The State of 'Star Wars'

With the release of Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, Sounds of Cinema took a look at the past, present, and future of the Star Wars series in an attempt to grapple with the saga's meanings for cinema and for popular culture.

I. The Star Wars Revolution

Star Wars has been such a dominating presence in cinema for the last thirty-eight years that it is difficult to imagine American movies and pop culture without it. But it’s worth understanding where Star Wars came from to fully understand what it has become.

The original Star Wars was released in the midst of the New Hollywood movement, which remains the greatest period of American film. Spanning from the late 1960s until the early 1980s, the New Hollywood movement gave rise to filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Hal Ashby, William Friedkin, and Stanley Kubrick who made movies like The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, Coming Home, The French Connection, and A Clockwork Orange. These movies upended filmmaking conventions, redrew the boundaries of censorship, told stories of moral complexity, and dealt with difficult subject matter.

Two things happened at this time that made the New Hollywood movement possible. The first was the destabilization of American society. Watergate, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, and insurgent social movements like second wave feminism and gay liberation shook up American society. At the same time the American film industry was going through its own structural change. The major studios were in financial trouble and the old standards of musicals and historical epics were no longer making bank. The studios went from standalone companies to divisions of much larger conglomerates. The new corporate owners didn’t know much about movies but they were interested in reaching the youth market and so they turned to young filmmakers. Under the old Hollywood studio system the average feature film director was in his mid-forties but now twenty year olds were given license to make what they wanted in the hope that it would regain the public’s interest in the movies. These young filmmakers produced motion pictures that reflected their own view of the world.

It’s in this environment that Star Wars was made and the movie was in its own way revolutionary. Writer and director George Lucas was operating within the studio system while alienated from it. He and his contemporaries were among the first graduates of film schools and Lucas saw himself as an outsider who would make experimental movies. His first two features, THX-1138 and American Graffiti, didn’t resemble traditional narrative filmmaking and Warner Bros. and Universal reedited them before release, angering Lucas and prompting him to assert more control over his films and properties. Star Wars was more conventionally narrative than those pictures but it was even more experimental in its style and technique. The rapid editing and technological innovations revealed new methods of producing visual effects and ultimately new ways of making movies altogether.

The story of Star Wars was also revolutionary or perhaps more accurately it was counter-revolutionary. The film spoke to the youth of the time as it depicted a galactic civil war in which young people figuratively (and later literally) rebelled against their fathers. But Star Wars rejected the ambiguity of the New Hollywood movement in favor of the optimism and moral absolutism of an earlier era. The youth of the 1970s saw their struggles against the establishment in the Rebel assault on the Death Star but their parents would have recognized Darth Vader’s headgear as a synthesis of the Nazi helmet and the SS Totenkopf symbol, giving the conflict a different point of reference. This mix of mainstream and revolutionary elements is a large part of what made Star Wars a hit and made it both a part of and apart from the New Hollywood movement.

Star Wars is also a revolutionary film in the way that it altered the trajectory of the film industry. The enormous box office of Star Wars recalibrated Hollywood’s barometer of financial success and so the picture is often credited—or blamed—with ending the New Hollywood era. But that’s not altogether true. Like any business owner, the executives running Hollywood studios were always interested in making products that would generate the most revenue. By the late 1970s the audience was exhausted with downbeat stories and the success of Jaws and Rocky had already begun to shift Hollywood’s tone. Following Star Wars, the subsequent box office failure of somber films like Sorcerer and Heaven’s Gate and the success of upbeat pictures like Grease and Superman: The Movie completed the redirection of the industry toward escapist fare.

It’s become a cliché to say that Star Wars changed the American film industry. But that is so often said because it’s true. Star Wars was as important a cinematic milestone at Citizen Kane and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and like Orson Welles and Walt Disney’s movies, the style and techniques of George Lucas’ original space opera have been so embedded in mainstream films that contemporary audiences can’t see what was so special about them. We’ve been living in the era of Star Wars for nearly forty years and what began as a youthful cinematic rebellion has become an empire in its own right. Now that we are on the cusp of a new era of Star Wars films, it is time for audiences, critics, and filmmakers to reevaluate what that means.

II. The Special Editions

It’s impossible to discuss the Star Wars film series without talking about the Special Editions. For those of you who don’t pay attention to these things, George Lucas revised the original trilogy in 1997, remastering the picture and sound but also materially changing the movies. Most of the alterations were done to the special effects. In some cases new backgrounds or additional characters were inserted into existing material or composite shots were adjusted to remove matte lines. But in many instances, special effect shots from 1977 were replaced entirely with new material created using digital technology. The bulk of the work was done to the original Star Wars but alterations were also made to The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

Released with great fanfare in 1997, the Special Editions became one of the most contested subjects in Star Wars fandom. At issue was not simply that Lucas had tinkered with these films but that he intended the Special Edition to be the only version of Star Wars to exist in perpetuity. The Special Edition was subject to a second draft in 2004 when the movies were issued on DVD and Lucas made a final set of changes to the original films and to the prequel trilogy for the series’ release on Blu-ray in 2011.

It’s worth noting that George Lucas was not the first filmmaker to create a “special edition” of a popular film. Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind was originally released in 1977, six months after Star Wars, and a special edition of Close Encounters was issued in 1980 with a subsequent “Director’s Cut” of the film released in 1998. Studios and filmmakers have followed suit, issuing unrated and extended versions of movies as a way of generating new revenue from old titles.

Yet, there are fundamental differences between the typical “special edition” or “director’s cut” and what Lucas did with Star Wars. First and most importantly, the original versions of the movies generally remain available. In the case of other important and beloved films given the special edition treatment such as Aliens, Apocalypse Now, and Blade Runner, both the theatrical cut and the director’s preferred version are easily accessible. This is important because it balances the interests of the audience, cinema history, and the creative integrity of the filmmaker. Everybody gets what they want and had Lucas gone this route the whole matter would have gone much more smoothly.

Secondly, the Star Wars Special Edition was made decades after the original production and included material that was entirely new. That makes the Special Edition fundamentally different from a restoration. Pictures like Touch of Evil or Once Upon a Time in America were finished as the director had intended and then were subsequently altered by the studio. The newly available versions of those films involved the recovery of material created during the production. There is a difference between that kind of restoration and waiting twenty years to indulge second guesses and hindsight. Despite what he might say, the Special Edition is not George Lucas’ original vision of Star Wars any more than a remix of a song is the same as the original tune. Art is a product of a specific time and place and creative decisions are made by the artist based on his or her sensibilities at that moment and with the tools available at the time. The Special Edition is a new article, a hybrid of the George Lucas of 1977 and the Lucas of 1997 and it both benefits and suffers from his changed sensibilities and a different set of filmmaking tools.

Until Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, no one of sound mind would debate that George Lucas had a legal right to do whatever he wanted with Star Wars. But that’s not what is at issue here. The Special Editions inspire such passion because they represent a moral and ethical problem.

Like many filmmakers of the New Hollywood era, George Lucas subscribes to the auteur theory of cinema, in which directors are the most important creative force behind a movie and they are to be regarded as the primary authors of a work of cinema. There is certainly a lot of truth to that, especially when the director asserts as much control over the property as Lucas did with Star Wars, but auteur theory does not tell the whole story. Filmmaking is a collaborative art form and actors, writers, and technicians all contribute to the making of a movie. This is especially the case in large scale films or movies that are cinematically innovative. The original Star Wars included groundbreaking filmmaking processes and The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were directed by other people. Discarding the work of collaborators and other directors, and in particular work that is important to cinematic and cultural history, goes well beyond being an auteur and it is ethically problematic to say the least.

The other ethical conundrum presented by the Special Editions is the preservation of film history. Whatever opinions each of us may have about Star Wars—good, bad, or indifferent—it cannot be denied that the original trilogy was seminal in cinema history and the content of the original picture is important to preserve as a matter of the cultural record. The changes made in the Special Editions are very much like the colorization of classic movies; it’s a fine thing to do but at best the altered version should exist in companion with the original cut and cannot be allowed to replace it.

