So I have managed to live my 30 years without seeing a single Star Wars film. A while back Spike TV aired all three of the first films (that is, episodes IV, V, & VI), but I never got around to watching them after recording them on my DVR.
Well, today my wife and two boys spent the day at the coast, so I decided to watch these three movies I had heard so much about over the years. Man, was I excited. I made myself comfortable in the la-z-boy and turned on the tv, eagerly awaiting what I was sure to be some of the best movies ever made.
Now its almost midnight. I am mourning the hours wasted, and filled with longing for all the things that I could have been doing instead of watching this drivel. Like taking a nap. Or staring at a wall for eight hours.
I mean, those three movies were most likely the most boring and over-hyped films I have ever seen.
Actually, no ‘most likely’ about it. They WERE.
Now, I’m sure I will be attacked mercilessly for my my beliefs, so perhaps this plea is a pointless cry, but can anyone tell me why these movies are so universally popular? The two most well-known lines from the film (“may the force be with you; I am your father”) led me to believe that there was something actually meaningful about them, but man, was I wrong. It is claimed that SW had ground breaking special effects. I don’t buy it. Kubrick’s 2001 had better effects. Different kind of movie, but still. And that was what, 15 years earlier? Why all the praise for SW?
I went into this expecting a damn good trio of movies. Man, was I disappointed. Anybody want to tell me what I’m missing?
Probably a childhood, not to trying to be snarky, but some things are engrained when your at your most formative years. Too see the first movie on the big screen or in the drive through and watch as some gigantic stardestroyer passes overhead.
On the technical aspects of the movies , they are probably dated enough that it seems too cartoony , but no different from me watching Casablanca and wondering what the big deal is. If I had just watched the original trilogy for the first time now, I am not sure I would disagree with you, but if you can, try watching a movie called Fanboys, it might explain our fascination with the movies.
It’s an epic adventure story, with good guys and bad guys and a damsel in distress. It has spaceships, fantastical alien creatures, and guns that shoot frickin’ lasers! It has action, drama, humor, and a little romance. It has charismatic actors, exotic locations, and an excellent musical score.
And light sabers! C’mon, man–those are cool!
Today there are so many special effects extravaganzas in movies that we take them for granted, but the effects in Star Wars really were amazing at the time.
Alternative answer:
You had to be there. A lot of the love comes out of nostalgia. I grew up watching the movies as they came out. Star Wars was released when I was five and it’s the first movie I can remember watching at the theater. I played with the toys and when the movies came out on television and video I watched them over and over and over. A significant number of my Gen X peers had the same experience. For a kid growing up in the 70’s and early 80’s, there was nothing else quite like it.
I watched the movies as a child, and honestly don’t have great memories of loving them (in fact I fell asleep during Return of the Jedi in the theater). And having watched them again as an adult a few years ago, I still don’t get it. This does result in ridicule and disbelief from many of my co-workers who truly love the movies. But I guess they’re just not my thing.
While I’m at it, I didn’t like Blade Runner either.
You weren’t 15 years old with a bunch of your fellow teens watching it for the very first time when there was nothing else like it ever. You were 30, and alone, and free of the wife and kids and you spent the weekend watching Star Wars? After having spent 30 years deliberately avoiding it? It was deliberate, wasn’t it? Or are you writing from some country that just got films and electricity last week?
I was 15 when I saw it the month it came out. I fell in love with movies because this film put so many things together for the first time in a very traditional hero story.
It’s common to be disappointed by a movie when you’ve spent your whole life hearing about how great it was – rarely does it live up to the hype. Recently I watched Citizen Kane for the first time and just like you, I was bored to tears. Ooh look, ceilings. :rolleyes:
There were no other movies like that at the time so everybody who prefer random explosions and unbelievable characters to actual acting and plots with motives loved it.
But it turned the tide completely and now random explosions are the norm. So now if somebody did believable characters in a movie it could well reach the kind of status that Star Wars did.
About a year ago, I was in a flea market and I picked up a DVD of the first movie. A couple of weeks later, I popped it in to watch it. This was the first time I had seen it since 1977.
The idea that you had to be a kid to appreciate Star Wars always comes up in these sorts of threads, and I think it’s a demonstrably bogus argument. Star Wars was a huge, huge hit when it came out - almost unprecedented in it’s success. People lined up for blocks to see it. But take a look at this graph. When Star Wars came out, the US was at a hundred year *low *in births per thousand. The most successful movie in American history came at a point when there were fewer children in America than ever before. It wasn’t kids that drove this movie’s success, it was adults. Hell, the fucking thing was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. Now, certainly, it’s not unknown for a kid’s movie to get Oscar nods and even wins. But it’s pretty rare, and it’s a good indication that whoever the intended audience was, the film was also plenty appreciated by adults of the day. So, no, you didn’t have to be a kid to like Star Wars, at least when it first came out.
