zombie84

The only thing TPM3D has really done is vindicate all the critics that they ban for "blasphemy" at places like theforce.net. No, the kids who were 7 years old in 1999 and who are now 20 years old are not swarming the internet to praise the childhood cult classic. No, critics who review it again 13 years later do not have some "enlightened" perspective. And no, the general populous does not care to see this film again. It turns out: it was just a shitty movie. Oops!

In 1999, TPM had hype and no one had seen it yet. It made $400 million domestically. In 2012, TPM no longer is the new Star Wars movie, and everyone knows its quality. It makes $40 million domestically. And this is the second thing vindicated: no, the hype did not kill TPM, did not cause the criticism or the unfair expectations. Hype, in fact, was the one thing the film had going for it. Episode I minus the hype gets you a flop, with the same bad reviews but this time barely any money and barely any audience.

Don't worry, most people think that, and with good reason since that is reported in many official sources. Bill Moyers, in Empire of Dreams, seems to be giving the impression that Campbell actually mentored Lucas through the screenplay in real life, which is preposterous. But that's part of the whole mythology-of-the-mythology. The Lucas-Campbell connection is way overstated, but both of them sort of went along with it, and I can kind of see why, because it was an opportunity to get young people interested in comparitive mythology. I never would have been reading Campbell at age 17 if it wasn't for Star Wars--although to be honest, I never finished Hero with a Thousand Faces. It was just excruciating, and I wanted to like it. I've picked it up every few years since, hoping my immature brain didn't appreciate it, but nope, same reaction.

As a speaker, he is phenomenal. I have a collection of bootleg lectures from him, plus a few audio cassette series he put out, and they're all fantastic. As a lecturer he was very powerful, and really did have an encyclopedia-like ability to just recall any sort of obscure story when it was relevant and connect it to his narrative. The best book with his name with it is the Power of Myth book, because it's just a transcription of an extended interview with him by Moyers.

I've always been interested in Robocop 2 development, but there isn't a lot out there. I will agree with her that Kershner did a shitty job on that film, which surprised me because the thing was written by Frank Miller, who seemed a perfect match to the violent-comic-book style of the original, but then the script was shitty too. I guess Kersh had different ideas of the film (although he's on record stating he was a fan of the original, so I dunno what happened there). Her comments are a bit vague though, I'd like to know more details about why she feels that way. Still, nice to have honesty. 

I think he was vaguely familiar with his stuff, because he did major in anthropology for one year, and that's part of the genesis of Star Wars since he studied a lot of mythology and cultural practices. But the whole notion of Campbell basically "providing the roadmap" or whatever is total BS. But, he may have skimmed through some of his stuff since one of the case studies in Hero with A Thousand Faces shows up (supposedly, but its not a real match--Massai in Campbell, Masasi in Lucas. Personally, I think Lucas got this from people he met, like he did for all of his early names, since Masasi, like Vader, is an actual surname). The personal connection between the two men doesn't even begin until after Star Wars, I think around 1981 was when they first met.

He did have a copy of Hero on his writing room desk in 1981 when he was doing the rough drafts of Jedi, but that may have been there because they had recently become aquaintences and so he maybe took a closer look at his work.

I share Lucas sentiment in that Campbell was far more powerful as a speaker than a writer. I can't stand his books; I sold my copy of Hero a few years ago--it had Luke Skywalker on the cover actually.

Glad you're finding EU that suits you Anchorhead. I haven't read some of the titles you've reviewed, but I'll try to find them since they have your endorsement. You've probably read more EU than me at this point!

And, one last thing to throw out there is the page I did about the films' reception at secrethistoryofstarwars.com. The site might be down right now becauise I am having some issues with reports of malicious software, but it shows in tangible terms using dozens of newspaper articles how the films' perception and rep changed over the years.

Also, if you ever want some backup you can always just email me or ask me here about a specific aspect, as it sometimes is useful for your paper's arguments to have an "authority" or whatever backing you up (in a "personal communication" in the end notes no less! :p ). Also, be sure to read Dale Pollock's bio, it touches upon this. I quote an article at length in the section in SHOSW on this topic, which I would strongly encourage you to read for a then-contemporary analysis of the film (and one generally critical too, which is hard to find today).

