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The Empire Stumbles
The evidence: In its first four days, Star Wars: Episode 2 -- Attack of the Clones sold nearly $117 million worth of tickets. When Spider-man opened two weeks earlier, it earned $115 million in just three days. Not only that, but the nerd-arachnoid drama earned another $48 million in box office during the weekend George Lucas' elephantine epic opened. And it shows no signs of slowing down. Spider-man is now on track to massacre Star Wars , perhaps out-earning it in the early days of the summer by as much as $100 million, if projected patterns continue. What happened? You can hardly call Clones a failure, but seeing it seems as much a reflex as a choice. And the grosses are below expectations, where as Spider-man is re-defining what a mega-hit movie is. I think Lucas and his movies have outgrown their audience, losing relevance to the young, the real avatars of culture, and are suffocating under their own enormous inertia and weight.
The late mythologist Joseph Campbell (who helped Lucas craft the Skywalker/Vader saga) wrote in The Elements of Myth that the hero-journey -- the often rebellious trek far from loved ones and home, finds a great teacher, battles evil forces in the world -- is inherent in every great myth, from cave-dweller's tales to Tolkien to Star Wars. It's certainly central to the story of Peter Parker, an unhappy and awkward kid who overnight goes from suffering at a nasty Queens high school to soaring over Manhattan's skyscrapers in search of the Green Goblin (this movie's Dark Side rep). In fact, every great myth has a lonely hero, a masked villain or two, and thinly-disguised spiritual choices between forces of good (God/a.k.a. The Force) or Evil (the literal Dark Side of the universe which shows up, Campbell wrote, in paintings that are thousands of years old.)
Why is Spider-Man's version surprisingly drubbing Lucas's, when he's cornered the global franchise on cinematic myth-marketing and he's one of the master cinematic marketers and hype-meisters of all time?
Several possible reasons. The Spider-Man saga is a simple love/adventure story, much like the first Star Wars, which didn't take itself nearly as seriously as the pompous sequels, pre-quels and tie-ins hatched at Lucas's secret ranch. In Spider-man, a nerd feels powerless, gets bitten by the bug, becomes powerful, goes on to confront great evil (and doesn't get the girl). Luke Skywalker, too, was powerless and trapped when we first met him. Then he met Obi-Wan, got in touch with the Force, went soaring around the universe to battle evil -- and didn't get the girl, either. Since the audience and industry expectations of Spider-Man were lower, the movie could afford to be looser, jokier -- more human. But poor George Lucas had dug himself a monstrous hole.
Simply because it's new (on film, at least) , Spider-Man arrives shrouded in less hype than Star Wars. When George Lucas decided to resuscitate his epic after a nearly generation-long respite, he could have chosen at least somewhat of a classier route and put some limits on the marketing that now engulfs big movies. Instead he acted like Jabba the Hutt, gorging on every dollar he could get. The producers of Lord Of The Rings curbed the marketing and toy tie-ins with corporations peddling food and dolls to kids out of respect for Tolkien. That makes Lucas, who showed no such restraint, all the more hypocritical and pretentious - polluting the series with trolls, Ewoks, aliens, soldiers, Jar-Jar Binks and his goofy patois, and all their inevitable action figures, light sabres, T-shirts and soda-cup representations.
Lucas created a brilliant film saga, then undercut it by demonstrating that there were few limits -- maybe no limits -- on what he would do to make still more money. The message to kids especially was follow the Force, but rake in the cash.
A franchise like Star Wars ought to be allowed to -- and can afford to -- retain some of its dignity and still make tens of millions. The movies make a fortune in their own right, a common experience that transcends reviews and tie-ins. When is enough enough? Lucas crossed the line, and cheapened his movies.
He also neglected to bone up on Campbell's books on the power and elements of myth. Spider-man is a simple love story about teen-aged angst: a kid almost anybody can relate to is suddenly transformed by a great power, grapples touchingly and hilariously to come to terms with that, and confronts a single bad guy and vanquishes him, though not without cost. Sound familiar? It ought to. That was more or less the feeling, despite the Imperial Death Star, of the original Star Wars. Spider-man was a cartoon myth -- part of the once-brilliant Marvel Comics factory, balm to nerds of the time -- and the movie doesn't forget its roots in the dialogue, plotting or action.
But what is Attack of the Clones about? The Skywalker genealogy? The Empire's evil origins? The birth of the Empire's Troopers? The rise and fall of the Queen of Naboo and her tormented lover and complex offspring? Trade unions and their relationship to the Galaxy? Legislative bodies and their place in galactic history? Lucas approaches the life and times of Darth Vader in much the same way biographer Robert Caro explores the life and times of ex-president LBJ (his latest book that's 1,300 pages long -- and that's just one volume of a projected four). Do we really care precisely how Anakin Skywalker got pissed off and turned to the Dark Side? Or would we -- especially the youngest among us -- be happy to see Yoda flashing his light-saber around and doing his Jackie Chan imitation?