In all likelihood the original version of Star Wars will eventually be restored. In 2012 Disney purchased Lucasfilm and market forces will probably compel The Mouse and 20th Century Fox to eventually release Star Wars in its unaltered form. But the debate about the Special Edition remains important and even a telltale struggle of our time. The alteration of the Star Wars trilogy occurred against a background in which advances in technology and shifting cultural mores have made the future of intellectual property rights and artistic integrity much more fraught. Since Lucas made the Special Edition, altering or discarding the work of his collaborators, many fans have done the same to Lucas’ later films by making their own cuts of the Star Wars prequels and creating so-called “Despecialized Editions” of the original pictures. 

We are now in an age in which art and media are much more fluid in form and content as is the cultural sense of ownership. Star Wars ignites such passion because the fans view these films as belonging to them. While Disney owns Star Wars in the legal sense of the word, on another level the fans are right. There’s no clearly defined moment when Star Wars became a cultural institution but it is a part of our heritage in the same way as Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Grant Wood’s American Gothic. That’s no license for piracy but it does compel the legal owners of Star Wars to be good stewards of a motion picture and a cultural artifact that means so much to so many people.

III. The Second Star Wars Revolution

Sixteen years after completing the original Star Wars trilogy with Return of the Jedi, George Lucas returned to his galaxy far, far away with the prequel trilogy, which told the backstory of the existing films. It is an understatement to say that the Star Wars prequels, which began with 1999’s The Phantom Menace, continued with 2002’s Attack of the Clones, and finished with 2005’s Revenge of the Sith, were regarded as a disappointment by fans and critics alike. It’s also uncontroversial to say that the new crop of movies, starting with The Force Awakens, are intended to distance the series from the prequels and preserve the Star Wars brand for the future.

What may be controversial, and which I will argue here, is that the prequel trilogy—and in particular The Phantom Menace—was as significant and as influential of a cinematic event as the original Star Wars.

If nothing else, 1977’s Star Wars was a landmark movie because of the technology that was invented in the process of making it. On the level of technical craft, The Phantom Menace has some equally groundbreaking accomplishments; unfortunately those accomplishments are embodied by Jar Jar Binks. There had already been computer generated characters in movies, namely the dinosaurs of 1993’s Jurassic Park, but there is a difference between creating an animal versus a sentient being who communicates and interacts with the other human performers. The latter requires a subtlety in the performance that calls upon a different set of skills. Although Jar Jar Binks is among the most reviled characters in Star Wars (or any other movie for that matter) the fact is that without Jar Jar we don’t get Gollum of Lord of the Rings or Caesar of Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Along with creating totally digital characters, the Star Wars prequels also innovated entirely digital environments. This was another important breakthrough. Where movies like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park were filmed in a physical space and then inserted digital characters or other elements in post-production, the Star Wars prequels reversed this; the movies were essentially animated films with live action components. This has had a profound impact on the way movies are made. First, the digital back lot has become a reality and on big budget studio films the most involved and time consuming portion of the filmmaking process is no longer the shoot with the actors but the post-production period in which digital technicians shape the material. Second, a whole new kind of movie has been made possible: the motion capture film. This hybrid of animation and live action moviemaking allowed Robert Zemeckis to make The Polar Express and James Cameron to create Avatar.

This leads to the third technical accomplishment of the Star Wars prequels and that is creating a standard for the quality and quantity of the work. Previous to The Phantom Menace the average tentpole film might have 400 effect shots. Virtually every shot of the Star Wars prequels was digitally enhanced in some way—that’s about 2000 shots per film—and they are of uniformly high quality. This same density of digital effects can be seen in The Avengers and 300.

There was another technical innovation spearheaded by the prequels: digital filmmaking. Attack of the Clones was the first feature film to be shot entirely with digital cameras. This was quite controversial at the time and whether or not this was good for the motion picture industry continues to be a matter of fierce debate. But the fact of the matter is that the future of cinema is digital and, for better or worse, Star Wars led the way in that conversion.

In each of these cases, whether it was computer generated characters or digital cameras, the filmmakers of the Star Wars prequels devised an entire process to get from a concept to a finished product. That infrastructure created new kinds of filmmaking jobs while ending old ones, reshaped the way that movies are made, and altered the expectations of the audience. In short, the prequel trilogy was the second Star Wars revolution.

The technical breakthroughs of the Star Wars prequels don’t excuse the many flaws of those films. But when it comes to taking stock of the legacy of Star Wars it’s a mistake to stop counting the series’ impact in 1977 or even 1983. The prequel trilogy has directly shaped contemporary motion picture production perhaps even more so than the original movie.

IV. Star Wars and Race

One of the criticisms that has dogged Star Wars has been its representation of race. This has been a particularly touchy subject for Star Wars fans who in some cases regard the films with the same reverence given to a holy scripture, and treat criticisms of it with the same indignancy.

The fact is that Star Wars has a complicated relationship with race and gender issues—which is not the same as being wholly and irremediably racist or sexist. The original 1977 film features virtually no actors of color and The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi have only one such character (Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams) even as the alien population of the series becomes much more diverse.

There was an attempt to correct this in the prequel trilogy with the addition of several more actors of color, most notably Samuel L. Jackson as Jedi Master Mace Windu. However, that progress was offset by several alien characters who, whether intentional or not, mimicked racial stereotypes in their voice, behavior, and character design. Toydarian junk dealer Watto echoed the clichés of Hollywood’s portrayal of Arabs and Jews, the Neimodians of the Trade Federation spoke like Mr. Yunioshi from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Gungan goofball Jar-Jar Binks recalled the embarrassing history of minstrel shows.

But Star Wars’ portrayal of race is not all terrible either. One of the themes that runs through the series, both the original films and the prequels, is that the heroes are people whose goals are democratic and who fight against tyranny by building coalitions among alien races. The Empire is ultimately defeated in Return of the Jedi by a Rebel fleet piloted by a variety of alien creatures and by ground forces that forge an alliance with the Ewoks. This is replicated in the climax of The Phantom Menace as the Gungans join with the human Naboo people to take on the occupation of the Trade Federation. By contrast, the titular army of Attack of the Clones is made of people who are literally homogenous (and in that respect indistinguishable from the automatons of the Separatists) and in Revenge of the Sith the clones become the basis for the Empire’s army of Stormtroopers. The fact that Star Wars tells stories of racial cooperation against oppression is itself significant no matter how compromised it may be.

The portrayal of women in Star Wars is not quite as knotty as its portrayal of race but it’s worth mentioning. As with characters of color, there are very few female characters in the entire series, with Princess Leia (played by Carrie Fisher) the sole female lead in the original trilogy. But Leia is a tough and complex character who is both assertive and feminine and she is rightly regarded to be among the great sci-fi heroines. More women were added in the Star Wars prequels, but mostly in background roles with few or no lines, and Padme Amidala actually regressed over the series, beginning in The Phantom Menace as an active player and ending in Revenge of the Sith as an anxious housewife.

Clearly, the filmmakers of Star Wars—which until now has primarily been George Lucas—have struggled with racial and gender representation in their movies. But there are two additional things to say about that. First, Star Wars underrepresentation of women and people of color is not exceptional at all. The critiques of this series are accurate but those same criticisms apply to virtually all Hollywood films. According to a 2015 study by UCLA, seventy-five percent of lead roles are held by men and eighty-three percent of lead roles are played by white actors. The racial and gender flaws of Star Wars are not particular to it. Rather, they are indicative of the entire Hollywood marketplace.

Secondly, representation of minorities in media is an issue that matters. If people never see themselves on screen in the most popular, most powerful, and widest reaching medium of our time it creates a sense of exclusion from society and renders those people invisible while reinforcing the impression among white male viewers that their stories are the only ones that are worth telling. But again, this is not about one story or one series. It’s about an entire entertainment system that has excluded a great deal of the population.

Hashing over the racial and gender politics of a populist sci-fi movie may seem like a waste of time that ought to be spent debating “serious” movies or other issues. But popular culture is still culture and Star Wars is a touchstone that transcends race, politics, and socio-economic class. Han Solo and Princess Leia and Darth Vader are as much a part of our American heritage as Jay Gatsby, Paul Bunyan, and Atticus Finch. But unlike those characters and their stories, the mythology of Star Wars is still open to addition and revision. As Star Wars moves into the hands of new filmmakers, I hope they will aspire to the best aspects of this series and create a universe in which all are welcome as characters and as audiences.

