Thirty years ago today - Page 2

I guess that's just how you was raised...

Maybe it's just me...but I'll take Star Trek 2: TWOK over anything Star Wars.

Look, I burnt out on Star Wars as bad as anyone, but we need to cut this "Star Trek is better" crap right out.

Star Trek isn't better.

Star Trek II is better.

I can't remember the first time I saw Star Wars, but I remember seeing Empire at a drive in theater, of course I was still too young to really get it at the time (I was born 6-24-77). By the time I saw Jedi on VHS I was already geeked out on Star Wars, with the toys and bed sheets and all kinds of other trimmings. I was also fascinated with the special effects/sounds/music. One of my relatives had some LPs of the score and I would ALWAYS make them play it. It was like heaven to me at the time. I was also really into all the Harryhausen stuff and anything similar. My geek sensibilities sprouted early on.

When I saw Jedi on VHS I remember wondering why it was avaialble. It just seemed so odd to be able to see it so soon. Of course, now I have no idea why I would have thought that at the time, but it stuck over the years...

edited for spelling/grammar. I have a wierd sort of dyslexia when I type sometimes... Maybe I should go see a doctor. Or not.

Late response but...

I recently saw STAR TREK II at the Aero Theater's 1982 film festival and I have to say, even though I truly love the film and it's always a blast to watch with a packed house, it really hasn't aged well either. I don't blame the writing or the performances but the cinematography and production design look like bad '70s TV, which is no doubt a result of the film's lower budget.

I would agree that STAR TREK II is clearly superior to 2/3 of the STAR WARS movies though. But then, so are a lot of films.

Another late response but....
Anybody staritng up the whole fucking Star Wars vs.Star Trek feud deserves
to die a horrible death.

A lot of people are quick to attribute the blockbuster mentality to Star Wars because it is a simple answer to the question of how it arose in the first place. There is actually another cause and I believe the industry would be virtually the same today with or without Star Wars.

First Star Wars was not the first in the trend of big budget special effects heavy action pictures that carried with it a high expectation of return on investment. Star Wars come out shortly after the disaster cycle that featured such small intimate movies like The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, Airport, and Earthquake. Six months before Star Wars' release, Dino De Laurentiis released a big budget remake of King Kong. Superman The Movie was already in production two months before Star Wars had been released.

Around this time, there were other technological innovations that not only influenced what was being put on screen but changed the way in which the films were getting to its audience. Prior to the late 70s, early 80s, you either saw a movie in the theater or not at all. If and when a movie got to television it was in a severely edited form with frequent commercial interruptions. The advent of home video and premium cable service gave movies a second life. Now audiences have two options: (1.) see it in the theater or (2.) wait for the DVD. This really comes down to an evaluation of whether a movie is worth seeing in the theater.

That evaluation is based on the event-worthiness of the movie in question. Usually this comes down to the amount of spectacle happening on screen. Most people aren't going to want to drag the whole family out to the theater unless the movie is sufficiently big enough to justify the time and expense. And given the short amount of time even the most successful blockbuster spends in theaters (as compared to 20-30 years ago) a small movie with a limited audience is not worth the money to market as a theatrical release.

I dunno if you like Fincher or Cameron movies, but those guys maybe would not have had the inspiration to get their acts together and be directors.
Wasn't Fincher an ILM camera operator?
What about ILM and THX? Without the former the whole film landscape would look completely different and without the latter it would sound different.
Then we have the first nonlinear editing program "droid" that was the forefather for all AVID systems, we have the computer graphics department, later to be known as PIXAR...all developed because of STAR WARS.