Looking back it is clear that Star Wars was not the first science fiction film--nor the first space-themed science fiction megahit. (2001 was the highest-grosser of 1968, a year that also saw Barbarella and Planet of the Apes become pop culture icons.) It was not even the first film to serve up galactic empire-style space opera. (Barbarella did that, certainly, and in a quieter way, so did Forbidden Planet, among others.)
At any rate, the significance of Star Wars' portrayal of the stuff of pulp space opera, unprecedentedly lavish as it was, ought not to be exaggerated. Contrary to popular belief, splashy galactic empires never became all that popular on the big screen. (Get away from Star Wars, and the list of really commercially successful films of the type proves rather short--certainly a lot shorter than the list of, for example, successful superhero films.) Indeed, one can think of the Star Wars as occupying a fairly narrow niche because of this.
What Star Wars really did was point Hollywood to something more basic than that--the pattern of the contemporary blockbuster. Hollywood had been making sequels since forever--but trilogies telling an extended story, and prequels, were something more novel. So was the intensiveness of the merchandising (which was why the executives at Fox let George Lucas have the rights, and doubtless kicked themselves afterward for doing so).
One may be ambivalent about that, seeing it as a simple matter of marketing than the artistic or entertainment value of cinema, but the films' innovation extends, too, to the essential structure of the movies--the structure of the action film specifically. The Bond films of the '60s had established this, organizing an unprecedentedly fast-paced film around giving the viewer a "bump" every three minutes or so, with elaborate set pieces at the center of this, filmed with the help of a battery of techniques (from short takes to exaggerated sound effects) to maximize their visceral impact.
Of course, Star Wars came along quite a few years after the Bond films--fifteen years or so after Dr. No. And Hollywood did cash in on the Bond craze, imitating the movies, but generally in a superficial way. The studios made spy movies, and other kinds of action movies (cop movies like Bullitt and The French Connection each had a big car chase in them)--but the filmmakers there didn't quite get the way they were put together (so that Bullitt, and French Connection are just crime dramas which happen to have a car chase in them, and even the Derek Flint movies look pretty flimsy as action films).
That changed when Lucas came along and served up, as he himself put it, a blend of James Bond with Flash Gordon, which because of that blend went Bond one better--because science fiction, with its exotic aliens, super powers and imaginary vehicles makes it easy to serve up bigger, flashier action than any spy or cop adventure, and because the production entailed a special effects revolution. The key innovation was the computer-controlled camera that, because of its precision, made it easier and cheaper to take lots and lots of effects shots, getting scenes right. That opening shot of the Star Destroyer's underbelly probably couldn't have been done without it.
And so today we're not awash in galactic empire movies--but action movies and science fiction movies and especially science fiction action movies have been playing at the multiplex all year long for about as long as any young person today can remember. Many are ambivalent about this--or outright critical. I don't argue that we could use more diversity in our films--diversity of subject, theme, tone, idea. But all the same, there is no denying the technical accomplishment of the saga, or its influence in this regard, precisely because of how it won over millions of fans, and has gone on winning them down to the present day.
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Monday, December 12, 2016
Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress: Thoughts on my First Viewing
I first saw Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (1958) on Bravo before its lamentable turn to particularly disgusting versions of the reality show format.
I have to admit that I was a bit thrown by that first viewing--and even a bit let down.
One of the reasons I watched it--the first Kurosawa film I saw--was that I had heard about The Hidden Fortress being a basis (the basis?) for Star Wars.
I suppose I expected Star Wars with horses and katana instead of spaceships and light sabers.
But it wasn't that.
We get C-3PO and R-2D2, Leia and Obi-Wan, and even a Darth Vader--redemption and all. But we don't get a Luke--so, no hero's journey.
There are good guys and bad guys--but no epic, cosmic, "universal" battle of good and evil. We have instead a smaller-scale, local conflict between two clans that is deeply rooted in the feudal culture with which we are presented, with its particular ethos and loyalties.
I might add that while there are some fights, it's not really an action movie. Aside from the fact that people just weren't making action movies as we know them back then (that awaited the Bond films in the '60s), the film skews comedic, at times rather darkly comic--just as you'd expect if Lucas decided to put the droids and their misadventures at the center of his film, and also made them a couple of idiot backstabbing freebooters who don't think twice about doing things they would never put in something advertised on the Disney Channel.