V. The Future of Star Wars

With the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney and that company’s plans to continue to make Star Wars films as long as is economically feasible, the series has entered a new phase.
The original Star Wars was released at a time when it was an anomaly in the motion picture marketplace. By the time George Lucas got around to making the prequel trilogy quite a lot had changed. Science fiction and fantasy movies were a regular fixture of mainstream culture but Star Wars still stood out among in the sci-fi and fantasy genres because of its breadth and ambition and creativity.

The Force Awakens comes out in a different context from either A New Hope or The Phantom Menace. The multi-film science fiction and fantasy epic isn’t just familiar. It is now a staple of the studio business plan. Every few months a new installment in one fantasy series or another gets released and Hollywood is constantly in search of the next Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or Hunger Games series that it can implement into a long term franchise. The new run of Star Wars films fits neatly into that plan.

The new Star Wars film also aligns with another current trend: the nostalgia sequel or the soft reboot. Earlier this year, Creed (a spin-off of Rocky) and Jurassic World found great success by reigniting dormant franchises with stories that appended onto the continuity of earlier movies while adhering closely to the basic themes of the series. The Force Awakens does the same, deliberately connecting itself to the classic trilogy of films and repeating many of the familiar beats of the original Star Wars. But reliance on nostalgia comes with its own risks.

Until now one of the outstanding things about Star Wars—and part of its appeal—was its independence from the Hollywood system. The original Star Wars was made under difficult conditions and some executives at 20th Century Fox actually opposed its production because it was so out of character with the conventional wisdom of the time. Out of that struggle and the movie’s success emerged the popular myth of George Lucas as the auteur who bucked the Hollywood power structure. And there was quite a bit of reality to that myth. Despite how wealthy this series made Lucas and how unscrupulous he may have been about exploiting the licensing rights, the fact is that five out of the first six Star Wars movies were independent films in the true sense of the word. They were financed outside of the Hollywood system and were not subject to studio notes or focus groups. As a result, all of the Star Wars movies made under the Lucas regime have a strange and singular creative vision behind them. They were experimental in technical craft and ambitious in their mash up of filmmaking genres.

The Force Awakens completes the transition of Star Wars from an independent and insurgent cultural phenomenon and into a fixture of the Hollywood institution. That’s evident in the degree to which the filmmakers of The Force Awakens go out of their way to appease the audience. Where Lucas flagrantly didn’t care about anyone else’s opinion (sometimes to the detriment of his movies), the filmmakers of The Force Awakens play to the nostalgia of the audience and give them exactly what they want and little else. But while that wave of nostalgia has been the very thing drawing crowds to theaters it also risks being the series’ greatest liability.

Complacency is the death of creativity. Any worthwhile piece of art requires a certain amount of risk and stories need characters and conflicts that continue to grow and develop. This is why The Empire Strikes Back is still held with such high regard. It didn’t rehash the original Star Wars. It took the series in new directions and expanded and enriched the material. Callbacks are fine but an ongoing series like Star Wars cannot be built solely on repurposing the same old set pieces. That sort of narrative decadence results in creative decay that eventually rots a series from the inside out.

The filmmakers of The Force Awakens were caught in a tough spot, having the follow the sour taste that the Star Wars prequels and the Special Edition left in the fan’s mouths. The overabundant nostalgia of this movie was probably necessary to make amends and to rehabilitate the Star Wars brand. If the box office is any indication, that mission has been accomplished. But as the new owners of Lucasfilm move forward without the company’s namesake it is imperative that they find new stories to tell and new ways to tell them.

'Star Wars' on Sounds of Cinema

On December 27th, Sounds of Cinema will feature a look at the Star Wars film series. Rather than re-reviewing all of the existing movies I will instead provide a series of commentaries about Star Wars concerning it's impact on filmmaking, the legacy that it has created, the series' occasional controversy, and the future of the franchise. I'll also have a review of The Force Awakens and play excerpts of John Williams' music from all seven live action theatrical movies.

Sounds of Cinema can be heard Sunday morning at 9am on 89.5 KQAL FM in Winona, Minnesota and at 11am on 89.7 KMSU FM in Mankato, Minnesota.

'Star Wars' and Race

Cable news host and political science professor Melissa Harris-Perry spent two segments of her MSNBC show discussing Star Wars and the series’ representation of gender and race. An offhand comment she made about Darth Vader resulted in a flurry of critiques, mostly taking the shape of hysterical and misleading headlines claiming that Harris-Perry had declared all of Star Wars racist because Darth Vader was voiced by a black actor.
 
Harris-Perry’s comments on “the Darth Vader situation” can be found in the first video at 3:37.





It’s clear from the entirety of the discussion that Harris-Perry didn’t claim Star Wars to be the sci-fi equivalent of Birth of a Nation. Rather, Harris-Perry has “feelings, good, bad, and otherwise about Star Wars” and she took the time to discuss those opinions with her guests.

The fact is that Star Wars has a complicated relationship with race and gender issues. The original 1977 film features virtually no actors of color and The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi have only one such character (Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams) even as the alien population of the series becomes much more diverse.

There was an attempt to correct this in the prequel trilogy with the addition of several more actors of color, most notably Samuel L. Jackson as Jedi Master Mace Windu. However, that progress was offset by several alien characters who, whether intentional or not, mimicked racial stereotypes in their voice, behavior, and character design. Toydarian junk dealer Watto echoed the clichés of Hollywood’s portrayal of Arabs and Jews, the Neimodians of the Trade Federation spoke like Mr. Yunioshi from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Gungan goofball Jar-Jar Binks recalled the embarrassing history of minstrel shows.

But Star Wars’ take on race is not all terrible either. One of the themes that runs through the series, both the original films and the prequels, is that the heroes are people whose goals are democratic and who fight against tyranny by building coalitions among alien races. The Empire is ultimately defeated in Return of the Jedi by a Rebel fleet piloted by a variety of alien creatures and by ground forces who forge an alliance with the Ewoks. This is replicated in the climax of The Phantom Menace as the Gungans join with the human Naboo people to take on the occupation of the Trade Federation. By contrast, the titular army of Attack of the Clones is made of people who are literally homogenous (and in that respect indistinguishable from the automatons of the Separatist forces) and in Revenge of the Sith the clones become the basis for the Empire’s army of Stormtroopers. The fact that Star Wars tells stories of racial cooperation against oppression is itself significant no matter how compromised it may be.

The portrayal of women in Star Wars is not quite as knotty as its portrayal of race but it’s worth mentioning. As with characters of color, there are very few female characters across the entire series, with Princess Leia (played by Carrie Fisher) the sole female lead in the original trilogy. But Leia is a tough and complex character who is both assertive and feminine and she is rightly regarded to be among the great sci-fi heroines. More women were added in the Star Wars prequels, but mostly in background roles with few or no lines, and Padme Amidala actually regressed over the series, beginning in The Phantom Menace as an active player and ending in Revenge of the Sith as an anxious housewife.

As an aside, one of the interesting omissions from Revenge of the Sith is a pair of deleted scenes included as bonus material on the DVD release. Padme meets with a diverse group of characters to discuss politics and they plant the foundation for what will become the Rebel Alliance. These scenes were purportedly cut for pacing reasons but they would have given Padme something to do and changed the subtext of other parts of the movie.

Clearly, the filmmakers of Star Wars—which until now has primarily been George Lucas—have struggled with racial and gender representation in their movies. But there are two additional things to say about that. First, Star Wars underrepresentation of women and people of color is not exceptional at all. The critiques of this series are accurate but those same criticisms apply to virtually all Hollywood films. According to a study by UCLA, seventy-five percent of lead roles are held by men and eighty-three percent of lead roles are played by white actors. The racial and gender flaws of Star Wars are not particular to it. Rather, they are indicative of the entire Hollywood marketplace.

