Corona | Coming Attractions

Jakester wrote:

The beauty of "episode 4" is that it was designed to be a Saturday Serial type of movie and invoked staples of mythology and character archetypes. That the story and characters weren't particularly new or unique doesn't make it a bad or worthless tale. It told an ages old story in a new and exciting way. It certainly was a well-made film that caused the creation of new technologies and upped the ante for was could be done on film. It created a new mythology and spoke to and touched multiple generations and in the past 30+ years has become part of our culture.Any one of those things alone would elevate it to more than "a simplistic action/adventure movie." I mean, it is that, but it is also more.

Mega dittos.

Do you think that post will make Kah want to bang me?

I will if she won't.

Corporal_Hicks wrote:

I can't fucking stand that the supporters of the prequels have to bring down the original films just to make up for their own fucked up tastes in movies.

Language, sir, language. Relax. Take it easy. Have a puff(passes some good Canadian weed around).

Nobody's "bringing down" the original three. As I said, many eyes have been opened since the summer of 1999. Like seeing a friend or family member after years, someone you idolized, even adored--and realizing, with the perpsective of time, that they were not exactly as you remembered them. Still wonderful people, but not as "perfect."

If TPM had been released in 1977, how would it have been received by us? Better? Worse? The same? The PT was released in a very different atmosphere, we had The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, an explosion of superhero films, steadily improving video games, plus numerous sf genre-related material on the big and small screen.

That simply wasn't the case in 1977. And we were young. Innocent. Free. Naked, roaming in the countryside.

Rose-coloured glasses.

Jakester wrote:

Any one of those things alone would elevate it to more than "a simplistic action/adventure movie." I mean, it is that, but it is also more.

Even Harrison Ford himself--Han Solo!--said that the special effects advances were what made SW something more than "three goofs and a guy in a monkey suit." Direct quote.

Space Tycoon wrote:

Language, sir, language. Relax. Take it easy. Have a puff(passes some good Canadian weed around).Nobody's "bringing down" the original three. As I said, many eyes have been opened since the summer of 1999. Like seeing a friend or family member after years, someone you idolized, even adored--and realizing, with the perpsective of time, that they were not exactly as you remembered them. Still wonderful people, but not as "perfect."If TPM had been released in 1977, how would it have been received by us? Better? Worse? The same? The PT was released in a very different atmosphere, we had The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, an explosion of superhero films, steadily improving video games, plus numerous sf genre-related material on the big and small screen. That simply wasn't the case in 1977. And we were young. Innocent. Free. Naked, roaming in the countryside.Rose-coloured glasses.

I wasn't talking about (or to) you.

It is nice you bring up the age-old (I know it has only been a decade or so, QUASAR, it's just a figure of speech) prequel excuse, "Well had TPM been released in 77, folks would have gone bonkers for it!".

No, they wouldn't have. The bottom-line is that TPM is a shitty movie.

People just wanted those movies to be GOOD.

This is also where the "fan expectations were too high" excuse enters.

No, they weren't. Fans wanted a GOOD movie, period.

As for your own comparison, A New Hope has just about as much in common with Close Encounters as it does with Annie Hall. Two totally seperate genres.

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I would expect you to downgrade the original films, and thank GOD you don't represent the opinion(s) of normal, functional adults.

Corporal_Hicks wrote:

---------------------------------------I would expect you to downgrade the original films, and thank GOD you don't represent the opinion(s) of normal, functional adults.

I guess it was too much for me to expect a fully rational response to my post. Most of it was okay, but........

.........No, you had to finish with one of your trademark kick-in-the-balls-type potshots that only affirms (in my mind) your basic emotional insecurity and intellectual weakness.

Tell me Hicks, what is a "normal, functional adult"? I find "normal" people quite boring. "Normal" people don't change the world. "Normal" people didn't write the Constitution, nor did "normal" people write the Declaration of Independence.

"Normal" people think we are ALL geeks and nerds for wasting precious minutes and hours doing what we do. ALL of us.

Fuck, man. Maybe they are right.

Corporal_Hicks wrote:

I wasn't talking about (or to) you.

Yes, you were.

Corporal_Hicks wrote:

People just wanted those movies to be GOOD. This is also where the "fan expectations were too high" excuse enters. No, they weren't. Fans wanted a GOOD movie, period.

And TPM is a good movie. Just not a great one. There is a difference.

Corporal_Hicks wrote:

As for your own comparison, A New Hope has just about as much in common with Close Encounters as it does with Annie Hall. Two totally seperate genres.

No, they ain't.

I was mainly referring to the period of time between the two. As well as the impact they had on me at my impressionable age.

But since you bring it up, I can see many points of similarity between the two films; interstellar travel and extraterrestrial contact; the realization that the predictable existence with which one has become familiar no longer holds any appeal; the transformative experience of being uprooted from one's daily workaday life towards something celestial; the final decision to rebel against an authoritarian State; the fulfillment of childhood dreams via the intervention of much older, cosmic intervention.... I could go on.

