Star Wars, -30-

[calimac]

So some time thirty years ago this month, sturgeonslawyer and I and our friend Jo piled into her car, because she had one, and drove from our college down to the biig theatre (the one that features in Michaela Roessner's Vanishing Point, then unwritten) to see the new skiffy film.

And we watched it, and we came back out, and someone asked me, "So what did you think?" and I replied, "Not bad." That has remained my settled opinion. That it changed the cultural environment of SF film is beyond question. But the film itself? Not bad. A rousing cliched adventure story which at least was not boring, which is more than I can say for some of its successors, both in the series (Phantom Menace) and out (Raiders of the Lost Ark).

The series jumped the shark for me at the end of the second film, when Vader tells Luke "I am your father." I didn't believe it then, and I believe it even less now. It's a fudged-in retcon, I'm sure of it. Ghosti-Wan's abashed explanation in the third film, as to why he "lied" in the first one about Vader having killed Luke's father, is strained beyond credibility.

Also beyond credibility in the third film is the equally obviously retconned scene where Luke and Leia turn out to be siblings. We were watching that on first run - none of us knew what was going to happen - when Luke made the announcement to Leia. At that moment, liveavatar, sitting next to me, turned to me and said, "Somehow, I always knew." Followed immediately by Leia saying to Luke, "Somehow, I always knew."

Incidentally, that turns one scene in the second film, where Leia kisses Luke on the mouth to spite Han, into inc-st. LJ in its quest for purity should delete all Star Wars fans.

About the prequels, the less said the better. I once read a story in which the Beatles got back together for a reunion tour, and they were awful. Who'd have imagined, if something equivalent to that actually happened, how awful it really would be?

So if Star Wars isn't the greatest SF film of all time - and it has aged rather badly - what is? grrm says Forbidden Planet. I wouldn't. It's got a solid plot - not surprising since it's by William Shakespeare - but the actual writing is poor. And the acting! Except for Walter Pidgeon, who's fairly good as always, everybody in it is lifeless at best.

My list of the three greatest SF films has:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey - a perfectly paced, awesome epic, beautiful to watch, and the special effects still hold up. Deep and complex enough to set the viewer thinking, but not too much so to understand.
2. The Man in the White Suit - a 1950 Ealing comedy about a meek scientist, played by Alec Guinness, who invents an indestructible fabric. The story is mostly about the social effects of the invention, which makes this one of the few SF films that could have been a leading story in the top-ranked SF magazines of its own day, instead of reflecting the SF of 30 or 40 years earlier.
3. Dark Star - one of the Gemini astronauts described the spacecraft as "an orbiting men's room." This is perhaps the only SF film to honestly depict that side of space travel. And funny, funny, and rather wistful too.

I made this list some years ago, and there have been good SF films since then, notably A Scanner Darkly last year, but I'll stand by this.

Comments

Re: Greatest SF

[19-crows.livejournal.com]

Had you read the book? I'd read the book first and liked it better. I was okay with the movie though there were plenty of things I didn't like.

Re: Greatest SF

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I have not read the book. But from what I've read about it, it does sound as if it's much better than the movie.

Re: Greatest SF

[19-crows.livejournal.com]

The book was much more cryptic about what happened, just presented all the fact and left the reader to add up the conclusion. When I finished it I had to go back and re-read many parts, and then google for reviews and discussion to see if I was right. I love that kind of puzzle.

It also had a different framing device that I liked more.

I think you could still enjoy it, knowing the outcome, but I'm a person who doesn't mind spoilers and enjoyed seeing The Sixth Sense knowing what the deal was.

Re: Greatest SF

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The Sixth Sense was a raw cheat.

I didn't think much more highly of the logic or honesty of The Prestige, and it wasn't even as good a movie.

Re: Greatest SF

[19-crows.livejournal.com]

What was the cheat of The Sixth Sense? I just thought it was an interesting idea.

I thought the book of The Prestige was pretty honest and very logical, though I could have missed something.

Sixth Sense cheats

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

1)As the ghosts are not a real-world thing, all we know of their nature and behavior is what the movie tells us. The ones we know to be ghosts do not behave at all like Malcolm does. For him to turn out to be one retroactively changes the known parameters of ghostly behavior.

2) While we never see Malcolm interact with anyone other than Cole onscreen, it is quite simply impossible for him to conduct his life without noticing that nobody else can see him. Some defenders of the film claim he doesn't continually exist; he just fades in whenever Cole needs him. I don't buy that either.

The Prestige (the movie) is not a cheat in that sense; but it suffers from the problems of huge over-elaborate schemes by the characters. These suffer from the usual glitches of:

1) They're far more complex, and requiring far more personal effort and sacrifice, then is justified by their motivations (despite the fact that the motivations here are very strong).

2) They're complex set-ups that won't work unless other characters over whom the schemers have no control behave in just the right way, and of course they do.

3) Too much expense, too many minions needed who could blab, too many odd things that the police or somebody would eventually notice.

Also, one plot catch specific to this movie: why doesn't Angier, a master magician on the lookout for trickery, suspect that Tesla just bought a bunch of hats and dumped them in the forest? That's far more likely than an actual duplicating machine. That's what Borden would have done. That's what the filmmakers actually did.

Re: Sixth Sense cheats

[19-crows.livejournal.com]

I guess I was able to suspend disbelief with The Sixth Sense - I thought the acting was really good, which made a big difference.

I agree on the Prestige-movie problems. The character played by Michael Caine (I'm no good with names) has a much smaller role in the book, which keeps the focus on the main characters where it belongs. The book has fewer subplots and small characters, also a plus.

Re: Sixth Sense cheats

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Not only is the acting good, but Shyamalan has the best hand at what I guess is called mise-en-scene of any director. It kept me watching not only Sixth Sense, but the Mel Gibson one, which had a much dumber plot, and even The Village, a film with a plot so lame I wouldn't have given it any tolerance from any other director. But from him it was still fun to watch.

You mention Michael Caine in The Prestige, which reminds me - I spent the movie wishing I could shout "SPEAK UP, man! I can't make out a word you're saying!"