Spider-Man is interesting on other levels, too. It's a very New York movie, set in working-class Queens and amidst the spires of Manhattan. It is unabashedly domestic and patriotic, even as Star Wars is pointedly other-worldly in tone and feel. Consider the Spider-man scene where New Yorkers cheer our hero from the Queensborough Bridge. It's heavy-handed but interesting. The movie ends with Spider-man draped around an American flag on a skyscraper not far from where the World Trade Center Towers used to stand. Holed up in his California cocoon, Lucas seemed to fall out of touch with post-9/11 America. He had too much genealogy to worry about. But the producers of Spider-Man, with a few last-minute adjustments, read it right. Star Wars was conceived in an era when Harrison Ford's Han Solo perfectly typified a generation's disenchantment with government and politics. Peter Parker has a different view, and so do the millions of kids making his movie a smash.
Attack Of The Clones is a cautionary tale, all right, but perhaps not the one Lucas intended. The real lesson is, if you're trying to make great movies aimed primarily at the young, avoid pomposity, self-indulgence and too much self-reference. Keep the story simple, clear and touching. Remember that movies mirror life. Films like this are about love, loss, conflict and fantasy. Spider-Man keeps that very much in mind. Attack Of The Clones seems to have forgotten it. That's why kids are flocking repeatedly to a new variety of myth, unseating the reigning one.
ObSTFUK: Shut the fuck up Katz!
There is a good chance however that with the release of episode 3, that once the series is complete you will see a major increase in not only box office revenues, but also in home video sales, I know that I for one will be buying the box set. And when one keeps in mind that the entire series is really one movie split into different parts, this is most likely one of the highest grossing movies to ever be released. In addition to this, it is a fact that sequels (and in this case prequels) historically don't generate much revenue (look at Rocky and Rambo) so when you consider the movie in light of this, I think it is pretty impressive that they were able to generate the amount of revenue that they did.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Yeah, so the 3,800 or so screens that Spider-Man is running on (even more than Shrek), compared to ~1,000 less for Attack of the Clones has nothing to do with it, eh?
Rami doesn't give a damn if the theater is "Billy Bob & A Projector", Spider-Man will still show. At least Lucas wants to make sure every theater showing Star Wars is equipped with certain basics, such as digital sound.
You also need to look at the fact that people have been clinging to their Spider-Man comics their whole lives. Of course there's going to be a build-up, of three generations OR MORE who are eagerly anticipating a big budget version of the comic brought to life on film. On the other hand, most people have already seen FOUR Star Wars movies, and a lot of people who aren't die hard fans figure that they can wait a few weeks, or even for its video/DVD release before they see it. They've seen it before, and they'll want to see the new one, but they're in no rush to wait in long(er) lines at the theater to see it in the first week or two.
Only an idiot would say that Star Wars is losing it and Spider-Man "has it all" based on nothing but box office reciepts. If you continued to use that logic, Titanic would be "the best film ever made" while something like Blade Runner would be "complete crap."
Give me a break, and my 10 minutes back that I spent reading this topic and writing my reply.
Lucas seemed to fall out of touch with post-9/11 America.
If ATOC had addressed 9/11 in a similar fashion as Spiderman, I would have picked up a light saber myself and done an Anakin-style massacre at Skywalker Ranch. While I personally thought Spiderman was better, I think the 9/11 patriotic stuff is contrived and trite at this point in time. For me, it made the movie worse.
"You see Mr Lucas, you suck as a writer. Really awful. And your directing...it's not very good either. So here's the deal. You write up an outline (no dialogue allowed) of Episode Three. You then hire a competent and hip writer, someone younger than, say, fifty. Said writer writes Episode Three, based on your notes. Then, you go and hire yourself a hot, fresh director--or Steven Spielberg, he'd do. You let them direct the movie while you sit back and collect lots of money. Everybody wins.
If you do that, we promise to go see it. And we will not burn you in effigy."
The coolest voice ever.
According to boxofficmojo.com, Spider-Man spent $50 million on marketing to Attack of the Clones' $25 million. Doesn't sound like Spider-Man was lacking in a hype budget. Looks like the production budget for Spider-Man was higher than AotC by $15 million as well.
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
I agree. Jon Katz, your articles are nothing but wind music. Plenty of bluster, very little substance.
