Star Wars...will they be talking about it a hundred years from now?

Cafe Society
1

I saw a show tonight on one of the learning type channels (Discovery, TLC, History…one of those types) called Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed. It was pretty interesting, talking about all the different themes that went through the various episodes, how it was influenced by Greek and Roman history and mythology, even modern European history and mythology (especially the heavy influence of both Hitler and Nazi Germany and Napoleon and the French Revolution and aftermath…even the US and the cowboy icon).

Anyway, one of the people on (and I have to admit it was a VERY diverse group of folks. Where are you going to see folks like Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi, to name a few, on the same show…and in essential agreement??) made a statement that I thought might make an interesting CS type debate:

The statement was this (to paraphrase): Star Wars is one of THE epic tales in our society. Kids identify with it, the characters and even the various dialogs in the movies. The movie itself has penetrated our collective psyche to such an extent that it will STILL be being discussed and talked about 100 years from now. And those folks discussing it 100 years from now will still be able to connect with the movie.

Dopers (especially Sci-Fi 'dopers :)), what do you think about that? I’m curious as to what the CS crowd here on the StraightDope think of this assertion…

-XT

2

It’ll be of some interest to film historians and buffs as among the first (along with Jaws) of the B-movie blockbusters. I doubt anyone will care about the “mythology” of it, except to note that it’s simply an updated version of much earlier films. It’ll be considered a benchmark in the marketing and technical advancement of film and studied by the future equivalent of business majors and special effects technicians, and the latter will be able to replicate and far exceed the effects of Star Wars with off-the-shelf gear bought at Circuit City-State.

How seriously are discussions of the “epic” nature of Star Wars taken now? I’d guess that lots of people who talk reverently about A New Hope have linked it with an idealized view of their 1970s youth and this will die out as they do.

Either that or dragons will destroy civilization and the “I am your father!” speech will become incorporated into folklore as humanity struggles for survival among the ashes.

3

They can do that already. It’d be an embarrassingly primitive achievement in a hundred years.

4

I don’t know about embarrassing; the 1933 King Kong is still studied in film schools, as far as I know, and it and Star Wars will be viewed as impressive technical feats for the tech of the day. I just don’t see a lasting reverence for the mythology of Star Wars as described in the OP.

Actually, I don’t how much reverence there is, lasting or otherwise. As an epic movie, i.e. one rich in locations, visuals, melodrama etc. Star Wars wasn’t even unique in 1977, let alone 2107. It wouldn’t surprise me if discussions on the future equivalent of this message board contain any number of factual errors about the history of the franchise, including (say) people conflating George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg, to be rapidly corrected by nitpickers backed up with Googleplex cites.

5

Kids already love different movies.

Whenever I think about what it will be like to look back 100 years from now I’m always struck by how much more stuff people of the future will have. How many more movies they will have to look back on compared to us. I always wonder how they’ll cope. From Star Wars till now is roughly 30% of movie history. It’ll be half that in a century and about 65% of the way back in movie history. I’ll say it will be almost completely forgotten. About as much as a very popular book written in 1877 is mostly forgotten today. Lost in the glow of a million other movies.

I’m sure they’ll make at least one remake within the next 100 years. Maybe that’d revive interest for awhile.

6

Talking will go out of fashion in the next decade or so. They won’t be talking about Star Wars, or anything else.

7

If by effects you mean CGI effects, then yes, certainly. But if by effects you mean the overall visual presentation of the film, then no, no computers can replicate that. This is because the visuals of Star Wars were by and large not done with CGI, they were done with actual, physical models. This is why the original trilogy has a kind of gritty soul that the newer films completely lacked - because you could see all the pockmarks and grime and faded paint on everything, and it all looked so real even though it was all totally fantastical and otherworldly. Countless hours went into the meticulous construction of model vehicles, often through “kit-bashing” (combining parts from already-existing vehicle models to make completely new creations) and a tremendous amount of creative improvisation of props.

