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Despite the fact that I like history and I like movies,  I don’t think a lot about about the history of the movie industry.  But I was reading the other day about the 1964 movie The Fall of the Roman Empire, which I’d never even heard of, but sounds very interesting, as it has a very strong cast.  (Too bad Edward Gibbon didn’t get screenwriting credit.)

The film was a fairly bad box office failure, reminding me of another epic historical film that famously lost money: Cleopatra, which I blogged about here.  It wasn’t that people didn’t want to see Cleopatra; it was just that it was so expensive it couldn’t make back its massive cost.

It seems like “epic” movies were big in the 1960s, until they ran into bombs like Cleopatra, at which point the industry turned towards smaller, more “personal” movies, until George Lucas and Steven Spielberg came along and turned things back toward the epic scale.

I think “epic” movies–think movies with ornate sets and large crowds–became prohibitively expensive to make, so they turned away from them in the ’70s.  Then the advent of CGI made it possible for the genre to be resurrected.  Look at the Wikipedia article on historical epic films, and take note of the dates:

Examples of historical epics include Intolerance (1916), Gone with the Wind (1939), The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Cleopatra (1963), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Barry Lyndon (1975), Gandhi (1982), Braveheart (1995), Titanic (1997), Joan of Arc (1999), Gladiator (2000), Troy (2004), Alexander (2004), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), and Les Misérables (2012).

Now, the “new” epics are not as really the same as the “old” epics–it’s hard to put your finger on exactly how, but there is a feeling of unreality about the new CGI based movies.  They lack “grittiness”–a term normally associated with the non-epics made in the 1970s, but which applies to the macro scale as well.

“Capriccio Romano”, by Bernardo Bellotto. 1740s. Image via Wikipedia.

It can be done–one reason I think the Star Wars prequels are better than people give them credit for is that they do a better job emulating the “feel” of the bygone epic films than most other modern epics do.  George Lucas may be over-reliant on CGI, and he may have done more than anyone else to usher in the era of cheap epics, but he himself knows what he’s doing when it comes to CGI effects.   This could just be because Lucas (and Spielberg) are old enough to remember the era of the original epic movie era, and so can understand them enough to imitate them expertly.

But now that CGI is so prevalent, and makes epics so easy (relatively speaking) it makes all epics too overdone, too focused upon spectacle, and loses the deeper meaning.  I believe that some historians feel the same thing happened to cause the decline of Rome.   “Bread and circuses” indeed…

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“The fans are all upset. They’re always going to be upset. Why did he do it like this? And why didn’t he do it like this? They write their own movie, and then, if you don’t do their movie, they get upset about it.”–George Lucas

I was thinking a bit more about the Mass Effect 3 ending.  I may do a post later on with my thoughts on it specifically, but while I was thinking about it, the idea occurred to me that it was so disappointing because it was so anticipated.  Fans had years to think about how the Mass Effect series would end; and so whatever happened would likely disappoint them.  It is an intrinsically bad ending, don’t get me wrong, but its badness was amplified by how much everyone had been thinking about it.

The same thing happened, for me anyway, with the Harry Potter series.  A big plot point, discussed by fans and even used in the advance marketing of the last book was “is Snape good or evil”?  Everybody had two years to think about this question, and we all knew what was going to happen.  Even if you bet on the wrong outcome, chances were you’d heard alternate theories that turned out to be correct. It may have made it sell better to promote the debate, but it weakened the book’s dramatic power.

It’s hard to surprise your audience with twists when you are telling a story with long intervals between each installment.  The only way out is to not leave clues to what’s coming, but then the endings or plot twists will feel unsatisfying; like they just came out of nowhere.  The best plot resolutions have to have been logically set up beforehand.

Sometimes a writer can stumble on some good twist in the middle of a series.  For instance, few people see the famous twist in The Empire Strikes Back coming, unless someone has spoiled them on it.  I’ve heard that this is because George Lucas only decided to do it after A New Hope was released, so he hadn’t left enough clues to give it away before hand, but was able to satisfactorily retrofit his twist on to the second film with the vague setup given in the first. But he was very lucky.

