The other day, we busted out Return of The Jedi as something to kind of just watch in the background. Diana said she was pretty sure that she'd never seen any of the movies on DVD, oddly enough, let alone any special features, so I popped in the primary doc that came on the special features disk with the original trilogy. We had it playing tonight as background while she went to sleep.
Combined with my previous rant of disgust toward the horrible GI Joe movie, I started to wonder if we'd ever see something like Star Wars again. Everything about it was a game changer and it managed to stay relevant decades later.
I think the Lord of The Rings movies got close, but being based on existing books that everybody knew means that, at the very least, what appeared had at least been imagined. The Narnia movies were pretty solid, but again, existing and known mythology. The Harry Potter series might be a contender, both for its relatively straight forward story telling and for its iconic characters. They'll have to make a strong finish with the last two movies.
I don't feel as strongly about the prequels, because they exist for little reason other than to establish the origins of Darth Vader, as far as I'm concerned. Really, I don't know that Lucas is really that good of a writer as much as he's excellent at bringing together a visual story. It could be argued that the two Star Wars movies he didn't direct were actually the best.
In any case, it's fun to think about how the films became bigger than movies and are so ingrained in our culture.
No comments yet.