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connielane at 02:45pm on 25/05/2007 under franchise films
connielane at 02:45pm on 25/05/2007 under franchise filmsHostel 2. Shrek the Third. A third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. A fourth Die Hard movie. Ocean's 13. And Harry Potter, Book 7. And that's just this summer! What is it about good stories that make us constantly want to hear or see more about them? Lots of things, I guess. Familiar characters that we love or love to hate - from Barbossa to Obi Wan to Donkey to Q to Ron Weasley to Hannibal Lecter. Audience in-jokes and favorite lines that we repeat to each other ad nauseum - "Why is the rum gone?" ... "Fear me, if you dare!" ... "U NO POO" ... and "Yippee-ki-yay, motherf***er." For whatever reason, certain films offer us a home away from home, and we feel comfortable and welcome on the screen or in the pages. And we enjoy coming back to those homes again and again.
So I thought I would add to the joy of this sequel-heavy summer by doing a post a day on what I'm going to call Franchise Films. Movies that are part of a set. In most cases I will be doing a post on each film in the franchise I'm covering, but some franchises are simply too huge - or the sequels not noteworthy enough - to do that. I believe all of the franchises I'm covering, though, have a pretty hardcore fan following. Well, if they didn't, there wouldn't be sequels, would there?
We begin our journey with the Star Wars franchise. Several of you correctly guessed that today is significant because thirty years ago today the world was first introduced to a galaxy far, far away. We met Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Obi Wan Kenobi. We saw Han shoot first, cheered at the magnificent destruction of the Death Star, practiced breathing like Darth Vader, and tried to do Jedi mind tricks on our friends.
Despite the anniversary, though, I won't be starting with the original 1977 film; I'm going in story order. That's right, I'm kicking things off with that bane of the series, The Phantom Menace.
The hype for this was unbelievable. We'd had our appetites whetted for this by the theatrical release of the Special Editions of the original trilogy, and we were really and truly going to get three more Star Wars movies. OMG x infinity! This was, I think, the first of these films - or any others, to be honest - where people were actually camped out in line weeks (or even months) in advance to be the first people to see it. There were huge stars attached to it - Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Samuel L. Jackson, and lots of original folks like Anthony Daniels and Ian McDiarmid reprising their roles from the original movies.
I camped out for roughly a few hours and was surprised how easy it was to get in on the first screening of opening night. The Lucasfilm logo appeared and the room exploded in cheers. I shed a tear as the crawl started. And I was fairly entertained by the movie itself. I thought the kid playing Anakin was all kinds of annoying, yet he was nothing to everyone's least favorite sidekick Jar-Jar Binks.
I was surprised by the negative responses to the film, though, and felt that the people who were reviewing this thing as fans of the old movies were looking at it from their new adult perspective and had lost the wonder that made them fall in love with the originals when they were kids.
The movie has its flaws, to be sure. I could never understand the politics of these films and had a hard time keeping track of the things that all the much harder-core fans seemed to know all about before even seeing the movie. But something I've always loved about these movies is that they take place in a rich and fully realized world. I don't think we're meant to understand every single thing, and we're supposed to be a bit lost - we've stepped into a world that's not our own and some things, even if they're explained to us, are just *going* to feel foreign and not quite right.
I'm not going to bother with a plot summary for this (or any of the other SW films, probably), because anyone who's a fan of these movies can probably explain it better than I can and anyone who isn't a fan is not going to care. :P What this film is essentially about is introducing us to the future Darth Vader and the woman he loves who bears him twin children, Luke and Leia. It also sets up an atmosphere that leads the characters to create the world to which we were introduced in the original Star Wars.
As a first set-up film for a story we already know, I think it did its job fairly well. And it felt like its own story with only occasional glances at future events from the original trilogy. I do think it could have been better - Lucas has clearly lost the talent he once had for engaging character dialogue. But I don't think it's quite as bad as everyone seems to remember.
So I thought I would add to the joy of this sequel-heavy summer by doing a post a day on what I'm going to call Franchise Films. Movies that are part of a set. In most cases I will be doing a post on each film in the franchise I'm covering, but some franchises are simply too huge - or the sequels not noteworthy enough - to do that. I believe all of the franchises I'm covering, though, have a pretty hardcore fan following. Well, if they didn't, there wouldn't be sequels, would there?
We begin our journey with the Star Wars franchise. Several of you correctly guessed that today is significant because thirty years ago today the world was first introduced to a galaxy far, far away. We met Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Obi Wan Kenobi. We saw Han shoot first, cheered at the magnificent destruction of the Death Star, practiced breathing like Darth Vader, and tried to do Jedi mind tricks on our friends.
Despite the anniversary, though, I won't be starting with the original 1977 film; I'm going in story order. That's right, I'm kicking things off with that bane of the series, The Phantom Menace.
The hype for this was unbelievable. We'd had our appetites whetted for this by the theatrical release of the Special Editions of the original trilogy, and we were really and truly going to get three more Star Wars movies. OMG x infinity! This was, I think, the first of these films - or any others, to be honest - where people were actually camped out in line weeks (or even months) in advance to be the first people to see it. There were huge stars attached to it - Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Samuel L. Jackson, and lots of original folks like Anthony Daniels and Ian McDiarmid reprising their roles from the original movies.
