Lee-Sensei

Bingowings said:

Lee-Sensei said:

TV's Frink said:

 

Lee-Sensei said:

^Just two years ago Disney released Toy Story 3, the mos successful animated movie in history and the only one to make over a billion.

I don't know anyone who considers the Pixar films to be a Disney product, any more than people here consider Star Wars a 20th Century Fox product. Distribution only.

 

Disney bought Pixar in 2006. The Boxart even says Disney's Pixar. Whether they consider Pixar films Disney products or not, they are.

True but your thread is about cultural significance and perception.

The Pixar brand is not necessarily associated with the Disney one just as the Muppet brand isn't.

When a new Muppet movie comes out people don't visualise themselves going to a Disney film, even though they are.

I have to disagree. I'll admit that when I hear about the Muppets, I don't think of Disney. But when I hear about Pixar, I've always thought about Disney. Back when the first Toy Story movie came out, I actually thought it was a Disney movie. I didn't find out until later. They were even playing 'Hakuna Matata' in the car though.

About the US and UK's global significance... it's called Cultural Imperialism. The cultures of the countries at the top are very influential.

TV's Frink said:

 

Lee-Sensei said:

^Just two years ago Disney released Toy Story 3, the mos successful animated movie in history and the only one to make over a billion.

I don't know anyone who considers the Pixar films to be a Disney product, any more than people here consider Star Wars a 20th Century Fox product. Distribution only.

 

Disney bought Pixar in 2006. The Boxart even says Disney's Pixar. Whether they consider Pixar films Disney products or not, they are.

^Fair enough. But characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck could make it, right? They're almost 90 years old and they've been iconic for like... 70-80 years now.

^Just two years ago Disney released Toy Story 3, the mos successful animated movie in history and the only one to make over a billion.

zombie84 said:

Lee-Sensei said:

That was an excellent answer. I really enjoyed reading it. However, I have to say that your comparison of King Josiah to R2D2 and Obi-Wan Kenobi is flawed. Those two are main characters. I know the Bible pretty well, and even I barely remember King Josiah. A better comparison would be Moses. And I'm pretty sure the average person knows more about him, than R2D2 and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

In school you actually learn about these things. If your studying Medieval Europe, you'll probably deal with the influence of the Church. If your studying Ancient Greece or the Renaissance you'll probably deal with Classical Mythology's influence in visual arts and on words.

I guess by the same token if you were to read about the first century of film and 20th century entertainment in a school in the future, you would probably have part of a chapter examining Star Wars and the late-century blockbusters that were inspired by it. But, obviously, that would probably be uncommon, a Univeristy speciality perhaps, whereas the Church and the classical theology shaped entire civilizations and formed the political policies of entire world empires. You can't expect pop culture to compare to that. Classical "mythology" (if you want to call it that, but then you ought to be also referring to Judeo-Christian "mythology" too) and Christianity were not pop-culture, they were a fundamental part of the entire world-view of their respective societies. Ancient Rome and Medieval Europe had its own pop culture too, but other than the odd thing like King Arthur or Gawain you never hear of any of it. Actually, a lot of the "pop culture" that survives is also intertwined with religion too, so you have stories about Hercules that were meant to entertain despite the fact that he was worshipped but that would be like maybe Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter or something like that, there was still linkage to the contemporary theology of the time. A lot of the "real" pop culture, that wasn't theologically inspired--folk tales, I guess--hasn't survived or fell out of popularity and is lost. You do still have stuff like Shakespear and Chaucer, but the former is very recent and (IMO) hasn't earned the "immortal" status English majors give him while the latter only became popular in recent centuries (if only because few could read him, plus in recent years we project backward and see he had a role in the development of the novel).

So, anyway, if you look at real pop culture throughout the ages, almost none of it lives on. If you are stacking Star Wars against two of the biggest religious institutions in human history--Christianity and the classical religions--then of course it won't be able to cut it on a historical scale, that would be preposterous. But as far as pop culture goes, I would wager Star Wars will end up somewhere on that list with King Arthur and Robin Hood and Macbeth, along with a lot of other modern tales like Superman and Wizard of Oz. When it comes to antiquity it's a bit hard to draw the line between pop culture and religion since a lot of heroes were worshipped, like Gilgamesh, and even with Gilgamesh his mythology was literally buried and forgotten for two thousand years until a bunch of British colonial diplomats started touring Iraq in the 19th century, only a 150 years ago.

