Video - Star Wars Crossed with Space: 1999!

A friend alerted me to this amazing combination of the classic season one opening theme from Space: 1999 and the original STAR WARS (1977). Barry Gray's music has always been a heart-pumping thrill ride and this edit of scenes works very well. Kudos! 

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980) Poster Art

 

STAR WARS (1977) Poster Art

The original film is still a favorite.

 

Wild Wild Podcast #8 - THE HUMANOID (1979)

Join Adrian and I as we travel back into the furthest reaches of the galaxy to find out just exactly what really happened to Richard Kiel after James Bond left him in space at the end of Moonraker.

The Humanoid is another fun Italian film that makes no attempt to pretend it's not ripping off Star Wars, but this podcast believes that is something to be celebrated. It's got heroes, villains with black helmets, cute robots and guns that go "pew pew!"

The closing song is called Love Games by the band Ganymede. They've long since split up now but you can still read about their interest in The Humanoid on this fan site. Whilst you're there check out some of the other amazing stuff they have like these behind the scenes stills.

Posters and Lobby Cards for THE HUMANOID (1979)

Sometimes what you want is an obvious STAR WARS rip-off made by Italians and starring a few actors from 70's Bond films. So, here we are! 

Marvel's Star Wars Comic Books

The past twenty years have made it difficult for me to be a Star Wars fan. When there was only the original three movies and hundreds of possibly non-canonical books it was kind of fun to occasionally connect with Lucas’ space fantasy tale to soak in the simple fun. But the prequels destroyed my ability to accept the larger SW world and, with those stupid entries, the obvious cracks in the expanding universe became impossible to ignore. The recently completed sequel trilogy was a mess of misplaced reverence and poorly chosen plot silliness that failed to do more than make me wish for the entire thing to just be done. Even the fact that I really enjoyed the two Disney produced stand along films ROGUE ONE and SOLO doesn’t make me much more of a fan, But those two side stories do make clear what I can still enjoy about the franchise.

When I was a kid the only ‘new’ Star Wars material readily available to excitement hungry fans was the Marvel comic book series. In between the 1977 film and the first sequel these comics told new tales of Han, Luke, Leia and the droids that were thrilling to our young minds and allowed the collective childhood imagination of what might be next to burst wide open. They were an amazing window into the possibilities for further adventures and, even if they felt slightly off sometime, we accepted these new stories like the starving devotees we were.

Of course, we were far too youthfully inexperienced to spot that the stories being told in these new SW comics were little more than direct steals from earlier things. I guess that we were so stunned by the cobbled together legends that Lucas stitched into his space opera script that it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the creators of the Marvel series would expect us to be clueless about their obvious plagiarism too. The first new Star Wars storyline in these four-color pages so blatantly lifts the plot of THE SEVEN SAMURAI (1954) by way of its western remake THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960) that it’s impossible to miss now. Han Solo is placed in the role of a man hired to help a bandit troubled village fight off the pillaging bad guys. He recruits a band of misfit drifters willing to do the job for minimal pay and then enacts the aforementioned story. Since STAR WARS (1977) was mostly based on Kurasawa’s THE HIDDEN FORTRESS (1958) I guess stealing from another Kurasawa films was considered the safest way to get the series off to a solid start. Although this multi-part comic book version might be the first adaptation of the SEVEN SAMURAI story into science fiction it would be far from the last with the Roger Corman production BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1980) being the one that did the least to hide its theft.

Rereading these old comics as an adult has been an interesting experience. Now I can see how stilted they are and I’m amused by the things that Marvel invented that subsequent movies swept away. They are of their times in many ways that surprise me with some strange additions to the central characters that might have been better than the ones the sequels eventually employed. Overall, these comics are a fun sideroad that I suspect fans of later generations would have trouble enjoying. I’m well aware that the kick I get from them is largely based on nostalgia as I remember the ways these issues spurred my imagination. They are a colorful window into a fanboy past that allowed a young me to see possible futures spread out with near infinite opportunities for star-spanning adventure. I suspect that the sadness I can sometimes feel about the inept path down which Lucas eventually took the franchise is a sense of loss about what could have been. As these flawed comic books show, there was so much potential and it has (to my mind) been squandered. If only they had used that seven foot tall green rabbit in the sequel films…..

