The visceral effect of Star Wars...is it gone forever?

Keycube

Well-Known Member
A little backstory: NONE of my friends want to go see SOLO with me (although the first go 'round will still be, well, solo), and I refuse to be merely indulged regarding the matter, so I asked a new lady friend if she would be interested. Absolutely, she said...but...she's never seen a Star Wars movie before. I started wondering whether or not ANH was even necessary for her to enjoy the new film (Though I'll obviously try, regardless), and being a hyper-sensitive sort anyway, I started visualizing how she would react to certain elements, if she would find them enjoyable based on what I know of her, etc...

And then that got me thinking...even if she was an open-minded sort, and even enjoyed sci-fi/fantasy (she IS an avid reader, enjoys theatre, and has watched - and enjoyed - the first two Star Trek films with me), the days of shock & awe whilst being introduced to Star Wars is probably over, isn't it. And I know it's kind of a loaded question - no one is totally foreign to Star Wars - you're probably not going to surprise anyone with Darth Vader - but it makes me sad to think that "being entertained for a couple of hours" might be the ceiling anymore for some/many/most new Star Wars fans.

I confess, a BIG part of my allure for the franchise has been the depth of the faux-engineering and world/character-building; being able to immerse yourself in this new world because it made sense through a careful connecting of the dots. Flipping through the vehicle cutaway books and character profiles, it was almost like reading a documentary - there was a reasonable backstory why everything existed, whether weapon, character, or locale. But it required a suspension of disbelief that, with the in-your-face pummeling of reality upon people via social media, I'm not sure people have room for in their life.

Some of us older SW folks see all of this a bit differently, I'm sure. You almost had to be there in the theatre from the very beginning, to get the full effect of total immersion. By being there at the start, you were one of the characters, you were a shareholder. I am definitely old enough to know better than to engage in online arguments over art, but I'll be damned if I can always rein myself in. Mind you, I am not proud of this. But it's, like, part of your DNA or something. At least, that's what I would have told the judge if I had ended up assaulting someone after my rage-tantrum upon viewing TLJ. :)

I was too young for Star Trek TOS, but I'm sure those people can also relate to all of this somewhat. I can also see why some of them were a bit eyeroll-ey about Star Wars, maybe in the way some of us OTers were about the prequels (initially at least; I've more than come to terms with them). We all set our bars high, they're our babies. :)

Anyway...it just made me sad to think that there may be no more whirlwind cinematic surprises that leave your mouth agape and have you returning to the theatre 20 times. Lots of reasons for this, I suppose; big, creative risks aren't really worth it, when you can phone it in and still make megabucks. The many problematic elements of CGI, including not having practical narrative boundaries. Tonal inconsistencies.

All that said...can't wait for SOLO and IX. :)
 
It's a funny situation. I bring you two relevant examples from my moive-watching experiences.
First one is Halloween. I saw it when I was something like 16. I've already seen Scream, Nightmare on Elm Street, one of the Friday the 13th ones and a couple other late 90s-early 2000s slasher movies. I just thought Halloween was boring really. Everything that was in it I've seen before in all those other horror movies. But for some reason I watched it again some time later and slowly started to realize that it's actually a great movie and how everything I've seen in all those movies would never be without Halloween. A part of it I think is that Halloween is indisputably a quality film. Your brain doesn't necessarily register how fantastically well it is lit, how the pacing is actually cleverly stretched out, how the blocking works to every scene's advantage but the overall effect is there and you register it as a film that works. So even if my initial thoughts were not that flattering I think quality and the context (it was something really new at that time that has become a commonplace now) will have an effect on the viewer.
On the other hand I wasn't too into Citizen Kane. I get it, I appreciate it and on a technical level I understand that it really is a masterpiece. Especially that at that time it was truly groundbreaking and whatever tropes it pulled and invented it has become commonplace now in modern cinematography. Probably the thing with that is that other than being a technical masterpiece I wasn't that entertained or invested in the story. It's well acted and the story is told well, but still felt a bit detached.
So to answer your question: I don't know. :)
I think as long as it is a quality movie and there is something really relatable there it could stand the test of time. I have six nephews, oldest is 22, the youngest is 7, they are all into Star Wars, pretty much like I was at their age.
What I think really jeopardizes the effect of the originals is the fact that a new movie will be pumped out every year, so the OT will soon be diluted. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is a different discussion really.
 