It was all totally low-budget, ad-hoc, and desperate, but they managed to create an atmosphere in keeping with Lucas’s vision of a “used universe.” To me, all those aliens in the cantina in A New Hope looked so much more real than any of the creatures in the new films. The new aliens looked slick, polished, very very impressive from a CGI standpoint, but totally fucking fake. That feel of the original films will never be replicated without the model-making, the hundreds of individually-designed and unique costumes, the expert puppetry, and all the other physically-real elements of production. No way, no how.

Yeah yeah, nostalgia, get off my lawn, and all that. I’m still sticking to my guns on this one.

8

The CGI spaceship models in the prequels were scanned from physical models, and the environments like Coruscant were also mostly made up of scale models, so you can’t pin that on CG. The real contribution CG made to the new movies was the digital compositing, and many of the alien characters.

It’s true that it was so slick it lost a raw energy, but you can’t pin that on computer graphics.

9

And the aliens were the most striking thing about the original movies. I mean, the Cantina scene - one of the most memorable sequences in Hollywood. Sure, all the wide shots of Star Destroyers and everything were badass, but you actually felt like you were in that cantina rubbing shoulders with all those crazy creatures. And that is owed to the meticulously designed costumes and puppets - an art form absent from the slick new prequels.

10

This sort of thing is hard to answer. I still love King Kong (1933) , revere it, and talk about it. But King Kong was still showing as a leading feature in movie theaters around the time I was born (true! – RKO continued to milk that cash cow for all it was worth with lots of re-releases). By the time I was a young kid, it was released to TV and was shown over and over again, because it gave the broadcasters the most bang for their syndication buck. I kept up with it, and it stayed current with me and my friends because magazines like Famous Monster of Filmland featured it prominentkly. Gold Key/Whitman released a comic book version about 1968, and the Delos W. Lovelace novelization from back in the 30s was released in paperback. Then it had the good fortune to have its “censored” scenes re-discovered, and they were re-installed to great fanfare, with a cover article in Esquire and yet another theatrical re-release. Then with the advent of VHS and laserdisk, it got another boost. It got another when it was re-released at long last in the US on DVD coincident with the release of the remake (although not as big a boost).

So King Kong was an interesting and iconic movie not only because of its technical innovations (which were many – KK would deserve a place in film history even if people hated it) and popularity at the time, but because people were actively keeping it alive – it still managed to turn a profit. RKO and its sccessors reaped rewards from theatrical re-releases, television syndication, all forms of video sales, and from licensing of products like those comic books.

Will King Kong continue to draw interest in one or two generations, when this sort of life-support is gone, and those influenced by it are as well? Maybe. The “life support” may continue, if the product continues to sell. If the appeal of the film continues – in spite of or even because of the now quaint pre-CGI effects, as in the case of a classic book, then then people will continue to watch and discuss it. I think we’re still too close to the time it was made, still experiencing the far ripples of the publicity, to tell yet.
Classic books are still read and loved, long after they’re out of date. You can still read Mark Twain’s books, or Jules Verne’s outdated science fiction, or H.G. wells’. A greatv many more books of science fiction have virtually disappeared, even though they were extremely good and, I would have thought, worthy of retention. Whether something IS recalled and treasured is subject to all sorts of factors. Godzilla, I think, got a toehold in the US market because it was cheap, so it could be shown again and again.
There are films that do seem to have acquired a special place – Casablanca, King Kong, It’s a Wonderful Life. Whether or not they will stay there, I don’t know. I suspect that the first Star Wars film, at least, will keep such a special place as well, and will continue to long after it appears very quaint. Time will tell.

11

I’d think that, for the most part, if you weren’t born before 1990, you don’t really have much reverence for Star Wars now, so I don’t see it being held up as anything special once those who were alive during its heyday are dead. It’ll probably be studied in film school and there’ll be some people who admire it greatly, but I don’t think there are going to be a whole lot of “new converts” to it.

