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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.
There was no Spider-Man: Episode I.
You are not the customer.
I think a better explanation is that Spider-Man is better written and better directed than Attack of the Clones. Occam's Razor and all that.
Oh, and dare I dream...first post?
Why is Spider-Man's version surprisingly drubbing Lucas
Because it isn't part of a series (yet). It can be enjoyed as a single film.
Anyone can see Spiderman; to see AotC you probably need some interest in Star Wars otherwise it will make no sense
"The next generation unseated its elders -- as is the right of every generation - and is making its own culture, moving away from ours."
Uh, exactly which generation is Spiderman supposed to represent? As a GenXer it's older than me, and if I'm not mistaken, is a far older tale than Star Wars.
And "Episode One" wasn't eaxctly a thrill either.
I wish that Kurtz (wasn't this the name of the guy that "helped" Lucas with ep 4,5?) would make his own versions of ep 1-3. They were supposed to be much much darker and much more interesting.
Though I hope that the "new generation" goes for the Tolkien movies rather than X-men/Spiderman/the Hulk
I saw Spider-Man, and thought it was fun, fast, refreshing, well-written, and sensitive. Then I saw AOTC, and thought it was pedantic, saccharine, slow, and irritating.
Give the "kids" some credit for being able to determine which movies are the most entertaining, rather than assuming that they are all following the instincts of mass culture. Also, it should be pointed out that the Spider-Man franchise is older than Star Wars by several decades.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
"The next generation unseated its elders -- as is the right of every generation - and is making its own culture, moving away from ours."
What is this tripe? Spiderman is older than Star Wars!
It's because episode one wasn't very good so it's put people off going to see episode 2. That's it. Duh. And what is that first paragraph trying to say. The words are English, but whole sentances make no sense.
Sig is taking a break!
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"
Attack of the clones was ruined by the analog copying of the film... Surely it would have taken in 20Trillion in the first 2 days if you werent able to download and view a really crappy, pixelated copy off of the internet and view it for free...
What, the movie studios don't lie... do they?
#ifdef REALITY
How about the whole thing is getting tired?
#endif
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There may be a simpler explanation than cultural shifts laboriously hypothesized by Jon Katz:
Spiderman is a good movie. Star Wars: Attack of the Clones is not. Would Spiderman, had it been contemporaneous, have trounced the original Star Wars or The Empire strikes Back? I seriously doubt it.
Lucas had a simple good vs. evil story to tell in the original Star Wars. It did not require laborious scenes reminiscent of CSPAN in Space to explain. It was not about the special effects. They were there to serve the movie, not vice-versa as one might believe in the recent additions to the Star Wars saga.
Tastes have not changed radically. The quality of Star Wars movies has.
Spider-Man is the next generation after Star Wars? Maybe I'm being nitpicky, but isn't Spider-Man an older story?
"Slashdot is about legos and staplers." -Cmdr. Taco
So...did Hans trade in his silver skates for a millennium falcon?
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Both of these cost a bundle to make. Spider-man cost MORE to make than Attack of the Clones.
Spider-Man spent MORE on marketing than Attack of the Clones.
I see Spider-Man marketing all over the place, including stupid ads for Carls Jr. Is this really any less of a sellout than Lucas/SW?
When Spider-Man #3 comes out (and if the movies keep making anywhere near this much this much money, it will), Katz will be one of the elitests crying about what sellouts Raimi and Maguire are, bet on it.
There's nothing to see here. As usual Katz is reading a lot more into something than actually exists.
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.
We don't want to be annoyed. We hated Scrappy Doo, we hated Oliver on the Brady Bunch. And we hate Jar Jar. I was HOPING that I wouldn't hear the word "meesa" come out of his mouth, but I did. That's point one.
Point two is that Lucas doesn't seem to demand much from his actors. Everyone in the film was a decent actor, but they were just coasting in this one. Easy work, for a nice fat check. That flew just fine with the original Star Wars, but now it's just stupid looking and awkward feeling.
But, back to the annoying sidekick. They just don't work. They never worked. Everyone hates them. If you like them, you are by definition outside the mainstream. Someday, if I ever become an editor or movie producer, I'm going to insist that every single thing made has an annoying sidekick or two in it. In fact, I'm going to insist that they all say the word "meesa" at least a hundred times. My goal will be to make the world so SICK of annoying sidekicks that future generations will not be plagued by this twist of storytelling idiocy.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Unfortunately, as usual, he botches his point again in trying to compare the two movies -- comparing these two on any level other than monetary is ridiculous: they are two different kinds of films. Granted, they both appeal to the tech/nerd/geek -- but for different reasons. People didn't flock to one or the other due to the mythological differences or because one or the other tells the same story but better... what tripe.
I vote for boycotting JKatz altogether.......we are from the government - we are here to help...
But already I've seen attack of the clones... Temuera Morrison, wahey! An army of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders, conquering the galaxy :-)
Oh, i guess it will get released outside the US one day, if the MPAA feels like it.
I would guess AOTC has been released in more theatres, just maybe not in the US. Maybe they need to update the accounting system to take into account global revenues.
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"
Jon,
:p)
You do realize that Star Wars: Episode II premiered in an amount of theaters significantly less than that of Spider-Man?
You do realize that Spider-Man's marketing campaign began prior to last August, nearly a full year before its theatrical release? If I recall correctly, one of its first teaser trailers was appended to all prints of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, a movie that was released on July 11, 2001. (That was my AC post you read earlier.
And finally, you do realize that both Spider-Man and Star Wars: Episode II are already most likely classified as "blockbusters" by the MPAA?
The narrow margin by which Spider-Man has defeated Star Wars isn't worthy of an article.
Do you like German cars?
Are you out of step or what?
/then/ to suggest all of this means some sort of paradigm, generational shift ... and here I thought his film reviews were pompous and self absorbed.
Maybe because Episode 2 wasn't shown on as many screens, it has to be blamed on "the kids" (what? the same kids that invented the internet?) decided that another commercialized story is somehow more "pure" than another -- and to suggest that Spider-Man, put out by the studio of fake movie critics, and marketing folks disguised as happy movie goers is somehow the antithesis of hype -- jeesh.
And
I view Star Wars and Lord of the Ring series as Sagas. On going movies that carry a central story. I don't see that with Spider Man. There I see sequels coming out that very loosely tie previous movies together. For those who have seen Spider Man know the thin basis of the next movies. But Spider Man II will not carry an epic or a saga with it. It will just be a sequel. Personally, I liked Spider Man, but I like the saga of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings better. Just my $0.02 USD.
David
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you!
Did someone use the flag to squash Spider-man?
(Me thinks slashdot needs an editor)
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
If you compare the movies 1 on 1, then yep, Spiderman is doing better then EpisodeII. However, what SERIES has pulled in more money? Call me when Spiderman 6 is out and we'll compare numbers for those 6 vs the 6 Star Wars movies. I would lay money that Star Wars outsells Spiderman... several times over.
If you want to talk about the generation gap, etc, you have to talk about staying power. Star Wars has much greater staying power than pretty much any other series. Liken Spiderman to Batman... the first one was great and they went downhill (very far downhill, IMHO) from there.
Nosce te Ipsum
Once again Jon Katz goes the long way, arrives at the same point, but did so for all the wrong reasons. Star Wars "failure" to earn gobs of money doesn't represent any cultural paradigm shift, it represents simple market economics. It has competition from Spiderman, which came out first and took the first movie bucks available. Star Wars also defeated itself with the hype, convincing people that "oh well, I won't get to see it this weekend anyway", and those people went to see spiderman instead. Overall, Star Wars will trounce spiderman, but with just over one week in circulation it's not fair to already try to deem it a flop. It's also an utter stretch to imply that the underperformance of Star Wars is a reflection of some sort of grass roots revolution. It's a movie dumbass!
Umm... There are like a million things that impact a movies' success in the first few weeks. I think it's rather hasty to select reasons that suit one's own agenda, and then provide no research/evidence to back one's argument's up.
Spider-man opened on a hell of a lot more screens, for starters. Interestingly, the Spider-man brand is actually *older* than the Star Wars brand, so it is entirely possible that it's actually getting more older viewers than Star Wars, rather than Katz's statement that a new, younger generation has chosen Spider-man. Let's also not forget that Spider-man has got a decently acted romantic storyline, which makes it a better date film.
Really, there are just so many reasons, it is silly to draw conclusions without some research.
sigs are a waste of space
Holed up in his California cocoon, Lucas seemed to fall out of touch with post-9/11 America.
Hello? He was producing a science-fiction movie. You know, A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away and all that? A movie that should have little or nothing to do with the real world. Nevermind the fact that the script for this movie was probably written many months, if not years, before 9-11.
What did you expect, some contrived pointless scene where all the Jedi stop and mention how the Coruscant police and firemen are the "real heroes"? Maybe they should have called Jango Fett a terrorist instead of a bounty hunter? Come on. Star Wars has nothing to do with our real world, it's escapism. 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.
Lucas has lost his touch!
Plus, he's bogged down in all of this political BS, trying to teach people a little american history and political theory (I'm sure he envisages small children asking "mommy, what's a republic?"), trying to live up to his earlier achievements, trying to say something of Significance.
And failing miserably in the process.
Spidey just has to be a good movie. With AOTC, Lucas had to live up to the legacy. And blew it.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
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
It's also important to note, however, that Spider Man opened in considerably more theaters than Star Wars. I *believe*, though I'm not sure, the number was somewhere between 1500-2000. That makes a BIG difference in the money that Star Wars pulled in.
Both of these movies were long done with principal photography by 9/11/01. Spider-Man is a better movie because it inserted a couple of pro-American "If you're not with us New Yorkers you're against us" scenes?
What should Lucas have done, added a scene where the Sith fly a speeder into the Jedi temple tower?
I'm not taking any sides here in the movie debate.. I liked both of thesem movies, and unlike Jon I don't think box office equates in any way to how good a movie is (yes Jon, this is the argument you are making..try reading your own writing and you'll see it). Is Titanic really that great of a movie? By Jon's logic it is..
Seriously, Katz, doesn't journalistic integrity mean anything to you anymore?
He seems to be a jack of all trades who must reference September 11 in every article he authors. You certainly aren't the only individual who isn't fond of his "work."
Do you like German cars?
Spider-Man wasn't exactly devoid of hype, either. I mean, just how many sponsorships does this movie have? How many promotional tie-ins? I've seen far more hype for Spider-Man than I've seen for the painfully titled AotC. Granted, I live in a hole, but still...
It's ridiculous to imply that one massively budgeted Hollywood movie is some kind of underdog to another massively budgeted Hollywood movie.
[|]
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
Jon, might I suggest that you write about real issues instead of inventing them?
The reality is: Star Wars Episode II and Spiderman are both doing well. Why create a conflicts and a social even when there isn't one? Most people I know saw both; they're great escapist eye candy. I can spout statistics that show how Star Wars beat Spidey at the box office (per screen revenues, for example)... but it's not worth the trouble.
I just took my two oldest dughters, ages 13 and 11 to see Star Wars. There is something magical about taking my kids to see a movie mythos that I've loved since the first film amazed me at age 15. The same thing happened with The Lord of the Rings last December -- I shared with my kids something special from my own life.
I'll be impressed when Spiderman 5 comes out in twenty-fix years and still pulls down blockbuster numbers.
All about me
Stop pretending to be a geek, pick up a copy of UNIX for Dumbasses and learn something. Jesus, can you get any more vapid? Spider-man vs. Star Wars? Fat ass Comic Book Store owners are now laughing at you.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I was 12 when Star Wars came out and it's not my fault Lucas waited until I was 37 to get as far as the fifth film, so I don't want or expect the same sort of film that I did when I was 12.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
From everything I had read and from talking to other people, it seemed that Star Wars has the simple disadvantage of not playing in nearly as many theaters - I thought the number was about 1/3. From what I recall it's a combination of Lucas beeing more choosy and Spiderman being deliberatly pushed to as many theaters (and especially screens within a theater) as possible, much more so than any other movie before... I think the theater I saw spiderman in had about six screens going opening day.