You almost had to be there in the theater from the very beginning, to get the full effect of total immersion. By being there at the start, you were one of the characters, you were a shareholder.

Not "almost". You DID have to be there in the theater from the beginning, to get the full effect of total immersion. (Having been there does not, however, guarantee you have a high SWIQ.)

But to answer your question, the visceral effect as you describe could never be duplicated, because, as you point out, the film was a product of the times and the first of its kind. However, the visceral effect could be approached--approached enough to transport us back in time, to that magical summer of '77.

In order for that to happen, a new Star Wars film would have to made by a group of high-SWIQ filmmakers (writers, directors, editors, actors, creature fabrication artists, prop designers, costume designers, etc.). That's what Star Wars (and its first sequel) had.

Unfortunately, most, if not all, of the current lot of Star Wars filmmakers are low-SWIQ hacks. So as long as they own the franchise, any chance of approaching the visceral effect you're yearning for is, I'm afraid, gone.

The Wook
 
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In a nutshell...yes it's gone. We can try to recapture it but it's like chasing St Elmo's fire. If you were there at the beginning just be glad and cherish the memories. I haven't seen the latest SW film yet, after VII I decided buying three movie tickets wasn't worth it. SW is a home entertainment for me now, though the Solo movie is tempting since I enjoyed Rouge 1 more than TFA.
 
But to answer your question, the visceral effect as you describe could never be duplicated, because, as you point out, the film was a product of the times and the first of its kind. However, the visceral effect could be approached--approached enough to transport us back in time, to that magical summer of '77.
Not sure. I was a mere kid in the 80s and certainly, the 80s in Hungary were very different than the 80s in US or even in Western Europe. For quite a while I kind of shrugged at Robocop and wrote it off as a violent action flick. It is only relatively recently that I rediscovered it and understood how smart that movie is, how much social commentary and sly humour it has. All this without living or being any close to the coke-fueled excess of the 80s US. I think as long as you can put things in their contexts and you are intelligent enough to understand the context it does have the desired effect. Maybe not as much as originally when it really was new and fresh, but to a degree.

In order for that to happen, a new Star Wars film would have to made by a group of high-SWIQ filmmakers (writers, directors, editors, actors, creature fabrication artists, prop designers, costume designers, etc.). That's what Star Wars (and its first sequel) had.

Unfortunately, most, if not all, of the current lot of Star Wars filmmakers are low-SWIQ hacks. So as long as they own the franchise, the visceral effect you're yearning for is, I'm afraid, gone.

The Wook
I think in order for that to happen there needs to be two things to happen:
1. Good filmmakers who actually want to make a movie as opposed to stretching a franchise.
2. Something great from a technical point of view.

Number 1 is not an option anymore, because it is a brand now that is managed as a brand. There's no artistic impulse there. Number 2, I really wonder. The last thing was the 3D movie, but that was traded for cheap entertainment and a simple gimmick as opposed to doing any real art with it. Movies are still made based on the rules of old-style filmmaking and there's just a 3D gloss on it instead of making movies with 3D already in mind.

I do think Star Wars is not there for the future. There will be something that will have the same effect and carry on from there. There always is. There was Elvis. Then Jimi. Then Led Zep and Sabbath. And so on. Until the genre wears out and something else comes.
 
I think this is a general issue relating to film history overall. In order to appreciate how big a deal XYZ film is, you have to understand the context in which it happened. In other words, you have to be at least broadly familiar with the other films of the era.

