kleph
06-02-2007, 12:29 PM
Star Wars is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good movie. In fact, rewatching it recently, I was struck by exactly how bad the thing is. It’s woefully bad. The recent trilogy was not a fall from grace for George Lucas, it was a return to form.
None of which to say Star Wars is not an enjoyable movie or to overlook the fact it is a vastly important one not to mention influential.
Blasting out of seemingly nowhere in 1977, Lucas provided a glorious summer diversion that was simply unmatchable by anything else we had up to that point. It was firmly planted in the past and gleefully frolicking through the future all the while having a finger on the pulse of the present.
Lucas was clearly a film buff. You see a love for film and an alert student of the medium’s history at work in his films. It’s the kind of fanaticism he shared with other mid-70s cinema giants such as Francis Ford Coppela and Martin Scorsese.
Where he differed was in a strident love for popular culture. Scorsese and Coppola sought inspiration in more aesthetic fields but there is a part of Lucas that was thoroughly tied to his central California rural upbringing.
For my generation and those that came immediately after, it’s damned tough to separate Star Wars from the nostalgia of our personal history. That Lucas insists on foisting his “improved” product on us despite our desire to witness a precious piece of our pasts is a very personal affront I’m not sure even he understands – despite the amount he has benefited from it.
For me, it’s the memory of my father taking my brother and I on what seemed like a whim to an afternoon feature in New Orleans. It was something quite unlike my father to do and something that stuck with me long after due to that fact – not the importance of the film itself.
But there was something about the imagery of the movie and the mythology it built for itself that grabbed my little 8-year-old mind up like everyone else. I remember trying to think of the story that must accompany that strange and captivating movie poster I tore out of a magazine to stare at hours on end. I even tried writing my own story but tore it up because… well, it sucked.
So with all that tied up into the mix it took me until relatively recently to step back and see the movie for what it was; an amateurish effort that missed on the wrong notes and nailed the right ones so perfect you really didn’t care.
When that into music starts, I’m sorry, it just grabs me by the nuts to this very day. And when that starfield pans up to reveal Tatooine an the Imperial Starcruiser shoots past overhead… well, you’ve won my willing suspension of belief once again, Mr. Lucas.
The exegisis that has since occurred about the roots and influences of the film must rival Hamlet since the bard’s advocates, although with several centrueis to work with, didn’t have the glorious geekdom of the internet spurring them on. Most, though, seem to miss the point in my opinion.
Of course the throne room scene echoes Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, Lucas was a film school student and that meant a working knowledge of the Nazi propagandist’s groundbreaking film. You didn’t get hip to Kurosawa in Fresno, you did at one of your film classes at USC.
Where Lucas was brilliant was in understanding the movies we make in our heads and them making that movie.
For example, in American Graffiti - a film I believe is the true mark of his genius as a director - he had the insight of establishing emotion by using the music we fill our lives with, rock and roll, instead of the traditional soundtrack. It was something that should have been completely apparent following the phenomenal success of the soundtrack of West Side Story but it took Lucas to pull the songs from the car radio and into the background of the movie instead.
(This was allied by the brilliant insight of not playing any music at all during times of drama in the film. Reinforcing the ‘realism’ of these particular moments and highlighting them in a unique fashion.)
So Star Wars picks up that thesis and tells the tale of every bored out of their skull rural Californian kid who wants to get out of town as fast as possible to places just out of reach of that big wide interstate that heads both ways out of town. It’s the Wizard of Oz for goofy mid-American kids stuck in the middle class ennui of the late 20th century. It's the kind of story you tell yourself to keep from going crazy those long boring nights of summer when there ain't nothing going on and no hope of that changing anytime soon.
Lucas, of course, set his escape firmly in the place he found his escape during those long idle years of adolescence – films. The heart of every crappy Saturday science fiction serial he ever sat through is beating firmly in every frame of Star Wars. Which is why he knew that it didn’t matter if the story sucked, the acting was rancid and the plot a muddling mess. That was all beside the point.
Watch a few episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 featuring a black and white Science Fiction film from the mid-50s and you can almost see the genesis of Star Wars as it unfolds in front of you. It isn’t by accident that Lucas was pursuing the chance to film the remake of Flash Gordon when he decided to make Star Wars.
With Star Wars he created a pastiche of B-cinema tropes but with a bigger budget and with enough polish to make it seem respectable. John Williams’ score is as important and groundbreaking here as the use of The Platters in American Graffiti. It is more than a little ironic that by fully embracing the Wagnerian leitmotif he abandoned to such success in the previous film worked to such an extraordinary degree.