I did like Spiderman a lot. But again because of the theater issue, I had no illusions about the movie taking in more money than Spiderman, and the numbers are in line with what I'd think they would be. The whole story seems to need a big old helping of "Never Mind" tacked at the end...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
WHAT? I guess the comic books were for the young as well?
Spider-Man is doing so well because it ISN'T targeted at primarily young.
It's for the Gen-Xers.
It's for our parents.
It's for anyone who loves super heroes.
It's for geeks.
It's for people who have read and loved the comic books.
And for people who watched the cartoons (I hoped that they would reuse the same 3 scenes for when he was swinging around. At least once, just for us!)
Why do you think we got the X-men? Blade? Why do you think the Hulk is on it's way? Scoobie? Not for the kiddies moron, it's for us. They know we'll bite. That we'll all go see our heroes in action. They want to drag the BIG kids in.
The average age opening night when I was there, best as I can figure (while waiting in line), was 30+. Not 12. Not 18. It was our generation wearing the spidey shirts for crying out loud!
Hello! These are the same conglomerates that fund MPIA and RIAA (Sure you remember these acronyms these are the acronyms that brought you other fun acronyms such as DMCA, COPA and others). Lets drop the "free media" for the fat-cat media conglomerates and expand our horizons on shashdot to truly innovative arts and letters.
I love Star Wars as much as the next person, but what was with:
the really bad wooden acting - I had no problem with the acting in Ep1, but Ep2 really sucked
the really corny lines - I mean how many cliches could they pull out for the romance scenes?!?
everything looked 2D. Take one CG background and shoot the actors standing in front of it giving dialogue. It looked so fake.
cliched camera shots - that big climatic battle when the camera zooms up to the troop carriers - like watching some b-grade Vietnam war movie ...
I could go on and on but I think you get the point. If I could delete Jar Jar Bink from Ep1, I would quite confidently say that Ep1 was a better movie than Ep2, and neither compares to Spiderman.
"Lucas seemed to fall out of touch with post-9/11 America"
WTF? Wasn't this movie written and filmed months before 9/11? Jesus christ man, I didn't like the movie either, but I'm weary of anyone that heavy handedly uses the term "post-9/11" in an article to debate something that has nothing to do with 9-11.
I saw both within a few days. I don't understand why Spiderman is so popular. It was OK, not great. It had the great benefit of low (no?) expectations.
I cringed twice during AoC at the mushy stuff, and twice during Spiderman. The bad guys had about the same level of character development (which was not much). The action was better in AoC (Did anybody really find the "Green Goblin" to be a good bad guy). The acting was a little better in Spiderman (but neither deserve Academy nominations). The overall plot complexity of AoC was much more rich.
I believe that all the people that knock AoC are basically just bitter about the fact that they have had to grow up. The original Star Wars movies were "magical", right? How can any movie live up to the *demand* that it restore people's feelings of childhood wonderment.
The next generation unseated its elders -- as is the right of every generation - and is making its own culture, moving away from ours. In doing so, these kids balked at mega-hype, rediscovered earnestness, simplicity, the love story, some patriotism, punctured a billion-dollar balloon, and maybe even sparked a (relative) movement away from whorish sellouts, back to simpler story-telling. I, for one, sure hope so.
Heheh... only Katz could consider a movie (Spider-Man) produced by Sony Pictures, Inc. and spender of over $50 million in marketing to the unwashed masses a "balk[ing] at mega-hype", "simplicity", and "punctur[ing] a billion dollar balloon".
Let's see, reasons why Spider-Man made more money its opening weekend than Episode II:
4. It has a shorter running time, and therefore can be shown more times per day by theaters,
3. It showed on over 7,500 screens, as opposed to Episode II's 6,000,
2. It is (subjectively) a better movie, and audiences (maybe) prefer it, and
1. Spider-Man opened to no competition from other summer blockbusters, whereas Episode II opened against Spider-Man.
That Katz. When you need a highly publicized, mega-hyped troll, you know who to call.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Do not discount the chick-ocitude of Spiderman. That right away nearly doubles the market for the picture.
Spiderman 2 will have more chickness and probably some orphans and puppies and unicorns too.
Clones didn't do too badly considering it was the first major motion picture, aparently written entirely by a machine.
Hardly. It's a fascinating eulogy for a period that was in its closing days and an invective against the complacency of spirit that he saw replacing it.
I'll second the earlier poster's sentiments. "The Great Shark Hunt" is a fantastic collection of some of the best journalism that I've ever read. "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved" is possibly the most apt capturing of the character of a situation that I've ever seen. It's highly recommended to all.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
I used to think that I couldn't write, that I just didn't have the inspiration. After actually reading your dribble, I am insipired. If you can actually make a living on sell this shite as journalism or even something to read, I know I can at least be *ok*.
Holed up in his California cocoon, Lucas seemed to fall out of touch with post-9/11 America.
And just what the hell is this? It would sundenly be *good* to re-edit the whole moive to make it more patriotic? That part with the bridge in Spiderman is SO post 9/11 it's not even funny. I mean how the fuck does that suddenly fit in? It's there to capitalize on 9/11. Maybe if they replaced the sith lords with Osamma bin-laden look alikes you'd be happier... damn. I'm with the trolls on this one, you suck dead dog ass, in a major way!
This article makes it sound like the recent Star Wars episodes have sold-out. This isn't true: Lucas and Star Wars defined spin-off marketing from day one. Prior to Star Wars, spin-off marketing of movies was practically unheard of, and certainly never made more money than the film itself even when it did appear. But when Star Wars burst onto the scene, it brought an army of plastic minatures into the world that became a marketing phenomenon.
Today, original Star Wars figures are often worth a small fortune to collectors. In their day they made a big fortune for George Lucas. So don't tell me he's selling out now. It may be even bigger and brasher this time round, but he was the one who invented the idea in the first place.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
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.
Because they went to see Spiderman? I can't wait to see what they rediscover from MIB 2. Virtue, fortitude, courage, brighter teeth and fresher breath, I suppose. William Bennett, call your office!
Just wait until Katz's article about how insensitive "The Two Towers", will be.
Its coming.
So more people like a fun comic book hero than a space western. Why is that some big revelation about "post-9/11 America", rather than just some big revelation about market share?
... followed by Green Lantern and Silver Surfer on the big screen. Not that Lucas should give up and go home.
I think the best thing the success of Spider-Man indicates is that we'll see Spider-Man 2, 3, 4, 5,
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
...Only Katz could write such a lengthy, flowerly, pretentious, but ultimately meaningless and empty condemnation of style over substance.
Cheers
-b
I just read the rest of the story after being annoyed at the lack of mentioning the screen count...
After reading the rest of the verbage, I found this:
Do we really care precisely how Anakin Skywalker got pissed off and turned to the Dark Side?
Well, actually yes!!! Why the hell do you think I am sitting through all these early movies. Sure the Yoda stuff is cool, but that's not why I'm there. My favorite parts are watching how the plot to overthrow the Republic and the Jedi unfolds. The battles are just a bonus as far as I'm concerned.
I normally rather like Jon Katz stories, but this one leaves me mystified.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
More importantly - this is just movies guys, NOT religion. Well maybe to some of you it is a religion, but not everyone.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
Just a minor point. As I recall, and have read, Joseph Campbell really didn't help Lucas craft the mythos. It was more of an after-the-fact thing that Campbell recognized and Lucas then picked up and ran with to inflate his own 'artistry' and level.
It's not a vast work of high art. However, it's the early cinema serials taken to the pinacle. Just spend a weekend watching the old Buster Crabbe serials, then watch Episode IV. From the settings (the common desert-type area), to the music to the cuts, wipes and dissolves, it's clearly a loving tribute to Flash Gordon.
Even more than pulp sci-fi (which I loved as a Jr. High student, E.E. 'Doc' Smith and all), Star Wars is the direct evolution of Flash Gordon. Remember, those old 30's serials hit TV in the early fifties, right about when Lucas would have been around 10 years old (wich is around how old I was when Star Wars came out and I watched it). So one could easily see his childhood wonder and awe come through there.
Someone in the media industry (I don't know if it came directly from the MPAA) stated that one of the factors in AotC's "poor" box office performance is the bootleg that was released a week before the movie. Fans downloaded and watched the movie, saw that it sucked (or even if it didn't quite "suck" it wasn't worth the price of admission in a theater) and decided not to go. That's their "proof" that movie piracy is destroying the entertainment industry.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Dude, its SPIDER-MAN!
Exactly how many years BEFORE Lucas even wrote Star Wars was Spider-man first published?
How is it that kids are seemingly solely credited with Spider-man's success in the box office?
My DAD(!) couldn't wait to see Spider-man, and if I recall, Star Wars gave him a headache.
Perhap you should switch to solely political commentary, because you're only making about that much sense.
A novel about a party weekend in Vegas that one can read in 2 evenings is good journalism?? It reads like a trashy novel... oh, wait... that's what it is!
You mean like Catcher in the Rye?
Don't start trashing Hunter S. Thompson just because Katz brings him up.
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...
Keep the story simple and clear for the kids, keep the story interesting to win oscars and keep the movie complex and thought-provoking to make the AFI 's Top 100 list.
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
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.
Personally I think the entire Star Wars franchise is embarrasingly bad (somehow I missed out on the hype machine for the original trio, so to me rather than fond memories of my childhood, they're just B grade sci-fi movies), and Lucas forsook his option to make the new series geared towards adults because of the ever important lucrative merchandising potential of continuing it more as a childrens movie (Come on: He seriously was going to put n'sync in it). Having said that, I thought Spider-Man was an enjoyable, but forgettable, standard CGI-enhanced action flick. Nothing tremendous, and it doesn't make me a better person or revolutionize life : It's just another movie that was ok, but it doesn't entertain beyond the 2 hours of watching it.
In any case, I find your portrayal of poor underdog Star Wars versus big bad Spiderman absurd. Firstly theaters, where there was demand, played it 24/7, starting right at 12:01 on the opening day: They knew that the hoardes of loyal Star Wars fanatics would be there to fill the coffers, probably many times over. The number of opening theaters between Spiderman and AOTC is largely comparable, with only a minor deviance, however the most telling number of all: Per screen revenue, has spiderman ahead on the opening weekend, with $31,769 versus AOTCs $25,317/screen (or are you going to claim that somehow AOTC demanded better, further separated seats for its superior audience?). As far as hype: Personally I thought that Spider-man had a lot less hype, and most certainly a lot less "We'll love it regardless" fanatics than AOTCs.
correction... thats 1.2 million clones
First: $115 mill in 3 days = $38 mill per day.
$117 mill in 4 days = $29 mill per day, WITH a hugely popular competitor in the theaters, and the previous movie in the series being suck-alicious.
To call this a coup d'etat is hyperbole on a par with, well, calling Spiderman a great movie. Or calling Star Wars (any) a great movie.
"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."
I think your lack of a point is suffocating beneath your style's ponderous inertia and weight.
Relevance? Maybe Spiderman was written by a real writer, and directed by a real director, instead of some disproportionally successful mediocre director.
George Lucas' problem is not that he tremendously sucks (Phantom Menace notwithstanding). The problem is that he is SO wealthy and SO surrounded by ass-kissing lickspittles that nobody will tell him "George, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard." Nobody.
Film creation is never a production of an individual. It's a collaborative effort of hundreds, sometimes thousands, from the actor on the screen interpreting a role, to the gaffer making a judgment call on how to provide the best lighting for a reomantic shot. When one personality not only dominates but controls everything, well, the product is GOING to suck.