Take Citizen Kane. To really appreciate what a big deal it was in terms of things like shot composition, use of Dutch angles, etc., you have to view other American cinema from the same era, and consider how it was shot. A lot of it was shot like a stage play at the time. For wide action shots, you'd get a framing of two characters standing in a room, just talking to each other, with the camera level as if it were an audience member. Citizen Kane upended a lot of that stuff, and did so in a consciously artistic way.

It's the same story with Star Wars (ANH). Unless you've seen a bunch of other sci-fi from that era, it's hard to appreciate just how damn good the film is and how amazing the f/x are. You need to watch junk like Battle Beyond the Stars or any of the other Star Wars inspired knockoffs, or scifi that came before it. Slow-paced films like 2001, stuff like Saturn-3, etc. Nobody was doing anything like Star Wars in 1977.

So, if you weren't there for it in the midst of it all happening, and you aren't enough of a student of film history -- and steeped in films contemporary to it -- you can't begin to appreciate what a big deal it was.


You see this in other art as well. As proof, I give you 1991 and Nirvana's Nevermind album. I was about 13 or 14 when this came out, and it's difficult to describe what a sea-change that album was for the music industry. To understand it, you'd have to be familiar with the music of the era, and how incredibly dominant stuff like hair metal had been, and just how...different the vibe was from Nirvana. How raw and powerful Smells Like Teen Spirit was in comparison to the legions of bands with teased out hair and skintight leather pants and a dime-a-dozen lead guitarist who threw in the same old virtuoso solo on every song on the album but the one or two power-ballads that their A&R guy said they had to record. Even if you studied the era, listening to the more well-known bands of the time like Poison, Motley Crue, G'n'R, Skid Row, etc., or the lesser-known bands like Slaughter, Bullet Boys, Cinderella, or Great White, if you weren't actually there and living it, watching Adam Curry rattle off one interchangeable band after another on MTV's Top 20 countdown each week, it's difficult to really appreciate the true impact of that one song, and how it completely shifted the landscape. It's the same way that, if you didn't grow up in it, you can't really understand what a seismic change it was when the Beatles hit it big in the U.S. You might grasp it on an intellectual level, but you'll never get it the way the people who lived it did.


Things like this -- including movies -- will happen again. There will be some huge, earth-changing event in film. SOMETHING will change, as it always does. Some change is gradual, but you get these meteor-like moments from time to time, and it'll happen again.
 
For me I think it has lost some of the "wow" factor because it is no longer an event; we know there will be Star Wars movies in theaters every year, forever (or at least until Disney milks every last drop and people stop going).
 
You see this in other art as well. As proof, I give you 1991 and Nirvana's Nevermind album. I was about 13 or 14 when this came out, and it's difficult to describe what a sea-change that album was for the music industry. To understand it, you'd have to be familiar with the music of the era, and how incredibly dominant stuff like hair metal had been, and just how...different the vibe was from Nirvana. How raw and powerful Smells Like Teen Spirit was in comparison to the legions of bands with teased out hair and skintight leather pants and a dime-a-dozen lead guitarist who threw in the same old virtuoso solo on every song on the album but the one or two power-ballads that their A&R guy said they had to record.

Things like this -- including movies -- will happen again. There will be some huge, earth-changing event in film. SOMETHING will change, as it always does. Some change is gradual, but you get these meteor-like moments from time to time, and it'll happen again.

A decade older than you, and therefore a child/teen of the 70s classic rock/folk rock era, I can tell you that there wasn't anything all that novel about Nirvana when they arrived on the scene in the early 90s. They were throwbacks, sure. And yeah, they had their own distinct sound--like any good band does. But there was nothing really new about them, for people my age.

You're right, hair metal was weak. And so we were happy to put an end to that. But for us, it was more like, "Cool. It's nice to hear a band get back to real rock.". And Nirvana was the perfect band for that, in that they would've fit right in during the classic rock era--and with a sound that was unique enough that they weren't gonna sound like copycats of any other hit bands dominating the music scene at the time.