Secondly, representation of minorities in media is an issue that matters. If people never see themselves on screen in the most popular, most powerful, and widest reaching medium of our time it creates a sense of exclusion from society and renders those people invisible while reinforcing the impression among white male viewers that their stories are the only ones that are worth telling. But again, this is not about one story or one series. It’s about an entire entertainment system that has excluded a great deal of the population.

Hashing over the racial and gender politics of a populist sci-fi movie may seem like a waste of time that ought to be spent debating “serious” movies or other issues. But popular culture is still culture and Star Wars is a touchstone that transcends race, politics, and socio-economic class. Han Solo and Princess Leia and Darth Vader are as much a part of our American heritage as Jay Gatsby, Paul Bunyan, and Atticus Finch. But unlike those characters and their stories, the mythology of Star Wars is still open to addition and revision. As Star Wars moves into the hands of new filmmakers, I hope they will aspire to the best aspects of this series and create a universe in which all are welcome as characters and as audiences.

Film Reviews: December 6, 2015

Here is a recap of the films reviewed on today's show:

The Night Before is a frustrating movie because the potential is there to be a very good or even great movie but the film is too unfocused and not funny enough.

Victor Frankenstein is an ambitious project but it’s also a mess. There is some fun stuff here but the film is a jumble of underwritten characters and plot points that don’t make sense.

Trumbo has the potential to be a complex portrait of the juncture between entertainment and politics but the filmmakers settle for a straightforward man against the institution story. As that it works and Trumbo is a very enjoyable movie. 

Secret in Their Eyes has some extraordinary performances and there is a powerful story here of justice and corruption. But the filmmakers are overambitious and unnecessarily complicate the story.

Dark Places flew under the radar of viewers and generally didn’t get the regard it deserved from critics. The movie is flawed and is certainly no Gone Girl but there is an intelligence to Dark Places that elevates it above the average murder mystery. 

You can find full text of every review in the Sounds of Cinema Review Archive.

Film Reviews: November 15, 2015

Here is a recap of the films reviewed on today's show:

Spectre is an average James Bond adventure. It certainly isn’t the worst of the series or even the worst of the Daniel Craig era but what should be a major payoff comes across as a run through of the 007 checklist.

Meadowland is a gritty drama with some extraordinary performances by Olivia Wilde and Luke Wilson. The movie gets away from its central premise but on the whole this film is a powerful look at the impact of loss and grief.

Burnt is an average movie. It suffers from a story that is unfocused and cliché. The movie has the potential to be daring but it is compromised by capitulating itself to populist feel-good entertainment.

Young viewers are going to enjoy The Peanuts Movie and it’s tolerable for adults. However, unlike the classic television specials, it is unlikely that this film will become a title that today’s kids share with their own children in years to come.

Boulevard is a fine drama and one of the notable final performances of Robin Williams’ career. The movie may not be entirely original but it tells this story very well.

You can find full text of every review in the Sounds of Cinema Review Archive.

Film Reviews: November 8, 2015

Here is a recap of the films reviewed on today's show:

The Last Witch Hunter is clearly an attempt to set up a new fantasy franchise but for that to work it must have a compelling central character and a rich story world. This film has neither.

Jem and the Holograms is intended to be a feel-good bubblegum story. For tweens who think Twilight is great literature and the music of Taylor Swift is life changing, this may have some appeal. But even adolescent audiences ought to recognize how facile and poorly written this movie is.

There is a case to be made for the disintegrating status of investigative journalism but Truth is not it. Very much like the people whose story it tells, the filmmakers attempt to contort a historical event into something it wasn’t.

Clouds of Sils Maria is a quiet but thoughtful film about the impermanence of life and the way art can capture a fleeting moment. It’s a pensive movie but those enjoy pictures like 8½ or Birdman ought to check it out.

You can find full text of every review in the Sounds of Cinema Review Archive. 

'Dark Side of the Full Moon' Screening Nov. 5th at Winona State University

Winona State University's Nursing Department will host a film screening of Dark Side of the Full Moon on Thursday, November 5th at 6:30 p.m. in the Science Laboratory Center Auditorium, room 120.

Dark Side of the Full Moon is about the 1.3 million women in the United States who struggle to find support and treatment for postpartum depression and other perinatal mood disorders. The 75 minute documentary will be followed by a panel discussion with those who have first-hand experience with the mental health of motherhood. Additional information about Dark Side of the Full Moon can be found at the official website.

The event is free and open to the public.

Sounds of Cinema Halloween Special

Sounds of Cinema's month-long Halloween theme concludes with the annual Halloween Special. This hour long program will feature music from a variety of spooky movies as well as some other audible surprises.

The Sounds of Cinema Halloween Special can be heard over the air and online the evening of Friday, October 30th at:

• 11pm on 89.5 KQAL FM in Winona, MN
• Midnight on 89.7 KMSU FM in Mankato, MN

  Tune in for the soundtrack to your Halloween.

89.7 KMSU Fall Pledge Drive

89.7 KMSU FM "The Maverick" is currently holding its fall pledge drive. If you listen to Sounds of Cinema from this station or believe in independent radio, please consider making a financial contribution. You can make a pledge by calling 507-389-5678 or 1-800-456-7810. You can also make a pledge online at the the station's website.

The funds raised in KMSU's bi-annual pledge drive pay for the overhead cost of running the station, maintaining and replacing the equipment, and keeping KMSU on the air.

If you listen to KMSU and enjoy its content, please help to ensure that the station continues to broadcast its unique blend of programming. In stressful and uncertain economic times we all have to take extra care in how we spend our money. But it is also important to remember that we demonstrate what we value by where and how we spend our money. Consider the impact that KMSU's content has on the community. Many of the programs, especially those that are locally produced, provide a very important service to the listenership and to the Mankato area as a whole.

It's also important to remember that pledges are not just about money. Space and funding are at a premium across higher education. When you make a pledge to KMSU you demonstrate that the station is valued by the community and that helps justify its continued existence.

On Sunday, November 1, those listening to Sounds of Cinema from KMSU will hear a special pledge drive episode. Those listening from 89.5 KQAL FM in Winona will hear the regularly scheduled program.

Presentation on 'American Sniper' at Winona State

On Wednesday, October 28th J. Paul Johnson will present "Screening American Sniper on the 21st-Century College Campus" at 7pm in Stark Hall room 103 at Winona State University. The event is part of the university's CLASP series.

Early in 2015, numerous scheduled college campus screenings of Clint Eastwood’s acclaimed war biopic American Sniper were protested, and of those, some cancelled, as Muslim and other student groups protested the film’s representation of Iraqi soldiers and citizens as “savages.” This presentation will chart the controversy over campus screenings of American Sniper, locate them in a historical context, and advocate for those who have been misrepresented by its depiction of non-Americans as “savages.”

J. Paul Johnson is Professor of English and Film Studies at Winona State, where he also serves as chairperson of the Mass Communication Department. He has published books and articles on composition and rhetoric and presented at national and international conferences on film and literature. His current research focuses on the intersections of genre identification, reception, and representation in film studies.

Here is a discussion about the film from The Young Turks:

Haunted House Movies

Today’s episode of Sounds of Cinema continued the month-long Halloween theme with a look at haunted house pictures. What follows are the movies discussed on today’s show as well as some additional titles.

1408
Based on a short story by Stephen King, a writer who specializes in debunking paranormal activity checks into a fabled haunted hotel. The movie had two endings, one that was shown in theaters and another, darker ending, that was included on the home video release.


The Amityville Horror
The Amityville Horror was based on the supposedly true story of a haunting experienced by the Lutz family in their Long Island home. The facts in the case have been a matter of dispute but that controversy only added to the mystery of the Amityville haunting. The 1979 movie was enormously successful and inspired a series of sequels although the follow ups had little to do with the original material.


The Beyond
Lucio Fulci is one of the legendary directors in the horror genre. His movies were mostly known for their gore but he mounted ambitious productions on small budgets. One of the most popular titles among Fulci’s cult following is 1983’s The Beyond (also known as The Seven Doors of Death). The movie concerns a hotel constructed over a gateway to hell. At the time of its release the movie was subject to censorship and like most of Fulci’s films it was critically derided but it has since achieved a modest reputation as a surrealistic horror title.