Lucas also didn’t have the internet to contend with.  If he had, some random fan probably would have accurately guessed the ending by pure chance while speculating on some forum.  I see this as the inevitable fate of the Half-Life video game series: if they ever do release Half-Life 3, there is no way someone won’t have already guessed what the deal is with the G-Man and posted a huge essay about their theories to be discussed on some forum.

There’s no question that internet fandom has intensified this problem; for it enables like-minded people to interact and ponder their favorite series.  I don’t think this was as much of a problem before the internet, even though there were stories that appeared in installments in magazines and the like.

This problem is lessened a bit if you are not doing a sequel that directly continues a particular story.  J.J. Abrams was very smart to come up with the alternate timeline business for his new Star Trek movies, because it pretty much allowed him to do whatever he wanted.   And although it still does not really live up to its title, I think a lot of criticism from Fallout fans of Fallout 3 was blunted because it was set far away from the other games.  In other words, it’s easier to do a series that is a loosely-related group of stories in a certain setting or around a set of themes than it is to tell one coherent story over installments. And it’s easiest of all to just tell your story in one shot.  To bring us back to Mass Effect 3, I’m convinced that had they condensed the story of the whole series into one game–with the same endings–they would have gotten way fewer complaints.  On the other hand, they also would have made less money.

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[Inspired by the Knights of the Old Republic series, to be sung to the tune of “On a tree by a river”, from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. I wrote this about six years ago, which is why it’s even worse than my typical efforts. I guess it’s the closest I’ve ever come to writing “fan-fiction”, because I imagined Revan singing it to Bastila.]

On a beach by the ocean, Canderous was seen,

Saying “Ordo, Clan Ordo, Clan Ordo!”

And I said to him, “Canderous, what do you mean

Saying: ‘Ordo, Clan Ordo, Clan Ordo?'”

Is it some race of aliens, soldier?” I cried,

“Or Tarisian gang with which you were allied?”

Said he: “They’re my clan–and should be unified!

O, Ordo, Clan Ordo, Clan Ordo!”

He thrust out his chest daring foes to defy

Clan Ordo, Clan Ordo, Clan Ordo.

And that warrior fire came into his eye

For Ordo, Clan Ordo, Clan Ordo!

He stood up at once, and he shouldered his gun;

Then he blasted away for the moon of Dxun.

And he promised to finish what he had begun

With Ordo, Clan Ordo, Clan Ordo.

Now, I feel just as sure as I’m sure that my clan

Isn’t “Ordo, Clan Ordo, Clan Ordo”;

That if you so desire, we certainly can

(Like Ordo, Clan Ordo, Clan Ordo)

Rekindle those passions that burned once before

And love one another, perhaps even more.

And I’m sure it won’t end in a violent war–

In contrast to Ordo’s Clan Ordo.

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I was too busy to address this when the news broke; but let me just say that I think the Star Wars/Disney thing is terrific news.  I am an avid, if somewhat unorthodox, Star Wars fan.  I like the prequels more than the originals.  I think most of the “Special Edition” changes were good.  I think the end of KotOR II is perfect, and that the game as a whole is the best thing ever set in the Star Wars universe.

Many fans are worried about it; they’re scared it will “ruin” Star Wars.  Star Wars fans are, I have come to realize, about the most fragile bunch of pessimistic nervous Nellies I’ve ever seen.  Honestly, they’re worse than Democrats when it comes to having no confidence in their own side.

I’m not saying it’s a sure thing that the new movie will be good.  Maybe it will be worse than the “Holiday Special”.  But Star Wars isn’t going to continue at all unless somebody is willing to take some risks.  It all goes back to what I said here, during the most recent existential threat to Star Wars.