Media critics love to compare gross sales of film A to gross sales of film B. But are they adjusting for inflation ( in ticket price? )
I saw Star Wars for $1.50 in 1976. I saw Spiderman for $9.00 in 2002.
What does it mean for Spiderman to gross more than Star Wars if a ticket price is 6 times what it was when Star Wars was released?
For once, I'd like to see a well-researched statistic which actually compares the number of tickets sold rather than gross sales. Then, perhaps, you could point to a trend.
-S
Well, there's also the fact that opening weekend for Spiderman saw the movie playing on hundreds of screens thousands of times a day here... One 12 screen theatre had ONLY Spiderman, all day from 10:00am.
Star Wars opening weekend? A couple dozen theatres showing on a couple screens, making for hundreds of shows a day.
Didn't Katz say something in there about how the less hyped movie was Spiderman? Funny... there was a whole lot of money tossed into hype, specifically to get the movie on more screens for more viewers, in order to try to win viewers away from Clones. It was only in the second week of Clones' run here that it was opened up into more of a wider set of times.
All this "biggest weekend" and "biggest grossing" movie is crap unless you compare A) the number of screens the movie was shown on B) correct for inflation C) factor in promotional and tie-in budgets...
--- http://foo.ca
Well, there's also the fact that opening weekend for Spiderman saw the movie playing on hundreds of screens thousands of times a day here... One 12 screen theatre had ONLY Spiderman, all day from 10:00am.
Actually, that's not a fact. This is a fact: Spiderman opened on around 1600 screens in North America, while Clones opened on around 1500 screens. That's not enough of a difference to explain away the revenues.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
And even after that, it's still crap. Movie quality != better box office. Katz (and others) have completely bought into the movie studio's line.
Next thing you know, we'll be saying that just because Microsoft sells more copies of Windows, that it's a better OS.
If you're thinking patriotism, you may be interested in yesterday's and today's editions of The Boondocks. I'm eagerly waiting to see it evolve over the week...
Spiderman was just a better movie
I agree, but had trouble pinpointing exactly why the new Star Wars movies weren't as good as their predecessors.
There is a brilliant article here that does explain exactly why. The gist of the article is that the two new Star Wars movies are missing any sort of Han Solo character. There is no 'cool' guy to offset all the earnest Jedi assholes -- who are basically divinity students -- and just a little more exciting. It's like Beverly Hills Cop without Eddy Murphy.
There is a very insightful point in the article describing how the re-mastered Star Wars has Greedo shoot Han Solo first, making it look like Han Solo acted in self-defence, and effectively 'nicing' up his character. In the original, he shoots first. In the new movies, only robots get shot.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
The reason that spiderman trumped star wars isn't because it's a better movie or because of the love story. It's because it's probably the first marvel movie to have a plot that most nerds can appreciate - and it's an OLDER story, older than star wars. Spiderman has been around longer.
And you're wrong about the hype. Spiderman has been hyped just as much, if not more. Just look at the last few months of releases from marvel comics, and how many commercials are using spidey as a mascot now.
I know an actor or two (minor) that were in the production of TPM. According to them, GL's directing style is to look like he's thinking really really hard, then shout "We need to do it again. I need more energy, people! Energy!"
Every shot at least 4 times. Even quiet dialogue scenes.
-Styopa
Occam's Razor, indeed. And I agree with you. But it's fairly un-rigorous to just leave it at "better written and better directed." The person who writes the articles for a living probably wants to figure out why it's better written and better directed. Having a better writer and a better director is much of the story, of course, but there is often something behind the lesser writing and direction.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
I'll grant you that in the first three Star Wars, the special effects served the story as a means to an end, and not an end in and of themselves. I'll also grant you that in Episode I, the emphasis was unnecessarily on the effects. However, in AotC, I felt that the effects were back to their rightful role of simply supporting the story, rather than drawing attention away from the story. There were a couple exceptions where I felt the effects needlessly grabbed my attention, but surprisingly, it occurred less than they did in Spiderman.
That is, in Spiderman, the effects were terrible. When he had just discovered his powers, and was running across the rooftops, it looked horrible, cheap, tacky, and worst of all, fake. The web-swinging scenes were spectacular, but they were spectacular in the same way that the intro cinematics to a Final Fantasy game are spectacular. A great achievement of computing, but obviously a computing achievement.