It is all a reminder not just of how much Lucas owed Kurosawa, but also how much he owed his numerous other inspirations--to Joseph Campbell, to a long tradition of pulp space opera, to the adrenaline-oriented structure of the James Bond films that he seems to have figured out and indeed mastered and improved upon before anyone else in Hollywood managed to wrap their minds around it (an achievement many seem to intuit, but rarely spell out clearly), among much, much else.
After realizing that, I took another look at this movie--taking it on its own terms, rather than as a prototype for a very different film, and enjoyed it for the work of art that it is.
I have to admit that I was a bit thrown by that first viewing--and even a bit let down.
One of the reasons I watched it--the first Kurosawa film I saw--was that I had heard about The Hidden Fortress being a basis (the basis?) for Star Wars.
I suppose I expected Star Wars with horses and katana instead of spaceships and light sabers.
But it wasn't that.
We get C-3PO and R-2D2, Leia and Obi-Wan, and even a Darth Vader--redemption and all. But we don't get a Luke--so, no hero's journey.
There are good guys and bad guys--but no epic, cosmic, "universal" battle of good and evil. We have instead a smaller-scale, local conflict between two clans that is deeply rooted in the feudal culture with which we are presented, with its particular ethos and loyalties.
I might add that while there are some fights, it's not really an action movie. Aside from the fact that people just weren't making action movies as we know them back then (that awaited the Bond films in the '60s), the film skews comedic, at times rather darkly comic--just as you'd expect if Lucas decided to put the droids and their misadventures at the center of his film, and also made them a couple of idiot backstabbing freebooters who don't think twice about doing things they would never put in something advertised on the Disney Channel.
After realizing that, I took another look at this movie--taking it on its own terms, rather than as a prototype for a very different film, and enjoyed it for the work of art that it is.
G.I. Joe and James Bond: A Few More Thoughts
Recently thinking about the G.I. Joe cartoon I was struck by how strong the similarities and connections to the Bond films are--G.I. Joe arguably being derived from Bond by way of Nick Fury, Cobra pretty closely hewing to SPECTRE in its essentials, and so forth.
However, it also seems worth considering the differences-- beyond the obvious fact that, as a syndicated weekday cartoon of the '80s, it was sanitized to a much greater degree. (James Bond stand-in Matthew Burke not allowed to smoke or drink or pursue Lady Jaye in any but the most subtle fashion when he dropped by in "The Spy Who Rooked Me," while any but the most oblique reference to death was rare.)
The most striking difference may be how much more over-the-top G.I. Joe was. This seems partly a matter of how what counts as over-the-top action had escalated since the '60s--big doses of science fiction increasingly necessary by that point. However, it also reflects that it was a drawn and animated rather than a filmed live-action product--meaning that if they could think it up, they could put it on the screen. It reflects, too, the fact that because it was made as a comic book/kid's cartoon there was more latitude to get zany (writing in ghosts, Cthulhu-like monsters and super-villains created from the DNA of famous conquerors), or just plain not make any sense. After all, when Bond blew up a SPECTRE headquarters, it usually took Ernst Stavro Blofeld a year or so to turn up again in another fortress--but Cobra seems to manage comparable feats on something like a monthly, even weekly, basis, with the new facilities usually sufficient to make even the most grandiose Bond villain green(er) with envy. (Hugo Drax could only wish his space station was as large, elaborate and well-equipped as the one we see in "The Pyramid of Darkness.")
Indeed, despite being an outlawed terrorist organization without any sign of a secure territorial base (despite which Cobra temples seem conveniently accessible everywhere), or the resources of a major nation-state sponsor (no nation is ever depicted as allied with them, all opposed to them, even the U.S. and Soviet Union cooperating), Cobra seems to have at its command the conventional military capabilities of a superpower. This extends to the ability to deploy operational fighter squadrons, tank forces, submarines (and even flying aircraft carriers!) anywhere in the world in a hurry--while however many of these the Joes capture or destroy, there are (usually) plenty of replacements available. The situation is in fact such that they regularly use all these weapons in major strikes against Joe facilities and forces on U.S. soil at will.1
The extreme casualness with such detail aside, there is also the focus of the series not on a single protagonist, or even a small, close-knit group of characters, but the big team as a whole, with its attention divided among many different characters, enabling those who ordinarily were just supporting players to often get their own episodes. (In season two, in fact, about half the episodes centered on characters only introduced in that season in one way or the other, with Mainframe, Leatherneck, Lifeline--and of course, the always scenery-chewing Sergeant Slaughter--each getting to be the star of an episode at least once.) Commensurately other earlier or more popular characters scarcely got any screen time at all.