Of course, reasons such as the ones being made by myself and others I reference is mainly limited to the era of its original release. Obviously the films continued to endure, but there are different contexts for the films as time has gone on, and so the elements that have made it endure have changed over time. I guess the main thing to keep in mind is that the films don't exist in a vaccuum. It's a lofty undertaking for an English thesis because you have to know a bit about film history, American social history, and the movie business itself.

LOL, I think you replied as I was editing my post to say I can paste it here. Did you want me to or do you have the actual book?

There is a section in SHOSW that addresses this, and why (or at least what I think is why) the film became a hit. Pages 213-225 or so, under the sub-heading "A Cultural Phenomenon". I can paste it in here if you like, but it would be quite a bit of text.

I worked with one of the guys from that show, actually.

Fuck, no wonder people think everyone in Canada knows each other.

Lee-Sensei said:

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

Well, to be honest in the case of Star Wars is just boils down to 1) English speaking countries and 2) Domestic production. Star Wars was in many ways an American-British co-production so of course it will be biggest in those two countries. It's also, I would argue, equally big in Canada, which is maybe the one area you could make the case for cultural imperialism, but it's not really imperialism since it's a deliberate audience choice mainly because our own entertainment industry sucks in comparison.

CatBus said:

LexX said:

I think people in the US and UK (the places where the movies were made) seem to think that they have more global significance than what it really is.

Yeah, I think global significance is a pretty big stretch for any cultural work.  The Bible and Greek/Roman mythology may have meant everything in Europe for a thousand years, but they meant squat to the Maori.  Global communication and media changes this a little, but not as much as you'd think--language and cultural barriers are still pretty tough to bridge.

By the same token though, there really isn't anything that is "global" if you are going to include every isolated community in every far corner of the world. As far as a "global" culture can actually exist, I'd say the Bible and classical religions fit the bill more appropriately than anything else I can think of. The only region in the world that was not directly shaped by these was east Asia, but in terms of trade and economy and to some degree politics they were directly linked into the world systems of both the Hellenistic era and Medieval Europe.

Maybe. The last time I saw either of them in anything was Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Spacejam, and they were only cameos, plus both movies were parodying classical animation to a degree. But like I said: who knows. They do still endure, but they are not an immediate part of pop culture like they were from 1935-1965. Discussions like this are great fun but when you get down to it, we might as well be deciding this with roulette. I would love to get together again in 500 years and pick up this conversation. :p

On a long enough time scale, all pop culture disappears, because there is only room for so much, and what will make the cut in 500 years, 1000 years, or 10, 000 years is anyone's guess. The list gets shorter the further you go so it may help to define your timeline and parameters.

Not with inflation though. Snow White, in 1937, earned more than two billion dollars domestically in today's dollars.

Apples to apples.

Sure, Disney stuff could make it. This is all speculatory and very hard to predict--in 1950 Disney would have been there without a doubt, but Disney characters have fallen out of popularity compared to then so many would say they won't truely endure, but the pendulum could easily swing right back where it was in 1950 in another thirty years. Same with Star Wars. In 1987, it was just a modern classic but that's it, there wasn't even comic books anymore, now we consider it a part of modern mythology, but who knows, we could see a return to 1987 in the coming decades. Really, with stuff this recent it is impossible to truely tell--heck, I have some doubts about Shakespeare, and he's stood the test of time for like 400 years, which on the macro scale might as well make Star Wars a current release.

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. Almost all of it was oral too, so it was never even written down, there are entire corpus' of popular culture that we will never have any idea ever existed. You do still have stuff like Shakespeare 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.

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 the 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.

Mr. Bungle said:

I don't think GL ever got over Marcia/the divorce.

 

Without being able to prove it I agree with this 100%. Though I'm glad he is finally in a relationship again.

georgec said:

This is as close as I've seen one of the principal actors come to criticizing the prequels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z08pO0nDCPA

I love that interview, one of my favourites.

