger critics and filmmakers not only grew up with Star Wars; they are less likely to view this kind of movie as inherently immature. The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael dismissed Lucas as “hooked on the crap of his childhood,” but people used to say the same thing about filmmakers who made Westerns, or samurai movies. An earlier generation of critics—including Vincent Canby—wound up giving more serious consideration to those genres. Today, we’ve done the same for the kid-friendly fantasy of Star Wars or superhero comics.
Star Wars is also benefiting from a new trend in pop culture criticism: an increased willingness to like popular things, and hope they’ll turn out well. Entertainment Weekly declared a wave of “pro-franchise optimism,” and, with Star Wars, in particular, it’s uncool to be too cynical; David Sims of The Atlantic wrote that people who complain about the prequels sound like “bitter Gen X-ers upset that their childhoods are receding further into the distance.” In an era when it’s almost obligatory to praise Beyoncé and other pop entertainers, bashing Star Wars doesn’t make you look refined, as it did in the 1980s.
Besides, there are many other things for critics to bash. Hollywood blockbuster movies have become so big that Lucas’s films seem charming by comparison. “As tent-pole movies have gotten ever more frenetic,” Kenny says, “the near-classical styling of [Star Wars:] A New Hope and the sobriety of Empire look more and more old-school and respectable.” One of the ways Abrams has encouraged fan optimism is to promise that the new film will use less computer-generated imagery than is the norm for modern movies, and more practical effects, miniatures and puppets. Star Wars films were once criticized for their overreliance on special effects; now, they’re from a more artistic and craftsmanlike time.
Could there be another Star Wars backlash? Maybe not. Kenny, who thinks Biskind’s criticisms were overblown, admits: “If you’re a fan of things like non-franchise, non-superhero movies, it’s kind of difficult now not to see Star Wars as a culturally corrosive influence.” But all the things people used to dislike about Lucas’s filmmaking—the New Age faux-religiosity, the overdependence on technology—are now inescapably part of every movie being made for mass audiences. Which means that, even if Star Wars: The Force Awakens disappoints, the original movies will just keep looking better. After all, as Kenny and others point out, Lucas’s visual language and storytelling in Star Wars were inspired by Akira Kurosawa. Today’s blockbusters have the disadvantage of being inspired by George Lucas.
The Star Wars franchise has ruined things for non-franchise, non-superhero, quirky, offbeat movies. Well, just as long as you ignore all the successful non-franchise, non-superhero, quirky, offbeat movies since 1977.
I liked the first Star Wars movie. It was good but not great. All that came after sucked. Were boring. I am amazed the Star Wars series has always had so many hypnotized fan bois but then so does Apple. Probably a lot of overlap here
I love those reviews.
“a film with comic-book characters, an unbelievable story, no political or social commentary, lousy acting, preposterous dialogue, and a ridiculously simplistic morality. In other words, a bad movie.”
CAN'T WE JUST HAVE FUN!!! Does EVERYTHING have to shove liberal morality in our faces? These fools will laugh and impugn anything remotely Christian and moral but will celebrate the filthy anti-American lies from De Palma!
This is why the "top lists" from critics of the past are no better than those of today. There was and is praised heaped on some works (literary as well as film and tv) because of some political view someone held (especially among the Hollywood 10) or other agenda. Other works are suppressed or forgotten because of personal or political grudges.
Pauline Kael (who is often held up as the best critic ever) said that she didn't know how Nixon could've won. Nobody she knew voted for him. They are all myopic and it influences their judgment.
Homos, women, and socialists dominated film criticism for awhile so you got costume dramas, musicals, and "social realism" defined as "the best cinema had to offer". Now a new crowd are the tastemakers. Critics once upon a time hated rock and roll too. They still generally do so they have to find the atypical example to elevate it as "good".
2001 was "art" not sci-fi. REM and Radiohead are "above rock". Those who enjoy the real deal feel cheated.
Much of the merchandising of Star Trek was made in the 1970s. The tv show itself was short lived (3 seasons?). Merchandising can be very financially successful even if the movie/tv show is not.
Snoopy toys/clothes/greeting cards/etc. are probably purchased by many fold the number of people who actually reading the daily strip anymore or have even one paperback collection of them.
