May 25, 1977 is a date that changed the course of the entertainment industry. From the mind of a young director and the talents of producers and actors who had yet to make it big came one of the greatest movies ever to hit the big screen: Star Wars. Today Star Wars and Lucas Arts is a brand name worth over $4 billion (Which was made evident with it's recent purchase by Disney). With the evolution of the studio comes the promise of Star Wars XII and new stories to be told. So how, after 36 years, has this movie still managed to touch the hearts and imagination of people around the world?
The original Star Wars trilogy has remained timeless for many reasons. For one, it does not set itself in any specific time-frame. By existing outside of our world it's impossible to look at a scene and say, "This is New York City in the 1970's" or "The dialect they're using shows it was filmed in this part of the world." No, by taking place on foreign planets and introducing bizarre alien races, Star Wars has managed to hold the attention of it's audiences across generations. I was born in 1991, a full 16 years after the release of the original film. I saw it for the first time at a young age on VHS on a small tube TV in my living room, and I fell in love with it. My parents took me to see the special edition re-releases in theaters in the late 90's. Every birthday and christmas I received Star Wars action figures and video games. As I sit here now I'm a couple of weeks away from my 22nd birthday and Star Wars is still my favorite movie of all time, and I'm not sure that's ever going to change. People, especially children, will forever be able to watch Star Wars and relate to the characters, the dilemmas, and the action. In the first movie in the cantina we are faced with dozens of aliens that speak different languages. Thanks to the crude development of CGI at that point, instead of green screen and animations we are watching real people in expertly designed costumes. This is a world we don't understand, but thanks to Luke Skywalker, our typical archetypal hero, he guides us and introduces us to this world.
The story is a classic one - Good vs evil, right vs wrong. The movie is not complicated on the surface. The Empire is bad and tyrannical and the rebels are good and struggling to survive. The main antagonist in the first film, Darth Vader, is a person devoid of humanity without even a human face to try and reason with. He terrifies everybody, even the officers that work under him. As we travel across the universe through the first three films we find ourselves growing with the characters. Luke Skywalker growing from a subdued farm hand into a Jedi Master. Han Solo going from a rogue and selfish smuggler into a compassionate and formidable asset for the rebellion. Princess Leia Organa, always on the forefront of the rebellion's attempts to take down the Empire, helps coordinate the battles of Yavin IV, Hoth, Bespin, and in the final film assists in taking down the shield generator on Endor, allowing Lando Calrissian to fly the Falcon in and save the day. These characters are tenacious and represent something that most people wanted to be at one point. This is why the story of Star Wars never feels dated, and why to this day episodes of Family Guy, Robot Chicken, Castle, How I Met Your Mother, and countless other shows make references to it.
With no apparent time frame in the film - All we are given is that it takes place "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away", people of all ages and interests can enjoy it. I've met many people who the only thing we have in common is that we both love Star Wars. There are concerts dedicated to it, conventions, rides in Disney World and talks of a George Lucas cultural museum being built. In 1989 the original Star Wars film was inducted into the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. In 2010 The Empire Strikes Back was also inducted. The registry exists to preserve culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films.
The films show us a cast of characters that are both lovable and relatable. Princess Leia as the strong independent woman, Luke Skywalker as the everyman, Han Solo as the handsome rogue, Chewie as the indiscernible but reliable side-kick, and we can't forget our Greek chorus: The two droids C-3PO, who is bumbling and anal retentive, and R2-D2, who is small but brave and is responsible for helping fix the Millenium Falcon on more than one occasion.
The original films still contain a lot of heart. Even the blu-ray editions which are riddled with new CGI add-ins and deleted scenes are capable of keeping the integrity of what the public saw in 1977, 1980, and 1983. CGI is a great tool, and I have no problem with movies that use it extensively - 300, Avatar, and Sin City continue to be some of my favorite films. But the fact that Star Wars had so much grit and reality added to it shows in the final product. People fall in love with the films, but they become even more special when you find out Anthony Daniels would frequently pass out from heat exhaustion inside the C-3PO costume when they were filming in the desert, or that two different people worked together to bring Darth Vader to life - A Scottish actor by the name of David Prowse, who was in the suit, and James Earl Jones who provided the voice. It's the classic story and mode of storytelling that initially made Star Wars so successful and why people are still buying the films on DVD and blu-ray over 30 years later.
No comments:
Post a Comment