"Lucas created a brilliant film saga"
Ha. Again, what are you smoking? Firstly, the original story was ripped almost verbatim from Hidden Fortress. And I don't care how much retro-remembered history anyone spouts, the "brilliant" film saga was first a simple movie, a hastily written plot outline (that was fleshed to it's fullest by Irvin Kirschner and Leigh Brackett), and then started swirling around the toilet bowl of re-interpretation, inconsistencies, and mistakes. To imply that there was some great genius behind it's conception as a story arc, well that complete nonsense. The Star Wars series was written the same way you drive a car if you look just in front of you - jerky, reactive, and unpleasant to ride in.
"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."
I will agree wholeheartedly with Jon on this. One might even suggest it applies to web articles.
-Styopa
Although... studios usually put a lot of research into the number of screens a particular film can support, and generally like to open on as many as they can fill.
BTW, some sources list that Star Wars opened at 3,161 theatres, while Spider-Man opened at 3,615 theatres and then only last weekend bumped up to 3,876. So that's only ~450 less, not ~1,000.
Horsefeathers. Are you saying that people wanted to go see "Clones" and couldn't find a ticket? That movie theatres, who are mostly struggling for their business survival, are turning away people who'd like to see a movie? Do you think that if they'd only put Hugh Grant's "About a Boy" on a few more screens, it'd have taken in a hundred million it's first weekend too?
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Instead he just lets her rot for 10 years, doesn't even send a letter or anything (since he had to search around to find her). Maybe thats part of being a good Jedi, but lets face it: The queen would have hooked his mom up with some kind of a better job than slave.
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.
This whole "editorial" smacks of the inability to distinguish fact and opinion. "AOTC took in $100 million" is a fact. "AOTC sucks" is an opinion.
Learning to tell the difference can greatly help your writing. Maybe I'll want to read it again some day (like when you come off as suggesting new thoughts to me rather than telling me what to think).
Do we really care precisely how Anakin Skywalker got pissed off and turned to the Dark Side?
Yes. I've cared for years. And that's my choice to make, not yours.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Uh, sorry, try again. Spiderman opened on far more screens than Clones, and you have both your numbers way, way wrong. Spiderman opened on around 7500 screens, and Clones opened on around 6000. And that is enough of a difference to explain away the revenues.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
I read an online comic yesterday, I forget the name off hand, but one character basicly tells the other, Attack of the Clones is an Allegory of the 9/11 attack, the subsquent "War on Terrorism" and even goes so far as to imply GW Bush and Osma Bin Laden were/are in on it together. When the other character implies he is crazy, he suggests a bet that Lucas will be dead before Episode 3 can be made.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
I generally liked AOTC as well. I will like it even better when I can sit at home and MST3K it. I also thought that the bad parts of AOTC (any love scene, any one liner by mcgregor, any scene with 3cpo talking) were an order of magnitude worse than TPM.
There were also many scenes that were blatant sell-out type scenes that the purist in me sees as a blatant travisty to the universe (yoda, r2 flying, the jedi sacraficing themselves uselessly).
btw: Spiderman is decently mediocre; Maguire is perfect casting, the newspaper owner is hilarious and perfectly done, but the movie has no set pace, and Dunst just doesn't do it for me.
One point is that the many of the comparisons here are on domestic gross, not international. At least that's what I watch at The Numbers, and jives with what people are citing. And as for number of screens, you can check my other comment for that.
More importantly (since you correctly point out that differences are in general 'negligable'), there are a few things that can be seen in the ticket sales. Among them are the interesting point that Spider-Man's gross did not drop extra on the weekend that AOTC opened. In fact, the decline slowed by a couple of percentage points compared to the decline from first to second weekend. This is especially telling, as many expected that much of the expected Star Wars audience overlapped the expected Spider-Man audience.
The one that really shows an unusual pattern in weekend-to-weekend decline was Titanic. That one started with a 23.8% gain instead of the usuall 33%-50% drop that movies get. And.... we all know how that movie fared.
The Columbine Culture Of Geek Media, by Jon Katz.
The media culture of geeks, or, rather the columbine culture of media is the new geek. Columbine, in addition to the media, created a geek culture where new geeks could columbine the culture. The culture, in return, created a geek media, and performed a coup d'etat. Then Columbine, a geek culture, had a new media. Geekdom. Geek. Culture, New, Geek. The columbine culture of geek media provides a new culture for Columbine, different than the geek media culture provided by new geeks. Columbine, columbine. Columbine. Thank you.
Ever get the feeling that Jon Katz is a mad-libs perl script?
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
After about a century of watching movies filmed on 35 mm film at an effective resolution of about 4000x3000, Lucas thinks that after schlepping out to the gigaplex and shelling out $8.50, people are going to watch 1920x1080 and feel satisfied?
Yes, they'll do it, and they probably won't complain, just as most won't complain about dim projection or dirty prints. But will they notice or care about a slight softening of the image? Not consciously perhaps, but subconsciously they will feel that the image looks less real than they have been accustomed to. They'll know something's WRONG, even if they can't say what it is, and in a subtle way they will feel cheated.
Lucas has lost his edge and lost his focus--LITERALLY.
Today's digital technology might be up to the demands of a straight drama or a romantic chick flick, where most of the interest is in the characters and dramatic elements. It is NOT up to the task of delivering immersive, spectacular, widescreen excitement.
It's a darn shame nobody has the courage to try making an action/fantasy/sci-fi picture in 70mm. It will be a decade before the quality of theatre digital approaches 70mm. It will be three or four years before it approaches plain old 35mm--longer, at the present rate of adoption.
Too bad so few of us can still remember what "2001" REALLY looked like on its first run.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
AOTC is definitely one of the best sequels I've ever seen, 'what, it is a sequel?', yeah a sequel, so give it credit for what it is.
You have to ask yourself whether you would rather have a stand alone Starwars-like movie made around the story which would draw in all the kids in the world with it's 'extreme' action or would you rather have a well-rounded and well produced sequel to a wonderful saga?
Episode one was for the kids apparently... we all complained, right? Then Lucas goes and makes a much more mature film (Episode 2) and we all yawn and complain, right? What's up?
I wish he had treated Episode 1 with the same level of seriousness he tried with E2. In the long run which film will you go back and watch again? I for one will be fast forwarding through E1 just to get the story started and then sitting down to enjoy E2 (w/ a few snack breaks around the romance scenes). E3? who knows...
Hopefully I'll be able to revisit the Starwars saga in years to come and get to have a real quality marathon viewing. It will be kind of wierd to jump from E3 to E4 though with the difference in cinema tech being so disparate.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Well, as I pointed out in a different comment here, the sources I usually use state that Spider-Man opened on 3,615 and AOTC opened on 3,161.
Quote: 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).
What gives JonKatz the right to say ANYTHING about overly long, strung out renditions of things that nobody cares about?
JonKatz approaches the life and times of Episode 2: Attack of the Clones in much the same way that Lucas explores the life and times of Darth Vader. He spends way too much time making up garbage and pulling buzzwords fromlate-90's culture. All he needed was a paradigm shift (or did I just miss it?) to use every known buzzword there is. Bingo!
and Post 9/11? COME ON! Geeze, this is a narrative about 2 movies, not the war on terrorism (yet another overused phrase...) Yeesh.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
The numbers I've seen paint just the opposite picture--that Star Wars has surpassed Spider-Man (according to an AP wire story.) Which numbers are correct?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Sure, you might say Lucas is his own Frankenstein, you might say that Spiderman was fresh and personal while the Star Wars series is in danger of collapsing under its own weight, but Katz is seriously overreaching.
Perhaps Katz could have simply just written that kids are more interested in seeing a teenager whose abilities aren't recognized by the world and is still a good guy than in seeing one whose abilities are kinda sorta recognized by his mentor, but who is arrogant and goes bad. From a teen perspective, who is more fun to admire; a secret superhero, or another kid going Columbine?
Perhaps the problem is that Katz is only capable of overusing one tragedy at a time.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
"Just" because it's a "space opera" doesn't mean that it doesn't have to be good. It still has to have a decent story and be interesting to watch.
I actually like AoTC very much. I'm talking more about TPM. Which was complete dross. _That_ was an uninteresting movie, no matter what you call it. Attack of the Clones, despite taking way to long to get off the ground, was surprisingly good.
---potential spoiler---
In fact, the scene on the clone planet in those sterile white corridors with those creepy sterile aliens reminded me the most of the fear of non-specific foreboding that I recall from when I first saw Star Wars when I was a young-un in the '80s.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
For a minute there, I was hopeful that somebody had actually made their own independant film through their own initiative, and marketed it over the net without the involvement of any of the big distribution companies.
Then I read on and realised you were talking about how one Hollywood blockbuster had outsold another Hollywood blockbuster. Oh well. Yawn. I am sure Spiderman is a good film.
So yes, Lucas did sell-out. Did he continue his ways in AOTC? I don't know, I haven't seen it yet. I am still debating whether or not to see it at all. I really want to see some good Jedi action though. At least if I wait for it to come out on rental, I can skip the lame crap.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
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.
Maybe it's because I'm in NYC and the national press is headquartered here, but I was amazed at how much was being done not just by the national networks and newsmagazines, but even by the NY Times to puff up SM. The Times not only featured it on the front of every possible section of the paper over several weeks (including such tripe as a profile of the family currently living at SM's fictional address in Queens), but gave Stan Lee Op-Ed space to gloat about how cool he's always been right when the movie opened.
And the press has been cold to Lucas - which might be partly because all the movies since the first one up until now have sucked (the first understood the attractions of classic sci-fi, the rest haven't). Or could it be because Lucas has put out a movie that questions imperial pretensions?
Isn't the audience for SM essentially the same one as supports the boy bands - that other revolution in confectionary taste among the young? Is anyone claiming SM is more than cute, mindless escapism? Nothing wrong with it being that; but hardly anything to celebrate about either, all press to the contrary.
___
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Just a tiny correction. Those 1950's-era TV space operas were broadcasts of the 1930's-era cinema serials. But I do agree with you on your main point. As one of those serials, AoTC (at least the last half) did rock.
I also thought that the bad parts of AOTC (any love scene, any one liner by mcgregor, any scene with 3cpo talking) were an order of magnitude worse than TPM.
Yeah, sucks to have a story involved. There should've just been lots of fights to watch and then we'd go home. Without those scenes there would be practically no development of Anakin and then nothing would make sense (where'd Luke come from?? Why does he turn to the dark side??).
There were also many scenes that were blatant sell-out type scenes that the purist in me sees as a blatant travisty to the universe (yoda, r2 flying, the jedi sacraficing themselves uselessly).
I'll agree with the R2 flying part. That just struck me as being dumb when you consider the original movies. As for Yoda, I don't know about it. He was supposed to be a great warrior. It's nice to see him doing something besides spouting jedi philosophy. Sure, it was a scene that would appeal to many just because it's a little green muppet jumping around and kicking ass with a lightsaber, but I think that those of us that grew up with the original films always wondered about Yoda's fighting skills. Luke was obviously shocked to find out that the great jedi master was such a little goofy looking guy. So were the rest of us. It worked for the movie, but this being a prequel, we want to see the great warrior for ourselves. Finally, on the subject of the jedi sacrificing themselves, I don't think that was their intent. I was fairly sceptical about the way that scene played out anyway. Why did they have hordes of battle-droids waiting right outside the arena doors? The jedi knew there was a droid army, but I don't see how they could have expected a fight like what they ended up with. I think they thought they would be able to take control of the situation pretty quickly, but it didn't work out for them.
Oh yeah... and I loved Spiderman. For the reasons you said, plus Dunst definitely does it for me.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Yup. I enjoyed AOTC -- and it was better than I was expecting. Face it, the thing that's grabbed us in every Star Wars release has been the progression in cool effects. We loved the star destroyer looming past at the start of Episode 4, and the creature cantina; and we loved similar progress in Episode 2 -- improved Jedi tricks like jumping through the window, Yoda's swordplay, the great waterfalls, nice spaceships.
:)
I never expected brilliant storytelling or dialogue. We've never seen that from Lucas. He's no Raymond Chandler or John LeCarre. He gives us pure, cheesy space opera, executed well. That's fine with me, and all I expect or hope from Episode 3.