So Dan, I usually agree with you on stuff, but in this case, I don't buy the analogy with Star Wars. It's true, that Star Wars and Nirvana both spawned copycats. But Star Wars was completely novel with its effects. Nirvana was not much more than a throwback. A quality throwback, for sure. And a highly-welcomed throwback, you betcha. But a throwback, nonetheless.

Star Wars was no throwback. It was something never seen before. Something magical.

The Wook
 
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A decade older than you, and therefore a child/teen of the 70s classic rock/folk rock era, I can tell you that there wasn't anything all that novel about Nirvana when they arrived on the scene in the early 90s. They were throwbacks, sure. And yeah, they had their own distinct sound--like any good band does. But there was nothing really new about them, for people my age.

You're right, hair metal was weak. And so we were happy to put an end to that. But for us, it was more like, "Cool. It's nice to hear a band get back to real rock.". And Nirvana was the perfect band for that, in that they would've fit right in during the classic rock era--and with a sound that was unique enough that they weren't gonna sound like copycats of any other hit bands dominating the music scene at the time.

The Wook

Oh, sure, the artistic impact of it may not have been that much. At least in the sense of the band being in many respects a "back to basics" affair. If you'd lived through punk in the 70s and 80s, then it was undoubtedly familiar. But that's true for the Beatles and the Stones. They were taking old blues-influenced stuff, or bits of Little Richard and whatnot, and just rephrasing them, while bringing their own sensibilities to the affair.

But the impact on the industry was absolutely huge. An entire format of music was binned almost overnight, and new "grunge" bands were gobbled up by labels left and right. Of course, these were bands where many of them had been quietly laboring away in Seattle and L.A. for nigh on a decade at the time, but still, the shift away from "hair metal" and towards "grunge"/"alternative" was massive and swift. While I am admittedly not as tied into popular music as I once was, I haven't seen that kind of overnight shift in musical styles since. Same story with the British Invasion stuff. Overnight, you have labels gobbling up British musical acts, just to feed the appetite of the audience for this new thing (which in many cases wasn't quite so new as it seemed).

Star Wars wasn't anything "new" in some respects, either. If you know your film history, you can instantly spot the homages to this or that film. The Searchers, The Dam Busters, Kurosawa, Reifenstahl, etc. But to the public, it's this wild new thing, and it spawned a host of imitators very, very quickly.
 
It's also worth noting that when SW was released, there were no competing franchises. It played in some theaters for almost eight months. Then it got a re-release about a year later. That's a long time to marinate in the mind's-eye of the public, a luxury most movies don't have anymore.

And in early–mid 1977 there were no video game systems in people's homes yet. Television shows were largely limited to the output of only three channels. There was no "binge watching" and most significantly, there was no internet, social media or 24 hour-a-day news cycles short-circuiting everyone's attention spans.

Now? I think there are just too many things competing for our attention to allow something like Star Wars to ever happen again.
 
Sadly, yes.

There had never been a movie like Star Wars before that. I was an evolution in film making but 2001 was, I think, the only serious and big budget space movie to date.
The technology to make Star Wars came from all the movies and TV shows that came before it.

Now for anyone looking back. It is no big deal. Most don't care that it was done with practical models and no CGI.
It is not on the immersion of the big screen and you don't have the physical response being surrounded by the musical score.

If you can get someone to watch the original cut... and are not interested in the pure product... all they see is the oddly shaped mattes behind the ships thanks to the hi-def TV.
 
Nothing is ever gone....forever, it just needs to have the right people involved who are passionate and believe in what they are making and not some soul less by-the-numbers, marketing research team campaign hacks
 
yeah,i feel exactly the same way keycube right up to and including your reaction after TLJ.and the wooks comments ring true as well.
 