Based off of what opinions I’ve heard from teenagers, it seems as though if you’re not old enough to remember the original trilogy better than the new then you don’t see the movies as anything more than entertainment. There are exceptions to this, of course, but think about it: So much of the visceral impact of the original trilogy is lost if you already know all of the secrets and if everything has been slicked up with CGI and Lucas’s retcons. If you know from the beginning that Darth Vader was a whiny teen heart-throb and you can’t remember Han shooting first, it loses something.

12

In 100 years 2D movies will have been supplanted by some new tech like direct neural interface (feelies) or 3D moving holography (holies) and all our present movies will be strictly in the provenance of film historians and other geeks, with most people marveling that people were once entertained by such stuff.

13

Yes, but they’ll be doing it in a galaxy far far away.

14

Gads, I hope not. I’m sick of people talking about it right now. (and I found that TV program pretentious to the max).

But yeah, I’m not a fan - & how do we know what they’ll be talking about 100 years from now? Since I am a LOTR fan I hope it will last but how can one even begin to predict?

15

I still find SW fascinating, because it is such an improbable mix of futuristic sci-fi, and medievalism. On the one hand, you have a technologically advanced society that can travel between galaxies (at many times the speed of light); yet you have human society ruled by monarchs. And why does Luke’s stepparents bother to eek out a living on the desert planet (Tatooine)? You would think they’d be living large, like the folks in present-day Las Vegas.
Plus: the absurd space combat scenes (1940’s-style anti-aircraft machine guns, firing through the plexiglass). And those weird humanoids, that somehow enjoy Benny Goodman jazz.
It will probably have the same level of interest (in 2100) as a cheap 1950’s sci-fil flick did in 2007 (not a lot).

16

I apologize in advance if this is rambling or les than coherent, I’m on pain meds for an injury sustained Sunday night.

What popular entertainment from 100 years ago do we remember, study, revere, etc today?
When the first Star Wars movie came out, was there much interest in Richard Wagner’s four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen? I really don’t recall becaues I was only 12-13 years old at the time. How much reverence is there today for even the types of popular entertainment available 100 years ago? Baseball was big then and is still around. How many of us can name any baseball stars from the decade 1900-1910 without looking them up? Does anyone talk about Nickelodeon today in any context besides the cable TV channel? Nobody talks about the 1904 Saint Louis World’s Fair today. I doubt if people will talk about Star Wars at all in 100 years. Maybe historians of popular culture. Maybe film buffs will exist as some kind of extreme nerd like our Ren Faire types today. For the general public, I doubt if “use the force” or “Try not, for there is no try. There is only do or do not” will exist as anything but something old geezers say to their grandchildren and their grandkids look confused in, oh, another 20 years. IF that long.

17

I think the key to the answer is asking ourselves, “Which artifacts of popular culture from 1907 are we still talking about?”

18

Of course, Star Wars will live forever. It’s a timeless classic, just like The Sorrows of Young Werther!

What, you haven’t heard of TSOYW?! It was an international sensation! Napoleon carried a copy of it wherever he went! Young men all over Europe walked around dressed in Werther costumes! 2000 fans committed copycat suicides! How can you not have heard of one of the biggest cultural phenomenons of the 18th century!?

In 1977 Star Wars was fun and fresh, but (let’s be honest) it’s not that well written and the special effects haven’t worn well over time. Kids today may pick up an echo of the original excitement from their parents, but their kids … ? Forget about it.

One hundred years from now they’ll still be talking about The Wizard of Oz. But not Star Wars.

19

Hey, I’ve aleady bought my ticket for the 2008 Olympic Drop-the-Hanky event.

20

Well, I think there is a big difference with Star Wars vs. pop culture items from 1907. The difference being that we have a way of keeping and replaying Star Wars while most of the music/movies/etc from 1907 are lost in their original form.

Having said that, people are still reading Moby Dick (1851) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939), listening to Louis Armstrong (1930) and watching King Kong (1933). The limit on the movies does not appear to be one of interest but rather one of availability. You can still buy the original King Kong on DVD and there is a 75th anniversery edition of Dracula out but there are man movies prior to that which were lost due to the film going bad, etc.

Slee