Sure, it won’t be exactly like A New Hope all over again, but so what?  As a melancholy Vrook remarks to Zez-Kai Ell in KotOR II when they return to the destroyed Jedi Enclave: “It is not as it was…”  And as Zez-Kai Ell thoughtfully responds: “But, perhaps, that is for the best.”

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I touched on this with my last post about the movie Rudy: it can be fun to come up with alternative interpretations of movies that the directors and writers didn’t think of.  With Rudy, I was saying that I found the hero character’s fixation on football to be an unhealthy obsession, rather than the inspirational determination it is presented as being.

Some movies have much more elaborate alternative interpretations.  Take the Star Wars movies for example: most people assumed that the Empire is evil just because the opening crawl said so.  But, in Phantom Menace, it’s pretty clear that what Palpatine says about the Old Republic being “mired” by “bureaucrats” is true.  They can’t even get it together to go do something when one of their planets gets invaded and occupied.  If nothing else, the Empire runs a more efficient operation.

If I know politics, a few years after ROTJ, there would be a massive campaign to rehabilitate Palpatine’s image.

This does not even take into account the Jedi, who claim to be good–although the only people who really seem to feel this way are the Jedi themselves–but who are shown to brainwash people from a young age to indoctrinate them into their cult.  They say the Sith are evil, but in the movies, at least, the Sith wait until you’re an adult before asking you to join.  Count Dooku was a former Jedi and an aristocrat of some sort before he opted to try his hand at Sith Lording in his retirement.

Also, of course, there’s the fact that everything the Jedi do turns out to be an abysmal failure.  The Sith are clearly the only ones capable of creating a plan and seeing it through to the end in that galaxy.  Even at the end, in Return of the Jedi, all the Jedi stuff Luke had been taught goes by the boards, and the Emperor is overthrown not by him, but by the actions of a renegade Sith.

George Lucas probably didn’t intend any of these interpretations (and the “Expanded Universe” contradicts a lot of them), but I think the movies can definitely be viewed that way.  Personally, I think it makes more sense in some ways.

Or take Oliver Stone’s movie JFK.  It was controversial for its promotion of conspiracy theories.  I have a different take on it: I think Kevin Costner’s character is an unreliable narrator (he’s not really the narrator, but the film is very much from his perspective) who has this weird obsession with conspiracies.  Donald Sutherland’s character “X” is a figment of his imagination, whom he created to fulfill his dreams of uncovering a massive plot.  Try watching JFK and then A Beautiful Mind and see if you don’t agree.

I know there’s also a famous alternate interpretation of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off–although Freddie DeBoer doesn’t buy it–but I have never seen that movie, so I wouldn’t know.

What movies do you interpret differently than may have been originally intended?

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I can’t say I’m terribly excited about it. From the description, it sounds like “Gears of Star Wars”. Actually, more than anything, it sounds like Star Wars: Bounty Hunter. I think it even included a level that was set in the underbelly of Coruscant.

More than anything, though, it makes me uneasy how everyone is going “oooh, it’s Star Wars but with ‘darkness’. This has never been done!” Yes, it has. I know KotOR II was rated “T”, but the underlying story, as well as some of the stuff that’s hinted with characters like Visas Marr, is more mature than anything I’ve seen in a lot of “M” games. And while we’re at it, it’s not like Dark Forces and Shadows of the Empire were brimming with sunshine and joy.

Maybe it will be good. But so far, the reports don’t make me hopeful.

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If the Defenders of High Culture didn’t have enough to worry about with the Harry Potter conference, there now comes an announcement that a new Harry Potter game will be coming out this fall. Perhaps the 2013 conference will feature an in-depth examination of Harry Potter for Kinect and what it means to our society.

If it’s anything like Star Wars Kinect, it might not be such a great thing, although I think Potter fans might be more receptive to that sort of thing than Star Wars fans. As long-time readers probably know, I think that J.K. Rowling’s series is fun, but deeply flawed. (Someday maybe I’ll write about that at length.) I’ve never played any of the games based on it, as they all seem to have about them the feel of something done just to cash in on the popularity of the name.