Of course, after the fact, with all this going for it all the the Cambellian overtones and Kurisowa influences seem obvious. Personally, I believe Lucas’ insistence on these guiding him is as much bullshit as his insistence that he had the plot of the whole series set down when he started. It’s clear he was making it up as he went along which, I believe, is why it worked so well out of the blocks. He did it instinctively, which has always been his greatest strength as a director.
The French New Wave directors had done something similar a decade and a half before. Abandoning the high-art pretenses of French film they embraced the low-art Hollywood pulp films from the 20s and 30s. Reinvisioning these with a modern mindset and updated themes they revolutionized the cutting edge of cinema.
Lucas did the exact same thing with the shlock 50s sci-fi films and then, with Raiders of the Lost Ark, did the same thing for the classic adventurer blockbuster of that time period as well.
In the end, the movie redefined the film industry by creating the summer blockbuster out of whole cloth and kick starting a special effects revolution that would eventually kill whatever spontaneity Lucas could muster in his prequel trilogy. Seduced by the dark side he created, I guess.
Yet, somehow, Star Wars stands alone, outside the fray. Seeing it today I can understand why many folks now see it for the first time and wonder what the hell the whole fuss is about. It’s worth it to remember that the whole current mythology of escapist cinema harks back to this work.
In fact, the one aspect of the film that really stuck with me longest was the matter-of-fact attitude toward this awesome science fiction spectacle. The spaceships and lightsabers and robots were simply drop-my-jaw awesome as an 8-year-old but to the characters in the film, they were just part of the way things were.
That assumption, along with the fact these spaceships were oily and gritty and looked like they had been used quite a bit, made this world seem more real to me. As real as my own imaginary worlds as a child could be. It was why Star Wars stuck with me a lot longer than a lot of films with better effects but with folks going ‘golly’ at the effects in the film itself.
Yet, as much as I find all these things to be relevant and, often, sorely overlooked, I truely doubt I'm doing much to add to the nigh infinite debate concerning the film now it has become so fully ensconced in popular culture. Still, I think it is useful to step away from the mythology it begat and ponder the mythology it sprung from and then sit down and watch the film anew - evaluating on its own terms. Which is where I think it can be best enjoyed, warts and all.
None of which to say Star Wars is not an enjoyable movie or to overlook the fact it is a vastly important one not to mention influential.
Blasting out of seemingly nowhere in 1977, Lucas provided a glorious summer diversion that was simply unmatchable by anything else we had up to that point. It was firmly planted in the past and gleefully frolicking through the future all the while having a finger on the pulse of the present.
Lucas was clearly a film buff. You see a love for film and an alert student of the medium’s history at work in his films. It’s the kind of fanaticism he shared with other mid-70s cinema giants such as Francis Ford Coppela and Martin Scorsese.
Where he differed was in a strident love for popular culture. Scorsese and Coppola sought inspiration in more aesthetic fields but there is a part of Lucas that was thoroughly tied to his central California rural upbringing.
For my generation and those that came immediately after, it’s damned tough to separate Star Wars from the nostalgia of our personal history. That Lucas insists on foisting his “improved” product on us despite our desire to witness a precious piece of our pasts is a very personal affront I’m not sure even he understands – despite the amount he has benefited from it.
For me, it’s the memory of my father taking my brother and I on what seemed like a whim to an afternoon feature in New Orleans. It was something quite unlike my father to do and something that stuck with me long after due to that fact – not the importance of the film itself.
But there was something about the imagery of the movie and the mythology it built for itself that grabbed my little 8-year-old mind up like everyone else. I remember trying to think of the story that must accompany that strange and captivating movie poster I tore out of a magazine to stare at hours on end. I even tried writing my own story but tore it up because… well, it sucked.
So with all that tied up into the mix it took me until relatively recently to step back and see the movie for what it was; an amateurish effort that missed on the wrong notes and nailed the right ones so perfect you really didn’t care.
When that into music starts, I’m sorry, it just grabs me by the nuts to this very day. And when that starfield pans up to reveal Tatooine an the Imperial Starcruiser shoots past overhead… well, you’ve won my willing suspension of belief once again, Mr. Lucas.
The exegisis that has since occurred about the roots and influences of the film must rival Hamlet since the bard’s advocates, although with several centrueis to work with, didn’t have the glorious geekdom of the internet spurring them on. Most, though, seem to miss the point in my opinion.
