What films today will impact kids like SW did to us?

[dfrey79]

After reading the "TRON, I don't get it" thread. It got me to wondering if there are/were any films out, say in the last 10-15 years, that have impacted kids/teens the way certain movies impacted us.

Will there ever be another "Star Wars"? Are there any recent movies that our kids will look back on in 30 years and still LOVE it? I can see Lord of the Rings, but what else? Matrix maybe?

 

[Darklighter]

Star Wars hasn't been replaced. Star Wars still impacts kids today, maybe not in the volume it did 30 years ago but with the re-release of the trilogy in the mid 90's George managed to plant a new set of crops. With the prequels (boo-hiss) I'm sure he was able to impact another section of kids. This generation and those to come have media/information overload, with so much fodder out there for kids to cling to I doubt any other film will have the SAME impact as the OT.

Concurrently,The Harry potter franchise has had a huge impact on the millennials(or whatever you want to call them). The books significantly more than the films.

 

[phase pistol]

I'm going to guess that "nothing" will have the impact that Star Wars had, since the landscape was very flat in those days and Star Wars seemed like a towering achievement, totally new and original.

Today movies are totally disposable, built to be forgotten as soon as you see them. Plus video games and other things are crowding for your attention.

k

 

[Ttaskmaster]

Not even those, I reckon.

You'd get a few minor ones, like Avatar and Twilight where kids are getting so desperately attached to the characters that they need these silly support groups... But nothing quite so profound, I daresay. They'll grow out of it and the films will fade as soon as something new comes along.

Trouble is, so much has already been done and Hollywood are refusing to create new films, preferring instead to 're-make' everything, that I don't forsee anything as amazing and captivating as SW coming along for a good while.

Even your standard 15 minutes of fame is now reduced to about 35 seconds.

 

[dfrey79]

Yeah, I look at my son and wonder if he'll ever have "action figures" or "playsets" from a favorite movie or story. I just don't see it.

Will there ever be a merchandising campaign like Star Wars? I mean, with 100's of action figures, ships, playsets and kids wanting every one? I mean Star Wars had figures for characters who were on screen for 1 second or not at all!

I just don't see that kind of childhood toy blissfulness happening ever again. I mean, does Toy's R Us even have commercials anymore?

 

[ob1al]

SW was of it's time, before the internet and the reality of a completely 'disposable' society came into being.

The flat landscape analogy is a good one.

Back in the day, the big movie releases were EVENTS. When TV stations eventually showed those same movies, at Christmas for instance, it was a big EVENT. I remember buying the Radio Times at Christmas break from school and circling the films I was going to watch...SW, Superman, JAWS...I was genuinely excited and looking forward to seeing those films again with the family.

That was before VHS was commonplace.

Now, with DVD, Bluray, streaming video, youtube, whatever...nothing is quite as special anymore because it's instant and disposable. There hasn't been a 'big' movie bought for terrestrial broadcast in the UK at Christmas for the last 10 years which I haven't seen, or had the opportunity to see, as many times as I like, whenever I like.

There are still special and excellent commercial films being produced. Sometimes, one of those is so good that it can't be 'disposed' of so easily and ends up becoming a modern classic - like Jackson's LOTR, for example.

But the big blockbusters, like SW, JAWS, RAIDERS and so on can be compared in terms of impact to 'The Beatles'. However great or sophisticated today's bands are, none will ever gain the same cultural status or achieve that level of wordwide exposure because the audience and playing field has so radically changed.

 

[Darklighter]

This is a fantastic point. Boy bands in the 90's shook the world in their own respect but hardly comparable to the British Invasion. Today it seems like the music/TV industry is only able to hook kids when they are really young especially to these Disney faux-idols, but obsession amongst late teens is more difficult to cultivate. Twilight excluded.....

But the big blockbusters, like SW, JAWS, RAIDERS and so on can be compared in terms of impact to 'The Beatles'. However great or sophisticated today's bands are, none will ever gain the same cultural status or achieve that level of wordwide exposure because the audience and playing field has so radically changed.

 

[EvilRocketeer]

AVATAR is the new star wars...well that is what some crazy people are saying these days haha

I thought it was an okay film that borrowed from tons of other films...it wasnt original

 

[Probe Droid]

I hate to say that nothing like Star Wars will come again, but there hasn’t been anything that big again since it debuted. You could make an argument for Harry Potter, but that has the book element, so it’s not quite the same, although I think those books/films will hook several generations to come, but in 30 years from now will it be as big a religion as SW, I don’t know.

My brother and I always have been movie geeks, so by the time SW came out in ’77 I’d seen hundreds of films in every genre, but when I saw SW the first time it was so different and unique that it wasn’t like anything that ever existed before.

