I have another new essay at MSN Movies now, on How Star Wars Changed the World. Yes, it was 30 years ago today (well, Friday, May 25, to be specific) that the Death Star blew Alderaan into space dust, contributing to galactic warming and allergy problems throughout the GFFA. An excerpt:
What "Star Wars" did best was combine corny stock characters and "Amazing Stories" plotlines with state-of-the-art Industrial Light and Magic visual effects and Dolby (later replaced with Lucas's patented THX) Surround sound. No more rockets made out of cardboard toilet-paper tubes with sparklers stuck in the rear for thrusters. Mix that with a wisecracking, almost postmodern sense of humor (more gung-ho earnest than the arch self-awareness William Goldman pumped into the Western in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" eight years earlier) and an old-fashioned Hollywood military-symphonic score by John Williams, and you have a rousing, roller-coaster space adventure for children of all ages, as the marketers like to say.Sure, the movie was criticized for being infantile, but that misses the point. It's aimed at a sensibility somewhere between infancy and the second year of college (or high school). A space fantasy with the emphasis on interstellar swashbuckling (and with romantic mush kept to a minimum), "Star Wars" appealed to the 3- to 12-year-old boy in all of us -- and still does.
But although all those things may have contributed to the "Star Wars" phenomenon, they don't explain why it "changed everything", or what accounted for "the mania" (as George Harrison used to call that unaccountable epochal thing that engulfed him and three other lovable mop-tops). Because it wasn't really the movie itself that shook the world (not like the Beatles' music shook up pop/rock music, anyway); it was the popular response to the movie, and the motion picture industry's response to that response. [...]
To see "Star Wars" in 1977 was to experience a moment in pop culture that seemed universal. This may have been the last such unifying landmark for the boomer generation -- with the Beatles at one end and "Star Wars" at the other.Read the whole article here.Unless you remember what it was like in the summer of 1967 -- the so-called "Summer of Love," when "Sgt. Pepper" was simply in the air, everywhere, or the summer of 1977, when lines for "Star Wars" seemed to last for months (and people waited in lawn chairs with coolers full of beverages) -- it's hard to describe the feeling, because it's not likely to happen again.
Coming Soon: A piece about other movies that "changed everything" -- from a few years before "Star Wars" ("Nashville," "Jaws") to "The Phantom Menace," the movie that (for many, including me) was so dull and misconceived that it tarnished the luster of the "Star Wars" mythology forever, by reducing it to something purely technical and mundane. (It began with a crawl about the taxation of trade routes and a blockade of shipping to the tiny planet of Naboo, fer cripes sake! As the opening was paraphrased -- and demolished -- on "The Simpsons": "It is a time of uncertainty: The empire's ambiguous tariff statutes mandate close reexamination of galactic export quotas. Interim Princess Agoomba has co-chaired a subcommittee to draft amendments to existing trade policies.")
Whaddaya think? How did "Star Wars" change your world, and why? What other movies changed everything? What did they change -- and how?
I was 15 when Star Wars came out and was really hankering for the kind of mind-blowing experience I got from Jaws in '75 and the movie to be named below in '76. I had grown up seeing almost nothing but Disney reruns in my once or twice a year family outings to the theater and then came Jaws. Star Wars just struck me as an expensive Saturday morning cartoon--nothing really new at all. I was frankly bored. A short time later, though, I saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind and decided that expensive special effects could be pretty cool, after all. (I allowed myself to be dragged to Empire Strikes Back but haven't seen a Star Wars movie since. No regrets.)
Back to 1976, though, and the movie: The Bad News Bears. It was the first review I ever read in the local paper and, while positive (3 stars, I think) it was all about girl pitchers, foul language, crotch-kicking, beer guzzling, smoking, etc. Don't get me wrong, I was all for that, but what a shock that even though all those things were there and the movie was very funny, the big thing was how real it was and how smart about baseball, as very few films since, and maybe none before. When I coached some kids' sports a few years later I was constantly confronted with the "play to win" school vs. the "play for fun" school. The Bad News Bears knew that winning is more fun but only if you get to play. Lupus didn't want to go in because he wanted to win and that made his catch all the more wonderful (along with the way he just looked into his glove and then jogged determinedly towards the bench.) And I haven't even mentioned Tanner, Engelberg, or Walter Matthau's classic Buttermaker, one of the great performances ever.
This was, and is, the best sports movie ever made and when I was 14 it changed my life in both sports and movies. And I kept reading reviews even though I saw right away that they could be right and still miss everything.
John Clute in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, says something very similar to what you say in your first paragraph:
"The SF world had waited-with both longing and fear of embarrassment-for something like this. It was a fairy tale, a Space Opera, a simple minded adventure obedient to iron laws of storytelling..."
"...And all of it, because of the extraordinary special effects, was suddenly more than a dream. No need to pretend that cardboard spaceships were real, because the battleships were real enough to fool us. Glorious and intoxicating, the dream had come true at last."