As far as I can tell, all Potter games have been based to a large degree on the books and movies. As a Star Wars fan, I know from experience that this usually means trouble. Star Wars games are either excellent or really bad. And the bad ones are often the ones that try to follow the movies, and have you playing as Luke or Anakin or someone. (The LEGO ones don’t count; they follow the movies, but with an original twist.)

The great Star Wars game series everyone thinks of are original stories like Rogue Squadron, Jedi Knight and Knights of the Old Republic. These take place in the Star Wars universe, and though in some cases they overlap with events or characters from the movies, for the most part they are their own stories. They don’t let the established stories dictate their course too much.

Are there any Harry Potter games that take place in the Potter universe, but don’t more or less follow the established story and timeframe? That would have the potential to be good, and to keep the franchise going. Now, for all I know, Rowling has forbidden this. Which she, as the creator of the series, is totally within her rights to do. But it would be the best thing for it as a franchise.

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So, Star Wars fans everywhere are outraged over this video:

The fact that it started getting publicity around April Fools’ Day makes me wonder, but it seems like it’s genuine.

Well, what else are you supposed to do with the Kinect? They already have some kind of lightsaber minigame in it, so they had to throw in something else for filler.

I also seem to remember that in the intro to one of the Rogue Squadron games (I forget which one) there was a brief sequence of the Star wars characters dancing a disco. Nobody complained about that. And for my money, the elaborate dance sequences in Return of the Jedi pose a far bigger threat to the integrity of Star Wars as a space opera than this does.

Look: Star Wars is a whole mythos. It’s a fantasy universe, and as such it is only to be expected that laughable and ridiculous ideas occur in that universe as well as serious and powerful ones. It’s that way in the real universe, and so it might as well be in any fake universe. It doesn’t ruin the movies to have a video game where Han Solo dances, anymore than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ruins Hamlet.

Also, it’s only a movie series, after all. If it were ruined, the sun would still come up tomorrow.

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I went to see The Phantom Menace in 3D yesterday. I didn’t have high hopes for it, as I was mostly unimpressed with the 3D effects in Avatar, and that film was originally filmed in 3D. Still, I thought I should at least take advantage of the chance to see it on the big screen again for the first time since 1999.

Overall, I thought the 3D effects were okay, but not revolutionary. They didn’t look bad, but they didn’t change the whole viewing experience for me. The best use of them I can remember was a scene at the very beginning of the movie showing the Trade Federation blockade. I really felt the sense of depth looking at the all the different ships in orbit.

After that, though… it was just The Phantom Menace. Since I enjoy the film, it was fun to watch, but no more so than it would have been in2D. If you’re one of the many people who hate it (you’re wrong, but you have a right to your opinion) I doubt this would change your mind.

(Incidentally, one thing that struck me on this viewing was how misplaced the complaints of the film being “dull” are. If anything, I felt it moved a little too fast.)

The 3D thing is just a marketing ploy. It’s an excuse to induce people to watch the same movie again. I have to wonder how long this fad will last. I mean, once they figure out that Star Wars nerds such as myself would watch the thing anyway in 2D, why should they bother making the effort?

Lastly, I have to ask: why do the 3D glasses they give you have a dark tint? That screws up the color of the movie, and frankly, when balanced against the minimal effects of the 3D, makes it arguably a less visually-appealing picture.

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The day I have waited for has come! Someone besides me has said that the Star Wars prequels were better than the Original Trilogy!

Sorry for all the exclamation points, but it’s about time. (Hat Tip to Christopher Knight, whose post on this is also well worth reading.)

To be completely honest, I don’t totally agree with the guy’s reasoning, and he ties his argument a little too much to political events, but I am glad to see someone at least taking this position.

UPDATE: Guess I should add–you can find the defenses of each of the prequels that I wrote last year here, here and here.