I camped out for roughly a few hours and was surprised how easy it was to get in on the first screening of opening night. The Lucasfilm logo appeared and the room exploded in cheers. I shed a tear as the crawl started. And I was fairly entertained by the movie itself. I thought the kid playing Anakin was all kinds of annoying, yet he was nothing to everyone's least favorite sidekick Jar-Jar Binks.
I was surprised by the negative responses to the film, though, and felt that the people who were reviewing this thing as fans of the old movies were looking at it from their new adult perspective and had lost the wonder that made them fall in love with the originals when they were kids.
The movie has its flaws, to be sure. I could never understand the politics of these films and had a hard time keeping track of the things that all the much harder-core fans seemed to know all about before even seeing the movie. But something I've always loved about these movies is that they take place in a rich and fully realized world. I don't think we're meant to understand every single thing, and we're supposed to be a bit lost - we've stepped into a world that's not our own and some things, even if they're explained to us, are just *going* to feel foreign and not quite right.
I'm not going to bother with a plot summary for this (or any of the other SW films, probably), because anyone who's a fan of these movies can probably explain it better than I can and anyone who isn't a fan is not going to care. :P What this film is essentially about is introducing us to the future Darth Vader and the woman he loves who bears him twin children, Luke and Leia. It also sets up an atmosphere that leads the characters to create the world to which we were introduced in the original Star Wars.
As a first set-up film for a story we already know, I think it did its job fairly well. And it felt like its own story with only occasional glances at future events from the original trilogy. I do think it could have been better - Lucas has clearly lost the talent he once had for engaging character dialogue. But I don't think it's quite as bad as everyone seems to remember.
cheerful
(mystery)
I think it's a combination of this and the flaws that disappointed a lot of people. The originals are flawed too but people often overlook the flaws when caught up in the nostalgia. I know I do. They're easier to forgive when the childhood memories of pretending to be Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, ect. ect. with your neighboorhood friends are so strong.
That said, I also think (this is just my own personal experience talking) being involved in the Star Wars fandom (as I was) actually probably caused me to be much more crititcal of the 'prequels' than I probably would have been otherwise. I was in the fandom pre-internet days and can remember waiting and running to the mailbox everyday for zines when they were ordered. There were tons of fanfic exploring how and why things got to the point they were in A New Hope - and after years of speculation PM just didn't add up. I'm not saying Lucas' vision was bad - I don't mean that at all - but after 14 years of my own ideas his were just so different that there will always be that disappointment. (Though, I was always kind of pleased because I had a very long outline for a fic that never got written. The outline dealt with Palpy's rise to fame starting out with the manipulation of trade routes. I got that right at least! :D)
I suppose I could call it a case of fandom sometimes 'ruining' the canon it comes from. (*Ruining in quotes because that's not quite the word I really want to use but can't think of a better one.)
(mystery)
In addition, there's something about the way the magic of certain fictional worlds are so enchanting because they, in part, just catch us off guard. Falling in love is always more natural when it's completely unexpected. ;)
(mystery)
I was surprised by the negative responses to the film, though, and felt that the people who were reviewing this thing as fans of the old movies were looking at it from their new adult perspective and had lost the wonder that made them fall in love with the originals when they were kids.
I agree. I also think that the hype was so huge that all sorts of people who weren't particularly Star Wars fans, or even science fiction fans, got sucked in because it was everywhere, and expected it to be the greatest thing ever. When it was just a science fiction movie, they whined.
On the other hand, I do honestly think that the original movies hold up better for adults than the prequels; it's not just that the audience grew up. The original movies feel like they had a certain worldly maturity to them, while the prequels feel more simplistic and naive, I think.
In particular, the prequels really never replaced the presence of Han Solo, and I can't possibly emphasize enough how important he was in keeping the original films from feeling like earnest little kids movies. His jaded sarcasm was very adult, and I know Harrison complained a million times about GL's dialogue, but he and the other OT actors really managed to pull it off, I think.
I don't think it's quite as bad as everyone seems to remember.
You mentioned Jar Jar and the casting of Jake Lloyd as Anakin, and I agree that these were probably the worst things about the film. Another issue was that Lucas cast all these great actors and then didn't get character-rich performances from them. No one managed to do what Ford or Fisher had done, and seize the screen and give us really memorable characters. I can't help wondering if George for some reason left all the most emotional performances on the cutting-room floor.... Certainly I've heard Ewan say things to make me think he was pretty disappointed.
I feel that in outline, the original trilogy is great. Lucas just really needed help in realizing his story, with dialogue and casting. It should have been me! Okay George, let's punch up the dialogue, replace Jake Lloyd with someone fifteen who can act and have chemistry with Natalie, remove all fart jokes....
Interestingly, there were two (non-Jar Jar) moments in this movie I really could never stand, but I've completely changed my mind about one of them:
1. The Midichlorians made me crazy. I felt, what, the Force has to go biotech? Just having an energy field that came from living things wasn't good enough, we have to make microorganisms? Hearing Liam Neeson say the word "cells" made me twitch. I still feel this way, and notably, this stuff was way downplayed in the final two prequel movies, making me wonder if George got the message.
2. The virgin birth also made me crazy. I know we're appropriating all sorts of mythological archetypes here, but do we have to do Jesus? This just seemed so unnecessary to me. But a single line of dialogue in Revenge of the Sith completely changed my mind about this idea, and now I am quite happy with it. Funny how that can happen.
Oh oh, one more thing: the Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan/Maul light saber battle to "Duel of the Fates" was so awesome it cancels out everything else put together. So awesome.