STAR WARS - THE RISE OF SKYWALKER (2019)

I’ve always been more of a Star Trek fan.

A joke I saw recently summed up my feelings about Star Wars.

“Star Trek fans don't hate six out of nine of their movies.”

I think that says a lot about both sets of fans.

Star Wars fans are notoriously easy to anger. And for a lot of reasons... There are valid points that I think make being an angry Star Wars fan very easy. If the original 1977 film was a blast across your psyche ripping open your brainpan, showing you a world of imaginative space fantasy fiction for the first time and the second film cemented the belief that this galaxy far, far away was a glorious, deep and wonderful thing then having that belief challenged can be awful. If you felt that the universe presented in those movies was deep, smart and fun on levels that real life never could be it would have seemed like the most incredible fiction in the world was embodied in Star Wars. You could latch onto that universe of delights and adventure and have a great place to visit with a simple press of the ‘Play’ button. That things were slightly spoiled by the not quite as good but still somewhat satisfying conclusion the series achieved in ’83 didn’t negate the overwhelming cool of the first two films. For decades that's all we had and in a lot of ways it was all fans really needed. Sure, there were a lot of comic books and novels and all kinds of ephemera built around Star Wars and you could wallow in that expanded universe which allowed you to imagine more adventures with lightsabers, X-wings and the Millennium Falcon. But those three movies - as flawed as the third one was – were enough to keep the imagination alive for an entire generation.

For most fans of the original three films, 1999’s return to the big screen with EPISODE 1 was like having your childhood held up so that you could see just how rotted and cold it had become. So that you could see how many gaps your own mind filled in to make those stories complete and coherent. Indeed, Episodes 1, 2 and 3 almost seemed as if they were contrived to perfectly undermine the love built by the original trilogy, to destroy the faith of the true believers. Artificial looking, badly written, poorly conceived on almost every level to the point that they almost seemed constructed to actively snuff out the wonder filled world that those first films had built for young minds in which to wander. Suddenly the Star Wars Universe was much smaller; a much more closely contained and less inviting place for every young person who might see themselves as someone who could learn to be the next Luke Skywalker. Now you were born with it or you weren't. And if that doesn't suck the magic out of the concept set up by the original movie, I don't know what else could.

So now we have the final three films in what is now known as the Skywalker Saga. I haven't really enjoyed any of the three recent numbered films because each one seems calculated in a way that makes them as artificial as maybe all of them really were all along. THE FORCE AWAKENS feels like a sad rehash of the 1977 film built very carefully to reassure fans disappointed by the prequel trilogy. “Come back home! Trust us. We're going to give you what you want this time and not a bunch of poorly CGI'd ridiculous garbage." THE LAST JEDI seemed to have some interesting ideas about examining what a hero is and what a hero can be but spent more than half of its running time wasting entire characters on things that are obviously being done just to give them something to do. And it committed the cardinal sin of not giving the now very vocal fans what they want – more of the same. Lucas might be able to get away with that but not anyone else!

THE RISE OF SKYWALKER attempts to wrap up the entire nine film arc in a way that's satisfying, exciting and pleasing to the fanbase. That it can't do those often contradictory things shouldn't surprise anybody, but it is kind of admirable to see them in there trying as hard as they are. I'm probably the wrong age for this film being in my 50s now. I can see how poorly welded together the various elements are and it bothers me to know that almost no one in this film is in real danger and no one is going to be really taken out of the story. They just won't do that because there's no way they're going to exclude those characters from the toy line. They learned long ago to leave things open to be in future stories even if only on the printed page. Was anybody really worried that a particular character had actually been killed halfway through the movie? Certainly not. There's no way these filmmakers are going to do something that radical after the screaming fit of rage the previous film engendered when it questioned the hero’s journey myth attached to the saga.

