Which is the silly movie: King Kong or The Enforcer (Dirty Harry 3, now with a lady partner!)?
Speaking as a conservative who saw Star Wars the first time around: I was underwhelmed. The movie had an enormous build-up, the cover of Time proclaiming it the year’s best, etc. I was expecting really good science fiction - think 2001 – and what I got was space opera. My date and I saw it again some time later, went in with appropriate expectations, and enjoyed it immensely.
The contrast between the serious movies of the early 70s and the Summer Blockbuster of the post-Jaws era caused a fair bit of cognitive dissonance among critics of the day.
I’ve been a bit surprised that no one on the SDMB seems to be discussing the current brouhaha that’s been stirred up by Martin Scorsese saying that the Marvel movies “aren’t cinema,” which has led to a whole lot of movie folks (everyone from Francis Ford Coppola to Jennifer Aniston) saying similar things. This seems to be an early manifestation of the same idea: a conflict between the notion that movies should be serious works about serious topics, versus the idea of movies as exciting spectacle.
I agree with most everything that RickJay said. Star Wars was the beginning of a huge transformation in what movies were about, and in how the fantastic would be treated in Hollywood. It really is kind of remarkable that superhero movies can be so dominant, command such big budgets, and attract such A-list actors. Star Wars was probably directly responsible for Richard Donner’s Superman being possible. Prior to that, film treatments of superheros were either dismissive and campy (the Batman movie based on the TV show), or cheap and clearly aimed at kids (Superman and the Mole Men, little more than a trial balloon for the TV series). Even those adaptations that took comic books slightly more seriously–the Wonder Woman or Incredible Hulk television shows, to name a couple–tended to downplay the more “comic-booky” aspects of their concepts. There were no costumed super-villains in either of those series, for example. The notion that full-on comic book adaptations, that treated these over-the-top storylines completely seriously, could possibly succeed, let alone rule the box office, would have seemed ludicrous.
It’s an amazing sea change, really, and probably is an uncomfortable one for guys like Scorsese or Coppola. It’s actually somewhat ironic, considering that Coppola and George Lucas were good friends when they were both starting out. I don’t know if they remain friends (I’m not privy to their private lives), but their careers certainly went in different directions.
John Simon seems to have been making the same sorts of criticisms that Scorsese and Coppola are making now. There’s nothing new under the sun, I suppose.
I understand what Scorsese is saying. I don’t know why he is saying it that way. Marvel movies and Raging Bull are certainly not the same kind of movie, but they are both movies, and the principal purpose of both movies is entertainment. OTOH, Jennifer Aniston certainly doesn’t raise the status of the movies she’s been in, and should stick to her main talent, looking good (which is not some knock against women, it’s a knock against her personally for her limited acting ability).
I’m not seeing Star Wars that way though, I see it as an assault on the failing movie industry in the 70s. The movie business was still in the throes of hair tearing about television putting them out of business. Ironic since TV was also faltering itself. The guy in the OP’s video may be a crank who would say nothing good about anything, but he was echoing common sentiment that boils down to “That’s not the way we used to do it”.
Yeah, I am not remotely a Star Wars / superhero fan and wouldn’t shed a tear if that whole genre disappeared overnight- but still, I have to admit that serious filmmakers did themselves no favors in the 1980s by making a bunch of dreary joyless slogs with zero re-viewing appeal and declaring them to be “prestigious” films (anyone watch “Cotton Club” or “Places in the Heart” lately?) There’s a reason why serious Oscar winning movies became associated with Meryl Streep or Sally Field doing lots of crying scenes, as was parodied in Waynes World.
That is absolutely not what I was saying, and Ukelele Ike is wrong.
“Star Wars,” which is a terrific movie, simply changed the business of movies. Prior to the 1970s, the production of movies was, if I may dramatically simplify things, a more straightforward business; you made a movie for X dollars, and hoped it would make back an amount of money equal to more than X plus the interest rate.
Star Wars created, in its modern sense, the franchise, whereby you can make oodles more money licensing the concept of the movie to toys, TV shows, books, and the like. That did exist before but on 1/1000th the scale it does now. I am fond of pointing out this fact: The amount of merchandising revenue that “Cars” stuff has made is greater than the box office receipts of all the movies Pixar has ever made combined.
