A meditation on movies

I saw Star Wars on the day it opened in 1977. One reason I did this is because a friend and I wanted to go to the movies, and it sounded promising because we were both fans of American Graffiti. We figured, why not? We knew nothing about it aside from its provenance, because there was no internet to hype it to death. It was not called A New Hope. And the theater, for some reason, was packed, probably because it had been so long since there had been a really good popular science fiction film that we were all hopeful. They handed out buttons to everyone on the way in that said, “May the Force be with you.”

Things have changed.

Movie buffs, as I define the term, are people who love movies more than the average Joe. Movie buffs are pretty much uninterested in whether a movie was released yesterday or a hundred years ago. Black & white vs. color means nothing unless it’s an artistic choice. Everyone has types of movies they like more than other types, but that’s not the driver of choice. As Duke Ellington famously said of music, there are two kinds, good music and the other kind. The same is true of movies.

Movies are, of course, meant to be seen on big screens, and presuppose filled seats. In other words, movies are a communal art form. So is architecture. Movies, because of the expense of their producing them, favor a mass-market approach, although money spent in production does not equate in any way with a film’s worthiness. As the means of making movies become more accessible, no doubt a new wave of personal films will eventually find a market, but no matter how you slice it, actors and sets and costumes and scripts and so forth all cost money, so film-making will probably never be the new book-writing. I can write a book at virtually no cost other than my time, all by myself. The reader will read it, similarly, alone. It’s hard to imagine movies on that scale, short of some amazing science fiction scenario of a vastly far-away future.

Movies, as popular entertainment, have almost from the start engendered popular affection beyond simply watching them. Charlie Chaplin was a traffic-stopping celebrity when he returned to England after making his first short films. The Golden Age of Hollywood was accompanied by seemingly endless numbers of fan magazines and gossip columns. Nobody put any President’s handprints in the cement outside of the White House, but you’ve got everything from John Barrymore’s profile to Harold Lloyd’s glasses to Trigger’s hoofprints in front of Grauman’s Chinese. Celebrity magazines morphed eventually into celebrity news shows on TV, like Entertainment Tonight. Add to this the internet, and today you can track celebrities 24/7.

Some movies become celebrated, and you can track them too. Studios paying a hundred million dollars (easily) for a big tent-pole picture, will spend as much on promoting it, starting with the buzz before the ink is even dry on the contract. They are now pushing trailers for Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass, which will be opening next May. (Don’t get me started.) And, of course, they’ve been pushing the new Star Wars film since God knows when. I’ve tried to ignore as much of it as possible.

Imagine walking into a theater in 1977, never having heard of Star Wars, and seeing that movie that day, virtually hype-free. You had no way of getting much hype even if you wanted it. There were no inescapable banner ads. There was no opening day merch madness three months in advance of the film. There was no speculation on Luke on every page of your RSS feed. The problem is, there’s no way you can ever come close to that virgin experience I had back then no matter how hard you try. You’ve already seen 6 Star Wars movies. You already have expectations, or lack of expectations. No matter how good the movie is, you will not go to it fresh, unless you’re maybe ten years old and living in a parentally sealed vacuum. And with its use of beloved old characters, well, how fresh can it be anyway?

Hollywood lives to remake successes, either by literal remakes or be endless sequels and reimaginings, which are sequels with a fancier name. Occasionally, a sequel can be quite good, as can a remake, but mostly not. And the best experiences we have in movies? And, for that matter, in any entertainment or art form? Well, I would suggest that those best experiences are fresh and new, something that stirs you in a way that you weren’t expecting, that you've never been stirred before, not a retelling of the same old same old but instead something totally different.

Star Wars TFA may be great. I hope so. I’ll go see it, and I’m doing my best to avoid knowing too much about it so that I can enjoy it with as much freshness as possible. But in no way will it be the breakthrough the original movie was. There were no great Space Opera movies before Star Wars, although there were a few good SF films. Star Wars killed the Western, opened the door to CGI (unfortunately, in many cases), sealed the tent-pole opening weekend b.o. phenomenon, and inspired countless fantasies in the minds of children around the world. TFA merely adds another layer to all that.

What I really want to see is a completely new movie that I am not expecting, one that totally blows me away and entertains me in ways I’ve never been entertained before, or maybe makes me think in ways I’ve never thought before. I don’t know the name of that movie, but I highly doubt that it will be a sequel, prequel, remake or reimagining. It will be totally new. And it will be rare.

I can’t wait.