I remember Roger talking about Star Wars on the eve of The Phantom Menace's release. One of the points he brought up that I like best, is that before Star Wars space was clean and so were the spaceships. He showed a clip of the Discovery's centrifuge from 2001 to illustrate that. But then in Star Wars, "things were rusty and dusty and lived in" he remarked that the hovercraft Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi ride around in looked like the future's version of a jalopy. Or take that giant humpbacked lizard that sits outside the bar and bellows like a camel. Details like that light up your imagination, and make the movie, as Roger said, "a place of mind."
Unfortunately, that's the part of the trouble with the sequels, which with their slick CGI imagery come back to space looking spick n' span.
Star Wars is more subtly brilliant than people give it credit for - because Lucas is not a great director. Dan touched on it in his comment above when mentioning how the Star Wars universe was "lived in," with rusty spaceships, etc... The Millennium Falcon was indeed Han Solo's version of the souped up '57 Chevy that's now 20 years old and has been in a few races. That, to me, is but a microcosm of why Lucas was so genius about his approach. You can talk all you want about how infantile the story is, etc.... but he created a whole universe around it from scratch, and made it all mesh seamlessly. And then he laid it out there as matter of fact, without all sorts of exposition as to why things were the way they were. It was cops and robbers in outer space, and that humanized everything.
Lucas should be given more credit for some of the intricacies, despite the surface criticisms that he may deserve.
And I agree with Dane above - Bad News Bears is the best sports movie ever made. I wish they came out with a special edition DVD of it.
Your readers might be interested in Edward Copeland's Star Wars blog-a-thon on Friday, May 25. More info can be found here.
Hey! Since you're interested in how Star Wars has impacted the world, I thought that you might be interested in what impacted Star Wars. In light of the 30 year anniversary of Star Wars, The History Channel is running a special called "Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed" which premiers May 20 at 9:00 pm ET. It's this really cool look at the political, historical and mythological influences on Star Wars. To promote this special, The History Channel is also running this contest offering the chance to win a trip to Star Wars Celebration Europe. I think that this is pretty awesome since we all know how expensive these trips can be. You can enter at www.history.com/starwars/sweepstakes.
But the real question is: what is your top 10 list of most influential movies?
I'll mention two other films from the 70's - Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Just like Star Wars introduced "blockbuster" filmmaking (personally, I love Star Wars dearly), Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were the standard-bearers for the modern horror film, which is sadly ironic b/c both Halloween and Chainsaw emphasize slow-building tension and atmospherics with minimal amounts of gore (Chainsaw has some, Halloween has virtually no gore shots). Despite this emphasis, they ended spawning decades of trash (e.g. the Friday the 13th films, the current torture porn epidemic) that value blood and gore over genuine suspense.
Great stuff, Jim, but I have to make one correction: When "Star Wars" was released in 1977, the celebrated opening crawl text did not include "Episode IV: A New Hope" -- that was added later for the special editions, when the prequels had become a certainty. Back in '77, not even Lucas could know what impact the film would have, and the opening crawl read simply "Star Wars," with the familiar text that followed.
For myself, I can only echo the words of Peter Jackson in his forward to "The Making of Star Wars," the recently published and 100% definitive history of the first film's production. Like Jackson, I saw "Star Wars" at an absolutely perfect age; to this day, no other movie has had quite the same effect on me. Yes, I'm a devoted fan -- no shame in that -- and a few of the spaceship models adorn my bookshelves. There was something truly special in the way THAT film (and a few months later, CE3K) became a focus for my passions, making it absolutely certain that my life and career would be connected to movies. It began, more deeply and meaningfully, with Kubrick's 2001, but where that was a cerebral impact (in some respects equally invigorating), "Star Wars" was a visceral joyride unlike anything I'd ever experienced. I didn't drive home from that first screening in my old Ford Fairlane -- it was an X-Wing fighter, and I was a member of "Red Squadron," right along with Luke. In many ways, I've been in that cockpit ever since, and loving every minute.
your pal,
Jeff Shannon
"Star Wars" is a movie that I can't remember seeing for the first time. I've seen it probably 20 times, but it was always there in my life (I'm only 23 so I wasn't even born when it first came out). The reason I think it's so great is because it has all the imagination of a child, only visualized. Of course the story isn't new, but who cares? Hundreds of great movies have been made from stories that weren't new 50 years ago. As the great Ebert always says, it's not what a movie is about but how it's about it. "Star Wars" captured that childlike enthusiasm and invention better than just about any other movie ever.
Regarding your question about other influential movies/movies that changed me. I first present a movie that has never been called influential by anybody ever....... "Pulp Fiction". Okay, so maybe a few people have said it, but I still believe it, and I still love it. Some have said (I believe including you, Jim) that some of it's impact has worn off through the years and it doesn't look as great in retrospect because so many movies have copied it. I'm calling bullshit on that. Nothing about Tarantino's only great movie has lost impact for me, I love it even more now than I did when I first saw it at the age of 11. Because I first saw it at a young age, the bad language was what first grabbed me as well as the sudden violence. They worked as shock value on a young kid. However, as an adult I love the rhythm of the dialogue now more than anything. Unlike in his post-Fiction movies, the dialogue sounds like something that actual, slightly quirky, people could be talking about. And how many movies have the balls to have that first scene with Bruce Willis and Maria de Medeiros where they talk about almost anything except what every other movie would talk about. Just like "Citizen Kane", for me "Pulp Fiction" has lost none of its greatness simply because everyone and their dog has tried to copy it.
