Film picture from the deminsts continuation of the saga "the awakening of power". Image: © lucasfilm ltd. Tm
The blockbuster saga has been a mirror of the time ie for 40 years, "new mythology" and a quantum consolation
Dark, deep blue, almost black lies the room in "starwars" open. Infinite. The fanfare of john williams’ title music sound, and the bias writing not only uses and pays the events in front of the action, but at the same time he misses the space in its width, in which he cursed to the illegible. Then, accompanied by a short string gauge, the camera pivots "below", what we first learn that moons after "above" climbing, and then the horizon of a planet is visible, which occupies the entire lower canvas part. So the open space is structured. Shortly thereafter, the perspective triangular spaceship darth vaders slides from above into the picture and quickly covers the complete upper canvas part.
The spaceships crash and boards in the movement; explosions cause smoke. Grune and red flashes mark the shot like light popener inhibition. But where is this larm to horen to see smoke? The space of "starwars" is an analogue. Like almost all space in the cinema. Even "serious" science fiction movies how "2001 — odyssee in space", "gravity" or "interstellar" although play with the tumble and the underground agoraphobic potential of space in its complete orientation.
But in the end, they can not be used on their consequences and softening the total debuting, which is also a relativization, by clicking the empty space, with people, myths and machines, and also limit it. The last limit of space is always the edge of the cinema wall.
Once upon a time there was a distant past… America against europe — so beat the front in that war of the critics, who burst off in 1977, and lasted until 1983: "imagination, simply enchantation and pretty demanding cinema numbers fall into one" praised roger ebert, and pauline kael in "new yorker" no less excited: "you spurt the love of filmmaking, almost a revelation of the filmmaking", during the german film criticism, he had to attend the latest demise of the occident had to attend, and tracked that she could not prevent him.
Blessed are the times, for the starry sky the map of the passable and going way is.
Georg lukacs, "theory of the novel"
Above "the lighting skill, with which there is dealt with terms such as ‘power’ and ‘feelings’", wall h. G. Plum painful in the "suddeutsche zeitung": "motives like these had in the most response epochs of film history high economy." "the comic saga is just an endlessly puzzled video game, deafly loud and dearly dull." weather ponkie, and hans c. Blumenberg recognized in the "time" a dark threat: "if this movie should be a harbinger of the cinema of the future, then you have to be afraid of the future of cinema."
New mythology, elementary moral, innocent purity
That’s how it came. All this is long for a long time than at the time of the second world war, but with the first part of the first "starwars"-trilogy 1977 broke a new age in the cinema story. Not just the blockbusterskino, which already with "exorcist" and "the woman shark" the film landscape changed, was lifted to a new stage, but the film art as such.
"Starwars" is an economic event like an asthetic and both can not be separated from each other. Because by george lucas’ epic on joseph campbells "make the hero in a thousand" referred and made shamelessly made of particles, fables, say, and myths, whose motifs and archetypes at the same time exerted and updated originals, aim at adults like children, it spoke in the adults the childlike coat and in the children whose fantasy.
A cinema, which after the collapse of studio companies, after the encouragement of the author’s cinemas (including new hollywood) and the advent of television to the scene of the displeased of the critical society, the catastrophe ("flaming inferno"), the social crises ("dunge"), the jerking into the private ("scenes of a marriage") and above all your subconscious ("schoolmad", "ice at the style", "the night of living dead", "mondo cannibale") had become, lucas gave innocent purity and a utopia back, one "new hope." ("new hope" is the official subtitle of the first "starwars".To)
Thus lucas created a new type of film, a movie that goes beyond himself. At the level of marketing and merchandising, but also on athetic and ideological level. "Starwars" is a separate universe, it is unfavorable, "new mythology" to be to be to form fan communities and worldview perspectives. George lucas was coming in a conversation years ago, the epic should one "elementary morality" depict.
The end "the awakening of power" image: © lucasfilm ltd. Tm
You can find all this fragwurrounded, dangerous and criticize with good reasons. But you should not leave your own click or affections on the films. Not only do not that, they are just too good and that also means: too varied, too multi-faceted, to divers and much too smart to be disconnected as a popcorn cinema, as simple ideology and as a stupid spare religion.
They are like good cinema, on the contrary, originar children of the time spirit of their conditions of origin, an amalgam of various, not always conscious influences and tendencies. This applies at least for the first three films, for the original trilogy. If you look at it in 100 or 200 years, from the time around 1980 will no less realize than from a movie of bertolucci, bergman, or depalma, and probably more than those who have made fass binders and turners in the same period.