The Changeling
A man mourning the death of his wife and child rents an isolated mansion and is accosted by the spirit of a murdered child. Martin Scorsese named The Changeling one of his favorite horror films.


The Haunting
One of the great titles in the history of haunted house movies is 1963’s The Haunting. Based on Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House and directed by Robert Wise (who also helmed The Sound of Music and The Day the Earth Stood Still), The Haunting involves a scientist testing paranormal researchers in a haunted mansion. The film is so effective because of its use of suggestion. That was lost on the makers of the 1999 remake.


Hellraiser
The Hellraiser franchise is now synonymous with the character of Pinhead but the original movie is really a haunted house picture. A married couple move into the husband’s childhood home but the reanimated corpse of the husband’s older brother is living in the attic and he seduces the wife into bringing him victims so that he can regenerate the rest of his body. Hellraiser was one of the best horror pictures of the 1980s and it’s one of the best debut features by a director in the genre.


House
A troubled novelist moves into the home of his recently deceased aunt in order to complete his next book. The movie isn’t a horror comedy but some of the visuals are a bit silly in a way that makes the movie campy fun. Interestingly, House was produced by Sean Cunningham, director of Friday the 13th, and directed by Steve Miner, who helmed Friday the 13th Part 2 and 3.


House on Haunted Hill
Directed by William Castle and starring Vincent Price, The House on Haunted Hill tells the story of a millionaire who offers ten thousand dollars to five people who agree to be locked in a spooky house overnight.


Monster House
Monster House is a good example of a family movie that respects the intelligence of both kids and their parents. This is an animated film but it gets pretty intense and is thematically heavy while managing to be appropriate for the family audience.


A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge
The second film in the Elm Street series combines a slasher film with a possession movie and a haunted house story. Taking place in the home were Freddy Krueger was defeated in the original picture, the sequel sees the villain attempting to cross from dreams into the real world.


The Orphanage
A couple renovates an orphanage into a home for handicapped children and their son plays with imaginary friend who might be ghosts. The Orphanage is a very thoughtful haunted house picture. It may not deliver the shocks of a mainstream horror film but it does tap into something that is mysterious about childhood.


The Others
Written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar, The Others is a very effective haunted house movie. The story concerns a mother and her two children who have an allergic reaction to sunlight. The mother maintains strict control over the household but her grip is disrupted by supernatural phenomena.


Paranormal Activity
The glut of sequels has pushed the series into absurdity but the original Paranormal Activity was a very effective found footage movie.


The Shining
Based on the book by Stephen King, The Shining has been adapted twice. The more popular version is the 1980 motion picture directed by Stanley Kubrick. This film starred Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall as a married couple who spend the winter as caretakers of an isolated hotel and the husband gradually goes insane. King was unhappy with Kubrick’s film, as it diverged greatly from the novel, and he produced a made-for-television remake that aired on ABC in 1997.


Poltergeist
Poltergeist was a very intense and quite successful haunted house picture in which a family’s young daughter is abducted by ghosts. Released in 1982, the movie was rated PG but it is more intense than that rating suggests. Poltergeist inspired two sequels and a television series. A remake of the original film was released in 2015.


What Lies Beneath
Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer play a couple whose marriage is strained by the wife’s visions that might be supernatural or the result of head trauma.

'U.S. vs. John Lennon' Showing on Oct. 22

The U.S. vs. John Lennon will be shown on Thursday, October 22nd at 7pm in the Stark Hall Auditorium on the Winona State University campus.



The U.S. vs. John Lennon is a documentary film about Lennon’s art and activism. The film recounts Lennon’s post-Beatles career and the way he used his star power to draw attention to political issues. As a result, Lennon was identified as an enemy of the Nixon administration and was targeted for deportation.


Admission is free and open to the public.

The U.S. vs. John Lennon runs 99 minutes and is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America.

This event is sponsored by the Winona State University Art Department, English Department, Mass Communication Department, Sociology Department, the Darrell W. Krueger Library, and Sounds of Cinema.

More information about the screening can be found here.

Join the Facebook event page here. 

Wes Craven Retrospective

Today’s episode of Sounds of Cinema continued the month-long Halloween theme with a look at the career of filmmaker Wes Craven. The writer-director-producer passed away on August 30, 2015 at the age of seventy-six. He left behind a filmography that is distinguished within the horror genre and across American cinema as a whole.

Overview
Wes Craven began his career in the early 1970s, first gaining experience as an editor and then becoming a writer and director with 1972’s The Last House on the Left. From there Craven would helm such horror classics as The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Serpent and the Rainbow, The People Under the Stairs,and the Scream series as well as the mainstream drama Music of the Heart.

Coming from a Midwestern working class background and a family that belonged to a fundamentalist church that rejected movies as literally the work of the devil, Craven was not disposed to become one of the great American filmmakers. But it’s difficult to deny that few figures in the history of horror cinema—and for that matter the history of American film—have created as many movies with the impact and longevity that he did.

One of the extraordinary aspects of Craven’s filmography is the role he played in reinventing the horror genre multiple times throughout his career. In doing so he created many of the scariest, most intelligent, and most influential horror films for three decades running. In the 1970s Craven was a key player in the new breed of independent horror cinema that occurred alongside the New Hollywood movement and The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes are as indispensable to the cinema of the 70s as Mean Streets and The Deer Hunter. In the 1980s Craven wrote and directed A Nightmare on Elm Street. In addition to creating slasher villain Freddy Krueger and launching one of the most successful franchises in Hollywood history, A Nightmare on Elm Street also changed the horror genre again by combining the realistic scares of the slasher format with surrealistic elements that paved the way for titles like Hellraiser and Paperhouse. In the 1990s he would reinvent the horror genre once again with Scream, bringing pop post-modernism and horror together.

Another of the exceptional aspects of Wes Craven’s work was the intelligence of his movies. Coming from an academic background, Craven approached his films with both the artistry of a storyteller and the cerebral qualities of an intellectual. He always attempted to give the audience their money’s worth but Craven was also interested in a cinema of ideas and in telling stories that questioned authority, interrogated the limits of rationality, and penetrated the cultural zeitgeist. Even movies that weren’t successful like Deadly Friend and Shocker had something in them that was thought-provoking. Because of that, Craven’s movies are not just spooky stories. They are also important cultural artifacts from the last four decades of American cinema.

Here are some of the highlights of Wes Craven’s filmography:

The Last House on the Left (1972)
Wes Craven’s first feature film was Last House on the Left. A reworking of Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (which itself was adapted from a 13th century Swedish folk song), The Last House on the Left told the story of two young women who are kidnapped, tortured, and killed by a gang of criminals. The killers inadvertently seek shelter with one of the victim’s parents and the mother and father take bloody revenge.

Last House on the Left is often cited as one of the most disturbing films of all time and that’s mostly attributed to its violence. Released in 1972, Last House on the Left was a key title in a swath of movies that changed the rules of on-screen brutality. However, the violence of Last House does not entirely account for the visceral reaction that the movie continues to elicit from audiences. The movie went beyond the prurient thrills of a trashy drive-in movie. This was a smarter picture than that and its story suggested that violence has no redemptive or regenerative qualities.

The impact of Last House on the Left was also enhanced by the circumstances of its production. The movie was made by people who had little or no experience in filmmaking. For his part, Wes Craven lacked an understanding of how to stage a sequence so that the action cut together in the editing room. As a result, the movie has a rough patchwork quality and many sequences play out in a gritty cinema verite style. Craven was also not entirely in control of the tone of the picture and moments of brutal violence alternate with slapstick comic relief. That contrast of violence and humor, along with a folk music score, creates a discordant tone that is perverse and nauseating.

Last House on the Left provoked an uproar in 1972, eliciting protests and calls for censorship. For audiences of 2015, the amateurishness of the production overshadows the controversial material and the movie is more interesting as a cinematic artifact than as a piece of entertainment. But Last House on the Left is an important film that led the way in dragging the horror genre into a new age.