In AotC, most of the time, I didn't even notice the effects, although of course I knew they were there. For example, the Jedi/droid battle in the arena. That was an amazing scene, and looked incredibly real. Also, the battle outside the city between the clones and the droids - also exceptionally well done. The Yoda fight scene was a little obvious, but overall, I think AotC is much more fluid between effects/reality than Episode I, and I don't think your statement is fair.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
So first of all, the box office is the be all end all. Spiderman is "massacring" Episode 2 in earning the almighty dollar. (Even if that really was all that mattered, it's way too early to call.) But then he complains about how Lucas has sold out, and he could have kept the franchise's dignity and still made tens of millions of dollars. So which is it Jon?
Vote Quimby.
Lucas doesn't have some sort of moral obligation to refer to or otherwise acknowledge real world events. It's a movie for God's sake.
Then why did he include the scene with a bar patron offering "death sticks" (cigarettes) to
Obi Wan? That scene made me cringe.
They may as well had tacked on a PSA from the Surgeon General.
First both are heavily religous movies. The new age buddhist in Clones v.s. more traditional Christianity (Aunt Mae says the our father, they celebrate thanksgiving and there is a problem saying grace).
Peter Parker is a comic character. He makes a lot of mistakes trying to become the superhero, and we laugh with him when things don't work out. That is someone everyone can relate to. The universe doesn't depend on him, so he really has choices.
Luke and Anakin Skywalker can't look stupid. They do stupid things while doing something heroic, but there is no "oops", and they always end up working out. The silly stupid is reserved for Jar Jar, or C3PO.
Another difference is the mentor - ObiWan wants Luke to become like him, but Peter's Uncle can't help him with his spider powers, only his moral makeup.
And in Spiderman, there are a lot of moral trade-offs (he could have got the girl, but I won't spoil it). He could explain or expose his secret and it would fix things short term, but he doesn't. He doesn't expose the Green Goblin's identity because it would hurt someone else, though he will be blamed. There are heavy costs to do the right thing in Spider-Man. Every doesn't live happily ever after, but they retain their honor.
There is some of this in StarWars, but things tend to work out a lot better against heavier odds. Like at the end of Return of the Jedi, we see Luke's father with the good Jedi. Han Solo gets Leah - apparently there are no noblesse oblige and they can go away to a garden planet and not worry about the messy politics (I think about the US revolution or civil war - building and/or rebuilding a country isn't easy).
Star Wars is great myth, in the sense of a grand opera like the Ring Cycle. Bigger than life with cleaner endings and contrasts.
Spiderman fits within life.
I kid you not. Check out the "Rename 'The Two Towers' to Something Less Offensive Petition". I like the note from the webmaster of petitiononline.com basically stating that the guys who created the petition are idiots. And check out the "View Current Signatures" section for extra chuckles.
GMD
watch this
So, a film that makes tons of cash is a demarcation of generational values?
Wither Titanic? Harry Potter? Lord of the Rings?
And will we be saying the same when MiB2 and Matrix Reloaded start to hit the screens?
Feh. People just like going to see them there talkies.
And while we're on the "ton of cash = cultural icon" roll, the following from the AP Wire, about the past record-breaking Memorial Day Weekend:
It was as diverse a weekend as moviegoers could ask for, with action blockbusters balanced by smart adult films and family fare. Each of the main movie ratings were represented in the top four -- "Attack of the Clones" with a PG rating, "Spider-Man" with a PG-13, "Insomnia" with an R and "Spirit" with a G.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Monday at North American theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. Final figures will be released Tuesday.
1. "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones," $61.2 million.
2. "Spider-Man," $36.5 million.
3. "Insomnia," $26.2 million.
4. "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron," $23 million.
5. "Enough," $17.5 million.
6. "About a Boy," $10 million.
7. "Unfaithful," $7.7 million.
8. "The New Guy," $5.5 million.
9. "Changing Lanes," $2 million.
10. "The Scorpion King," $1.9 million.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
And this leads to the question I have been wondering about for my (future) kids. Do I show them episodes IV-VI and then I-III? Or do I go chronologically? Which would be more fun?
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
This has always amazed me. To compare a 2002 movie's revenues at $8 a seat to a 1977 movie's revenues at $4 a seat and say it outsold Star Wars! Well, duh!
Now why don't we just look at number of tickets sold and see where we stand, keeping in mind that even that metric is skewed by the size of the movie-going population now vs then, the economic climate in which the movie was released (millions of out-of-work people all over the US and even Europe right now probably aren't shelling out the bucks to go see a movie, and if they do, they probably won't see it multiple times like they might if they had lots of discretionary money or time).