Star Wars is for kids.

And kids at heart.

That is my final word on the subject.

But if there are all these points of similarity between the two films - and such sophisticated ones at that! - how is one "for kids" and the other is not?

Well, the simple answer is, CE3K is about the baby-boomer Middle American Male existence as it was in the mid to late 1970's.

Vietnam was over, as were the Civil Rights battles, Watergate, and a whole host of other things. Free Love was kinda over, or at least reaching it's expiration date. The causes, I mean, not the issues that spurred them on.

Older people wanted something worth believing in. Younger people wanted something to fight for. CE3K (for some, at least) gave us the first, while Star Wars (for a lot more, apparently) gave us the second.

I guess I have what they call an old soul; because while I liked Star Wars.....I loved CE3K. There is a difference.

And giving you space aliens to believe in is less childish than telling you to fight against an authoritarian state?

How about both, in decent measure.

A compelling argument for a movie definitely not being intended for kids is an uncontested adult rating by the movie's home country's official rating board. If a movie does not get an adult rating, that doesn't mean that it is meant exclusively for kids. It simply means it is considered acceptable for more people to watch than a movie meant exclusively for adults. In America, for example, a movie rated G, PG, or PG-13 isn't necessarily meant exclusively for kids. What it does mean is that the closer a movie gets to a G rating, the closer it comes to being acceptable by MPAA standards for a child to watch the movie unsupervised. If things are how they were when I was a child, a child can still see a movie with an R rating as long as a "guardian" is with that child.

A different country is going to have different rating criteria. Most major studio movies are made for the home market first, since it is easier for a studio to gauge what the home market will be receptive toward. If a country finds the seeming jeopardization of animals' lives to be offensive, then Benji: The Hunted might (theoretically) be given a harsher rating than it was given in America (G).

Neither Star Wars nor Close Encounters of the Third Kind received R ratings, meaning neither was deemed to be intended exclusively for adults. (Of course, Spielberg famously fought the original rating for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which shows that Spielberg and the MPAA do not always see eye-to-eye. They saw eye-to-eye on Jaws, however, which originally got a PG rating.) Does this mean they were deemed to be exclusively for kids? No. It just means that "[s]ome material may not be suitable for children under 10."

It's easier to say what kids are probably not intended to see and what is deemed acceptable for them to see than it is to say what they are intended to see.

Parentage is too diverse to assume much about what's meant for kids (or for families) across the board. The MPAA deemed Jesus Camp to be PG-13, despite the fact that all of the things being said in the movie were being said to children who were, in some cases, half that age. For some parents, nothing in that movie would be considered objectionable. Despite this, the MPAA maintains that it contains "discussions of mature subject matter." At the same time, according to the MPAA, a fart joke is acceptable for most audiences. Surround the fart joke with blood, sex, and profanity, and it is no longer acceptable for most audiences. On its own, though, it's just fine.

Jaws, Star Wars, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind all received PG ratings upon initial release. They have retained these ratings. This means the MPAA still feels that some of the material in them "may not be suitable for children."

How does the MPAA feel about simpletons?

In the case of Star Wars, it might not be too hard to imagine what scenes were considered to be potentially unsuitable for children. A person is choked to death in the movie's opening minutes, an arm is severed (and blood is seen in a pool at the point of severance), the smoking corpses of characters we have come to know are seen on screen, the torture and drugging of a character of nobility is implied (the robot with the hypodermic needle is referred to as "a giant black torture robot" in the script), people are shot and killed with laser fire, Obi-Wan is seemingly evaporated by a lightsaber blow, a moon-sized spaceship is blown up, an entire planet is blown up, Greedo is shot and killed at point-blank range, and Han Solo and Admiral Motti mock characters' religions openly.

The inclusion of these things doesn't mean the movie was meant exclusively for adults, but they all likely contributed to the MPAA deeming portions of the movie to be unsuitable for children. At the same time, a movie being deemed acceptable for children under ten as long as they have a guardian with them is not the same as a movie made specifically for children.

I think the PG rating means less to modern audiences than it meant before the mid eighties. It is often forgotten that PG replaced the M (Mature) rating in 1970. (The original ratings were G, M, R, and X.) The eventual upset over Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom's PG rating led to the creation of the PG-13, which further seemed to trivialize the PG rating.

* * *

I'm not going to try to argue for which audience Lucas intended Star Wars, nor am I going to try to argue for which audience he intended Empire Strikes Back--though his lessened involvement is an interesting point of contention when it comes to who gets the say on intended audience. In an interview with Kershner in Sound & Vision, Kershner says, "That's what 20th Century Fox wanted to know, because they thought I was too old. I was over 55. They said, 'Get a young man. Get someone in their 30s, somebody who will understand the kids.' But George said, 'No,' he wanted me. George had been in my classes, my seminars at USC. I was teaching there, on and off, and we became friends. Later, we would meet every once in a while, and he would talk about some of the films I'd done — Eyes of Laura Mars, The Return of a Man Called Horse, and The Flim-Flam Man. He loved them. 'I want you to do the film,' he said, 'because you know everything a Hollywood director's supposed to know, but you're not Hollywood.'" (Note: he also addresses the changes made to the Special Edition cut of Empire Strikes Back.)