Jesus loves Stars. jusayin
If you go to a comic book convention today, you will find that the focus is on actors and actresses from Game of Thrones and Marvel Comics movies and tv shows. Very few of the fans read. The artists are considered an afterthought and authors are "boring". The fans have more fun dressing up in self-made or purchased costumes.
They far outnumber the attendees who are there to look at or discuss books (with or without illustrations).
Billy Dee Williams has been asked how did he prepare for playing Lando. What in his life experiences did be bring to it. He said that it would be nothing like his life, it’s a whole other world. His role model was Errol Flynn and other pirate actors. Black has nothing to do with it.
Hopefully his impression of Lando improved after the next episode. :-) I'll never know, since our lives parted company.
The original three movies were a blast. The prequels sucked. The upcoming sequels at least don't appear to be an attempt to reboot the franchise, like the execrable new Star Trek.
Easy Rider made some serious money in 1969, allowed Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda and Bill Hayward to be set for life if they invested their money right.
Anyway the big franchise pics are the rage right now and for the time being are paying off.
It isn't. It's a swashbuckler.
Problem is that I didn’t think the movies were fun.
Problem is that I didn’t think the movies were fun.
The best thing resulting from Star Wars was Space Balls.
Yeah, but I think Star Trek always had a very dedicated fan base, even if it wasn't quite large enough to keep it on the air. And I think Lucas took merchandising to a level that hadn't been done prior to Star Wars.
"George went to Fox with a proposition. He offered to keep his salary at $150,000 in exchange for two seemingly insignificant requests: 1) That he retain all merchandising rights, and 2) that he would retain the rights to any sequels...
"But the real money for George didn't come from box office receipts. Between 1977 and 1978, Star Wars sold $100 million worth of toys. 35 years later and Star Wars themed toys have generated $12 billion worth of revenue. Today, Star Wars licensed toys produce $3 billion a year in revenues."
Right.
I know in the 1970s there were "collectible" glasses in jelly jars that could be later reused as drinking cups. And a detergent company attached a series of Pogo plastic cups to sell their wares.
And some fast food burger joints would offer collectible glassware for sports teams. And 7-eleven went overboard with dozens and dozens of plastic slurpee cups in a year.
I seem to recall Happy Days glasses at some fast food joint but the Star Wars glasses (at Burger King?) really brought that trend into focus (at least for movie critics).
I think it was Roger Ebert who identified a class of movies that could have their plots summed up on 4 (or 6) glasses.
Now that I think of it, King Kong (1976?) also had such glasses.
It certainly became a standard for the Lucas films to come.
And while other movies might have a set of trading cards, I think the original film had 3 (or 4?) series of images from the film. At a time when there was no home video (and not even a telecast of the movie for years to come) it was one of several "home experience" ways of reliving a movie (there were also some sort of photonovels in the 1970s).
Ha! Many critics hate success. They have the insane idea that a popular movie is always bad. Yet they give 5 stars to foreign movies that they would totally pan if those movies were made in the USA. Star Wars, for all its faults brought the fun back to a movie industry that churned out depressing crap... movies called “auteur”. I remember very well what a breath of fresh air Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark were. Yes, they changed movies and I thank them for it. Otherwise we’d see nothing but pretentious navel-gazers like “The Deer Hunter”.
This was made decades ago but is case in point. Someone recreated the first Star Wars movie using the different merchandising products (toys, book on record, etc.).
The Star Wars (1994)
"Throughout the late seventies and early eighties, plenty of kids used toys to make their own stop-motion animated versions of Lucas's space saga, but it was 'The Star Wars', made in 1994 by Pez D. Spencer (aka Troy Durrett), Lance Robson, and Jon Ramos, that took the concept of the action figure movie to the ultimate level -thanks to it's structure, which was dictated by the merchandise it exploited. The short was a collector's fever dream, an experiment in metastorttelling, a commentary on the commercialization of 'Star Wars' and an insular artistic conceit taken to the extreme-far more than the sum of its (plastic) parts." - Homemade Hollywood by Clive YoungThere apparently was an attempt to do the same with Empire Strikes Back but it does not seem to be complete.
Including Slings and Qam for nostalgic Ping list considerations.
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