It was a distinct experience seeing Star Wars for the first time in ’77. So many of its effects have been reused countless times that they’ve lost the wow factor, but back then that first time they make the jump to light speed and the stars blur into streaks, everybody in the theater gripped the armrests and went “whoa!” It was an amazing thing.

I hate so say no, nothing like that will ever come along again, because you never know what’s down the road, but there’s been nothing like it since.

I was 17 when I first saw this, now I'm 50 and I'm still geeking over it.

 

[Solo4114]

Will there ever be another "Star Wars"? Are there any recent movies that our kids will look back on in 30 years and still LOVE it? I can see Lord of the Rings, but what else? Matrix maybe?

I don't think so, no. Mostly because Star Wars came out of nowhere and nothing like it had existed previously. Star Wars wasn't just a film, it was a cultural phenomenon, complete with the first mass-merchandising campaign. Star Wars drinking cups. Star Wars lunchboxes. Star Wars underwear. Star Wars shoelaces. Star Wars action figures. Star Wars TV specials. And so on and so forth. It was EVERYWHERE, and prior to that, nothing had come close to that level of merchandising based on a film with such wide appeal.

Star Wars also (despite what some here say) wasn't targeted solely at kids. It's space fantasy, definitely, but it still can appeal to adults, even today. It's probably closer to, say, a Pixar film in that respect.

Mostly, though, I think that no film will accomplish that, simply because no film will have that kind of widespread, unheard of appeal in a way that COMPLETELY changes culture.

These days, everyone TRIES to be Star Wars in the sense of having that kind of impact. With at least the first movie, nobody knew it'd take off like that. Sure you had successful films, even f/x extravaganzas, but it caught everyone off guard. Now everything is engineered to try to lead to that result.

And let's face it. When you talk about "What'll be the next Star Wars" the answer, by necessity, is "Nothing." The "next" thing won't BE like Star Wars. It'll be something completely different that sweeps the cultural landscape and reshapes it. The only thing that came close to that in recent memory was the Harry Potter phenomenon, but even that I'm not sure qualifies. It didn't exactly change the cultural landscape the way Star Wars did, but it came close.

Hell, the next "Star Wars" probably will be in some completely different medium. Maybe some film where you assume the role of the hero yourself. Some fusion of video gaming and film, played out over the "cloud" or somesuch.

 

[Solo4114]

AVATAR is the new star wars...well that is what some crazy people are saying these days haha

I thought it was an okay film that borrowed from tons of other films...it wasnt original

Avatar is, at it's core, a tech demo (or so I'm told. I haven't seen it yet). It's impressive use of a specific visual technique...but it lacks the core movie to really grab folks. From what I've heard, you watch Avatar in 2D and it's more like "Ok. Decent film. Nothin' special, but not total crap at least." If that's the case, then really, it's NOT the "new star Wars" simply because Star Wars was the fusion of both technically impressive and unprecedented F/X and a story that continues to grip people.


Again, Avatar is also, I think, too....knowing. It's TRYING to be the "new Star Wars." I don't think the "new Star Wars" will be trying to be that. I think it'll be doing its own thing and will catch the world by surprise. And it won't be a movie. Not exactly, anyway.

 

[ghostryder]

When a lot of us were kids in '77, if we wanted to be entertained, we had what, five choices:

Go to a movie
Go outside and play
Watch one of a handful of channels on tv
Read a book or comic
or
Beat up a sibling

Now kids have what, 500 plus channels, Blu-rays, video games, internet, a million vids on YouTube, DVRs, Facebook, texting, sexting, and a million other inputs/outputs that definitely would have scrambled MY brain if I were that age now. We had the combined awesomeness of all of that in a singular piece of entertainment. So in this atmosphere, I doubt if ANYTHING can capture the attention and imaginations like Star Wars did for a lot of us.

 

[ave4uevoli]

two girls and a cup comes to mind....


-sigh- I worry about the next generation...

 

[Solo4114]

When a lot of us were kids in '77, if we wanted to be entertained, we had what, five choices:

Go to a movie
Go outside and play
Watch one of a handful of channels on tv
Read a book or comic
or
Beat up a sibling

Now kids have what, 500 plus channels, Blu-rays, video games, internet, a million vids on YouTube, DVRs, Facebook, texting, sexting, and a million other inputs/outputs that definitely would have scrambled MY brain if I were that age now. We had the combined awesomeness of all of that in a singular piece of entertainment. So in this atmosphere, I doubt if ANYTHING can capture the attention and imaginations like Star Wars did for a lot of us.

Excellent point. A big part of the problem is that nothing stays popular for longer than 10 minutes, and is instantly consumed and we're moving on to the Next Big Thing (For The Next Ten Minutes). that's part of what I'm getting at with the more "knowing" approach to mass media and pop culture.