I found myself only vaguely engaged while watching all of the things speed by me on the big screen. I have no emotional investment in any of the characters anymore. In fact, I don't think I've had any emotional investment in any of these characters since the 80s and the past 20 years of Star Wars movies has certainly not changed that. To me all the characters in these movies are just empty ciphers, often played by very good actors, but with such thin characterizations that I've never given a crap about any of them. I guess that this is probably the way adults felt about the original movie back in the 70s when they were wondering out loud to anyone who would listen ‘What do you see in this? It's just a bunch of cardboard people in a bunch of expensive special effects.’ And now I am that person looking at these movies and thinking that same thing. So, I’ve become unable to feel these story embrace me like they did in 1977 and 1980. I can see the problems, the weaknesses and the poor choices clearly. The magic is gone. I guess I was born without midichlorians. Or maybe the Force was just an illusion after all. 

STAR WARS Day 2019

I'm pretty sure I was ten when I saw STAR WARS (1977) for the first time and that is probably the right age to have it enter your life. I was a young lad living in rural Tennessee and getting to a movie theater was difficult to the point of frustration. I think the film had been out for months if not a year by the time I finally was taken to see it, but by then I was already familiar with the story. In 1977 I had bought a paperback copy of the novelization and devoured this tale of science fantasy adventure in much the same way I devoured Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter novels or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. The experience of seeing the film was life changing but not the way so many people seem to have had their sense of self altered by Star Wars. I loved it but I had so many other similar tales in my awareness that it was just another fun one. That this one got splashed across the big screen in the real world made it special but the screen in my head had so much more variety that competition was sharp for my love.

For a brief few years after the second film I thought that the series might become one of the greatest adventure stories of all time. The high quality of the script of Empire opened up the world giving the characters nuance and detail beyond the broad hero/villain outlines of the first movie. But then the third film came along with it's rehash of the first movie and made-for-toy-shelf characters and my enthusiasm was tempered again. Since then I've occasionally read some Star Wars fiction or comics that recapture the original feeling of wonder from when I was ten or twelve years old but it's still those first two movies that continue to do the trick.

Even after the horrible prequels and the weakly realized Disney follow up trilogy films I still enjoy those movies. I end up being able to enjoy new Star Wars films and tales only in that they find a way to rekindle the feeling of wide-eyed discovery I felt reading that novelization or seeing the first film. It's become something, for me, that causes nostalgia more than anything else. I guess that may have been the inevitable fate of a story originally conceived out of nostalgia for a man's childhood love of science fiction adventure stories. But it's a shame that there have been so few of the films since 1977 that have been able to make Star Wars more than what it's detractors said it was from the beginning - big budgeted children's scribbling. It's better than that but now it has become much more difficult to argue for the tale's higher qualities because you must start each defense with caveats about the obviously bad things attached to it. 

Fan-Made Anime Style Trailer for STAR WARS (1977)

This is kind of amazing and I'd love to watch this if it were ever made! 

What I Watched in June

I truly thought that SOLO (2018) might be the first Star Wars film that I did not see in a theater. I thought I would actually refuse to see it on the grounds that I've not been enjoying most of the recent Star Wars films since roughly 1983 and this one in particular seemed a truly unnecessary film. I found episodes 7 and 8 to be both lackluster, pointless, silly, redundant and poorly constructed. The only good thing that I could say about the more recent Disneyfied version of Star Wars is that ROGUE ONE (2016) was something that I actually enjoyed. So, what the heck, I decided to go see SOLO and boy am I glad I did! Turns out that this is a truly enjoyable film. Possibly the most enjoyable of the recent Star Wars films. It's a fun heist movie with some memorable characters, some nice twists and turns, a pretty decent story and a few surprises that I wasn't expecting. It's not great, it's not going to change anybody's attitude toward these films really but overall this is a pretty darn good little movie. Quite a surprise.

HEREDITARY (2018) is one of the best horror films of the decade. The past few years have been very strong for the genre and this movie deserves to be added to the list of top-rated efforts. I won't discuss things beyond some very general comments as I feel the tale is best discovered cold. What I will say is that the film's performances are astounding with the great Toni Collette taking top honors in a very difficult role. The dark family drama that plays out would fly apart if she was less than brilliant but she anchors the film so well I have trouble picturing anyone else as the character. The second half turn the story takes is smartly handled with only a few subtle hints laying breadcrumbs to the hellish final act. Also, the nerve jangling tone of the entire piece is excellent and something I hope other filmmakers study for future exercises in suspense. This film knows when to withhold information and how to reveal it well. 

