Happy Birthday to George Lucas, 69. Despite everything. Graffiti and Star Wars is still a one-two punch that stacks up with the very best, and then add his contributions to Empire and Raiders, and the good bits of the rest of his career (and I remain a big fan of Jedi)...He couldn't sustain it? Well, he's not the only one; he just did it in a way more public way than most.
And some good stuff:
1. Brendan Nyhan on the scandal(s) he predicted.
2. Fenno's Paradox and re-election, from Michael Ensley.
3. So much for rebranding, Ed Kilgore notes.
4. I think Conor Friedersdorf's continuing insistence that the War Powers Act matters is wrong, maybe even silly, but he's right about the CIA and Benghazi. The obvious answer, of course, is that Republicans don't actually care about the policy disaster in Benghazi.
5. And Abby Rapoport on the next approach for the US labor...oh, movement is too optimistic, isn't it? At any rate, the next thing they're going to try.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
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My wife and I were trying to decide what has been the most influential motion picture in history. There can be arguments in favor of the legendary classics that defined what a movie could be (Metropolis, Citizen Kane, the Wizard of Oz), but in the end we decided the correct answer was Star Wars.
ReplyDeleteThere were science fiction movies before (2001, Planet of the Apes), but they were either flops or middling successes. Most successful movies in the two decades before Star Wars were set in the modern day, on Earth, like the Godfather or Hitchcock films. Star Wars was a huge jump in special effects, cemented the summer blockbuster, and paved the way for all future science fiction and fantasy movies at the box office. Without Star Wars, there would be no Star Trek movies or TNG. There would be no Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movies. There would be no Avengers series.
It was a cultural phenomenon. Regardless of what he's done since, that one movie alone makes Lucas one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
Isn't Jaws a proto-summer blockbuster?
DeleteThere is an important difference: Jaws was a very good movie while Star Wars is trash.
DeleteUnder our system, the executive branch seems to enjoy immense additional power during war time. There doesn't seem to be much hope of changing that (the precedents are well-established, and it's plausible to most people that our leader should enjoy extraordinary powers during emergencies).
ReplyDeleteGiven that, I've come to take complaints about the War Powers Act more seriously. If civil libertarians cannot restrict the government during war, maybe they're better off making sure that "war" is more narrowly defined.
Could you explain why you find Friedersdorf's focus on the War Powers Act is misguided, or even silly?
ReplyDeleteVery short version: if Congress wanted to do something, they can. That they didn't means they approved, de facto. WPA doesn't really change that -- and having it there allows people to make process arguments instead of substantive ones.
DeleteTHX-1138 IMO is Lucas' greatest work. A genuinely experimental and original slice of dystopian SF that is quite possibly the definitive work in the genre. Highly influential and both stylistically and technically distinctive. You can see bits of his more experimental camera style in Star Wars (Ep.IV) which I think is the most innovative of the trilogy in this regard. Sure Empire is a better /movie/ and my favorite of the bunch, but the camerawork is pretty workmanlike there (though excellent lighting). To me, the decline of the more experimental side of Lucas is the biggest loss over the years, but as you say, few hold on to that.
ReplyDeleteI've only seen THX once, and not in the best of circumstances...I thought it was good, but not nearly at the level of his next two. I've been intending to go back to it...I suppose I should.
DeleteAnd I disagree that Empire is a better movie than Star Wars.
Well I hold Star Wars right up there and certainly think one can argue either way. It does work the best as a stand alone movie of course which is certainly something to consider. Empire just has such better character work. But Star Wars does work the 'serial' style and standard heroic archetypes very well and perhaps the cardboard cutout characterization is fine in that sense - the archetypes do the heavy lifting.
DeleteTHX is lower budget, experimental, rather grim and much more deliberately paced than any other of Lucas' other films. That will certainly not be to everyones taste. But I stand by my assessment. Sure I've watch Star Wars probably 100x more often, so there's no denying it's more fun, but I think THX is a great film. American Graffiti, I've probably only seen a couple times. Good film but never did much for me.
What's frustrating for me about Lucas' career is he had everything he could possibly have wanted to make those last three SW movies and they were probably the worst of his career. And it's not like with other directors where you can argue the studio got in the way.
ReplyDeleteBut I guess that's one point in favor of collaborative work: sometimes you need a strong voice to point out when the director is doing something very wrong.