The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
After 1972’s The Last House on the Left, Wes Craven attempted to work outside the horror genre but with the success of his first film the director found himself pigeonholed as a horror filmmaker. Unable to get any other projects made, Craven wrote and directed his second horror film, which remains one of his best: 1977’s The Hills Have Eyes. In this movie a vacationing middle class family is stranded in the desert and preyed upon by a feral group of cannibals.

In terms of its filmmaking, The Hills Have Eyes was a major leap forward from Last House on the Left. The movie was made with a more experienced cast and crew and Craven showed a great deal of improvement as a director. The action and violence are thoughtfully staged but so are the quiet moments before and after the scenes of high terror. This is especially true in the raid sequence in which the people of the hills break into the family’s RV. The sequence builds from the mundane to the creepy to the ultra-violent with startling impact.

Like Craven’s best work, The Hills Have Eyes delivers horror movie thrills by working on deeply embedded fears. The narrative is based on a template that is familiar from old westerns in which white settlers in covered wagons were attacked by Native Americans. But like Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes is also a reaction to the societal unrest of the 1970s and in particular urban riots and the war in Vietnam. Even as it borrows the template of the western genre, The Hills Have Eyes inverts its politics. As the civilized family members fight off their uncivilized attackers they are required to become just as vicious in order to survive. As the tagline to the movie stated, “They didn’t want to kill. But they didn’t want to die.”

The Hills Have Eyes was a modest success in 1977 but the reputation of the movie has continued to grow and it is now properly recognized as one of Wes Craven’s best works.


A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
In the early 1980s Wes Craven directed a couple of television thrillers as well as 1981’s Deadly Blessing and 1982’s Swamp Thing. These films were not very good but Craven subsequently came up with an ingenious idea that would become one of the great American horror stories: 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. In this movie a group of teenagers are haunted by Freddy Krueger, a bogeyman who stalks the teens in their dreams. If Freddy kills the dreamers in their sleep they die in real life.

A Nightmare on Elm Street was produced amid the slasher boom of the 1980s. After the success of Halloween in 1978, the slasher subgenre took off with the release of Friday the 13th and Prom Night in 1980. In the subsequent years literally hundreds of slasher movies were released but by 1984 the formula was worn out. A Nightmare on Elm Street rejuvenated and transformed the horror genre by introducing fantasy elements.

The metaphysical component of A Nightmare on Elm Street was more than a gimmick. It allowed the filmmakers to tell a more complicated story than the average slasher film. That’s implied in the very title. “Elm Street” invokes mainstream, Norman Rockwell Americana while “Nightmare” is of the suppressed madness and violence of the unconscious. This is a movie about the ugliness underneath polite society personified by Freddy Krueger.

The success of A Nightmare on Elm Street was partly due to the casting of Robert Englund as Freddy. Assisted by the script, the makeup work, the costuming, and the mechanical effects, Englund created one of the most memorable villains in the history of movies. The contribution of composer Charles Bernstein is also important and this film has one of the great horror movie scores.

A Nightmare on Elm Street was a film in which everything came together. It was an exciting concept that was extremely well executed and told a frightening story that appealed on primal, mythological, and sociological levels. Its success went beyond the box office and A Nightmare on Elm Street was the rare motion picture that become part of the fabric of popular culture.


The Freddy Krueger Phenomenon
One of the ironies about the making of A Nightmare on Elm Street was that writer and director Wes Craven shopped his script to virtually every studio in Hollywood and was universally rejected. Craven finally got a green light from New Line Cinema, which at that point was a small operation that was primarily distributing movies to prisons and college campuses.

New Line founder and president Bob Shaye saw the potential in Wes Craven’s script and Shaye raised the money to get A Nightmare on Elm Street made. The movie was a hit but in order to get his original script produced, Wes Craven had relinquished all rights to the property and New Line, because of its financing deals on the first film, didn’t make a tremendous amount of money from Nightmare’s theatrical run. What the studio did come away with was a copyright on a potentially valuable property and the decision was made to start producing sequels, something Craven was not happy about.

Wes Craven sat out of 1985’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. The sequel was a hit but it was regarded as a disappointment by fans, critics, and even the filmmakers themselves. Craven returned to the series as a writer and producer on A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. The initial script was co-written by Wes Craven and Bruce Wagner and it returned the series to its roots while expanding the conceit. However, the final script was revised significantly by Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont, with Russell directing the movie.

Dream Warriors was an even bigger success and launched Nightmare on Elm Street into the mainstream. It also fundamentally changed the series. The tone was lighter and Freddy came out of the shadows to become the centerpiece of the franchise.

Throughout the remainder of the 1980s New Line Cinema continued to exploit the Nightmare on Elm Street series. In addition to movies, Freddy Krueger appeared on television, comic books, model kits, video games, and t-shirts. But the series became increasingly diluted and by the end Freddy had become a consumer-friendly corporate logo, much to Wes Craven’s chagrin.


The Universal Years
While New Line Cinema was preoccupied with the further adventures of Freddy Krueger, Wes Craven went off and made other movies. The first was Deadly Friend, a disastrous production for Warner Bros. that was supposed to be a PG-rated fantasy movie but was contorted into an R-rated horror film because of studio interference.

Wes Craven moved on to Universal were he made a series of very interesting titles. The first was 1988’s The Serpent and the Rainbow. Adapted from the nonfiction book by Wade Davis, the story dealt with an anthropologist who travels to Haiti in pursuit of a drug rumored to resurrect the dead. The Serpent and the Rainbow explored the limits of rational Western thought and linked medicine, science, and superstition. The storytelling is clumsy in places but The Serpent and the Rainbow is unlike any American horror film made before or since.

Craven’s next effort was 1989’s Shocker. In this movie a serial killer transforms himself into an electricity-based specter. Compared to The Serpent and the Rainbow this was a much more conventional scary film and it was intended to create a franchisable character for Universal. Shocker’s box office performance was tepid and so it never led anywhere. But the movie does have an off-the-wall performance by Mitch Pileggi as the killer and it is one of Craven’s first experiments with characters crossing between media and reality. The 1998 movie Fallen, starring Denzel Washington, is remarkably similar to Shocker.

The best movie to come out of Wes Craven’s tenure with Universal was 1991’s The People Under the Stairs. In this movie a young African American boy takes part in a heist of his landlord’s home and discovers that the proprietors are psychotics who have booby-trapped their house and keep people locked up in the basement. As a piece of entertainment, The People Under the Stairs is a wild mashup of gruesome horror and the madcap hijinks of a Tom and Jerry cartoon.  But like A Nightmare on Elm Street, this movie is also a contemporary fairytale with a political edge. In this case, it’s a parable about the haves and have-nots.


New Nightmare (1994)
New Line Cinema brought the original cycle of Nightmare on Elm Street films to an inauspicious close with 1991’s Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. But despite the subtitle of that film New Line president Bob Shaye felt that there was room for one more movie. Because of the way the contracts and financing had worked out in the production of the original film, Nightmare on Elm Street creator Wes Craven had been shut out of royalties on the Nightmare films he wasn’t directly involved with. In a very un-Hollywood gesture, Shaye offered Craven compensation and recruited him to make another Freddy movie.

Craven accepted the offer but the continuity and story logic of the Nightmare on Elm Street series was a disaster by that point. Instead of continuing the existing narrative, Craven came up with New Nightmare, in which the cast and crew of the original film would play themselves. In New Nightmare an evil force that looks a lot like Freddy Krueger haunts actress Heather Langenkamp (who played the heroine of the first picture) and movie reality gradually encroaches upon physical reality.

In making New Nightmare, Wes Craven was determined to return Freddy Krueger back to the menacing character he had originally envisioned but he also used the opportunity to reflect on what horror stories mean for the culture. According to the movie’s premise, an ineffable evil spirit that preys on humanity can be imprisoned by stories that capture its essence. When the stories stop the demon is set free. For Craven, New Nightmare was a warning to would-be censors. The movie suggested that attempts to clean up horror stories actually prevent us from confronting the dark and violent aspects of human nature and stopping these stories altogether allows human destructiveness to flow unimpeded and unidentified and eventually materialize in real life violence.