Of course it's gone. Be glad that the experience was so overwhelmingly positive that you had something like that. Media over-saturation pretty much prohibits that occurring again; the hype machines needing to whip everyone to a frenzy and hope they see some coin from the weak-by-comparison experiences that are delivered, before folks see the man behind the curtain yanking on them. Same as the rest of life. If you were there for this bolt of lightning, be very very glad of it.

Star Wars' ingredients were and are very familiar, but the pot hadn't been stirred in quite that way. Equally important, or perhaps more importantly, given what the world was enduring at the time, the *timing* of SW kicked it in the ass and upstairs a few levels as well. You can't separate its success from the cultural context. There's a lot of ground to cover for great cinematic experiences, but that represents unknown realms (not really but... SW is now SW by committee and marketing), the current formula will be stuck to as long as it gets your butts in seats, which it does.
 
Star Wars wasn't anything "new" in some respects, either. If you know your film history, you can instantly spot the homages to this or that film. The Searchers, The Dam Busters, Kurosawa, Reifenstahl, etc. But to the public, it's this wild new thing, and it spawned a host of imitators very, very quickly.

You're right, Star Wars was this wild new thing. My point is, that Nirvana was not, to anyone in their mid-20s and up.

Had Nirvana's first album, Nevermind, come out in 1975, it would've been well-received, because it's good stuff. But it wouldn't shake the industry, at all. They'd be just another promising young band. And not even the best band to debut that year, as Aerosmith would no doubt garner that distinction with their first album, Toys In The Attic.

However, you take Star Wars back in time, put it on screens around America, and it would turn the industry upside down, just like it did in '77. Even more so, the farther back you go.

The bottom line is this. Nirvana was only novel and radical to kids your age when they debuted. Star War was novel and radical to everyone in that magical summer of '77.

The Wook

Of course it's gone. Be glad that the experience was so overwhelmingly positive that you had something like that.

I'm incredibly thankful for that every day, Clerval.

The Wook
 
You're right, Star Wars was this wild new thing. My point is, that Nirvana was not, to anyone in their mid-20s and up.

Had Nirvana's first album, Nevermind, come out in 1975, it would've been well-received, because it's good stuff. But it wouldn't shake the industry, at all. They'd be just another promising young band. And not even the best band to debut that year, as Aerosmith would no doubt garner that distinction with their first album, Toys In The Attic.

However, you take Star Wars back in time, put it on screens around America, and it would turn the industry upside down, just like it did in '77. Even more so, the farther back you go.

The bottom line is this. Nirvana was only novel and radical to kids your age when they debuted. Star War was novel and radical to everyone in that magical summer of '77.

The Wook



I'm incredibly thankful for that every day, Clerval.

The Wook

Yeah I have to agree with The Wook on this, it literally defined and created the entire concept of pop culture films. It was a seminal event and I haven't seen any if since that can really compare. Someday perhaps but as of now, nothing had the cultural impact and lasting impact that a film called Star Wars had in 1977.
 
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For me, Star Wars will always be a product of its time. They just don't make movies like that anymore so none of the new movies feel like Star Wars. The same can be said of the Indy franchise. It resides in the 80s and because no one makes that kind of movie anymore, any new movies will not be Indiana Jones. I don't think there's any magic in the 70s or 80s, I think the same thing of Jurassic Park. Movies made since the 90s are just not Jurassic Park. The franchise is a product of its time. You can't go back home.
 
For me, Star Wars will always be a product of its time. They just don't make movies like that anymore so none of the new movies feel like Star Wars. The same can be said of the Indy franchise. It resides in the 80s and because no one makes that kind of movie anymore, any new movies will not be Indiana Jones. I don't think there's any magic in the 70s or 80s, I think the same thing of Jurassic Park. Movies made since the 90s are just not Jurassic Park. The franchise is a product of its time. You can't go back home.

Indy in retrospect feels like the result of Star Wars as opposed to its own unique contribution. And not because Ford and Lucas involvement, it seemed to me like the natural progression of the pop culture wave Star Wars created.

Crap, maybe really Jaws should get some of this credit.
 
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