And aren't you glad to know the reason that Luke is such a whiny, pissy little brat -- because his dad was just the same?
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
Just click on any of the movie titles listed (Spider-Man, for example). The text they use before listing gross is "Total US Gross".
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.
George Lucas is working on Spider-Man Episode I as we speak. Here's some select quotes:
"Meesa been bitten by a spider!"
"Meesa spidey-sense all tingly! Oh no, issa bombad villain! Meesa got to go find a phone booth!"
***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.***
The marketing for Ep II was about the same as any other movie. The hype machine for spider-man was pumping just as hard. And to say that Lucas is to blame for all the marketing is crap anyway. Who's to know if he or the studio has more to do with it?
And you're right; they didn't have any toy or fast food marketing for Lord of the Rings. *Plays with his lurtz action figure and takes a sip from his light up lord of the rings cup from BURGER KING*
***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?***
Give me a break. If you describe anything like that it sounds negative.
What is spider-man? A movie about the use of spiders for gene therapy? A warning to keep an eye on egotistical scientists? A vessel for the powerful acting of Randy Savage?
***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?***
Are you being serious? This is the part that makes me believe I fell asleep and it's really April 1st and this is all a big joke. I try to respond to this but the inherent stupidity of the comment seeps into my skin through the keyboard and blur's my mind. It's like saying Do we really care how Peter Parker became a spider? Do we really care why Connor Macleod is cutting all these people's head's off? Do we care why Tyler Durden is blowing up a corporate campus?
***Holed up in his California cocoon, Lucas seemed to fall out of touch with post-9/11 America.***
You're right. At the end of Ep II Obi-Wan and Anakin should have flown through the streets of New York towing a giant American flag and singing God Bless America. I mean, a movie in space? In a galaxy far far away? How un-American.
You're so full of crap I can smell it through the screen. They're two incredible movies. Why everyone feels the need to compare them is beyond me. I watched Ep II yesterday and the theater was packed. I wasn't sitting there thinking "this well help their profit margin" I was just happy a lot of little kids were sitting there enjoying the movie.
We can all certainly point out ways in which Lucas could have improved things (and there definitely are many), and any one of us would have written epsodes 1 and 2 differently. There are many valid criticisms that have been made, but on the other hand, Lucas had many more and far tougher constraints to deal with.
First and foremost was all the baggage that accompanied him from the first four movies. There are several things that created constraints here. The most difficult was that these episodes are prequels. Not only does the character and situation development have to be consistent with the pre-existing stories, but they must also converge to a single target time in some sort of consistent fashion. This is much more difficult than a sequel, where the writer has the freedom to diverge in any number of directions.
Another difficult area is public expectations. We can all point out areas where Lucas gauged things wrong in this area, and that's just the point -- it's very difficult to do, and very difficult to get right, even with sequels where there is only one pre-existing film, let alone a prequel series that follows three highly successful episodes. Any one of us could have done "better", and the film would have matched our personal expectations, but Lucas was faced with estimating the expectations of millions of fans from three generations who had already seen four previous movies -- not an easy task task by any stretch of the imagination.
Yet another area is complexity. As Katz points out, over the years, the Star Wars saga has come to deal with many kinds of social, economic, and even religious issues. Here, Lucas is being criticized for maintaining and even building on this complexity, but if he were to completely drop it, he would undoubtedly be criticized equally harshly by others. Again, the years of baggage that accompanies the Star Wars saga made it difficult for Lucas to do the right thing in everyone's eyes.
Spidey had none of this constraining baggage, other than generally following the premise of the original comic strip/cartoon series.
Granted, there were some very obvious goofs, such as the over-commercialization of the tie-in products (it certainly cheapens the saga), but given the constraints, it was very difficult (and will get even harder) for Lucas to come up with prequels that will satisfy everyone's preconceived notions of how things should be.
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
I feel sorry for pundits. It is their job to find patterns in the seemingly chaotic world we live in. Sure, between 99 and 100% of these patterns are complete bullshit, but at least they are entertaining [sometimes].
Having said that, it would be patently ridiculous to assume that generational rebellion is exemplified in movie-goers deciding to forfeit their cash to one mega-corporation over another.
But then again, maybe I'm not in on the joke. It is a joke, right?
The Katz piece was hilarous [intentional or not].
Good point. In my other comment I mention, the person stated '3,800 or so screens', which matched Memorial Day numbers of 3,876 theatres that I had read.
It's sad that you and your friends' attention spans have been so wildly eroded by the instant-gratification of the Internet that none of you were capable of grasping the plot of such a simple piece of science fiction escapism.
Let me boil it down for you: [SPOILERS] Senator Palpatine orchestrated an interstellar war in order to assume complete control of the republic under martial law. Using this power, he assembled a massive army of clones which he intends to use to conquer the universe. The trade federation, in association with several thousand other disgruntled star systems, wants out of the republic, and has assembled a droid army of their own.
Meanwhile, Anakin grew up and fell in love with Amidala. They've wed secretly. He's got the dark side in him.
Does that help? Feel free to print this out and show it to your equally-slow friends. But don't bash a movie because the plot was too complicated for you to understand. By your logic, "The Usual Suspects" would be a piece of cimematic crap.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
The name came from Yoda, who coined, at the end of the film, the phrase Clone War. Why? Who knows? Who cares?
There was nothing special about the clones. There never was meant to *BE* anything special about them, except that they are plentiful, amoral, will follow orders, and come from good genetic stock, i.e. Jango Fett.
Does this answer your questions?
Useless opinions, worthless observations, and more!
Katz, your beef is not with Lucas raking the cash from the merchandizing efforts -- it is with the american society which greedilly sucks this tripe up voluntarilly. Lucas is merely a successfull capitalist.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
Well duh!
Now, try to explain why you thought Spiderman was a better movie. Explain what it did that AoTC didn't do to keep your interest.
It may be the first time in my life that I've done this, but I actually agree with Katz this time that AoTC was bogged down by the weight of its epic size. (People say that LoTR suffers from the same problem, though I still think Tolkein was a better storyteller than Lucas.) However, given its context, I don't see how it could be otherwise. If we ever get to Spiderman II, III, IV and V, I think we'll see a similar trend...
Your Servant, B. Baggins
I think the real lession is, if you're trying to make a good article for slashdot, aimed primarily at geeks, avoid pomposity, self-indulgence, and too much self-reference. Keep the article simple, clear, and not full of your shit.
Yes, we do care, as a matter of fact. AotC was a huge success. Obviously a lot of people did care (enough to pay for expensive tickets)
At a basketball game it does matter who wins by just one point. The "loser" who played nearly as well is still the "loser". Likewise for most sporting events, which are artifical contests. Fortunately, that fiction doesn't apply to most real world success (despite the flare it might add to otherwise boring journalism and reporting)
AotC taking in slightly less revenue that Spidey doesn't somehow mean that AotC is a "loser" and Spidey is a "winner". They're both an amazing success. In fact, they're so close that fans endlessly argue about the number of opening screens and other factors (much like watching those cameras to see if the ref made a fair call... over just one point to decide the game!)
Of course, if you really, really want to believe in something... say that Lucas is evil for hype/merchandizing, far-flung storytelling, and whatnot, then it's a battle with a winner and a loser. No matter how close the contest, no matter how well AotC did, if it's just a bit below your favorite then Lucas "lost" and "should learn his lesson".
This latest installment of Katz babble reminds me of when I was very young and the Apple ][ was clearly superior to the C-64. Then again, Apple's still in business today, so maybe it was. Kinda makes me wonder how many Spidey sequals they will make and if Lucas will change his mind and create Episodes 7, 8 and 9 ??
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Dude, I don't know what your romantic experience has been, but when I'm with someone that I'm falling in love with, I know that every one of my thoughts is centered on them. If they were already married and had years together, then yeah, they'd be bored with each other and still be thinking about problems at work, etc. But when you're falling in love, you don't think about anything else.
Trust me, some day you'll understand.
Questions not answered.
The point was it makes absolutely no sense that only planets have armies and the Republic does not. Its the most glaringly unrealistic flaw in AoTC. Even the most basic understanding of political interaction of a governing body the size of the Republic, necessitates the existence of an army.
The name makes no sense. It ain't realistic. Get it?
The clones are not plentiful. They stated that there were 1.2 million of the suckers. That is a tiny amount compared to the amount of citizenry of the Republic. If they aren't special, then why bother with clones. Get 1.2 million Joe Blows and hand them laser rifles and storm trooper helmets.
Its the loss of the universe to the dark side. The beginning of the series whows the slide down the scree and the plunge into the volcano.
No amount of cinematographic wizardry is going to help movie #3 the end of which is already known since it segues into #4. It will have real crap as grosses.
That doesn't mean it won't be made or that it shouldn't be made. Just that it will take at least another generation before the entire series can be viewed (from 1 to 9) without the angst and agita that #3 will create.
By the way, nobody seems to remember that the series was orogonally conceived and written about the life of the 'droids, not about the evanescent existence of the "flesh" beings.
The saga is older and tired and the audiences are older and tired too.
The "Geek Factor" is dying as surely as the original audience is losing its hair.
I just wish that the studios would stop milking the paltry media history of the late Boomers and Gen X'ers.
Who needs anything new? Rerun "The Philadelphia Story" All the actors are dead by now.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
A coup d'etat, huh? Is that anything like a Caddie Coup D'eville? That's what the generation that grew up with Star Wars'll be drivin' soon. Peerin' through the steerin' wheel with their cataract-clouded eyes viewin' the hood of the Caddie, unless they have to settle for sumthin' downscale like a Buick. Yeah, things change. Big deal.
P.S. I really like your writing, Jon. But how about trying to find some relevant fodder in something less trivial than a couple of fscking movies - and ones no-one will remember in a couple decades' time at that? Riffing on dumb movies is a waste of your talent.
That is all.
We've but given up hope in ever seeing a JonKatz review of Star-Wars 2.0...
Padme's line "Ani Ani, are you okay?" in the romance-in-the-Tellitubbie-land scences got a big laugh out of me. Maybe that sequence was an intentional joke for us medical care professionals, and the writers really are geniuses.
First off, Katz, you are annoying as always. As usual you get caught up in the depth of your own arguments. I don't think that you need Joseph Campbell to explain this one but his name certainly looks good in the footnotes. I'm sure your old English teachers think you're cool.
An entire generation of folks grew up on Star Wars. None of us are kids anymore. This core fan group is now 30-40 years old. Lucas should be targetting his original fans with these prequels. It doesn't make sense to try to drag children into a storyline that is already 25 years old and spans 4 movies.
The problem is that Lucas and everyone backing him expects a blockbuster out of every new Star Wars movie. To do this he has to try to make a movie of wide appeal. This means expanding the audience to include the 8 year olds of today. Unfortunately it is difficult to make a movie that extends a storyline of 4 previous movies and also appeals to people who know little about it. Plot elements such as Jar Jar only alienate his core audience and seem to have missed the mark with younger viewers.
Take a look at David Brin's site. He has a lot of thoughts about Star Wars (much better than the Katz tripe). These are old comments after Episode I disappointed so many of us. Most importantly I think that he has a lot of suggestions that would do a lot to enhance these prequels.
Brin Article
Marvel comics has been marketing themselves to 12 year old boys for ohh .. some 50 odd years.
.. ask any kid if he has heard of a comic book hero .. and EVERYONE who has ever read one will be able to say either 'Spider-man' 'Super-man' or 'Bat-man'. (or if your from the 70's-80's .. 'x-man' :P)
..
.. it was a fringe audiance in the first place .. sci-fi geeks.
.. then it became a HUGE thing .. but skip 10 years forward in the future .. these kids missed the first one .. and everyone hitting empire was 10 years older .. so it never hit their generation (cept for the hardcore or whatever) but market penetration skipped years of folks.
.. and targeting the young kids again .. but hey .. they mystic of the first movies totally passed them by.