It's a LOT harder to (A) make a loud enough noise that anyone pays attention in the first place, AND (B) hold people's attention long enough to actually become as culturally impactful as Star Wars was.

There's always another "Next Big Thing" coming, and they come faster and faster now. I'd have thought that this would lead to a growing dissatisfaction and desensitization to "big noise" products, but it seems people keep falling for it again and again, chasing that same high. And maybe it all comes so fast and furious now that people just get into the habit of non-stop consumption of whatever's coming down the assembly line, rather than taking a step back and waiting for something really good.

Constant stimulation, constant input, constant material to consume -- be it good, bad, or average -- and people just constantly eat it all up. It's a lot harder for a Star Wars or a Beatles or Nirvana or whathaveyou to come along and really shake things up, and even then, it's simply quickly adopted and mass produced until the spark that made it original and interesting has been smothered.

That's why I think it'll have to be something outside of film (or at least partially outside of it). It'll be some....different...form of storytelling that becomes the next Star Wars because the existing one is so controlled and manipulated by The Powers That Be, that it's damn near impossible for anything new and unpredicted to even appear in the first place, much less take off and hold people's attention and sweep across the culture as a whole. It'll have to be something where folks are really "wildcatting", in some industry where ConHugeCo or whathaveyou hasn't taken control.

 

[PHArchivist]

POTC has made a fairly large blip on my 10-year-old son's radar.

 

[nickytea]

Well, having been a kid for most of that ten to fifteen year period, I can tell you what affected me.

I've often heard that "there will never be another Star Wars." Insofar as it being a cultural phenomenon, you may be right. The world moves so much faster now. Heck, it moved fast then, and it's inconceivably faster now. Reminds me of the Bill Moyers interview with Joseph Campbell where he asked, "what is the place of mythology in a world that moves too fast for anything to become mythologized"

My answer is the same as Campbell's. The focus shifts from the communal and societal to the individual and the personal. This is where the effect will never change.

Star Wars had the same effect on me as it had on so many, it was just on laserdisc instead of in a theater. I didn't have the sense of community or cultural event, but the personal effect was the same.

The others of modern release that have profoundly effected me have been the Matrix trilogy, the Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy, and in my supremely younger days even the Star Wars prequels. (My appreciation for them may have waned slightly through maturity, but even in my "age of analysis" I don't find them as repugnant as others do. Maybe because for me Star Wars (77) is king and everything else is second.)

I still find that with the optimism I've been able to preserve, I can have these experiences continually with movies now released. Inception was the most recent, but it also happened with District 9 and Up last year. The year before that, The Dark Knight and Speed Racer.

It seems to me that holding on with the grip of pure nostalgia only ends with a jaded view that gates up your ability to accept anything else, good or bad.

 

[HAL9000]

Harry Potter?

 

[nickytea]

Harry Potter?

The books, maybe. The movies, while entertaining, never reach the level of inspiring its fans that the books did. Some would argue that a movie can never do that like a book can, but I think we all know otherwise.

 

[CessnaDriver]

I'm going to guess that "nothing" will have the impact that Star Wars had, since the landscape was very flat in those days and Star Wars seemed like a towering achievement, totally new and original.

Today movies are totally disposable, built to be forgotten as soon as you see them. Plus video games and other things are crowding for your attention.

k

Definately.
There are more choices out there to water down the impact of anything that does manage to stand out today.

In the seventies, everyone was watching the same cartoons on Saturday morning, the same songs on the radio, the same small amount of broadcast TV channels, there was no way to watch a film at home, you had to go to the theater, Star Wars played at one local theater and everyone had to go to the same one and wait in those long lines.

So I think there was greater chance of shared experiences in entertainment choices back then.

Now I think there are so many flavors to choose from it is more likely kids won't be on the same page with each other.

 

[SithLord]

This is another era. I personally don't think that children can be impacted the way the SW generation was when they were children. There is simply too much more for them to absorb and be impressed by through other media for a movie to make that kind of an impact. Certainly that doesn't mean they won't be inspired in some way by particular movies, Avatar being mentioned as possibly one, and LOTR. Movies like 2001 and Star Wars inspired people not just children to excel in many different fields....movie production, music, science, etc. But Star Wars came out of nowhere and was such a radical shift in the movie-going experience. Going 3D with CGI is something we anticipated and the result was memorable but can it, or did it, change our collective psyche the way that Star Wars did? I don't think so. But it would be good to hear from the youngest members of the forum about what movies impacted them instead of us old guys going on about it. :lol

Star Wars played in theaters where I was for almost a year. That's unheard of now but I was following Avatar in the theaters and it played a really long time and I hadn't seen that for ages. That was good to see. When you never want the experience to end, or to leave that world created in film, that is when it makes the most profound impact.