reinvogorate your experience of watching Star Wars by watching other films from 1977.

I tried an interesting experiment which I thought would allow me to appreciate (and RE-experience!)  why and how Star wars made such an impact in 77'........by watching  a couple of DVD's of other films that were released that same year over a period of a couple of days.

These fims encompass a wide variety of genres and styles

Films like:

Annie Hall

A Bridge too Far

Saturday night fever

The Deep

Smoky And the Bandit

Close Encounters Of the Third Kind

The Gauntlet

and then Star Wars!(The GOUT DVD)

And Bam!

the difference is like night and day!

Star War's rythm and pacing, it's effects, the aesthetics of it' enviroment, the slightly oblique quality of it's characters,the sound effects,the music and above all the films powerful energy combine to provide an experience which all of the films lacked(even though some of them are fine films in their own right)

Trust me,try watching some of the above films or maybe even one of them and then watch Star Wars.......it will be like watching it for the first time!

@None

Oh definetely!

It is a question of cycles I guess.

I just picked films explicitly from 1977 to not only get an idea of the films that Star Wars went up directly against but also to immerse myself in the cultural and cinematic world of that moment in time.It is wierd but if you watch a couple of these films like The Deep, Saturday Night Fever, Annie Hall and Smokie And the Bandit back to back  your "movie senses"--so to speak!-- acclamatise to the beats and rythms of these movies; i.e the slower editing, the emphasise on character(something which is missing from a lot of movies these days), the colour pallettes that are distinctive of 70's cinema,the mono sound!(for Annie Hall or Smokie And The Bandit) and the earth bound reality of the stories that comprise these films(even Close Encounters).

And then you watch Star Wars and the whole thing just leaps out at you!

Baronlando said:

Supposedly A Bridge Too Far and The Deep in particular were the ones that really looked like flabby dinosaurs by comparison.

Oh it is no contest !

To be fair  The Deep has some great underwater photography and A Bridge Too Far does have some well choreographed war battles.

But you have to give Lucas credit for going against the cinematic mainstream norms of the time and really injecting a sense of energy and pace into his then new film.Something which may have been risky at the time because that is something that audiences were not used to back then.

Ironically it is that energy and dynamism that so distinguished Star Wars from it's cinematic contempories that seems to be missing from the prequels.

But then again maybe that is the problem.

By the time the prequels came out; special effects and rip roar fast editing were something that audiences of the late 90's/early 2000's were used to.

miker71 said:

it's a good job Lucas sacked his first editor or it would very much have been typical for the time from what I hear.

True.

The irony is that 20 years later in 1997 Lucas inhibited the flow of the original  theatrical  edit by inserting cut scenes.

The 1977 edit is perfect.

I should have added;

Having just come off the best part  of a week where I had watched nothing other than films from 1977; I went to watch a 2k digital projection of LA Battle at the local cinema here in cambridge the other night and that film pretty much epitomised(for me!) all that is wrong in the  contempory fantasy/scfi fim genre at the moment(I saw Skyline just before xmas):

Great effects(although even though the "the effect" of  those are redundant given the fact that we are so used to seeing cgi in practically every TV commercial going) but completely forgettable characters.

And that IMHO is the greatest contrast between then and now.

Even if 1977 films like The Deep,The Gauntlet,A Bridge Too Far and  Smoky And The Bandit were a touch inconsistent in terms of overall quality(even at the time of their original theatrical release) they do have memorable character portrayals courtesy of the likes of Nolte(Deep),Eastwood(Gauntlet),Bogarde,Caine,Connery,Redford(Bridge Too Far) and Reynolds(Smoky And The Bandit) which was  completely absent from supposedly from a contempory blockbuster like Battle LA!*

The magic of SW was that it encapsulated the emphasise on great characters with other factors like effects,editing,sound ect ect.

*

The trailer for "Source Code" looked kinda cool though.....though all trailers look cool!

@twooffour

You made some good points.

Although I would maintain that something like  LA battle does not hold a candle to a film like Close Encounters when it comes to emphasise on character.

Although I guess it is about balance.

The depth of character depends on the overall context of the film.If there is too much depth in a character like Luke Skywalker then the whole film can be brought down by that weight.

If there is not enough depth then the character has no resonance and you as a member of the audience has no affinity for the character.

This is where SW reached the right equilibrium between depth and resonance....making you care enough for the character without inquiring too much about what motivates him or where he comes from(like Han Solo).

I remember 1977 being a great year for movies.  Star Wars had some tough competition at the Oscars.

lo and behold!

a reviewer  of Battle :LA agrees  with me!

Good action movies develop their characters organically, in the heat of battle or in the midst of fight. Star Wars didn’t tell us Han Solo’s entire life story during his introduction scene at the Mos Eisely Cantina. That wouldn’t make sense. No one walks up to a stranger and says, “Hi I’m Han Solo. I’m from Corellia, I like long walks on the beach, sunsets, and I’m a big fan of Two and a Half Men. My mommy bought me a parakeet when I was eight, but I really wanted a dog.” We got to know what Han was all about while he was blasting around in the Millennium Falcon, scaring off entire battalions of Storm Troopers with nothing but sheer bravado. Battle: LA isn’t good enough to do that, and if it’s not good enough or smart enough to deal with its characters in a way that makes any sense, then I hope you’ve already assumed that it’s kind of clueless when it comes to everything else too.

http://www.cinemablend.com/reviews/Battle-Los-Angeles-5138.html

@Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda

If you were there in 77' then I envy you mate!

Just think that in december 77' ,in some places,Star Wars ,Close Encounters and Saturday Night Fever were all up on the big screen all at the same time!.

All of them ground breaking in one way or another but SW undoubtedly lead the pack.

Personally ,even though they are 2 completely different kinds of films, I feel SW kicks  Annie Hall into touch.......but Annie Hall is still a great movie!

I forgot to mention A Spy Who Loved Me(probably the best Roger Moore Bond movie) as being another film that SW had to compete against.

Amazing to think that A Spy Who Loved Me probably cost twice as much to make as Star Wars.Yet Star Wars(the 77' version) makes A Spy Who Loved Me so dated by comparison.Especially if you watch them both now.

I was just coming here to talk about TSWLM..I've been doing a LD preservation on and off for a while. The budget wasn't that much above SW (12-14 million as compared to slightly over 10) and was a return to the big scale of previous Bond adventures. It is extremely 70's (right down to the disco score, film stock, and amount of brown in the image) but this adds to it's charm in this day and age. And yes, I love raised eyebrows. And Lotus. And bad Russian accents. ;)

captainsolo said:

I was just coming here to talk about TSWLM..I've been doing a LD preservation on and off for a while. The budget wasn't that much above SW (12-14 million as compared to slightly over 10) and was a return to the big scale of previous Bond adventures. It is extremely 70's (right down to the disco score, film stock, and amount of brown in the image) but this adds to it's charm in this day and age. And yes, I love raised eyebrows. And Lotus. And bad Russian accents. ;)

Oh undoubtedly!

The battle in the hull of the ship in the last half hour between the good and the bad guys is excellent by any standard.I feel a bit sorry for Bond because whenever  a Bond film came out the same year as  a Star wars film it was outshone;

1980 = Empire Strikes Back outshining For Your Eyes Only

1983 = Return Of The Jedi  outdoing Octopussy