Star Wars

10/11/2019

What Great Cover Songs and The Legend of Zelda Can Teach Us About the Disney Remakes

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Here’s a list of Disney Live Action Remakes that I enjoyed:

  1. Cinderella (2015)
  2. The Jungle Book (2016)
  3. Pete’s Dragon (2014)

Here’s a list of Disney Live Action Remakes that I did not enjoy:

  1. Beauty and the Beast (2017)
  2. The Lion King (2019)

Now, I could go into each and explain the things that I did and did not like about each movie (and certainly, there were things I did and did not like in each one), but given the amount and the general structure of these remakes, plus general quandary that are the Alice and Maleficent live action films, there is a question that most many some people ask which is:

“Why remake these movies at all?”

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01/23/2018

My Favorite Film Scores

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So this post came about because a) I have to push back the other post I was planning for today because I haven’t finished the research for it and b) the film I am focusing on for what is now next week’s post has a particularly iconic and important score in terms of film history. I also really don’t care for it. Not to give too much away, it’s a very bass heavy and monotonous score and not very motivic. Well, it has one motif. Still, I started thinking about what I do like in film scores and that naturally lead me to some movies that I really enjoy the music of.

I’ve talked about music in film before. This list is going to cover films with mainly non-diegetic music, meaning that the music is present in the film, but isn’t happening within the world of the characters. All of these films also have wholly original score, save one notable exception– mostly because saying that Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 have great scores is fairly redundant. I also managed to only repeat one composer (no surprise as to who that was though). The films are listed in chronological order as well, because the films I picked really aren’t a fair comparison to rank.

Let’s get started.

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05/26/2017

6 More Classic Films That Would Not Exist Without Star Wars

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About a year back, I talked about some movies that would not have been made if it weren’t for Star Wars. That was far from a complete list, of course, so in honor of Episode IV’s 40th birthday (yes, it’s been 40 years, Gen X-ers) I’ve decided to talk about some more. These have a bit of a different theme though. Last year’s post was mostly about effects and film-making techniques. This year, I’m going to talk more about executives and directors and people— movies that literally would not have been made were it not for George’s “silly little sci-fi film”. Many of the films listed here are made by people who were inspired directly by Star Wars, or are films that have a symbiotic relationship with Star Wars (even more so that Star Trek). These are films, ultimately, that people decided to make due to the success of Star Wars, or due to the power of its film-making.

This is still talking about the Original Trilogy, of course.

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01/10/2017

Prophesy and the Real Girl

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Quick, name a Chosen One narrative.

Okay, I’m hearing Star Wars, I’m hearing Harry Potter, Percy Jackson… Did someone actually say Disney’s Hercules?

All right, now name one with a female protagonist.

That isn’t Buffy.

(Leave your answers in the comments.)

Most Heroines– at least the ones of the past 30-ish years– don’t get chosen but rather choose their adventure. Mulan decides to take up her father’s sword and join the Army. Katniss volunteers in place of her sister for the Hunger Games. Merida’s entire story is about how she should have the choice of what her life will be. It’s hardly ever seen in Sci-Fi; Ripley isn’t a Chosen One, neither is Capt. Janeway or Dana Scully or the Doctor’s Companions (pointed stare at Moffat). Chosen Ones tend to deal with prophesies and mysticism and fate, things more often associated with Fantasy.

There’s also more to girls who are Chosen Ones than being princesses with curses, or being Buffy. They follow certain patterns, the same that the guys follow. There are essentially three different types of Chosen Ones; Type One, the kind that has an explicit prophesy attached to them; Type Two, the kind that is chosen by the gods/the universe’s higher power; and Type Three, the kind that simply has a unique power and is “Great Power, Great Responsibility”-ed into being the hero.  Types One and Two are the easiest to write, but the hardest to write well due to just how many of them there are, and Type Three works best for serialized stories. I’ll talk some about each of them, with some of their higher profile examples, as well as some writing advice to nail the character arc.

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12/31/2016

A Year in Review

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Well, that’s it. If you’re reading this, you made it. Congratulations.

2016 hasn’t been the best of years. But even still, some good things were there. There were several major anniversaries, including Star Trek, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and others. Rouge One and Captain America: Civil War and Moana were fantastic. There’s a vaccine for Ebola, child mortality continues to fall, and DiCaprio won his Oscar. I’m not going to go through the pretense that any individual life, especially my own, was any more or less important to anyone else’s this year. I only really started in April, and it’s been somewhat scattered at that, but we had some good times here. I do this for a lot of reasons, but fun is certainly one of them.

If you’ve read this blog at all, you know I’m bad at these intro paragraphs, so let’s get into the content. Here are some highlights and hidden gems of this year.

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07/11/2016

Breaking Genre: Star Wars

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I’ve often said that Star Wars is not Science Fiction. And while I would generally use the term “Space Fantasy” as a substitution, that’s not exactly a layman’s term. Sci-Fi and Fantasy have sub-genres upon sub-genres, from as broad as “Hard Science Fiction” to as specific as “Young Adult Urban Fantasy Paranormal Vampire Romance”. Some sub-genres overlap between two main genres; where does Steampunk bridge the gap? Or Space Opera? What about Magical Realism– literary fiction, or authors refusing to say they write Fantasy? There are so many to choose from, but these sub-genres are distinguished by various elements of story all of which make up the whole. Some deal more with aesthetics (the main reason that High Fantasy and Urban Fantasy are different sub-genres), while others deal with content (the reason the Foglios are insistent that Girl Genius is Gaslamp Fantasy). To find these elements, there are five questions you must ask– Who? What? Where? Why? How?