And another thing that's meaningless is how much a movie did in it's first weekend (as opposed to altogether). I and many people I know purposely avoid seeing any blockbuster its first weekend because we don't like waiting hours in line to find out it's sold out, or at the very least having to sit in the front row, often not even together, and crane your neck to see 1/4 of the screen at a time. Phooey. Just wait until it's been out a week or so. Does that mean it's not as good a film because I didn't see it in the first couple days? Get real. And to compare first weekend sales of movie A, which came out in February (let's say) in the middle of winter with nothing going on, to movie B which is released in late spring when the weather is beautiful and people want to be outdoors instead of in a theater, there are graduations going on, and a million other distractions, is ridiculous at best.
Meaningless numbers are just that- meaningless. You must look at the meaning behind the statistics and take everything that could affect them into account.
Or, it might be simply the idea that the original idea wasn't simply a film 'targetted at kids'.
I've written about this before here, but the original Star Wars came out at a pretty unique time in the history of American cinema. The films of the 1970's were quite different than the films of the 90's or of the 00's of this new century.
Obviously, it's easy to point to something like Vietnam and say that, well, Star Wars -- the original -- was a pretty canny, subtle response to a culture still mired in the complex politics of the 60's and 70's.
But Star Wars -- the original -- was also whimsical. It was Lucas' response, I think, to growing up in the 50's and being submerged in the California car culture. Sort of a weird, whimsical amalgam of the Cold War mentality of the 50's and 60's mixed in with the savagery of Vietnam but touched here and there with odd bits of folly and idealism. (Sort of like a simplistic reading of the war in Vietnam -- folly, idealism, savagery.)
Star Wars, I think, was aimed at "kids" the same way that Lucas's previous film 'American Graffiti' was -- it was about kids, really, but it wasn't specifically aimed at them.
My "reading" of Star Wars has always been that it's about kids in a complex world. Han and Luke are a couple of hot-rodders, essentially. And they're both going after the girl (one more than the other, of course, but no one can deny the allure of Luke's almost asexual naivete.)
I suspect the film is a mirror of Lucas's own inner-self. When he made Star Wars he was still a big kid that didn't want to give up (or give in) to the emerging complexities of culture. In many ways, Star Wars is an amazingly naive and gentle film -- nothing like 'Return of the Jedi', for example, which is the first film of the series that has (finally) become 'aware of Star Wars.' RotJ is a film aware of itself. Not so with Star Wars (a joy ride) and most definitely not so with ESB (still naive, still riding fast, but showing signs of dark awareness. You could certainly make the argument that ESB is the end of the joyride. From RotJ on it's the legal speed limit all the way)
But you wonder if Lucas had much of a choice. I think the more interesting route for Ep 3 to go would be dark, violent, and absurd. Think of Kurosawa's 'Ran', for example. A film made late in K's life -- but a masterpiece. Filled with savagery and darkness (even though it's one of the most colorful films you'll ever see projected on a screen.) It's quite disturbing, Ran, and is really -- when you think of it -- an astonishing achievement so late in K's life.
It always amazes me to realize that Lucas, Spielburg, Coppola, Fellini, Kurosawa, and Scorsese were all very close -- close in vision, close in their desire for "epic sweep", and close personally. Lucas and Spielburg helped Kurosawa finance several of K's later films, and there's some great shots of Fellini walking and talking with Spielburg in Rome. What's distressing, however, is that as Kurosawa and Fellini aged, their visions became more rareified (if that's the right word.)
One look at Fellini's 'And the Ship Sails On...' and your heart breaks. It's a wonderful film -- much like K's 'Ran' -- and you see these bright-hot glimmers of genius and power shining through. But Lucas seems to be retreating -- afraid to tackle the difficult problems. The excuse is that, well, he really can't: Star Wars is a marketing machine and the marketing is aimed at kids. Taco Bell needs their DooKoo Pootie cups, McDonalds needs their Annie Happy Meals.
But just as Bruno Bettleheim talks about the need for dark fairy tales in the growth of child's mind, Lucas shouldn't be afraid to tackle the real dark stuff.
Oh god, Katz is shooting is mouth off again...
Listen, the amount of money a film makes does *not* turn it into a myth or cultural icon. SO what if Spiderman is going to end up making more than Episode 2? Lucas himself has stated is that his only goal is that Episode2 will fair a bit better than Episode1. So far, he has reached this goal (in the amount of days since the release, Episode2 has surpassed Episode1 in sales).
If the biggest money maker makes a myth, then please explain Titanic. The biggest money maker of all time (not counting inflation). I would hardly call that movie a myth or a cultural icon.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
What was I supposed to glean from your Tirade ?
All I got was 'spiderman is better than clones ?'
Hello - wakey wakey - they are both crap dolled out to rake in the bucks and have very little bearing on the real world.
Are you sane ? - you just had a major rant over two insignificant pieces of film.
Get a grip, please.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !