Its two sequels, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, came into a world where the Star Wars universe was a cultural and marketing phenomenon. Similarly, the Los Angeles Times lauded the original movie, calling it “an exuberant and technically astonishing space adventure in which the galactic tomorrows of Flash Gordon are the setting for conflicts and events that carry the suspiciously but splendidly familiar ring of yesterday’s westerns, as well as yesterday’s Flash Gordon serials.” (Which tells you how far Flash Gordon has fallen in our cultural consciousness.) Matthew, the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. It’s both an apotheosis of Flash Gordon serials and a witty critique that makes associations with a variety of literature that is nothing if not eclectic: Quo Vadis?, Buck Rogers, Ivanhoe, Superman, The Wizard of Oz, The Gospel According to St. Star Wars, which opened yesterday at the Astor Plaza, Orpheum, and other theaters, is the most elaborate, most expensive, most beautiful movie serial ever made. It came to screens with little of today’s advance publicity and was made at a cost of $11 million ( about $40 million in today’s dollars ). It was George Lucas’s first film since American Graffiti in 1973. What must it have been like to watch t he original movie, Episode IV: A New Hope, in 1977? It didn’t have the advantages of its sequels, and certainly not its prequels. Now, I just pretend those movies didn’t happen: Jar-Jar, midi-chlorians, intergalactic trade negotiations all relegated deep into the sarlacc’s digestive tract. I, like the film critics, turned my ire toward a worthy object, Episode II, and, to a lesser extent, Episode III. I wanted to love it, came out of the theater loving it, watched it again and again, and then slowly realized how bad it really was. Which brings me to the question: Is it possible to dislike Star Wars: The Force Awakens given that we already know that it’s going to be great, “epic, awesome, and perfect”? I bring all this up as someone who remembers the excitement surrounding Episode I. And d espite the disdain, and fans’ attempts to excise the films from the public consciousness, the three movies made about $2.5 billion at the worldwide box office. There were reviews that pilloried the movies, of course (especially the second installment), but, in general they were drowned out by those twin pillars of the Hollywood publicity machinery: hype and hope. That’s right: it’s better than Star Wars.” Honestly, it’s not a view that’s now less controversial than the debate over who shot first. At the time, The New York Times called it “ by far the best film in the more recent trilogy, and also the best of the four episodes Mr. The sneering carried over to its sequel, the laughably bad Attack of the Clones, a movie about which The Hollywood Reporter said: “The good news about George Lucas’s new Star Wars movie is that the universally loathed Jar Jar Binks is little more than a dress extra.”īy the time Revenge of the Sith rolled around in 2005, many were hopeful Lucas could rescue the franchise he’d created a long time ago, in a studio far, far away. Except: The same thing happened in 1999, when the first Star Wars prequel met with acclaim, which turned into late-breaking disdain. The seventh movie in the series, The Force Awakens, comes out tomorrow, and already critics are rhapsodizing about its “ strong performances,” “ old-fashioned escapism,” and script that “ has a better and sharper sense of humor than the original trilogy.” Which bodes well for fans. I am, of course, talking about The Phantom Menace, the first of the three Star Wars prequels, which most fans of the original movies pretend don’t exist. Why Do We Need to Sleep? Veronique Greenwood
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