"Look at the moons!!"

Ewan is a great guy, you should see his interviews with Craig Ferguson, the two grew up together in Scotland and it makes for some of the best talk-show material I've ever seen.

w_c: No idea on that. I know McCallum had a heavier role in the EpIII casting and making sure actors had rehearsal time and so forth, but the strength of any and all roles resided on the script written by George, so it's not really clear what impact casting directors would have had. I mean, Episode I had one of the best casts of 1999, which was a breakthrough year in the movies, and the film sucked in terms of acting, so casting doesn't mean squat when Lucas is the last word. But I do think they put more emphasis on performance for Episode III, and I get the impression that Rick McCallum was the one that was pushing for that.

He chose Lloyd because Lloyd was the cuter of the two. That's what it comes down to. He had the sweeter face. I think in his head he had this idea of Vader being the most un-Vader-like kid in the world, a sort of poster child for The Good Kid, maybe someone he saw the way he saw his own son, and Lloyd lacked the acting chops but had the right image. The runner-up was more mature looking and had a bit more edge to him (he also looked way more plausible as Mark Hamill's father), but Lloyd had that wide-eyed, rosy-cheeked looked that Lucas thought was more important. Style over substance as usual, I guess.

I'm sure he is an awesome guy and got undue personal tormenting at school but you also have be fair to yourself in that it's not some personal shame to have criticized his performance, unless you were really mean and personal. Frankly, his performance wasn't good, partly because he was miscast and, I must assume, poorly directed, but also because as far as nine-year-old child actors go he just wasn't that good. Fine for television or something like that, but not good enough to carry a major film. I guess in that respect you have to blame George Lucas for putting him in that position when he should have known that the kid couldn't cut it; the kid himself doesn't know any better, and his parents are just trying to be supportive so of course they are going to encourage him, but the blame really does fall to Lucas for putting someone that naive under so big a spotlight. We've all seen that audition scene on the Episode I documentary where there was a really good runner-up actor that would not have received the amount of critcism as Lloyd did.

She spoke to Peter Biskind in 1996 for his famous book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.

She also spoke to me in 2009 or so, which I put in her unofficial biography.

She still lives in the Bay area, single as far as I know, but I'm not exactly what she does for a living. Given that she would be in her mid-60s maybe she is just retired. Her daughter recently graduated from USC and I think she is getting into editing, or post work, like her mom.

Sinbad... And the Eye of the Tiger, i think?

Erikstormtrooper said:

Hats off to zombie, canofhumdingers, and anyone else who's helped bring this awesomeness to fruition. If the LOC now has proper copies of the OT, WE HAVE WON.

(Seeing you guys do these great things, while I just sit here and read about them on a forum, makes me feel a bit small. I honestly wish I could do more.)

Hey, all I've been doing is sitting at my desk sending emails and writing web pages. There's nothing I do that you can't also. It's just a matter of sitting down and doing it.

none said:

An article with some details of the 3D work:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/star-wars-3d-george-lucas-289377?page=2

Prime Focus set up a process for the 3D conversion of the 115-minute movie,  which was mostly done at their facilities in India and in London. It involved at various times 600 of their employees. “Everything was sent back for review,” said Malhotra, “by (the Lucasfilm team) and George Lucas himself. We would get notes from them, suggestions for enhancements and any direction they had. It worked pretty smoothly.”

 

Still it was an intense eight month process *CUT*

and look who get's quoted:

Michael Kaminski, author of the unauthorized 2008 book The Secret History of Star Wars, who has been critical of Lucas in the past when he changed things in the movies, is on board with this re-release. “A lot of people say ‘3D, oh its crap,’ because there are so many 3D releases done badly,” said Kaminski. “And it’s true. Often the film is done badly. But the fact Lucas is a supporter of 3D and spent a lot of time getting it right, I think it’s a fun way to re-energize the movies.”

 

Nice catch! Kind of random quote though.