It's clear from this (if we are to take Kershner at his word) that the studio wanted a director who "understood" kids. Does this mean they wanted to make a movie exclusively for kids, or just that they wanted to make sure they weren't excluded? That's not an easy question to answer. What the studio wanted was not what Lucas wanted in this case. Does this mean that Lucas wanted an adult movie? No. Does it mean he wanted a more adult movie than the studio wanted? Again, that's not an easy question to answer. What kind of movie did Kershner think he was making? It is clear he thought he was making his own movie. From another interview we get the following:

"I told George, 'You know, I'm not going to stand there on the set and have you standing over my shoulder. I need absolute freedom to make my picture.' He says, 'Of course. And I understand it.' He says, 'I'll tell you what. I will never come on the set. I will never even be in London. I don't like being in London.'"

All this is echoed in a Salon interview:

"But Kershner didn't view 'Star Wars' as science fiction: 'It was fairy tale, myth, that's where I did my research. It had to do with empowerment, and with loyalty, which is a wonderful thing in legend, and with the fact that fathers want to destroy their sons or to use their sons' powers as their powers decline.' Although 'The Empire Strikes Back' was instantly (and justly) labeled the 'darkest' of the 'Star Wars' films, part of its darkness came from its maturity. Kershner recalls that even though he was in his 50s, executives at Twentieth Century Fox considered him too old for the job. But Lucas stuck by his light-sabres, telling Kershner that he wanted him 'because you know all the things a Hollywood director should know, without being Hollywood,' and promising, 'It's going to be your picture.' And Lucas kept his word. Even when the film went over budget and Kershner offered to cut a couple of sequences, Lucas said, 'Don't change a thing! Keep going as you're going.'" (I think it's a pretty neat interview. You should read it, if you get a chance. This part made me laugh: "And Kershner insisted on demonstrating that Luke Skywalker has feeling in his artificial hand: 'We were starting to make him a mechanical man, and he's not; I wanted to show that in the future when he makes love to a woman he'll have some feeling there -- that's what I was thinking!'")

* * *

I brought us back to Empire Strikes Back without really meaning to. Sorry, Guys.

What was the point I set out to make above? I think it was that the Star Wars movies were not *not* made for kids, but that that didn't necessarily make them kids' movies. It doesn't necessarily make them family movies, either, even though the rating might make it so that families could attend as a whole. (By this I mean that it's also not *not* made for individual viewing experiences.) Like the Thin Man movies, perhaps, more and more theoretically kid-friendly elements would be included as the universe expanded. In the Thin Man's case, the movies were getting slapstickier, the main characters were drinking less, and Asta was becoming a bigger and bigger element. In the original movie, though, there seems to be a lot less for kids. The dog's role is minor, there are multiple, lengthy expository scenes, Nick and Nora do a lot of hard drinking, sex and adultery are discussed, and the movie centers around trying to figure out the identity of a murderer. While it is a comedy, it is also fairly ribald.

It's hard to say, in the Thin Man series's case, if they set out to make movies primarily for kids with the last entries, or if kids were beginning to be more enthusiastic about the movies than there parents with each subsequent movie (precipitating the addition of more and more kid-friendly elements to appeal to the kids in the audience).

I'll save you some time by anticipating Spacey's response: "But still!"

The Swollen Goi... wrote:

I think the PG rating means less to modern audiences than it meant before the mid eighties.

That reminds me of Patton Oswalt's routine on G-rated filth:

The Swollen Goi... wrote:

In the Thin Man's case, the movies were getting slapstickier, the main characters were drinking less, and Asta was becoming a bigger and bigger element.

And Leon was getting laaarger.

http://tattuinardoelasaga.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/tattuinardoela-saga-i...

This is really cool. I'm especially surprised to see the consistency with which the names have been kept or translated directly in Lucas' version. I don't mean just the proper names but also the names of objects, such as lightsaber and Death Star. The Millennium Falcon is literally the Thousand-Year Falcon in the Icelandic saga.

I don't know why, but reading that article made me almost giddy.

I was impressed with it.

I wonder how many hours of his life that dude wasted writing that.

If he's spent as much time on it as I have spent on Horso and Pussy Fucker, I feel for him.

That's different!

I'm going to have to call the match in 'The People vs. George Lucas' in favor of George Lucas. He remains an amiable, slighty incoherent millionaire and mega-producer (and an attack of sleep apnea waiting to happen), while the fans remain a mishmash of the bitter, delusional Lucas-worshippers, and bitter, self-loathing Lucas-haters. There's also the odd sardonic, self-amused, above-the-fray pseudo-intellectuals who dislike the prequels and enjoy the originals, though in an ever-decreasing slide toward total apathy (clearly none of these groups can be considered winners, so Lucas wins be default).