.. but she make a yoda/force joke the other day .. and she said that out of a class of 40 (yeah .. no kidding) only 2 kids even showed recognition.
.. of COURSE spider-man made more . .. 50 years of Stan-Lee pushing comics to 12 year old kids.
.. Marvel kept pushing comics at them.
.. doesn't SELL his franchise .. he just expects the momentum to carry on.
.. lucas is a FILM director .. arty .. likes to do differnt stuff .. Stan-Lee .. is a comic book publisher .. makes $$ of each book sold.]
.. but he doesnt exacly have to depend on monthly sales of starwars to keep him going .. where as comic books are a pretty brutal business.
.. in a nutshell .. Marvel has been SELLING spiderman for years .. compared to that .. Starwars was just a pickup line at some party in the 70's.
non stop
Now . compare that to some 25 years of starwars marketing
not REALLY 25 years mind you
SURE . if you were borne in the late 60's early 70's
Now Starwars is back
My wife teaches middle school, everyone in all her classes knows who spider-man is
so
its more in the main-stream
as long as kids kept turning 12
Lucas on the other hand
[and honestly . its apples and oranges
not to say lucas isnt in it for the $$
so
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
...Or, why Katz is wrong.
In 1997, Titantic grossed over $600 million. The second place movie was Men in Black, Which did less then half that.
Both were highly hyped, big budget films. Titantic was a simple love story with a little adventure thrown in, while Men in Black was mostly eye candy with special effects and quite a few tie ins (including a cartoon series).
Yet, 5 years later, which one would you rather see? The easy answer would be neither, but I for one remember Men in Black far more fondly then Titantic.
Of course, you could say that Titantic hit a nerve amoung young woman that had'nt been touched by major movie studios in a long time, whic accounted for it's good showing at the box office. . . and you'd be right. You can say a lot of things, but to suggest that because it made so much money it represented a dynamic shift in the Western world's understanding of mythology is just silly.
---
The Internet is generally stupid
No Jon. This movie is out before 9/11. It's only May. Seriously, what in the fuck does 9/11 have to do with this movie? You are so into globalization yet you fail to see that this movie plays in countries other than America. So why do you feel it has to have pictures of New York in it or it has to be filmed no more than 50 yards distance of the WTC site? Hell, I live in NC. I haven't been affected by 9/11/01 at all (except for people's annoying ass flag waving.. which the fad has faded greatly now). I mean, the disaster was great entertainment for a day, but you can only watch jets fly into huge buildings so long before it gets old. Please stop using the hype of Nine-Eleven(TM) to push your trash that your are trying to pass up as a real movie article/comparison. In other words: NO ONE GIVES A DAMN ANYMORE. The only ones still giving a damn are people who actually knew someone who died or the media (i.e. your dumbass) who are hyping things by association.
Why didn't you use Columbine to pump up this trash? I mean, they use GODDAMN LIGHTSABERS AND LASERS in Starwars! What do 9/11 terrorists use? Friggen box cutters. How boring. Shotguns and explosives are way more interesting and almost-in-a-JonKatz-logic-type-way related to Starwars.
Dijkstra Considered Dead
I won't claim to speak for everyone but my experience with eps. I-II has mostly to do with how I have changed since the first ones came out. I was 4, 7 and 10 for eps. IV-VI. I expected less then than I demand now. So while I've had 20+ years to view Star Wars with nostalgia and enjoy the memory of how it changed my perspective of what sci-fi/action movies should be like now that's not an option for me. George faces several challenges:
1) Just being a Star Wars movie is not enough to be exciting, whereas with the first 3 (released, not chrono) just being Star Wars was enough. It was new and exciting. Even kids who did not get to see the first 3 have grown up in a world where Star Wars has been lauded as the model for sci-fi/action. (This is starting to change.) Culturally, the bar has been raised and I think today's children demand more from a movie than children did 20 years ago.
2) I'm an adult now. (Or at least, I masquerade as one.) I need more from a movie now than I did then. When I was 4 I didn't care if the dialogue or acting wasn't that great. It was fun and that's what was important.
3) Back-story? One of the things I realized after watching AOTC is that part of what made the first 3 feel complete was the presence of the back-story. The effect, while subtle, is important because it helps make the universe-of-the-movie more fully realized. You don't exactly notice it when it's there, but it's glaring when absent. Eps. I-III are the back-story, but there's no back-back-story and I think this makes everything feel a little flat and less-realized.
4) Related to 3, I already know the frickin' ending. It's hard to feel the suspense for Amidala, Obi-wan, Anakin or any other major character when I know they have to survive. (If only through ep. III) Which is not to say that their escape was boring, there's just less of an edge-of-my-seat factor when I never really believe they are in any danger.
And I agree that a Han Solo type character is a shortcoming of I-III, I'm just not sure that such a character would make up for everything else.
-r
Just because something is free does not mean you have to take it.
First, let me say, I'm not a kid. I'm 21. Which is precisely why I'm not going to now -- nor ever -- see this stupid Spiderman film. Even when I was a kid, I didn't like Spiderman comics or TV-series.
Spiderman is, imo, from what I've seen, a purely for kids movie. Unlike the original Star Wars IV - VI, which could be enjoyed by kids who just wanted a fun movie, and which was serious enough that adults wouldn't feel like idiots watching it. There are some things which are just too stupid, too childish, for an adult to even watch by him or herself. Spiderman is one of those things. Congratulations to the creators of Spiderman for making a movie targetted to children which made them an awful awful lotta money. I'm sure that if they'd released a 3D animated movie of Transformers it'd do just as well. Big deal.
What really gets me is that some people are actually trying to say this is "a classic", or "a great movie". As of simply because its sold a lot, it deserves to be compared with great movies such as the original Star Wars series, Jurassic Park, Jaws, Titanic, and so on and so forth. Lets get one thing straight: "Spidey" isn't in that class of movies. There's nothing brilliant about it, as there was in Jaws. There's no revolution in special effects, as was done in Jurassic Park.
So, please, people lets not do real movies a disservice by saying Spiderman is anything all that great. It's a for-kids movie that sold alot. Big deal.
On the other hand, on to Star Wars. Whereas Spidey can't be classified as a great movie because it simply lacks the substance or revolutionary elements, these new Star Wars movies can't be classified as great because they're targetted specifically at Star-Wars nerds. Outside of Star-Wars nerds, no one's really interested in Darth Vaders' child-hood, ok? I happen to really like Star Wars, but I'm still not interested in Anakin Skywalker. I'll be more than interested to see how the evil Emperor turns him into Darth Vader in Ep 3., but that's yet to come. Hopefully, Lucas won't screw up Darth Vader, give him some dumb voice, make him the wrong height, or some nonsense like that.
The simple fact is, as is said earlier, Lucas tries to take it too serious. That would be OK, if we could actually believe it should be serious. With the original Star Wars, you could take it as just fun, but it was also dead serious; Darth Vader was dead serious. But the new Star Wars eps, with Darth Maul? Come on, that guy looked like some poor rip off of a painting of a demon. Try to be a little more creative than red makeup and horns, Lucas. Gee, red make-up and horns? That might be original if not for the THOUSANDS of Christian zealots who've already used that image as the anti-christ for their religion.
Part of it isn't Lucas' fault. I mean, no matter what he does, no Darth Sith he can come up with is going to in any way be able to hold a candle to Darth Vader. But he could've done better than Darth Maul. Even the name was lame.
And another thing, despite MORE THAN A DECADE of special effects but Jaws 2, 3, 4? All pathetic jokes. Jurassic Park 1, great in every way. Jurassic Park 2 was a fun action film, not too much plot other than hunters v. tree-huggers...but still really fun to watch. Jurassic Park 3? Boring. Plot in it was lame, action was lame; as I've said on epinions.com, Jurassic Park 3 tried to be everything that Jurassic Park 1 was, and failed in every possible conceivable way.
I really see parallels between Jurassic Park 3 and Jaws 3/4 and Star Wars I/II. Just a lame money-grab, nothing new to add to the saga. The standard for doing a sequel should be in light of the legacy: does the sequel enhance or diminish the legacy? I think that these new Star Wars I/II movies do nothing to enhance the Star Wars legacy, and in fact diminish it by diluting the real Star Wars movies (IV, V, and VI) with money-grabbing rubbish.
If your a real Star Wars fan, and you really want to see Star Wars, then pop in your IV, V, and VI tapes. You get to watch those for free, and you won't be left with the bad taste in your mouth.
Star Wars III is My Last Hope for Lucas to redeem himself. Hopefully, when Lucas can have a Star Wars movie based around turning Anakin Skywalker into the half-machine Darth Vader, that will be something worth seeing.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Personally I've never had cause to bash on Katz. His articles/prononucements/perspectives were, to me, harmless stuff which was probably ok if I actually cared about what he thought.
But a couple of things about this one are so far over the top I'm gonna filter this guy out now. First:
"...the young, the real avatars of culture..."
So, Katz, you either do not know what avatar means, or what culture means. Regardless, the frequency of your rather silly commentaries suggests that you have the time to look
up the big words which you clearly don't understand.
Second:
"...cultural and generational coup d'etat this month..."
Christ, what over blown crap. It's actually
funny (no, funny, like in HaHaHa, my side's
splitting, laugh out loud, funny. Funny. Really)
that you are able to demonstrate how absolutely
shallow your thinking and thus perspective is.
And you don't even know why (this is the funny
part).
Shut up man, you're making yourself look bad.
Honest.
---Rick
... you didn't like the movie.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
Fitting, yes, that Jar Jar Binks plays a pivotal role in bringing unspeakable pain to the galaxy. Come to think of it, that's TWO galaxies he's ruined: his own of course, but also ours, which he terrorized as of 1999.
I *used* to agree with Katz on many of his movie analyses. Not so with this one. His basic thesis is as follows:
"Simpler movies are better movies."
And he's not just talking about "better" as in "makes more money." What's this crap about Joseph Campbell and the simple hero myth? If I hear that overblown windbag quoted one more time, I think I'm going to puke. He's not the only mythologist out there, but he sure gets quoted like he is.
I appreciated that complexities of the latest Star Wars movie. There were many different factions, all trying for various goals (some hidden and some obvious). And the members of each faction weren't always ACTUALLY working for that faction.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Spiderman. But it wasn't better than Star Wars because the story was less complex. It was better than Star Wars because it was better written, better acted, and better edited. Don't confuse simplicity with quality.
4-star general in a one-man army.
Dude, you got Claire Danes with crazy NHO's in the rain. What more could you ask of a movie like Spiderman? All you get in AOTC is Natalie Portman's bare midriff. Which one has more spank potential?
With only a little bit of Unix knowledge, you can write Katz articles too!
bash% lynx -dump http://slashdot.org/some_old_katz_article.pl | sed -e "s/post-Columbine/post-9\/11/g" >today\'s_article.txt
Ta-da!
SpiderMan hit the screens with practically no expectations.
Star Wars has an immense fan base, is very much a known entitiy, and is an ongoing saga. There are huge expectations for each Star Wars movie.
Worse, Star Wars suffers not only from high expectations but from wrong expectations. Many people want it it be something like an adult action/sci-fi movie. On the other hand, I think Lucas wants the movie to be aimed more at the under-12 crowd.
Sounds more like Moonwalker and smooth criminal. I doubt the delivery was the same, though. I also doubt there was a fight in a billiard parlor between gangsters with flapper girls dancing about.
Lowmag.net
better acted. I found it really painful to watch the CGIs out-act the wetware; that kid who played Anakin had maybe one 15-second scene where he really did a decent job of acting (the reunion-with-Mom scene), vs. many where he was just not credible (the whining-to-Padme scene was simply awful). The CGI was fantastic, but I really think Lucas did much better when he was resource-limited and had to rely on archaic things like an interesting plot and good dialog. Show me the character in AOTC who is nearly as good as Harrison Ford in the original SW (not the most versatile actor in the world, but he fit in that role really well). There's *nothing* in AOTC that compares with some of the dialog in SW for wit and aliveness.