And as my other "movie that changed me", I present probably the best movie by my definitely favorite director..... "Taxi Driver". When I first watched "Taxi Driver" I thought "Meh, it was ok". But that was because it hadn't yet had a chance to seep into my soul and haunt me for the next few weeks. "Taxi Driver" was the first movie to really haunt me like that (although "Brokeback Mountain" and my favorite movie "The Godfather" did that later). De Niro's face in the "You talkin' to me?" scene wouldn't leave my mind literally for weeks. The devastating loneliness of that scene, and the movie as a whole just destroyed me. It was the first time I'd had that kind of visceral experience to a movie. That's one of those great scenes like "I coulda been a contenda" from "On the Waterfront" or the entirety of "Casablanca" that has lost none of its impact simply because it's become a part of pop culture regardless of context in the movie. I love movies that can evoke a strong emotion like that without even having to watch the movie again. Brando's dissapointment in "On the Waterfront" ("you shoulda taken better care of me Charlie, I'm your brotha."), Bogart's loss in "Casablance" ("if she can stand to hear it, I can!"), and De Niro's loneliness in "Taxi Driver" ("well I'm the only one here, you must be talkin' to me.") are all so palpable in my mind even though I haven't even seen them double digit times.
Thanks for the memories, Jeff! I didn't mean to imply that the original "Star Wars" actually said "Episode IV" (that was added for the 1980 re-release) -- just that the series began in the middle, with Episode IV:
"That was part of the joke: The thing even began in media res, with 'Episode IV' -- trumpeted with a now-familiar fanfare and a crawl that assumed previous installments."
To quote William Friedkin, "What happened with Star Wars was like when McDonald's got a foothold - the taste for good food just disappeared. Now we’re in the period of devolution."
And we're still in that period. Thank you, Mr. Lucas. Because of you, movies were meant to be sequalized, and Brett Ratner has a career.
If I may pick a nit, the "Episode IV" title was added for the first re-release in 1980.
JE: Thanks, Jack. I feel like a nitwit. Fixed.
I think Star Wars, in many respects, represented a transition in film. The films of the 1960s through the mid-1970s, generally, celebrated the anti-hero. There was no 'good,' there was no 'evil', all morality was relativie. Like the Godfather which you referenced in your piece or Taxi Driver or myriad other movies of the period, the protagonist was morally corupt yet the film sought to make audiences sympathize with that character. Consequently, film eroded concepts of black & white to reveal a world, at least from the filmmaker's perspective, that was in shades of grey. But in 1977, no more. Star Wars was deeply iconoclastic to the movies of the preceding era. Good and evil could not be painted more starkly or signify a greater juxtaposition than in Star Wars. Moreover, the hero and protagonist of the story, Luke Skywalker, was pure and innocent; a character that even a casual cynic would have to snide at. Like Kyle, I am only 23, and saw the movie well past its era of inception. Nonetheless, I was mesmerized by it as a kid. There is a spirit about it, an optimism that good will always defeat evil - as naive of a concept as that may be. After Star Wars, and during the Reagan Administration that exemplified that optimism for better or worse, a series of action movies came out with similar sentiments and similar representations of good and evil - sometimes going so far as to codify them into the opposing sides of the Cold War (ex. Rambo II) rather than the abstract ideas of freedom vs absolutism. With the three Star Wars prequels, however, some have suggested the movies' themes are more resonant to the current administration as Jim alluded to with his facetious reference to Cheney/Vader (at least I think it was facetious). Anyways, I know I can probably not feel the "utopian" excitement baby boomers felt in 1977, but I still love Star Wars (I love Sgt. Peppers too, so perhaps I am a reincarnated baby boomer).
What Lucas did so well was take familiar stories and update them into modern styles of story telling...kinda like that other guy...the Chinese one no one around here seems to like. :p
If I may be so bold to pick a further nit, "Episode IV: A NEW HOPE" was added in 1979, not 1980. Also, the first re-release was in 1978, and, again, not 1980.
McBain: My son comes back from a fancy East Coast college, and I'm horrified to discover he's a nerd.
Kent Brockman: I'm laughing already.
McBain: It's not a comedy.
To Kyle:
This isn't to argue with your opinion--just to clarify my earlier statement re: my personal reaction in 1977. The fact that it wasn't all new and original wasn't my main problem, (who cares, indeed) it's just that, at the time, the media seemed to be promising exactly that which raised my expectations. That's why I compared it to Close Encounters which I did find to be a new sort of experience and one more in tune with my tastes. Action comic books and cowboy serials are established art forms worthy of respect, but not really my style.