Principally a function of the show being a promo for a large and continually expanding line of action figures, I suppose, it nonetheless wound up a far cry from the hardcore individualism of James Bond--and a rarity for American television in that way.
1. Indeed, the show was often iffy even on stuff that wouldn't have compromised the storyline much--like why the chain of command in this large, elite, joint-service military unit goes straight down from General Hawk to noncommissioned and warrant officers Duke, Flint and Beachhead; or how everyone so effortlessly switches between very different and hugely demanding combat specialties, not in a pinch but as a matter of routine. (Shipwreck, according to everything we are told about him a sailor in the narrow sense of the term, who has never been a naval aviator or a member of any other service, casually goes from driving battle tanks to flying attack helicopters to piloting space-capable fighter planes from episode to episode.)
However, it also seems worth considering the differences-- beyond the obvious fact that, as a syndicated weekday cartoon of the '80s, it was sanitized to a much greater degree. (James Bond stand-in Matthew Burke not allowed to smoke or drink or pursue Lady Jaye in any but the most subtle fashion when he dropped by in "The Spy Who Rooked Me," while any but the most oblique reference to death was rare.)
The most striking difference may be how much more over-the-top G.I. Joe was. This seems partly a matter of how what counts as over-the-top action had escalated since the '60s--big doses of science fiction increasingly necessary by that point. However, it also reflects that it was a drawn and animated rather than a filmed live-action product--meaning that if they could think it up, they could put it on the screen. It reflects, too, the fact that because it was made as a comic book/kid's cartoon there was more latitude to get zany (writing in ghosts, Cthulhu-like monsters and super-villains created from the DNA of famous conquerors), or just plain not make any sense. After all, when Bond blew up a SPECTRE headquarters, it usually took Ernst Stavro Blofeld a year or so to turn up again in another fortress--but Cobra seems to manage comparable feats on something like a monthly, even weekly, basis, with the new facilities usually sufficient to make even the most grandiose Bond villain green(er) with envy. (Hugo Drax could only wish his space station was as large, elaborate and well-equipped as the one we see in "The Pyramid of Darkness.")
Indeed, despite being an outlawed terrorist organization without any sign of a secure territorial base (despite which Cobra temples seem conveniently accessible everywhere), or the resources of a major nation-state sponsor (no nation is ever depicted as allied with them, all opposed to them, even the U.S. and Soviet Union cooperating), Cobra seems to have at its command the conventional military capabilities of a superpower. This extends to the ability to deploy operational fighter squadrons, tank forces, submarines (and even flying aircraft carriers!) anywhere in the world in a hurry--while however many of these the Joes capture or destroy, there are (usually) plenty of replacements available. The situation is in fact such that they regularly use all these weapons in major strikes against Joe facilities and forces on U.S. soil at will.1
The extreme casualness with such detail aside, there is also the focus of the series not on a single protagonist, or even a small, close-knit group of characters, but the big team as a whole, with its attention divided among many different characters, enabling those who ordinarily were just supporting players to often get their own episodes. (In season two, in fact, about half the episodes centered on characters only introduced in that season in one way or the other, with Mainframe, Leatherneck, Lifeline--and of course, the always scenery-chewing Sergeant Slaughter--each getting to be the star of an episode at least once.) Commensurately other earlier or more popular characters scarcely got any screen time at all.
Principally a function of the show being a promo for a large and continually expanding line of action figures, I suppose, it nonetheless wound up a far cry from the hardcore individualism of James Bond--and a rarity for American television in that way.
1. Indeed, the show was often iffy even on stuff that wouldn't have compromised the storyline much--like why the chain of command in this large, elite, joint-service military unit goes straight down from General Hawk to noncommissioned and warrant officers Duke, Flint and Beachhead; or how everyone so effortlessly switches between very different and hugely demanding combat specialties, not in a pinch but as a matter of routine. (Shipwreck, according to everything we are told about him a sailor in the narrow sense of the term, who has never been a naval aviator or a member of any other service, casually goes from driving battle tanks to flying attack helicopters to piloting space-capable fighter planes from episode to episode.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