Who? — characters, or, more importantly, the archetypes they conform to. There are genre specific character archetypes– there’s a reason you wouldn’t see a Scotty or Geordi in Middle Earth.

What? — Plot. This is actually very important when determining genre. Shakespeare set at least 13 of his plays in Italy, but that doesn’t make Romeo and Juliet the same kind of story as Much Ado About Nothing.

Where? — as alluded in the past question, setting. Keep in mind, setting is not just place, but time as well, which is why there’s no “When?” question.

Why? — Themes or messages. This is also incredibly important, partially because of its intertwining with the plot, but also because it can help determine sub-genre, especially within Sci-Fi.

How? — This is a part of genre that has recently come into prominence with the rise of the “dramedy”, as it partially deals with tone, but it’s asking how the story is told and that runs through all of the technical aspects of the story-making process. This is what most academics mean when they say “genre” — painting is a “genre”, poetry is a “genre”, prose is a “genre”. For the purposes of this blog, those are mediums, genres are genres.

With that in mind, let’s see how Star Wars stacks up.

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06/19/2016

John Williams’ Ten Most Classic John Williams Moments

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So this week I watched AFI’s 44th Annual Lifetime Achievement Award, which this year went to composer John Williams. Even if you don’t know his name, you know his music. From Harry Potter to Indiana Jones to Star Wars, he is the modern master of the lietmotif, and has written some of the most iconic film scores ever. At 50 Academy Award nominations, he is the most nominated person alive (only edged out by Walt Disney at 59). Many things were said at the event, but one stood out to me the most. Harrison Ford came on stage and spoke about a moment in Raiders where Marion’s Theme was prominent and how it wasn’t where it was expected. He expected it to be when Indiana and Marion reunited in Nepal, but noted that that scene had no music. The scene he eventually pointed out was the cut from the truck that Indiana thinks Marion is on exploding to Indiana later drinking with the Nazi Monkey. He was getting very close to an idea I’ve had about film for a long time, the “John Williams Moment”.

A “John Williams Moment” is a moment in a movie where the scene is carried by the music. Many people don’t think about how music effects our engagement in a film– and I’m not talking about characters outright singing, but what others might call “incidental music” or the orchestral soundtrack. So many classic movie moments are classic because of the powerful music that underscores them, a lot of that music being composed by John Williams. It’s when the power behind the scene comes from its score, and there’s so many for so many movie composers. You don’t have to be John Williams to have a John Williams moment.

But he’s had some pretty good ones.

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05/25/2016

Night of the Living Dead Author, OR How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Respect George Lucas

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This is a story about storytellers, about the people behind the words and images. We all have our own ideas as to whom this person should be. A lone artist atop their ivory tower, slaving away at their magnum opus. A moderately successful director known for quirky, realistic movies that probably star Jennifer Lawrence. A writer that lives somewhere in New England, in a log cabin miles from anyone else. A camp leader with kids around the fire. Wherever or however, stories are told by everyone. Some particular stories are fairly universal, and told by many people. Some less so. Some stories are iconic, recognized by millions. Again, some less so. But given that today is the 39th birthday of the movie that would come to be known as Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope, you can imagine that I’ll be talking about one story in particular. Or, rather, one storyteller.

George Lucas is a visionary director, a powerful force in the film industry, and, surprisingly, not the enemy. I can’t imagine what he thought or felt when he signed away LucasFilms. I don’t know his creative process beyond how the movies were made. I don’t know why some decisions were made and others not. I’m sitting here, watching the GOUT version of A New Hope, after a short argument with my sister over the fact that she initially grabbed the Special Edition DVDs. I get excited over the idea of the De-Specialised Editions. And then there’s everything to do with the prequels… Why do we get invested in a story to such a degree that such changes are seen as sacrilege? What makes the Special Editions different from LOTR’s Extended Editions? But mostly, who “owns” Star Wars?

It’s not who you think.

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05/04/2016

7 Classic Films That Would Not Exist Without ‘Star Wars’

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It’s Star Wars Day, much to the delight of many and to the groans of people not impressed with puns. There’s so much that has already been said about the franchise, so I’m going to talk about Star Wars by… not talking about Star Wars, and instead talking about its cultural influence. Of course, there has been a lot that’s been said of that as well, but as the title suggests, Star Wars had its impact on the industry as well, for many reasons. Most of them having to do with Lucasfilm. The following films would not exist as we know them today without Star Wars, and some might not exist at all. The franchise’s impact on the industry is, of course, far wider reaching than what I am going to cover here. From groundbreaking effects (that still hold up, by the way), to some iconic imagery, to the simple act of putting the credits at the end (leading to the ever popular Post Credits scene), so much was different after that Wednesday in late May of 1977. Here are six films that would not exist without Star Wars.

And I am talking about the Original Trilogy… we’ll get to the prequels later.

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