New Nightmare was a bold movie that was more successful creatively than it was financially. The movie did respectable office box but it wasn’t a hit. However, New Nightmare has since been rediscovered by critics and fans and it’s now regarded as one of the best horror films of the 1990s.


Scream (1996)
One of the underappreciated elements of Wes Craven’s work is his sense of humor. It’s a mordent sense of humor but it is nevertheless a consistent feature of his movies. Craven attempted to make a full-fledged comedy with 1995’s Vampire in Brooklyn which starred Eddie Murphy. The film wasn’t especially successful.

Wes Craven’s next project was 1996’s Scream. It proved to be one of his most popular movies and it effectively mixed scares with a biting sense of humor. Crossing the slasher film with a murder mystery, Scream told the story of teenagers stalked by a killer who offs his victims according to the “rules” of horror movies.

Within Wes Craven’s filmography, Scream connected the director’s early work with his later material. The movie is brutally violent in ways that recalled Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes but it was also self-reflexive in the manner of Shocker and New Nightmare. Scream aligned those elements in a way that packed a subversive punch and was very entertaining.

Craven certainly had a lot to do with the success of Scream but the contributions of other players shouldn’t be underestimated. Among them was screenwriter Kevin Williamson. Like John Hughes in the 1980s, Williamson had a feel for 1990s youth culture and Scream became one of the defining movies of the decade. The other major contributor to Scream was its cast. Horror films don’t always attract high caliber acting talent but the cast of Scream included some very good performers including Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Jamie Kennedy, Courtney Cox, and David Arquette.

While the movie delivered as a horror film and as a whodunit, Scream’s greatest asset was its intelligence. The slasher genre has a reputation for being stupid and that is not entirely undeserved. For every A Nightmare on Elm Street there are a dozen z-grade knockoffs with cliché-ridden scripts populated by dumb teenagers who only exist to be dispatched in hideous ways. The characters of Scream generally made reasonable decisions, fought back against the killer, and they were hip to the conventions of horror films.

Scream was a huge hit and the Ghostface costume soon became as ubiquitous as Freddy Krueger’s glove. For the third time in Wes Craven’s career, his film announced a seismic shift in the horror genre and in American cinema as a whole.


The Scream Sequels
After Scream became a hit in 1996, sequels and imitators quickly followed. The movie had tapped into the culture of the 1990s and laid bare the new rubric for hip movies. Within the horror genre it was no longer possible to tell a straight slasher story. One of the characters had to make a sarcastic remark or compare their situation to an equivalent scene in a retro horror film.

Unlike A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven stayed on as director throughout the Scream series. Scream 2 was rushed into production and was in theaters less than a year after the release of the original film. Despite the accelerated schedule, Scream 2 was an impressive follow up. It couldn’t match the surprise of the first film but it was better than the average sequel. Like the first movie, its intelligence was key to its appeal. The characters of Scream 2 discussed the new string of murders in terms of a sequel and the film played on Hollywood serialization.


Several years passed before the release of Scream 3 in 2000. Wes Craven returned to direct but the movie was written by Ehren Krueger, who has since become known for writing Michael Bay’s Transformers movies. All franchises, if they go on long enough, eventually become self-parody and the filmmakers embraced their fate by making Scream 3 something of a spoof. It satirized Hollywood and has several connections with Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. However, it never fully commits to the horror or the comedy and so Scream 3 was the weakest link in the series.


Following Scream 3, the series was dormant for over a decade until 2011’s Scream 4. Between the third and fourth installments, Hollywood remade virtually every major horror title of the 1970s and 80s and Scream 4 played on the reboot craze. The screenplay is credited to Kevin Williamson but Ehren Krueger did an uncredited rewrite. This probably accounts for the diverted focus of the story and the patchwork ending. Like Scream 3, the final installment of this series is uneven but it is satisfactorily entertaining.


Scream has since been turned into a dramatic television series on which Wes Craven served as an executive producer.

Music of the Heart (1999)
Although Wes Craven was best known as a horror director, he fell into the genre by circumstance and throughout his career he tried to do something outside of horror and suspense. When Scream was a success, then-Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein signed Craven to a three picture deal in which Craven would helm two Scream sequels and 1999’s Music of the Heart. This film tells the true story of a violin teacher and her struggle to establish a music program in Harlem schools.

There is a small subgenre of movies about white teachers who go into inner city schools and inspire the students, who are usually of a non-white background, to work hard and escape their surroundings through art. Movies like Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers have achieved box office success but also critical derision because of the perceived soft racism of white savior condescension.

Music of the Heart fits that inspirational teacher template but the difference is in the details. For one, the movie addresses the racial criticism head on. The filmmakers deliberately clear the air and that leads to the second distinction of Music of the Heart. The movie doesn’t oversell itself. The teacher isn’t saving anybody and the students won’t be spared from the difficulties of life just by learning an instrument. But Music of the Heart does embrace the value of art education and the work ethic required to be a musician. Third, the film has characters who are colorful and complex. The music teacher, played by Meryl Streep, is a flawed individual and her students are distinct characters. Unlike some education stories, the other teachers and administrators aren’t demonized and there is a general good will about the movie.

There is one disheartening aspect of Music of the Heart. Wes Craven did well by the horror genre and movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Hills Have Eyes deserve to be taken seriously. But Music of the Heart demonstrated that Wes Craven had a broader set of skills that he might have applied to a wider range of movies had he been given the opportunity.


Red Eye (2005)
The last notable title in Wes Craven’s filmography is 2005’s Red Eye. In this movie a woman is held prisoner while on an airline flight and forced to cooperate with a terrorist attack.

Those who have made motion pictures or know something about how they are made can appreciate the skill on display in Red Eye. Cinema is about movement and as challenging as it is to coordinate an action sequence, a filmmaker’s skill is rarely tested the way that it is in a long dialogue scene. The bulk of Red Eye consists of two people sitting and talking on an airplane. What’s more, their conversation must be tense and that tension has to escalate over the course of the movie. Red Eye succeeds and the film is extraordinarily well put together.

Red Eye is in many respects the PG-13 version of Scream. It does not have the gore of the horror series but it does come down to an equivalent situation: a young woman is terrorized by a villain and she must draw on all of her wit and courage to survive. Like Scream, the success of Red Eye is due to the combination of good casting, a smart and witty script, and Wes Craven’s filmmaking skills. The link between Red Eye and Scream is most apparent in the ending and the finale has a lot of similar set pieces.

Red Eye showcases one of the underappreciated aspects of Wes Craven’s films and the horror genre as a whole: the regard for women. As it is, women are grossly underrepresented in Hollywood movies, comprising only about twelve percent of lead roles and only about thirty percent of speaking roles. Horror is one of the only film genres that consistently features female protagonists and puts women in situations in which they act with volition. Throughout his career, Craven consistently helmed movies with women in the lead such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, and Music of the Heart and he always portrayed these female characters with respect and intelligence.


Final Thought
Although his output veered wildly between classics and forgettable junk, there is no denying that Wes Craven was one of the most important filmmakers in the history of American movies. Most filmmakers are lucky if they create one indelible movie. Craven literally changed the landscape of American horror cinema not once, not twice, but three times and he created characters and images that have resonated around the world and continue to terrify audiences.

In October 2014 Wes Craven participated in a wide ranging interview with fellow horror director Mick Garris.

Travel Horror

Today’s episode of Sounds of Cinema continued the month-long Halloween theme with a look at travel horror. These are movies about road trips and vacations gone horribly wrong. What follows are some of the movies discussed on today’s show as well as some other titles.

An American Werewolf in London
Two backpackers traveling the British countryside are attacked by a wolf. One of them is killed and the other is cursed with lycanthropy. This film was renowned for its groundbreaking visual effects.


Cabin Fever
Eli Roth’s first feature was a mix of gory horror and black comedy in which vacationers in a secluded cabin contract a flesh eating virus. The movie works on its own terms and it contains a glut of nods to classic horror films like Night of the Living Dead and Evil Dead. A remake of Cabin Fever is anticipated for release in 2016.


Cannibal Ferox
Throughout the 1970s and 80s Italian filmmakers churned out a lot of films in which white adventurers are killed and eaten by cannibalistic natives. One of the nastier entries in this trend was Umberto Lenzi’s Cannibal Ferox (a.k.a. Let Them Die Slowly). In this film anthropologists in the jungles of Columbia are caught between drug dealers and an anthropophagous tribe.