But, admittedly, a lot of things that were wildly popular in their day don’t hold up to modern viewings. These things don’t generally run billion dollar franchises more than thirty years after their release. Which leads to the second common fallacy about Star Wars: that people who think it’s a good movie today, only do so out of nostalgia for a film they loved as a kid. And I admit, this argument looks good on the surface. I mean, Star Wars was literally the first movie I ever saw. Growing up, my parents must have dumped thousands of dollars into Star Wars toys, and books, and games, and bedsheets, and every other damn thing you can think of to slap Yoda’s face onto.
But you know what else I loved the shit out of during that time? GI Joe. I had at least as many GI Joe toys as I had Star Wars toys. I even had the aircraft carrier. And every day, I’d rush home from school to watch the GI Joe cartoon on TV. I figure I easily spent more time watching the GI Joe show than the Star Wars movies - this was back when, if you wanted to rent a movie, most people also had to rent a VCR to go with it, after all. But I’ve watched the GI Joe cartoon as an adult. And they’re not really all that notable. They don’t suck as much as you might expect, but they’re pretty clearly kiddie fare, with no real attempt to appeal to adults. And 99% of the stuff I absolutely loved as a kid is the same, or worse. I mean, I can still enjoy some of it as a nostalgia kick, but it’s pretty obvious that the nostalgia is the only thing about these movies that could appeal to an adult. Hell, even other Star Wars films suffer this way. If you’d asked me in 1984, I’d have told you that Return of the Jedi was not only the best film that had ever been made, it was the best film that could ever possibly be made. Now? It’s pretty clearly a mediocre sci-fi flick, with not much to recommend it outside of the brand name and some nice special effects. So, I don’t buy the argument that people still like Star Wars out of nostalgia. If they do, then Star Wars was pretty damned unique in imprinting itself on an impressionable young mind in a way that virtually nothing else made at the time could do.
Which is, I think, a damned strong argument for the inherent quality of the films all by itself.
Well, I admit that car chase stuff was popular well before, even in black and white. What I mean (with my hyperbole) is that in the 70s, even westerns tended to be more cynical and artsy and less hero-shoots-at-everything-but-never-kills-a-good-guy, like they had been in the 50s. In the 70s there really were not many princess stories with sword fights.
Star Wars brought back (to the front) non-cynical (or naive if you take that angle) entertainment. But this time with effects never seen before.
PSXer makes a good point about the special editions. lancia, you should try to get ahold of the movies without the enhanced special effects and watch them again. Or at least Episode IV to start with.
I think this is a much more defensible argument, but I don’t think it necessarily bears directly on Star Wars or its success; that is, it’s a factor, but it’s a factor that applies to a lot of things at that time. The seventies were a fairly cynical decade, and the cinema of the time is marked by a penchant for anti heroes and morally ambiguous stories. By the close of the decade, the public was looking for something more upbeat and simpler, and Star Wars was in on the first wave of that change. But it certainly wasn’t unique in that regard, nor was it anything audiences would have been unfamiliar with. To the contrary, it consciously traded on tropes and themes well established in the old science fiction serials of the '50s. It was something audiences hadn’t seen for a little while, but it certainly was not something they’d never seen before. Arguably, the target audience of the film were the Baby Boomers who had grown up with Flash Gordon and the films of Ray Harryhausen- which does bring a heavy nostalgia factor into the success of the original film, but not in the way that’s usually meant in these discussions.
Lots of good points about it’s appeal above. Here is my take on it.
The opening shot is absolutely crucial for sucking you into a different world. The camera pans, the planet comes into view, a spaceship shoots past. This is followed by the monstrous star destroyer steaming past like a train, the perfect symbol overwhelming power and oppression of the empire. What follows isn’t a fight with a plucky underdog landing some blows, the rebels are helpless and are swept aside. The score follows the action perfectly. With great economy of storytelling, the disparity between the empire and the rebels is established.
The film certainly has it’s flaws, some of the dialogue and acting is pretty ropey, but there are also plenty of memorable quotes and some good performances. It’s made with a good deal of craft, it’s very well paced and edited. The decision to follow the action from the droid’s perspective is inspired (although stolen from a Kurosawa film). I also like the sense that the story is taking place against the backdrop of a larger universe.
As others have pointed out, it’s uncynical and morally simplistic, and there is a place for that. The villains are villainous, with obvious nazi influences, and the heroes are pretty straightforward, while still having enough character to be interesting. It’s a very well crafted children’s movie. As such, most adults should be able to enjoy it, but the best time to see it is as a child.
Simple question - if you didn’t get into the first one, why on earth did you watch the other two?
