SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Don't underestimate the power of the Force ... or inflation. Box-office analysts predict that in dollar terms, The Force Awakens will be the biggest earning movie with Star Wars in its name. But such measurements almost always fail to account for inflation. In real dollar terms, none of the sequels/prequels have surpassed the original Star Wars (later subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope).
A New Hope was a smash success financially, a bona fide blockbuster in the dawn of the blockbuster era. With cinemas screening the original Star Wars for most of 1977 and 1978, the film garnered $512 million in ticket sales. What's truly incredible about that figure is that movie tickets in 1977 cost just $2.23 on average. That means about 230 million people went to see the film, slightly more than the population of the U.S. at the time.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:02PM
The thing about Star Wars is that it made that boilerplate.
And I don't mean "It was an early movie to fit the model". I mean George Lucas was literally one of the first people to apply the Hero's Journey as a generic template for a script. Believe it or not, action flicks up until that time, awful and poorly written as they may have been, weren't intentionally written to a pre-ordained structure of what a good plot is. Lucas was a huge fan of Tolkien's writing on the matter(though his focus was on fairy tales, not action movies). In that time-span, the idea has become so refined that it's rare a big-ticket action movie will be greenlit if the script doesn't align with the now well-established predefined narrative structure.
So... I have to contest that Star Wars is "Just Another" sci-fi hollywood movie. It caused the glut of "just another hollywood sci fi movies". That's a big deal.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:33PM
Well, if you go back and watch "The Magnificent Seven" (1960), you'll see the same plot elements. An interesting, but ragtag bunch "heroes" is assembled to defend the village against the mighty enemy, which is led by a charismatic but vicious chief. The heroes bicker among themselves, lose, and then win. The action gets faster and faster towards the end as the majestic symphonic music swirls.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pipedwho on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:51PM
But that was simply an Americanised retelling of the Akira Kurosawa original called The Seven Samurai. However, that doesn't mean that hollywood didn't get some movies right. Just that it hadn't become an established 'formula' that gets applied to nearly every single movie that comes out of the major studios.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @11:00PM
Stars Wars is not The Seven Samurai retold. Not even close - that was a town that hired seven warriors to defend them against bandits that had been exploiting the crap out of the town with a sort of mafia/protection racket thing.
No, the Kurosawa movie that Stars Wars copied is The Hidden Fortress. [imdb.com] It is about a general and a princess fighting through enemy lines. C3PO and R2D2 are straight up copied from the two comic relief characters - even though they are speaking japanese it is as clear as day. When Criterion did their deluxe release of The Hidden Fortress a decade ago they even got Lucas to do a commentary track.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Thursday December 17 2015, @11:42PM
Stars Wars is not The Seven Samurai retold.
He didn't claim it was. He claimed The Magificent Seven was the Seven Samurai retold.
The rest of your post is accurate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2015, @12:16AM
read the gp
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:53PM
The Magnificent Seven was based on an Akira Kurosawa movie called Seven Samurai. Star Wars was heavily influenced by another Akira Kurosawa movie called Hidden Fortress. That's probably why they share certain elements.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:49PM
I won't argue with you that big budget movies have to fit the hero saga mold to get funded, particularly after the success of Star Wars, but I won't go as far as to say that Star Wars made that boilerplate. Even at the time it was called a "space western" for a reason - it fit the classic western motif story played out many, many times with Gary Cooper, John Wayne, etc.
However, for the sake of argument, let's say that you are right. Then too bad Lucas didn't stick to that boilerplate for the next two movies. The second (and NO, all you dipshits who may want to correct me, I am old enough to have seen the original and the following ones in the theater, and I really do mean the second one, not this "fifth one" bullshit) was just a bunch of action-y stuff going on, ending in a horrible serialized ending ("Will Han escape from the carbonite? Will Luke become a Jedi?? Tune in next year for the exciting conclusion!"). The third was a disappointing Ewok craptacular story with some other action-y stuff put in, but at least it came to a final conclusion (which Lucas had to go and eff it up with his later "improvements"). Really? You had to blow up the Death Star a second time? THAT is the best you could come up with for how to deal with the Empire in the last movie? What, you mean after the first movie, some Imperial wreckers came in an hauled the blown up wreckage to some secret part of the galaxy where it could be rebuilt, all in the manner of a year or so?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday December 18 2015, @05:10AM
Not that star wars isn't full of plot holes you could fly an imperator class star destroyer through, but they started building the second death star about the same time as the first it was just much bigger.