To some degree, AOTC is handicapped by being a "prequel" and having little real suspense; we know all the basics of the plot ahead of time. The next movie will be even worse, 'cause the course of its plot will be even more tightly restricted and suspenseless, and these two movies have to end on a downer anyway to fit the story sequence. However, even with these limitations, Lucas really hasn't done a great job.
On the other hand, the starship drive flames were a really cool special effect...
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
But none of this had anything to do with Spider-Man making more money. No no no. It's a "cultural and generational coup d'etat". It's "The next generation [unseating] its elders". It's because "Lucas seemed to fall out of touch with post-9/11 America."
Katz, you're a pedantic, repetitive, overly dramatic idiot. You continuously put out poorly researched, sensational, buzzword laden drivel. You put the anal in analyze. Is it hard to breathe with your head so far up your ass? You try and cram EVERYTHING into your little "post 9/11, disillusioned generation gap, geek alienation" peghole. It's so, so sad. About the only thing I can say in your favour is how much discussion your articles tend to generate. Of course, 80% of it tends to be people criticizing your "ability" as a journalist.
"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."
Listen to your own fucking advice when it comes to writing.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
That is besides the fact that:
Let's face it: Harrison Ford was the only decent actor to play a major role in the first trilogy. With all due respect to Sir Alec Guiness, his screen appearance does not really span all of the first three movies. The rest of the cast in the first episodes are hardly worth mentioning.
And I agree. The attempt at cleansing Han Solo in the "remaster" was disgusting. Not just the scene with the shot. The scene where he was trying to explain himself to Jabba. Shudder... Yuk... In the original version he was doing everything he could not to explain himself and not to cough up.
Actually, that Han Solo did not need to explain himself. He shot first, provided explanations later.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
You're just figuring that out now?
But like most good trolls, he generates the traffic, so slashdot keeps posting his crap. But his articles are like automobile accidents you're passing... you don't want to look, but you just have to.
Suckered again.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
This is ridiculous. One Ultra Huge Heavily Marketed Movie is beating another Ultra Huge Heavily Marketed Movie and you're trying to read some sort of deep changing of the guard theme into it? Is this even worth disucssing? Both movies are making more money than 50 Slasdotters combined will make in their entire lifetimes. How can this be reasonably talked about?
Attack of the Clones is a completely different kind of movie than Spider-Man, and trying to make direct comparisons between the two is asinine. AotC has a wide base to draw upon, and has a responsibility to expand upon that base, which it does quite well. It's not as if everyone hasn't known exactly what it would be about for the last 15 years. The only surprise is in the details, which is exactly as it should be!
I think it's fairly obvious that there will be at least 2 Spider-Man sequels, as Hollywood tryies to milk as much as it can out of it. If the Spider-Man franchise ever makes it to 5 films, I think it's a safe prediction that you will be far more disappointed in it than you are in AotC.
Remember how great the first Batman movie was? How about The Crow? Superman?
How old were you when the A New Hope came out? I was 2 years old. Star Wars absolutely dominated my childhood, it was by far the coolest thing any of us had ever seen. Guess what? The new trilogy holds the same place among kids of similar age today. My daughter is constantly asking to watch The Phantom Menace, she would watch it 5 times a day if we let her, and most of my friend's kids are the same way.
The new Start Wars movies dominate their culture just as the first three dominated ours, and I'm sure that they will be just as disappointed in parts 7-9 as some of us are in parts 1 and 2, and for the same reason: Nothing will ever be as cool as it was when you were a kid. Get over it.
And enought with this "Post 9/11 America" crap. It had potential in the first 3 months or so to become a positive, unifying force, but now it's become nothing more than a blanket pulled over our eyes so we can't see Bush holding the door for Ashcroft, Hollings, and the rest to cart our freedoms out for auction to the highest bidder. "Post 9/11 America" is a code word for the same kind of blind patriotism bullshit that fueled the Cold War, but without the altruistic aspect of fighting for Democracy.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Yoda is supposed to be the wiser, more thoughtful jedi. IMO Yoda is more like the emperor. "We don't need no steenking lightsabers." Just some subtle power.
Says who? Yoda is quite powerful, but that would seem to allow him to move like he did. He doesn't have the physical ability to do so, but when he relies on the force to move himself he could be quite agile. If Yoda could just wave his hand and take out Dooku, then there would probably be nothing that could defeat him. Even Palpatine. We know that's not true, so there must be more limitation to his abilities, at least when confronted with a powerful jedi or sith lord. Their abilities nearly cancel each other out, so it comes down to physical combat. Yoda should be quite good with a lightsaber given that he's had over 800 years to practice. That would explain why Dooku beat a hasty retreat by distracting Yoda long enough to allow his escape.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I still don't understand the appeal of a universe where a queen is elected, but a senator is appointed.
My other first post is car post.
In fact, I'd say the new movies are much MORE violent than any of the original three. Think about the scene in ANH in the cantina where Obi-Wan chops off that creature's arm. We don't even see it happen!
Now we have Annakin decapitating Sandpeople, fly creatures getting mashed by machinery and chopped in half, Qui-Gon Jinn getting a lightsaber through his chest.
Lots of implied violence is now shown, and there is a lot more detail. And there is a lot more than just people getting shot with lasers.
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Word is Spiderman cost 30% - 40% more than Star Wars to make. It also opened on 1,000 more screens than Star Wars (meaning another 1,000 or so duplicates to make and distribute).
Star Wars opened mid-week (Thursday), instead of on a Friday.
Star Wars cost about 1/2 of what Spiderman did to advertise.
Star Wars was/is pulling in about DOUBLE what Spiderman was/is on a per-theater basis.
Natalie Portman is hot, but Kirsten Dunst's tits are perfection embodied.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
AFAICT, it was the other ingredients besides the story line that has made one movie better than another.
I'd like to believe that public choices in which movie to see reflect a fundamental groundswell of enlightenment and rejection of crass commercial values for more enduring qualities. It would be convenient if every video game and movie represents a strong tie to meta myths that Joseph Campbell outlined: they'd sure be a whole lot easier to analyze if they fell into those nice large deep and meaningful categories. But, many moviegoers don't live epic lives: they're just out for a good time.
It's as simple as the fact that AOTC was not as well made a movie as Spiderman. That's it.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
There were still a lot of things for the original trilogy. Remember that scene in Spaceballs, in Yogurt's temple, where he shows off some merchandises? Lunch boxes, t-shirts, even a flame-thrower!
That's way before TPM. And it is a satyre, but still, even for then, it was maybe a bit too much.
As for the 2 films of Katz's article, I saw AotC twice, and I haven't seen Spider-Man yet, and don't plan to see it. Why? I followed the Star Wars story, and liked it. TPM wasn't the best film ever, but if you like (love) something, you must be able to forgive. And I never been hooked by the Spider-Man story. Not before 9/11 (when it was originally supposed to go out, remember?), and especially not after. Come on, it almost looks like cold-war or WWII propaganda!
Do we really care precisely how Anakin Skywalker got pissed off and turned to the Dark Side? Um, YES! Lucas's vision was a rich backstory that we saw only a couple of episodes in the middle of. The public has put huge demands on him to develop that backstory.
I totally agree here. I thought ATOC was a good movie except for the excessive love scenes. I had always wondered where the empire got the endless supply of storm troopers, how the emperor came to power, etc...
After Ep1 I was pretty bummed about seeing the next two, and just saw Ep2 last weekend(in a empty theater btw). Now I am pretty excited about ep3 and can't wait to see how everything fits together.
If I show on 20 screens with 10 seats each or 1 megatheatre with 343 seats, which gives more opportunity for people to see it? (The answer is: it depends... one option offers more show times and can be better distributed, the other offers more raw seating potential).
Statistics is such a wonderful art of deception (intentional and otherwise)....
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
How about "Sep 10 and Sep 12th, can we find meaning for other dates?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Alright. . .
.
I'll get into it.
First off. .
While it's always interesting to look at the broad socio-cultural dynamics in mass media, I think perhaps Katz is searching rather too deeply here for a reason. Aside from the fact that Spiderman is a decade or so older than even the first Star Wars film, (which makes it anything but a youthful rebellion against convention), the reason Sam Raimi's film is making more than George's is that it was a better movie. This has been pointed out several times already.
What hasn't been successfully pointed out is why. People seem to be a little confused as to why the latest entry in the Star Wars franchise didn't ring any bells. Yes, they say things like, "Bad Dialogue" and "Bad Acting," but that's somewhat off the mark. And I sympathize. Such a lumbering monstrosity as AOTC, which worked on some levels, looked good, and generally entertained for nearly three hours despite it's being riddled with flaws, makes it difficult to see exactly where and how it went wrong.
I'd like to offer that the fact George didn't have a completed script before he started shooting as the prime culprit. That, and George has forgotten how to direct. --I refuse to put the actors at fault for what ended up on the screen. That's silly. I don't care how talented you are as an actor, You try pulling off some of the things they were required to say with integrity, a straight face and weak directing!
Take a look at the website for the Matrix, Reloaded. Look at the interviews and artwork done by the concept and story board artists. Every single scene of that film was worked out and adjusted with the director's approval, penciled and inked on paper in excruciating detail. The story board for the first film was VERY complete. Certain sections were even animated just to work out how they should look. And why? Because only if you do it this way can you be certain of what your finished product will look like on the big screen. This is a way of 'beta-testing' your film.
And it works. The first Matrix film was wonderfully done. There were very few kinks in the mix, and the pacing was wonderful.
However, the system by which the latest Star Wars films were made is entirely different.
George has basically invented a new way of movie making. Rather than shooting the all the footage, inserting the effects, and then sitting down with the finished film to edit everything into a finished product, The Phantom Menace and Clones were shot, edited and treated all at the same time. The daily video which came off the set or from location, was digitally sent to the editors that afternoon to be spliced together with the rest of the scenes in the 'master' copy of the film. At certain points, the master copy was made up from some scenes which were just green screens with actors talking, or a hand drawn animated sequences of a space fight or what have you, but the whole film was essentially right there on the non-linear editor. As new scenes, effects, etc., became available, they were spliced in to replace less finished scenes. And the film grew like this.
This allows, potentially, for increased efficiencies in production and for problems to be caught early on. It allows for massive flexibility. Unfortunately, it also clearly has the power to fool a director into thinking that just because he can create on the fly, that he should try to do so. --George clearly wanted to make the actual writing part of this non-linear process, which I feel, was a huge mistake.
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles were produced using an earlier version of this process. They looked ten times more expensive than they actually were, thanks to the efficiencies provided by the digital system. They told fun, sophisticated stories which on the whole, were highly entertaining. The difference between them and the last two Star Wars films were that each episode of Chronicles was first written by a respected and accomplished writer and then carefully edited into shape before being stamped with approval to be shot. And when they were shot, it was done by a skilled director. (Not Lucas.) Planning and directing. These two items make all the difference in the world!
The ironic part is that the super precision with which the Matrix was written, planned and story boarded was not something new. The Wachowski brothers were simply following George Lucas's lead. Back in the days when The Empire Strikes Back was being made, every shot and scene was meticulously planned in pencil and ink. Some scenes were even fully hand animated. Nobody was going to waste an inch of expensive film or a minute of expensive production time shooting something which they weren't pretty damned certain was work.
So yes, Video non-linear editing and the wonderfully efficient system Lucas has managed to create over the last fifteen years is an amazingly powerful and ingenious contraption. It makes error and experimentation fairly inexpensive. But in the final analysis, perhaps this is not such a good thing. Perhaps that much creative freedom only encourages laziness.
-Fantastic Lad
No, Jon just forgot to watch the movie again.
(SPOILER)
What he describes is a half second flash of movement of the wallcrawler
swinging around various buildings in New York. He swings to a flagpole
on top of one building, takes an instant to get his bearings, and is off again.