After nearly a decade and a half of waiting Brad Bird and crew finally bring us a sequel and it's almost as good as the original. INCREDIBLES 2 (2018) picks up right after the end of the first film with a super-villain battle in the heart of the city making the ban on Supers even more popular. Destitute and depressed, the Parr family are surprised when a pair of wealthy siblings recruit them to engineer a return to the old days of public acceptance of costumed super-heroes. Thus begins a multilayered and clever adventure that is also very funny and exciting. This is how these types of films should always be done. It's a near perfect crowd-pleaser that doesn't insult your intelligence. 

THE LIST 

THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH (1963) - 8 (rewatch of all three parts) 

ZOMBIE 3 (1988) - 2 (rewatch on Bly-Ray)

BULLDOG DRUMMOND (1929) - 7 

SOLO (2018) - 7 (solid if unnecessary Star Wars tale) 

SEPTEMBER STORM (1960) - 5 (OK 3D sunken treasure tale) 

FROZEN ALIVE (1964) - 6 (SF drama) 

HEREDITARY (2018) - 9 (incredible horror film) 

LA LOBA (1965) - 6 (good Mexican werewolf tale) 

INCREDIBLES 2 (2018) - 9 

HAUNTED HONEYMOON (1940) - 7 (Lord Peter Whimsey) 

THE RETURN OF BULLDOG DRUMMOND (1934) - 6 

THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN (1957)- 4 (rewatch) 

THE LIVING COFFIN (1959) - 6 (Mexican horror western) 

THE MONSTER SQUAD (1987) - 8 (rewatch) 

SANTO VS THE VAMPIRE WOMEN (1961) - 7 (Spanish language version!) 

WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST (1959) - 4 (rewatch) 

What I Watched in December

I'm surprised that there haven't been more big screen at adaptations of some of Agatha Christie's more famous novels over the past few decades. As soon as I heard that Kenneth Branagh was planning to adapt MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS for a new feature film I was kind of amazed that it had been over 40 years since the last time someone had done so. I would think that there would be enough interest in such a thing for there to be a new version of this tale told on the screen every 20 years, give or take. But then again, maybe it's a good idea in the age of home video to let the story lay low long enough for the general audience to forget that they might already know the solution to the central mystery. Regardless, this adaptation of the story is fantastic. I love this twisty tale and the stunning cinematography is worth the price of admission all on it's own. The fantastic cast brings energy to the proceedings and the movie moves along very well even if the occasionally artificially goosed pace seems a little out of place in at least one spot. Branagh is a fine director and is an excellent Poirot, finally bring his magnificent mustache to the screen in it's gargantuan glory. I very much look forward to the sequel film of Death on the Nile whenever it appears.

I think that I am no longer the correct audience for a Star Wars film. As a matter of fact, I think I may not have been the correct audience for a Star Wars film for about 20 years. Of the three Disney produce Star Wars films in the past 3 years I've liked only one of them and it's the one that doesn't have an Episode number in it's title.

THE LAST JEDI has turned out to be a very divisive film for fans and I can completely understand. I used to count myself as a Star Wars fan but, having grown up much more attached to Star Trek, Star Wars has always seemed a little too tied to Fantasy for me to really feel wholly attached. This new film continues that - as it should, I suppose - but there might just be something about this universe that makes it so artificial that I can no longer care about it. Everything about the barely-there story of this feature feels like it's there for some reason other than to tell a tale. It's like a series of slightly connected segments or television episodes meant to evoke recognition or nostalgia instead of creating something new. 

That being said, I did enjoy about 30 to 40 minutes of THE LAST JEDI. The entire confrontation with Snoke, the large-scale lightsaber battle all the way up through the splitting of the lightsaber between Rey and Kylo Ren was a fascinating and well done film sequence. It's the film's most well handled action sequence with understandable emotional reasons for the actions taken wrapped in colorful and vividly cinematic skill . It really is great but all it accomplishes for me is to point toward the next film where I guess we'll end this dance of powerful Force users -hopefully. Also admirable is the theme of leaving the past behind so as to carve out new ideas and new stories in an attempt to forge new movies that aren't beholden (and I would say crippled) by adherence to the shape and form of the original trilogy. Do we really need to keep 90% of these film's dialog as bad as the 1977 original? Really? Do we?  