Prior to 1977, if a studio wanted to make money, they had to make a bunch of movies people would pay to see at least in excess of what the movie cost, and so you had to keep pumping out largely new movies, or so they thought. Since the culture of the time was not as heavy on spending money on kids, that meant relatively straightforward dramas and comedies like “The Godfather” or “American Graffiti” could be among the year’s top grossing films. A lot of box office hits were crowd pleasing junk, like “Billy Jack” (a series of films now almost totally forgotten, largely because they were terrible, but they were every bit as popular in those days as Fast and Furious movies are today) but there wasn’t a proliferation of sci fi spectacular “Universe” films and billion dollar toy and video game tie ins.
Now a major studio would be fiscally irresponsible NOT to try that kind of movie. But does that mean movies are bad? Hell no, it does not. Here are teh 197 top grossing films.
- Billy Jack
- Fiddler on the Roof
- Diamonds are Forever
- The French Connection
- Summer of '42
- Carnal Knowledge
- Dirty Harry
- A Clockwork Orange
- The Last Picture Show
- Bedknobs and Broomsticks
There are some great movies there but a few bad ones and some that are, you know, okay. Dirty Harry’s kinda dated now.
Here are the 2018 top grossers:
- Black Panther
- Infinity War
- Incredibles 2
- Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
- Deadpool 2
- The Grinch
- Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
- Mission Impossible Fallout
- Ant-Man and the Wasp
- Solo
None of those films are as bad as Billy Jack (that I have seen; I have not seen Fallen Kingdom) and a few are quite good, though I didn’t drool over Black Panther the way most people did. It’s a DIFFERENT set of films but the average quality is about the same.
There are still excellent films; in the last few years we’ve had masterworks like Moonlight, Dunkirk, Spider Man Into The Spiderverse, The Hate U Give, Manchester By The Sea, and Hell or High Water. In many cases they’re made by small studios who can’t do franchises and so making $10 million on a movie is a pretty decent return. The movie business has rearranged itself so that huge high concept movies working on a formula, like Captain Marvel (and these movies aren’t BAD - they aren’t original, but they are very, very competently done) are being made for hundreds of millions of dollars and keep the multiplexes in business, but in the theatre right next to it you can watch Brooklyn.
John Simon was never a fan of popular movies, even before Star Wars
I don’t disagree with the trend, but Big Hollywood – which was always about making money – saw that people would go to these movies multiple times, thus making them more money. They’d be foolish not to continue to make them.
Prior to Jaws, a movie could make tons of money (i.e., The Godfather) while still portraying adult characters. But Jaws and Star Wars showed there was more money in making movies for teen boys. And the trend began.
fuck, man, where’s that like button again?
Emphasis mine,
This is the typical elitist selective memory that clogs these type of discussions. “Oh things were better back in the day! kids these days and their super hero films! In my day we watched good films like The Godfather!”
It always seems people forget the bad movies. Here are some other movies from the late 60s and early 70s that were in theaters. All “grown up movies for people with grown up brains”, eh? I’ll take Star Wars over any of these:
Manos: Hands of Fate (1966)
The Wild World of Batwoman (1966)
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1968) (with Boris karloff AND Basil Rathbone!)
Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)
The White Buffalo (1977)
Americanthon (1979)
Airport 77 (1977, of course)
Death Race 2000 (1975)
Mitchell (1975)
Rabbit Test (1978)
the Thing With two heads (1972)
The Towering Inferno (1974)
the Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Dumb enough to read the National Review.
Australians"Oh, the astronomical audiences; oh, the mundane story; oh, the over-cute little robots (one fat, one thin); oh, the vapid actors, the galactic shootouts; oh, the brilliant technology and oh, the boredom of it all." and New Yorkers “There’s no breather in the picture, no lyricism; the only attempt at beauty is in the double sunset.” hated Star Wars too.
John Simon has 17 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and 15 are bad reviews. It was his shtick.
What were the two movies he liked?
Everybody hates Star Wars. That’s why it tanked at the box office.
Ukulele Ike Is NEVER wrong.
Right–pretty much the golden age of Hammer-style horror went through the 60s and 70s. Not exactly high-brow stuff there.
Home video has more to do with the changing box office economics than the blockbuster. People still watch realistic dramas and emotional character studies and romantic comedies, they just don’t go to the theater to do it.
I randomly took 1967. According to wikipedia, top grossing movies then were:
- The Graduate
- The Jungle Book
- Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
- Bonnie and Clyde
- The Dirty Dozen MGM
- Valley of the Dolls
- You Only Live Twice
- To Sir, with Love
- Thoroughly Modern Millie
- Camelot
Tell me more about how The Dirty Dozen or You Only Live Twice were so much more for people with brains (and so much less rock-em shock-em) than Star Wars or Black Panther.
Two things I never do: lie or exaggerate.