^Alright. Alright. That's another very good answer. Personally, I didn't believe it was up there. But what about Disney?

Bingowings said:

Yeah but they would remember most of the Star Wars characters by name and by some vague notion of what they did (unlike the PT characters because they aren't anywhere near as clearly defined other than Jar-Jar).

I must have misunderstood this line of your text:

And if we're counting characters that didn't start in movies, Yoda would probably be pushed off the list.

That part of my text was exactly what I said. Mickey Mouse has been in movies. Superman has been in movies. Batman has been in movies. Donald Duck has been in movies. Spider-Man, Daffy Duck, Merlin, Sherlock Holmes etc..

Bingowings said:

Lee-Sensei said:

^That still seems like a huge stretch though? Are we counting every character that's appeared in a movie or just the characters that started in movies?

Characters that should be on the list that started in movies...

Darth Vader

Yoda

Indiana Jones

ET

Buzz Lightyear (possibly)

Don Vito Corleone

Scarface

Frankenstein (I know it was from a book first, but it's very different)

Wolfman

Jason Vorhees

Freddy Kreuger

There are more...

And if we're counting characters that didn't start in movies, Yoda would probably be pushed off the list.

@Bingowings Funny. Heh.

Most people wouldn't know Vito's name but would recognise him as being in The Godfather, hardly anyone would recognise either version of Scarface, Jason would probably be "that horror film guy" and the majority of people wouldn't know which film he was in or that he didn't look like that at all in the first two.

And where was Yoda before he was in a film???

It may be that people would more likely recognise the Alien from Alien than The Wolfman (they might just think he was a werewolf)

No, they probably wouldn't remember him by name. They'd recognize his image though. Probably the same with Scarface. Jason wouldn't just be 'that horror film guy' though. That I'm sure of. Both Freddy and Jason are iconic. Definitely.

I never said Yoda was anywhere before films. What are you asking me?

Your probably right about the Wolfman though.

^That still seems like a huge stretch though? Are we counting every character that's appeared in a movie or just the characters that started in movies?

Characters that should be on the list that started in movies...

Darth Vader

Yoda

Indiana Jones

ET

Buzz Lightyear (possibly)

Don Vito Corleone

Scarface

Frankenstein (I know it was from a book first, but it's very different)

Wolfman

Jason Vorhees

Freddy Kreuger

There are more...

And if we're counting characters that didn't start in movies, Yoda would probably be pushed off the list.

@Bingowings Funny. Heh.

Bingowings said:

Oh I'd go further because the characters are so distinct from each other.

You stick a pair of thick head phones on a woman and she's Princess Leia even though she only had that hairstyle on in one film and then not for the entire duration of that one film.

In that form she is recognisable even in silhouette, if you went to the added expense of a metal bikini once again almost anyone would get the reference and probably know at least the name.

R2D2 and C3PO are also instantly recognisable.

In fact most of the characters in the first film are embedded culturally.

Each film of the original trilogy added at least one on top of that.

Yoda, Boba Fett, Jabba (who's name has practically become a byword for corpulence).

I think the only one from the PT which has the same degree of instant recognition is Jar-Jar (probably not for the best of reasons).

People who haven't seen a prequel trilogy film would probably recognise him and even know the name. 

I imagine by Canterbury Zombie meant to say Chaucer or The Canterbury Tales.

Star Wars is more like Malory in the sense that Lucas distilled lots of other tales and influences into a compendium addition.

The names are his but the archetypes and some of the key visual influences are from all over the place.

^Are you sure about that? Maybe in some places. But it's not like every characters become a global icon. There are probably only two. Darth Vader and Yoda. And I haven't really heard anyone using Jabba as a byword for corpulence. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

Most of these characters are only somewhat recognizable at this point. There are very few Star Wars characters that have avoided this decline.

zombie84 said:

I think one of the main things is that Star Wars came out at a time when there was not the hyper-saturated media of today; there were few blockbusters and no contemporary mythological things, and nothing that was truely "universal" at the time in that everyone could connect to it regardless of age or gender or whathaveyou. Today we have Harry Potter, which is the closest that has probably come to matching Star Wars in that respect, but it's also lost in the sea of media: there's a million other blockbusters, like Batman and Lord of the Rings and the continuing Star Wars spinoffs (prequels included), plus cable television with a devoted channel for every genre and niche, not to mention VHS, DVD, Blu-ray and torrents making every single film ever made available, in high definition much of the time, plus Youtube, Facebook, and the internet clammoring for attention. Plus, video games are huge, and have replaced a lot of traditional media like film and television to a degree--there were games in 1977, but no standout titles other than maybe stuff like Pong and Space Invaders (did this come out after SW? I know it was around in 1977), but you didn't have them in your home for the most part.