Deliverance
In the annals of travel horror, one of the most essential titles is John Boorman’s Deliverance. In this movie a group of white suburbanites on a canoe trip run afoul of murderous hillbillies. Deliverance is the film that made Burt Reynolds a star.


The Descent
The Descent is frequently cited as one of the best horror films of the 2000s. In this film a group of women on a spelunking expedition are trapped in a cave among subterranean creatures. The Descent has two different endings: one that was seen in U.S. theaters and another that was seen elsewhere.


Duel
Before Steven Spielberg became a Hollywood director he spent some years working in television. In that capacity he directed Duel in which Dennis Weaver plays a businessman driving across the desert in a compact car and is stalked by a truck driver. The film played on ABC in November 1971 and was later shown theatrically in Europe. In many respects Duel was a dress rehearsal for Spielberg’s Jaws.


The Edge
Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins play two wealthy New Yorkers who are stranded in the Alaskan wilderness after a plane crash. They struggle to survive the elements while being stalked by a bear.


Frozen
No, not the Disney cartoon. This 2010 film told a story of three young people who are stranded on a ski lift high above the tree line and must find a way down before freezing to death.  


Hostel: Part II
The original Hostel was about a group of hedonistic American backpackers abducted by an organization that allows rich people to live out murder fantasies. The sequel expanded and improved the original idea, focusing on female students studying abroad, and Hostel: Part II had some provocative things to say about violence against women.


House of 1000 Corpses
Rob Zombie’s first directorial feature tells the story of young people who come upon a sadistic family while on a road trip through the backwoods of Texas. House of 1000 Corpses was financed by Universal and shot on the backlot but when the studio executives saw what Zombie had made they refused to release the movie and it sat on the shelf for years before being released by Lionsgate in 2003. Ironically, the Universal Hollywood theme park incorporated elements of House of 1000 Corpses in its Halloween Horror Nights attraction in 2010.


Open Water
Inspired by true events, this film focused on the plight of a married couple stranded in the ocean when their tour boat accidentally leaves them behind. Open Water was filmed on a very low budget and was created by hiring two scuba certified actors and putting them in the water amid real sharks.


Red Eye
Red Eye concerns a young woman on a cross-country flight who is held captive by a mysterious passenger seated next to her. The movie plays very effectively on the fears of flying and then compounds it with a tense abduction story.


Snakes on a Plane
Throughout the 2000s there were deliberate attempts to engineer cult movies. Of course these things cannot be engineered as was discovered by the makers of 2006’s Snakes on a Plane. Before its release the movie was an internet phenomenon but it wasn’t as much shlocky fun as it was promised to be and the film was a box office disappointment. Nevertheless Snakes on a Plane is an interesting artifact from the past decade.


Who Can Kill a Child?
In this 1976 film a couple travels to a European island and find that the adults have been killed by the children. The movie was remade in 2012 as Come Out and Play.

Film Screening: The U.S. vs. John Lennon

The U.S. vs. John Lennon will be shown on Thursday, October 22nd at 7pm in the Stark Hall Auditorium on the Winona State University campus.



The U.S. vs. John Lennon is a documentary film about Lennon’s art and activism. The film recounts Lennon’s post-Beatles career and the way he used his star power to draw attention to political issues. As a result, Lennon was identified as an enemy of the Nixon administration and was targeted for deportation.

The movie utilizes Lennon’s music and archival footage as well as information from declassified FBI files and commentary from figures such as Yoko Ono, Ron Kovic, Walter Cronkite, Angela Davis, G. Gordon Liddy, and Gore Vidal.

Admission is free and open to the public.

The U.S. vs. John Lennon runs 99 minutes and is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America.

This event is sponsored by the Winona State University Art Department, English Department, Mass Communication Department, Sociology Department, the Darrell W. Krueger Library, and Sounds of Cinema.

More information about the screening can be found here.

Join the Facebook event page here. 

The Humor of Horror

Today’s episode of Sounds of Cinema kicked off the month-long Halloween theme with a look at movies that combine humor and horror. Here is a recap of some of the films discussed this hour as well as some additional titles.

The Addams Family
1991’s The Addams Family was a very good example of successfully adapting a television series into a feature film. The Addams Family was very well cast, including Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, and Christina Ricci. A sequel, Addams Family Values, followed in 1993.


Beetlejuice
Beetlejuice was one of Tim Burton’s early films and it remains one of his best. The movie has an effective mix of scares and jokes and a memorable performance by Michael Keeton in the title role. Beetlejuice was so popular that it spawned a cartoon television series and a line of toys. However, parents should be aware that Beetlejuice is scarier and has a dirtier sense of humor than its PG rating indicates.


The ‘Burbs
The Burb’s was a satire of suburban paranoia in which the homeowners in a sleepy subdivision become convinced that their new neighbors are cannibals.


Evil Dead II
One of the great horror sequels is 1987’s Evil Dead II. The film is basically a remake of the original film but with much better production values and a more pronounced sense of humor. Director Sam Raimi was highly influenced by The Three Stooges and this movie is as funny as it is scary.


Fright Night
Fright Night concerns a teenager who suspects that his neighbor is a vampire. When no one believes him, the teen seeks the help of a local television personality. Fright Night was remade in 2011 and as remakes go it wasn’t bad.


The Frighteners
Before Peter Jackson made The Lord of the Rings he was primarily known for making schlocky horror titles like Bad Taste and Dead Alive. Just preceding his Middle Earth epic, Jackson made The Frighteners, a ghost story with a helping of comedy.


Ghostbusters
Perhaps the ultimate title in the horror-comedy niche is 1984’s Ghostbusters. The film tells the story of scientists who go into business as paranormal exterminators and it is one of the greatest comedies of all time. A sequel followed in 1989 and a reboot is scheduled for 2016.


Little Shop of Horrors
Little Shop of Horrors was originally a low budget Roger Corman picture released in 1960. The film was later turned into a successful stage musical which was then made into a feature film released in 1986. The ending of the theatrical version of the musical was altered to leave the film on a more upbeat conclusion but the blu-ray release includes both the original and theatrical versions of the film.  


Re-Animator
Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator was adapted from the novella by H.P. Lovecraft. The story is a contemporary reworking of Frankenstein and the film has an absurd sense of humor amid a lot of very icky body horror.


The Return of the Living Dead
The horror comedy had its heyday in the mid-to-late 1980s as filmmakers working in the horror genre saw the comic possibilities and made movies that were good campy fun. One of the major titles at the beginning of that trend was 1985’s The Return of the Living Dead. The film has a lot of broad humor as well as plenty of subtle in-jokes while also telling a sufficiently scary zombie outbreak story. This title is also the origin of zombies eating brains.


The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Rocky Horror Picture Show paid tribute to many of the classic sci-fi and horror films of the 1940s and 50s in the midst of a bizarre musical. Although it was not successful in its initial release The Rocky Horror Picture Show has become the ultimate cult film.


Shaun of the Dead
The first film in Edgar Wright’s Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy (followed by Hot Fuzz and The World’s End) set the template for the director’s later work as it lampooned the zombie genre while also working as an example of the same. This is also the film that introduced Simon Pegg and Nick Frost to mainstream audiences.


The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
The sequel to Tobe Hooper’s slasher movie masterpiece came twelve years after the original film. By that point the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was regarded as a classic and so when Hooper made the sequel many critics and fans hated it because it was so different. Like Evil Dead II, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is a comic send up of the first movie and it has a brilliant Grand Guignol quality.


The Witches of Eastwick
Based on John Updike’s novel in which the devil moves to a small Rhode Island town and takes up with three women. Jack Nicholson plays the devil, who goes by the name Daryl Van Horne, and it’s among Nicholson’s most over-the-top performances.


Young Frankenstein
Mel Brooks’ 1974 feature Young Frankenstein parodied the classic Universal monster movies of the 1930s and 40s and Brooks considers it to be his best work as a writer and director. The film has since been adapted into a Broadway show.