It is both the stylistic and structural holdovers from the original trilogy that make the Last Jedi such an uninspired and weak experience overall. For all the talk of forging a new path, this movie feels dragged down by holding onto the past. That's the only excuse for that extended Casino World/Cantina sequence. Talk about needing to leave things in the past!

THE LIST 

SPLIT (2017)- 8 (rewatch)
WEREWOLF & THE YETI (1975) - 7 (rewatch on Blu-Ray)
MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (2017) - 8
GHOST STORY OF YOTSUYA (1959) - 7 (Japanese spectral vengeance)
SUSAN SLEPT HERE (1954)- 8 (rewatch)
BRIGADOON (1954) - 7
AT SWORD'S POINT (1952)- 5
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (2017) - 5
THE SIGN OF ZORRO (1958)- 5 (Disney TV show cut into feature)
SANTA CLAUS (1959) - 4
BRIGHT (20117) - 5
CYBORG 2087 (1966) - 5 (cheap but interesting SF)
THE FOX WITH A VELVET TAIL (1971) - 8 (excellent if slow thriller)
THE REVENGE OF THE CRUSADER (1964) - 5

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016)

Even though much of the movie-going world seemed thrilled with the last Star Wars film I was quite underwhelmed by The Force Awakens. It was too much a safe rehash of the original film with the barest sprinkling of new ideas scattered about to distract from the dumber elements that piled up as the film barreled along. It wasn't a terrible film but it was far from inspiring or very good at doing more than making fans go squee.

Given that, I was not very excited to go see the 2016 SW offering, but the fact that it was being touted as a stand alone tale and I love seeing science fiction on the big screen means that of course I saw it. Glad I did. This is easily the best Star Wars film since 1980 and the first in just as long to make me actually fear for the lives of the characters onscreen. There is a grittiness and danger inherent in this story that is refreshing. It reminded me that way back in the first two films people died in often harsh ways just as if they were fighting a darkly violent Empire bent on ruthlessly subjugating a galaxy wide population. No fuzzy bears tripping storm troopers, no insane leaps off of impossibly tall buildings and no gravity or logic defying saber fights were present to make the audience wince. ROGUE ONE brings back the sense of danger that makes the stakes of the story feel real. Good guys do bad things, morally hard choices are made and terrible ends come to undeserving people. But, at the same time, there is humor in the film that seems natural to the characters and not wedged into the scene to please children.

It's not perfect. The death of Krennic shows that the reshoots couldn't find a really satisfying way to end his villainous character and the CGI recreations of a couple of characters are only fitfully effective but this is the most enjoyable Star Wars film in decades and is to be applauded for its accomplishment. Yeah, it's essentially The Dirty Dozen reset in SW but it is done very well. I hope that we get to one day see some of the discarded early versions of scenes that turned up in the various trailers just to be able to see why they were deemed less worthy.   

CRACKED - Why JJ Abrams Doesn't Understand Star Wars

This humously lays out some of the problems with The Force Awakens and I have to admit that I hadn't even thought of a few of them. The Mystery Box is a terrible idea for these films.

THE STAR WARS! - A Grindhouse Classic!

I would watch the Holy Living Hell out of this!! 

What I Watched in December

Even though it is always a busy time of year I caught four movies in the theater last month. I've already written about KRAMPUS and THE HATEFUL EIGHT so let's look at the other two cinema experiences for December. 

I caught the first MAZE RUNNER film on cable a few months ago and was impressed with it. It wasn't something I wanted to go out of my way to see but having the DVR catch it was worth the effort. The mystery element was interesting enough to keep me watching, the performances were solid, the dialog pretty good and the visuals were rather arresting. I did wonder why a group of young men never broached the subject of girls or romantic feelings in any way. Of course, I knew this was based on a series of YA novels so I suspect the absence of sexuality was built into the tale.

