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Return to oz

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I can't believe you had the balls to even list that one.

The "Gary Kurtz is the real genius behind Star Wars" routine is pretty thin, man. Lucas' filmography is far more impressive, all things considered.

Personally, I think George Lucas is to blame for the "Empire is the best one" movement. The prequels sucked so much that it sparked a hatred for everything he's been in charge of.

However, if film students are continually instructed to say that Citizen Kane is the greatest film of all time because of its impact on the industry, I think that Star Wars can be said to have overcome that status for the same reason.

Seriously. I blasted off and was transported to a galaxy far far away, and the world was not the same when I left that theater. Star Wars is a watershed in human history, not just a film. Hate on Mr. Lucas all you like. He changed the world with that movie.

I don't think he's the genius behind it but conceptually it was both Kurtz and Lucas. Lucas was the idea man, Kurtz was the filter those ideas went through

I list return to oz because visually, it has style and reinforces the role Kurtz had on the production design of Star Wars and empire

We're talking about Jedi, just look at the drop in set quality and the increase with compositing on simple dialogue scenes (lands and han in the hangar bay)

I watched American graffiti, and it's really good, but perhaps because it's one of those "slice of Americana" films


I don't know what happened to George lucas...he ruins everything now

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So, this isn't just me, Fox and a few yahoos on the M/TV board saying - it has been a growing consensus for 35 years.

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yup...i'm inclined to believe that many people (not blueboy) dismiss the excellence of the film simply because it's a space adventure (i'm sidestepping the genre debate) film "for kids"

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continually instructed to say that Citizen Kane is the greatest film of all time because of its impact on the industry, I think that Star Wars can be said to have overcome that status for the same reason.

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I absolutely agree that the impact is such that it is impossible to dismiss it when judging the movie...star wars is a GOAT movie

citizen kane is the better film between those two however

citizen kane I think is the second greatest film behind emire. To me they're equally perfect, but empire is more of what cinema is about...imagination, discovery, adventure

...and let's not forget all those poor independent contractors working on the Death Star in Jedi. Sucking on that fat government tit got them killed.

Poor bastards.

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oh how I wish I could have seen these movies on the big screen.

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Well, since that was my generation's "coming of age" - film-wise, I can tell you it was magical. People clapped and cheered at the end in 1977. People left and immediately got in line for tickets to see it again. The average television set in the U.S. was probably a 21" tube model, with a few 25s out there, a few custom bigger, and a handful of projectors. There just weren't surround sound systems in home theaters at that point. For that matter, "home theaters" didn't really exist in any appreciable numbers, outside of the very wealthy. Elvis Presley would famously rent out the entire cinema at midnight to watch a film with his posse.

So, I can say, with no exaggeration that blueboy's position that Star Wars (not Empire) was a seminal film in the history of the medium - that much is definitely true. There are 2 film periods - before Star Wars and after. It completely changed the way all action-oriented films (not just Space Opera/SciFi/Fantasy films, but virtually all big budget action films) were produced, cast, filmed, marketed (co-marketed) and promoted. The serial as the rule, not the exception started with this film. Just a number of things, co-branding, product partnerships, toys, all of those modern practices trace to this film (for good and bad).

And it was that visual/aural spectacle of the first film that started it all.

(Doesn't change the fact that Empire is the better film, from purely an art/literary standpoint, but also a grand spectacle in its own right. It is merely a darker more reality-grounded story, with more emotional response for the average viewer.)

Your thread. Not mine.

And honestly, I think Lucas' brain went soft while he was living in NoCal wine country. I think that the PC culture constantly in his ear had a huge effect on the prequels sucking, rather than a lack thereof.

Elected queens? Forced political messages? Ham-handed racial pandering? It's got SJW written all over it.

Speaking of elected queens I did enjoy "pilot" being a unique job description again in TFA