There is an American Flag attached to the flagpole; frankly I
(and the rest of the audience) would have been more surprised if there had
not been a flag attached to that pole. That is a common cliche of
American films, New York City films, Superhero films, many action films
and certainly every summer blockbuster film that has been released in the U.S.
since Independence Day (and probably before) .
Katz seems to be out of touch with the recovery of post-9/11 America, where
he sees something "unabashedly domestic and patriotic" in a part of a film
that prior to 9/11 would just have been seen as Hollywood S.O.P.
I actually preferred the way they treated the flag in Spider-Man; it was
a good-feeling yet subtle reminder of where the story takes place (and where
some of the values of the Main Character come from), without needing to bash
that message in as if the viewers are too ignorant to feel pride in our
common upbringing.
And unless I missed my modern geography, all the other skyscrapers
on the island of Manhatten are "not far from where the World Trade Center Towers
used to stand", relatively speaking.
You are right. And unfortunately I don't think it's a joke.
Spider-Man's success is a "... movement away from whorish sellouts?" Holy shit, can't he see what a totally false assertion that is? In my local supermarket, Spider-Man cereal outnumbers Star Wars cereal at least 2 to 1.
His claims are absolutely idiotic. I guess as a "pundit" Katz feels the need to draw some kind of socially significant conjecture, no matter how fatuous it might be.
After 5 Spider-man moves, one would think the same thing. Ex. Superman, Starwars.
Can anyone name any really long running series of movies that truly surpased or even maintained the momentum of past movies that have lasted this long? Just be glad that it isn't another Jason X...
Bye!
Jon, if you expect to have any credibility at all, you need to stop being so sloppy. Whenever you write an editorial like this, you lend merit to your detractors' complaints.
1. Spider-Man was NOT a hyped blockbuster? I'm not even sure you could make the argument that it had less hype than Episode 2. Spider-Man certainly seems to have had many more product tie-ins and marketing tie-ins than Episode 2 did -- and almost as many as Episode 1.
2. Star Wars, making $200M in 12 days -- doing so even faster than Episode 1 did -- is somehow failing?
3. Joseph Campbell did not help Lucas pen Star Wars. That is an urban legend. Joseph Campbell would later use Star Wars to help sell his ideas, and Lucas would then use Campbell to help sell Star Wars. But Campbell and Lucas didn't know about each other until after Star Wars came out.
The third doesn't really affect your point, but the first two do.
What's worse, Jon, is that when you write a sociological article as badly as you've written this one, you not only undermine your own credibility, but you undermine the credibility of real Sociological research, and the benefits it can have for you, me, and the world, by adding to the already-common perception that Sociology is nothing more than pseudoscience with no basis in hard fact and logical extrapolation. This hurts not just you, but all of us.
If you continue writing articles in this way, you will not find much of a career in journalism, and people will largely ignore you, even when you do have something interesting and important to say.
Oh please, Katz! The assertion that Spider-Man is somehow less of a "commercial whore" and Star Wars is laughable. My supermarket is filled with Spider-Man cereal! I've even seen Spider-Man in cellphone commercials! THERE IS SPIDER-MAN MERCHANDISE EVERYWHERE!
... and now nothing George Lucas could do would please them.
Katz, did you even do any research about this? Can you back up your assertion with data? I'd love to see, in hard numbers, how many different products Spider-Man has attached its name to. I'm sure it would rival Star Wars -- and possibly surpass it.
As far as the apparent decrease in popularity of Star Wars, isn't it amazing that even though "Clones" is doing so well at the box office, people still see that as a failure of some kind?
I think what happened is this: during the 15 years hiatus in which new Star Wars movies weren't being made, all the Star Wars fandorks convinced themselves that they were somehow involved in the production process of the movie.
15 years of nonstop Star Wars fantasization later, the fandorks have immersed themselves in scores of SW novels, collectible card games and [awful] fan scripts
--Mid
The point is, he got it backwards.
Confusing both movies John Katz is, hmmmm? Strong in the Mind Force he is not.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Somebody mod the above comment up!
He's exactly right. Even IF Katz is right and Spider-Man doing better than AotC is a "cultural coup" -- and he's NOT -- it's about as much of a coup as Pepsi outsing Coke as "choice of a new generation".
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
You confused the UN with a governing body that can be in anyway compared to a Republic. The UN is nothing like that. Your analogy simply falls flat on its face. The United States of America is a governing body. It is also a Republic. It has an army.
You have no understanding of what a Republic is. Governing bodies that wish to maintain any type of unity simply do not exist without armies. Its simply unbelievable that the Stars Wars Republic could have existed for thousands of years with no army and only a few jedi to hold it together.
Even if there was a plausible reason for the Republic to have no army and hence be at the mercy of a few hastily assembled droids, then THAT should have been mentioned. Lucas is an idiot for not doing so and putting forward a story that is so obviously unbelievable.
Wrong. Any graduate of Political Science 101 will tell you that large governing bodies must have armies.
My only question at this point is why you are so deluded that you will defend an obviously flawed piece of shit like AoTC.
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.
I agree with the article you linked to...
I also at first had trouble pinpointing what I didn't like about AotC. After talking about it over a few beers I realized that one main difference between Ep I and II and the original three is that there is no team in the new movies.
In Ep. III to V, we had a constant team: Luke, Han Solo, Leia, Chewie, and the two droids. In story-telling reality it was really the "team" against the Empire -- the Rebellion and characters were just a backdrop. Although the main characters at times were separated and went on their own individually, they consistently re-unified and it was obvious that each character mattered to the other (even c3p0 -- R2 definitely showed a lot of love to that dude).
Now in the newest movies there is some attempt at a consistent team but it's really a movie about individuals. Everyone has their own path and obviously their own destiny, and some of these paths are interwoven, but I still came away from the movie feeling that the characters' relationships with each other weren't cohesive The Jedi are divine know-it-alls who see all but know nothing, Amidala's struggling with work-life balance, Anakin's got growing pains and testosterone surges, and Yoda's been watching too much kung-fu. At no point did I feel like celebrating because as a team they accomplished anything. Everyone's a hero.
A cohesive portrayal of a team isn't a necessary ingredient for a movie, although we do see this in Fellowship of the Rings. But if Katz wants to point out anything that relates to society/culture/humanity he can point to this concept, not the post-9/11 world order.
More importantly - this is just movies guys, NOT religion.
Heretic! Burn him!
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Spider-man 0 scenes exploring the joys of self-gratification.
AoTC 1 Jedi Hand Trick.
When I pay to see solo masturbation scenes, I do not pay to see Hayden Christensen in them, nor do I expect to see Storm troopers in beta. That's just not what floats my boat.
Also, the graininess resulting from the low light levels (it's not like movie makers haven't known about the problems with this for a few decades) early in the movie, the shortened sets shot badly enough that it shows, the shocking misuse of CGI, the fact that it was as a whole rather uninspired and plotted for the up comming video game as much as anything else, the brutally painful dialogue, the poor makeup on Anakin's mother where you can see the freaking outline of the appliance, the fact she stole her death scene from Jim Carry in The Mask, the fact that the only enjoyment to be had from the movie are the little bits of decent eye candy, laughing at (but never with) it, and Crouching Jedi, Hidden Yoda.
Was Spider-man without blemishes? No. There's some dialogue in there I find painful. Like 2 or 3 scenes could have benefited from a handful of rewrites. But for the most part the movie was fun, funny, and telling a story worth watching. I don't know if I would say it was 4 stars like some reviewers, but it was a strong 3. The blemishes are small compared with the rest of the movie, and easily overlooked. With AoTC, finding the good is about as entertaining as searching for change in the sofa, and takes about as much effort.
Maybe its me, but when I'm watching a movie, whether or not it's for the solo masturbation scene, I generally don't like to be reminded I'm watching a movie, much less a poorly made one.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
...in "Spiderman" (action for the guys, romance for the girls). But I don't think "Attack of the Clones" was really lacking in chick-ocitude.
In fact, the second time I saw "Send in the Clones" (the title I was jokingly referring to it by before the release actually turns out to be a much better title) I was struck by the number of teen girls in the audience. They seemed to like it a lot. Which I find encouraging when you consider the role Senator Amidala plays in the third act. Definitely not the shrinking violet waiting for a handsome prince to rescue her from the slavers.
Maybe we'll get to see CJ Cherryh's "Angel with a Sword" made into a movie yet.
<DISCLAIMERS type="movie preferences" for="those looking to discount my opinions">I liked Episode II. I even liked Episode I. I've seen Episode II twice. I liked "Spiderman." But I've only seen it once. I think the final act of "Clones" was the best action sequence yet in any Star Wars movie (you can throw in "Spiderman" into the mix and still not beat it).</DISCLAIMERS>
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Opinions and assholes everybody has one after all....
On with the real meat.
The author misses the point I think. The Epic grew to meet its audience. Which is a good thing. Lucas did exactly what the "old" star wars watchers wanted. We want the answers to the many questions we have always had about how did this happened where did this come from? The backsotry is key in making the entire Star Wars story arc come together. Which exactly how he screwed up so royally in the eyes of the "old" crew in Ep1 it wasn't the Star Wars of old it didn't fit, it didn't really answer any questions. Ep2 is much better, and is a much better fit it answers those questions. Spiderman on the other hand doesn't have that back weight to deal with, it phrases its own new questions and answers(and lets face it everyone in the world knows the basic themes and stories of spiderman, there really are no new suprises there)
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Jon, I really suggest attempting to get read in a more mature venue - perhaps then you're writing skills will actually come to the fore. Or you'll collapse on the floor after experiencing real criticism...
But from a historical perspective it still makes zero sense to call the conflict The Clone Wars. That name gives NO MEANING to the conflict. They might have named it the The Sithian War of Secession.
There were 1.2 million clones which took many years to produce. There are thousands of star systems participating in this war. Why would you name the conflict The Clone Wars because a minute number from a galactic perspective of the combatants were clones?
During the American Revolution (that's a good name for a war), the British hired numerous Heshian mercenaries. Notice that historians did not later refer to that conflict as The Heshian Wars.
I agree with the article, but I don't think the lack of Han was the whole problem. Similar analyses could be made of Obi-wan and Darth Vader. (I refer, of course, to the originals). To put it more generally, the characters in AOTC all sucked. The article implies that the original movie was a healthy mix of ingredients, while AOTC is imbalanced with too much "Jedi" and not enough "Scoundrel". However I don't accept that the "Jedi" of AOTC is equivalent to the "Jedi" of Star Wars. Nor is Dooku an adequate substitute for Darth Vader.
Of course, fans of AOTC will answer any such objections with the "structural defense" - the claim that the movie somehow had to be that way to fit into the bigger picture.
or Empire Strikes Back?
or even Return of the Jedi?
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.
Exactly. I was hoping Jango would play an ambiguous role - maybe the Jedi
would hire him and his kid to do something they couldn't. He was almost the only cool character in the movie, and his relationship to his cloned "son" added depth. I guess he was created almost by accident, in an attempt to "explain" where Boba came from - "genealogy" as Katz puts it.
Look Jon -- It's a convenient device to raise the battle between Spider-man and AotC to the level of culture-shifting battles between one kids generation and the next.
But to say that Lucas has a lock on marketroid obsession and that the Stan Lee clan hasn't tried to "shroud Spider-man in market hype", and that that's why Spider-man is winning the hearts of all the little Generation X++ers, isn't just wishful thinking... it's plain wrong.
For breakfast this morning, I had Kellog's Spider-man cereal. (Honestly. I really did.) It tasted just like Cap'n Crunch Berries, but it sure looked like little spider webs. I could have tried the Spider-man Pop-tarts or Rice-Krispies, but I was in the mood for something a little sweeter.
After breakfast I signed up for the new Spider-man Cingular account that I saw lots of cool commecials for, and entered to win a custom Spider-man Dodge Viper.