So, Star Wars really is the first and last of its kind. It's hard to say if The Matrix and Harry Potter will be remembered in 60 years from now, other than aging original-generation fans and maybe classic literature/cinema fans, just because these types of blockbusters have become rather disposable today, and this will only increase in the future as more media options become available and the market continues to fragment. Star Wars didn't have that. Star Wars didn't even have multiplexes to contend with--your town had one theatre, with one screen, and what was playing was Star Wars. So everyone saw it, and it was everywhere, in magazines and the news and on SNL and such.

Consequently, Star Wars has become a lasting part of popular culture, even if increasingly fewer people will actually be watching the films. It's like Superman or Wizard of Oz--most people have never read a Superman comic, most people have never read the Oz books, and there are increasingly large amounts of people who have never seen any of the film or television adaptations of either franchises. But they still know the mythology. The know about Dorothy and Tin Man and Munchkins, they know about Superman's costume and Lois Lane and Clark Kent, and people likewise know all about Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader and the Death Star and the Force.

Is it on the same level as the Bible or classical mythology? In the contemporary sense, probably yes. More people today have probably seen Star Wars than actually read all, or even a significant part of, the Bible, especially as young people are leaving tIhe church at a record-setting pace. People know who Obi Wan Kenobi or R2D2 are, but unless they really know their Bible or go to sunday school they probably don't know a character/person like King Josiah. Harry Potter outsells the Bible today (no joke). But of course, that is just because western society has become increasingly less tied to religion and superstition, and this trend will only continue (unless you live in the so-called Bible Belt, in which case it's harder to predict if the current religious furver will last or decline in the near future, as it has tended to be cyclical there).

On a historical scale it would be absurd to argue any of this though, as was mentioned for a good thousand years the only thing that really tied Europe together from end to end was Christianity and the vestiges of classical religion spread through the influence of the former Roman Empire. It's pretty unlikely that many people will know about Star Wars in the year 3000, although I would say if people study early film like they do early literature (canterbury, etc), Star Wars would be a contender for somewhere at the top of that list but I imagine that would be more for historical buffs and academics, the way Canterbury largely is today.

That was an excellent answer. I really enjoyed reading it. However, I have to say that your comparison of King Josiah to R2D2 and Obi-Wan Kenobi is flawed. Those two are main characters. I know the Bible pretty well, and even I barely remember King Josiah. A better comparison would be Moses. And I'm pretty sure the average person knows more about him, than R2D2 and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

In school you actually learn about these things. If your studying Medieval Europe, you'll probably deal with the influence of the Church. If your studying Ancient Greece or the Renaissance you'll probably deal with Classical Mythology's influence in visual arts and on words.

walking_carpet said:

CatBus said:

In fact, I'd say Star Wars ranks pretty evenly with the Beatles.

 

Many people have said over the years that Star Wars was cinema's beatlemania.  as a matter of fact, when I asked my dad how big and immersive the beatles were, he said only star wars reminded him.

If you make a top ten list of the most recognizable film characters - star wars has 4 or 5 of them.  No matter what has happened its still the most storied saga in movie history.

this is why its heartbreaking when I see a star wars fan under the age of 31 - to miss something so special (except for maybe the eve of TPM and flashes of 1997).

let me put it this way - there is a very good reason lucas was able to get away with the crap he did during the PT. 

for a long time - star trek was the cult favorite and star wars was the cultural phenomenon that captured the imagination of an entire generation.  now - star wars is rapidly evolving into a bigger cult than star trek ever was - a cult of personality.  which is exactly how lucas wants it.

4 or 5 of them? That's to much. At least 1 (Darth Vader). Or maybe 2 (Yoda). But 4 or 5? No.

SilverWook said:

Need I say more? ;)?

Awesome. Is the other one just a random animal? And please say more.

Okay, so how influential and culturally significant do you think Star Wars is? I know it gets referenced a lot in Pop Culture and it has a couple of iconic characters, like Darth Vader and Yoda. However, I've seen people who argue that Star Wars is more influential and culturally significant then Classical Mythology, the Bible, and the Walt Disney Company. What will be Star Wars' legacy, after George Lucas passes away?