So, having enjoyed the first one, when the sequel popped up at the cheap theater I spent my two dollars and I must say that I think THE MAZE RUNNER: THE SCORCH TRIALS is actually a better film. This one opens up the world quite a lot introducing the overarching plot, mysterious characters and setting the table for a very dark dystopian future that plays very much like a variation on what Logan's Run was doing decades ago. I began to really like the characters in this one as they started to have a definable goal with the young cast finally getting some able assistance from a very good group of adult actors. In fact, no movie that has Giancarlo Esposito, Patricia Clarkson and Aiden Gillen stirring the plot/pot can be unwatchable and they are given some juicy parts to play.

Also, although this movie is primarily an action adventure, it sports one of the creepiest and downright scary sequences I've seen on the big screen in years. I won't spoil it for anyone one other than to say there are some frightening things lurking in the dark deep underground. Whew!

Far too much has already been said and written about the new STAR WARS film and I'm sure my opinion will mean just as much as everyone else's - i.e. not much. Understand that I really was hoping for the best with this one. After the garbage pit that was the prequel trilogy I was surprised that Disney wanted to do this but I guess $ will always be there for this franchise. And J.J Abrams essentially spent two Star Trek movies trying really, really hard to prove he could make a Star Wars film if given the chance so he was probably the right choice as director. But - and this is a big problem - I think that fear guided the creation of THE FORCE AWAKENS.

Fear. Not love, not hope, not even optimistic glee. Fear is behind the story that was chosen to be told in this film much more than any other single thing. I think everyone involved knew that if they didn't give the fans what they wanted they were going to be savaged from every internet hilltop in the world. I think that after 16 years of justified weeping about how bad the prequels were they felt that they had to be safe, so they stuck to the plot of the original film as if it were holy writ. I think that this is the reason the film fails on several levels for me and for quite a number of other people as well. The simple fact is that I've seen this movie before - back in 1977 - and what I was hoping for was something new. Not 'the same thing gussied up with cool new FX and fresh faced actors' but a NEW story. And what's even more frustrating is the outlines of a new story are in this movie - rebelling storm trooper escapes from fascistic army and becomes hero - but it is buried under the OLD story as it is recast and rerun. Some great performances are wasted in this mistake and the action scenes are actually very exciting but overall this is a missed opportunity. I got some enjoyment out of it but as I think more about it, the less happy I am. I wanted a new adventure and I got a spit-shined remake.

Yes- this was a story crafted from fear and Yoda taught us decades ago that fear is the way to the Dark Side. Acting out of fear will get you short term benefit but in the long term the cost is very high.

THE LIST 

THE MAZE RUNNER: THE SCORCH TRIALS (2015)- 7 
TRAPPED WOMEN (1986)-  6 (variation on Franco's FURY IN THE TROPICS with a completely different story and ending) 
KRAMPUS (2015)- 8 
DEVIL'S ISLAND (1939)- 6 (solid tale of the French penal colony with Karloff) 
FANTOMAS (1980) - 7 (French TV movie by Claude Chabrol) 
REMEMBER THE NIGHT (1947)- 9 (rewatch) 
NEW YEAR'S EVIL (1980) - 4 (rewatch) 
A CHRISTMAS HORROR STORY (2015)- 8 
BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST (1941)- 6 (message melodrama)
SCROOGE (1970)-  10 (rewatch) 
THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN LIVES (2015) - 9 (amazing documentary) 
RUN ALL NIGHT (2014)- 7 (good crime film with great cast) 
AN AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CAROL (1979) - 7 (Solid TV version with Henry Winkler as Scrooge) 
IT HAPPENED ON 5TH AVENUE (1947) - 6 (sweet Christmas tale that is just a bit too silly) 
THE HATEFUL EIGHT (2015) - 9 (sprawling western from Tarantino - caught the Roadshow version) 
JUSTICE LEAGUE: THRONE OF ATLANTIS (2015)- 8 (great animated tale) 
THE DAY THE WORLD EXPLODED (1957)- 5 (silly, short SF) 
STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015)- 6