Of course the throne room scene echoes Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, Lucas was a film school student and that meant a working knowledge of the Nazi propagandist’s groundbreaking film. You didn’t get hip to Kurosawa in Fresno, you did at one of your film classes at USC.
Where Lucas was brilliant was in understanding the movies we make in our heads and them making that movie.
For example, in American Graffiti - a film I believe is the true mark of his genius as a director - he had the insight of establishing emotion by using the music we fill our lives with, rock and roll, instead of the traditional soundtrack. It was something that should have been completely apparent following the phenomenal success of the soundtrack of West Side Story but it took Lucas to pull the songs from the car radio and into the background of the movie instead.
(This was allied by the brilliant insight of not playing any music at all during times of drama in the film. Reinforcing the ‘realism’ of these particular moments and highlighting them in a unique fashion.)
So Star Wars picks up that thesis and tells the tale of every bored out of their skull rural Californian kid who wants to get out of town as fast as possible to places just out of reach of that big wide interstate that heads both ways out of town. It’s the Wizard of Oz for goofy mid-American kids stuck in the middle class ennui of the late 20th century. It's the kind of story you tell yourself to keep from going crazy those long boring nights of summer when there ain't nothing going on and no hope of that changing anytime soon.
Lucas, of course, set his escape firmly in the place he found his escape during those long idle years of adolescence – films. The heart of every crappy Saturday science fiction serial he ever sat through is beating firmly in every frame of Star Wars. Which is why he knew that it didn’t matter if the story sucked, the acting was rancid and the plot a muddling mess. That was all beside the point.
Watch a few episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 featuring a black and white Science Fiction film from the mid-50s and you can almost see the genesis of Star Wars as it unfolds in front of you. It isn’t by accident that Lucas was pursuing the chance to film the remake of Flash Gordon when he decided to make Star Wars.
With Star Wars he created a pastiche of B-cinema tropes but with a bigger budget and with enough polish to make it seem respectable. John Williams’ score is as important and groundbreaking here as the use of The Platters in American Graffiti. It is more than a little ironic that by fully embracing the Wagnerian leitmotif he abandoned to such success in the previous film worked to such an extraordinary degree.
Of course, after the fact, with all this going for it all the the Cambellian overtones and Kurisowa influences seem obvious. Personally, I believe Lucas’ insistence on these guiding him is as much bullshit as his insistence that he had the plot of the whole series set down when he started. It’s clear he was making it up as he went along which, I believe, is why it worked so well out of the blocks. He did it instinctively, which has always been his greatest strength as a director.
The French New Wave directors had done something similar a decade and a half before. Abandoning the high-art pretenses of French film they embraced the low-art Hollywood pulp films from the 20s and 30s. Reinvisioning these with a modern mindset and updated themes they revolutionized the cutting edge of cinema.
Lucas did the exact same thing with the shlock 50s sci-fi films and then, with Raiders of the Lost Ark, did the same thing for the classic adventurer blockbuster of that time period as well.
In the end, the movie redefined the film industry by creating the summer blockbuster out of whole cloth and kick starting a special effects revolution that would eventually kill whatever spontaneity Lucas could muster in his prequel trilogy. Seduced by the dark side he created, I guess.
Yet, somehow, Star Wars stands alone, outside the fray. Seeing it today I can understand why many folks now see it for the first time and wonder what the hell the whole fuss is about. It’s worth it to remember that the whole current mythology of escapist cinema harks back to this work.
In fact, the one aspect of the film that really stuck with me longest was the matter-of-fact attitude toward this awesome science fiction spectacle. The spaceships and lightsabers and robots were simply drop-my-jaw awesome as an 8-year-old but to the characters in the film, they were just part of the way things were.
That assumption, along with the fact these spaceships were oily and gritty and looked like they had been used quite a bit, made this world seem more real to me. As real as my own imaginary worlds as a child could be. It was why Star Wars stuck with me a lot longer than a lot of films with better effects but with folks going ‘golly’ at the effects in the film itself.
Yet, as much as I find all these things to be relevant and, often, sorely overlooked, I truely doubt I'm doing much to add to the nigh infinite debate concerning the film now it has become so fully ensconced in popular culture. Still, I think it is useful to step away from the mythology it begat and ponder the mythology it sprung from and then sit down and watch the film anew - evaluating on its own terms. Which is where I think it can be best enjoyed, warts and all.