Then I popped over to Wal-mart to pick up the new Spider-man game, and found out I could get a free trip to Universal Studios, complements of Sam Walton! For lunch I "swung into Carl's Jr" or did I "drop into Hardee's" for a quick Spider-man burger, and washed it down with a Spider-man Dr. Pepper, which I became a big fan of ever since I heard they were racing a Spider-man Dr. Pepper car in the NASCAR Busch Series.
The amazing thing is, even the marketing press is completely aware of what Sony Pictures is doing with Spider-man. Why aren't you?
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
I liked the Yoda lightsaber-fight scene for precisely that reason: everybody expected Dooku and Yoda to have a "Big Trouble in Little China" style fight where they point their fists at each other and make straining faces.
"You never could beat me, Egg Shen."
Anyone I talk to says that's how they imagined Yoda fighting. His fight scene flew straight in the face of that assumption, and showed that Yoda is definitely not to be underestimated -- even when it comes to lightsaber fights. I appreciated it for that.
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 !
I agree with you that they needed to drop the CG characters. Muppet Yoda looked much much better than the obviously fake CG Yoda.
I think that most of Yoda's scenes should have had a Muppet and just use the CG for the fight.
As for the fight - he is using the force to be able to move fast. He's such a great Jedi he can do that, but not all the time.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
yes, that's right. If everyone here went to go see My Dinner With Andre ~ the very universe would collapse onto itself. A very bad thing indeed, unless of course you have a reservation at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
As with most statistics, it's important to understand the concepts. The main point is that they are comparing to the fifth Star Wars movie: "Episode II" (confusing, huh?). This, of course, opened only two few weeks after Spider-Man, so chances are ticket prices are close enough for a valid comparison.
My guess is because only gross revenues are reported, not individual sales (which can vary just from time of day...)
Actually, that's not so meaningless. The vast majority of movies follow a general pattern where the first weekend is the largest, then they progressively slide from around 33%-50% per weekend. Given that and a little basic math, the first weekend take can be a good indicator.
Now, there are a few movies that don't do this. Titanic was one (actually hit a 28% increase for its second weekend). Of course, that movie stood out for all sorts of reasons, and was an anomoly. Off-hand, I recall Amistad and Mouse Hunt also grew their second weekends. Of course, those two were initial films from an untested new studio, so there's reason for them also.
If you are interested, check some sites like Box Office Mojo or The Numbers and look at the percentage change, not just the raw numbers.
Sounds like you really need to stop relying on personal preference there and look to industry information. Right off hand I see that February is usually down for ticket sales, while late spring is usually when sales really start to take off. My first Google hit checking things even shows just that. Feb 1999: $341,959,083. May 1999: $742,936,211. Doesn't sound "ridiculous" to me.
Exactly. Unfortunately, it seems that you are missing on this a little. Go to The Numbers and do some looking up. Pay careful attention to the % change from weekend to weekend. That's quite informative. And even more informative is looking at the change in the change. And ponder things like "Why did 'A Beautiful Mind' have a sudden reverse in change from -24% to +28% for the weekend of 2/15/2002???"
What was it about Episode IV that made Episode I look so bad? The same thing that made Spiderman so good: the struggle. In Episode I, the Jedi are already super-powerful. They come in and kick ass. There is no hero's journey for them to go on; they are just galactic policemen.
Think about the use of the Force in Episode IV. How many times did it really manifest? Once. When Vader choked the Admiral. You might count Luke using the Force to shoot a missle up the Death Star's ass, but that could be attributed to luck. It's kinda cool, because it relies more on your imagination than knocking robot troopers around with force-push.
Don't get me wrong, I love using the force powers in Jedi Knight II, but that alone does not a good movie make.
Its simple, really. Spiderman is playing in almost 4000 theaters. Star Wars is only in 3000.
Lucas' refusal to give his customers a bad experience (by playing in theaters with bad sound and bad projection) results in a lower initial box office... but will proabably result in longer legs.
Katz is the whore here- he sells his integrity by backing a mega-corporation hype machine (Spiderman) against the Independant Film - Star Wars.
Star Wars is made outside hollywood, with no hollywood involvement (FOX only distributes it) totally controlled by Lucas-- his own effects companies, his own sound company, his own production company, his own money.
Star Wars- the whole saga- is the triumph of being true to your vision over selling out to the "we gotta get a sequal out" attitude and pandering to those of poor taste. (So this means that those slashdotters who didn't like star wars are of poor taste?! Well, the version released in 77 had all the same issues: bad acting, a reliance on "cute" characters in the name of R2D2 and C3PO, etc. etc.)
Jon Katz is a sellout, whereas Star Wars is a Blockbuster.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Lucas could re-release the original star wars (and put it out on DVD the same day) and it'd probably out-sell them both.
And futher to your points, does Katz even realise that there's a world outside of the US? Yes, yes, the movies are made in the US, that's all well and good, but heros draped in American flags, believe it or not, tend to alienate and annoy audiences outside America.
Has anyone got the WORLDWIDE sales figures on Spiderman and AoTC? I'm sure Worldwide attendance to AoTC will be far more telling.
I'm not concerned if the director thinks the US is the greatest country on earth, I and hundred of millions of non-americans disagree and have had enough of patriotism being rammed down our throats by movie makers.
Get over yourselves - Katz AND you Hollywood movie makers - and realise that a majority of people who see your work are not of the American persuasion.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
The really ironic thing is that AOTC addresses 9/11 directly. IT is all about the triumph of evil when people are swayed by politicians for voting for a war/army that will ultimately be turned against them.
Spiderman is about a guy who goes out and fights crime by himself. Ok, but has no relevance to 9/11.
Katz criticizes star wars for doing something spiderman never even tries to do!
Did he even see the movie? Or did he just not understand it at all?
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Did you actually survey the audiences in the movie theatres to discover what age they were? Did you even try? If this is the kids rebelling against their elders culture, can you explain to me why Star Wars is a relic of the 70s and Spiderman's a relic of the 60's? And why do you assume that people couldn't have gone to BOTH movies?
This article is based on a lot of unproven assumptions and dubious interpretations. In fact, at a certain other discussion board (k5), it would have been voted down as a sloppy piece of work, if not as a troll. Which begs the question - who's losing touch with their audience - movie makers or webmasters?
This is really a weird. When you think about it, AoTC and Spiderman are both competing for the same market (Gen-x geeks). It's nice to see that a movie actually won out over a Star Wars movie. I liked AoTC, but Spiderman was even better.
Now, I dissagree with Katz: Spiderman was hyped even more than AoTC.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Well if major portions of the conbatants turn out to be clones then perhaps the term Clone Wars might be somewhat plausible.
Even with the accelerated growth, it still took some time to clone 1.2 million. Thousands of star systems at war. Billions or trillions of citizens potentially affected. And a measely 1.2 million foot soldiers from an obscure planet mean anything?
Yeah sure its fantasy. The problem is Lucas picked a fantastical sounding name but then he didn't back it up with at least a modicum of plausibility.
The problem here is the political correctness of George the Has Been Lucas. He didn't want to put forward a story where thousands of "real" people die. So he made do with armies of droids and clones.
That's not how I would have choreographed that fight.
Look at ESB, Luke vs. Vader. Vader starts out fighting one-handed, while Luke is sweating grunting, balls-out giving it everything he's got like the hot-tempered whiny little out of control punk that he is. Vader holds him off and controls - DOMINATES the fight with quiet dignity. He's steering Luke over to the carbon freezer. . .
I expected something more akin to that out of an 800 year old little green guy. Especially one who walks like he's got an arthritic hip. The jumping spinning spastic monkey he turned into was not dignified at all. I half expected him to begin using the force to fling his feces at Dooku.
As someone who knows at least a little bit about martial arts - both in a practical sense, and a Hollywood sense - I would have written up this fight with Yoda using more wisdom with regard to his strengths as a fighter. Trying to kick someone in the head is like trying to punch someone in the knee. It's not the easiest move, it wastes energy for very little potential payoff, and it exposes some fairly vulnerable areas to attack. Granted, Yoda wasn't throwing any Jet Li kicks, but there was no reason for him to jump up to Dooku's face-level, where his lightsaber was more conveniently located for defense. I would have kept Yoda firmly planted on the ground, using two short light sabers. (long would be impossible, because some of the moves would have the tips cutting the floor). Yoda would have made quick lunging low attacks at Dooku's feet and shins. As silly as that sounds, Dooku would have had a hard time defending against them. He'd have to bend over, stoop down, and be made off balance. On the ground, there's a limited number of directions Yoda could expect to be attacked from. Down there, Dooku does have a reach advantage, but he pretty much has that no matter where Yoda is. With two sabres, Yoda could have eaten that advantage. Yoda has a good defensive advantage, and the ability to attack targets that would be difficult for Dooku to defend. It's a great strategy, because Yoda could easily have cut off a foot or a leg. Then they could have moved the story on and Dooku could have escaped, and gotten a cyber replacement, which would have taken all of 60 seconds of film to portray.
When I first saw Yoda in action, I was half expecting some bullet-time scenes. I'm grateful they didn't do that. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
While he is wrong about epII - think about epI for a minute. We don't see pilots scream in death. We dont see any Gungans die in the battle on Naboo. The only living beings that die in Ep1 are starfighter pilots and Darth Maul (and that's okay 'cause he's a Bad Guy). The fighter pilots don't count, they're not real people - they're extras, you never see their face, so to Hollywood they don't really exist.
Every Disney movie in the past 10 years has been more violent then Ep1.
Are we sure that Jango is dead? All I saw was a suit of body armor or something get its helmet sliced off, almost as though it were a 'droid. Seems the bottom of the helmet and the top of the torso were carefully kept aimed away from the view of the audience. (We at least got a glimpse of the "inner" Darth Maul.) And shouldn't the kid have freaked out even a little bit, maybe even trying to put the head back on the torso for just a moment before collapsing with grief, or going postal and grabbing the nearest thing he could use for a weapon to get revenge, instead of just standing there stoically regarding the helmet like Hamlet talking to Yoric's skull?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
More like over 35 years. Spiderman's been around since at least 1965, although at this late date some of my memories from those years tend to blur together, although I'm pretty sure he was post Fantastic Four and Howlin' Commmandos and pre-Daredevil (and much before Silver Surfer), though I'm not sure about The Avengers. Need to go get that box out of the attic and check copyright dates.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Now that might have made it worth reading.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Even simpler explination for the name comes from good ol Episode IV when Luke says
"No, my father wasn't in the clone wars, he was a navigator on a spice frigette" (or something to that effect)
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Last I checked, switzerland had no standing army. They have a civil defense network, but no standing army. And they seem to be holding up pretty well. Actualy, the idea of a governing body with no specific army, but rather individual units of defence has been toyed with and explored before. The US toyed with the idea while forming the constitution, and for the longest time, the formation of a standing army was resisted. In fact it wasn't until WW I untill the US actualy had a standing army of any real size. Timothy Zahn explored this concept in his book Cobra in which he establishes an empire with loosely connected armies, held together only by common interest. Most ruling bodies do not really need an army, just a powerful presense and a handful of intimidating enforcers. It wasn't the Nazi army per se that kept Hitler's territories in line, it was his Gestapo. The same could apply to the Republic. No need for a standing army if a thousand+ Jedi are powerful enough to keep people under some semblance of control.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
LOL, woops, they're both hot and I get them mixed up occasionally.
We saw a cultural and generational coup d'etat this month, at least in cinematic terms -- if we were watching. Star Wars was challenged by millions of rebellious kids, who decided to choose a new kind of myth. The next generation unseated its elders -- as is the right of every generation - and is making its own culture....
What the shit? Is this engli... oh, its katz. nevermind. Not that i really agree with bashing something cause it's popular, but this is rediculous.
> mythologist Joseph Campbell (who helped Lucas craft the Skywalker/Vader saga)
This is not true, as well documented by Salon.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
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Today's heavy-handed patriotism is tomorrow's post-ironic kitsch.
Some day, your kids or grandkids will look back on 2002 in the same way you looked at those old Norman Rockwell prints.