According to Filmtracks.com, movie music before these films, soundtracks had begun to take on ‘pop’ route and avoid orchestral music, until the score for Star Wars was written. The themes such as the title music and the imperial march are something of a cultural nature due to their popularity. For example, if anyone was to imitate the tune, we as a culture associate this with bad news or a bad person. The soundtrack has been released a total of six times, with re-mastered tracks and additional audio tracks. Even a disco version of the song was mixed and played in clubs a year after the films release. John Williams furthered his movie soundtrack career by providing soundtracks to countless movies, including Home Alone, Superman and the Harry Potter Movies.
Altogether since 1977, Star Wars merchandise alone earned around $13.5 billion (NPR News 2007) in retail sales. Dale Pollock (author of Skywalking, an unauthorised biography of George Lucas) stated that ‘It was much more than just action figures and toy sets’ ‘It was merchandise in more variety and volume that Hollywood had ever seen.’ (Pollock, D, 1999). For the first time in 1977, toy stores such as Toys ‘R’ Us had shelf and isle space just for movie tie ins thanks to Star Wars merchandising. With products such as this available, it helps keep the franchise alive as more than just a film, and allows the consumer to be ‘Luke Skywalker’ or ‘Darth Vader’ and let the movie live on. The merchandising continues today, as more and more various products are made, such as video games like the Lego Star Wars series, and further toys and action figures from the prequel films made in the 2000’s. This form of mass merchandising is still happening today with other blockbuster movies, such as Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) movies and The Dark Knight (2008).
The impact that these movies have left on popular culture, are also a force to be reckoned with. Both movies are frequently parodied in other forms of media. For example, the T.V series Family Guy frequently parodies the Star Wars trilogy in various episodes. Also, the T.V show dedicated a whole 45 minute, special episode named ‘Blue Harvest’, which parodies the whole of ‘Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope’, and are currently working on finishing up the parody trilogy by repeating this with the remaining two movies.
With this in mind, we can use this example and relate it to Christian Metz’s’ (1974) theory of genre cycle changes. He argued that through a genres lifetime, it would go through 4 stages of changes, which can be down to technology (introduction of sound and colour) or contemporary issues (World War I, II, AIDS, Terrorism etc). These include the Experimental Stage, The Classic Stage, The Parody Stage and The Deconstruction stage. Metz suggested that the Experimental movies were very early on, and dynamic in which case we could use Frtiz Lang’s 1927 movie, ‘Metropolis’. Star Wars would then fit into the Classic stage, as the successful codes and conventions of early sci-fi films are taken and built on until made more formulaic. The parody stage is where the films clichés are made fun of or to re-engage with the audience, in which we can use the previous example of Family Guy, or Mel Brooks’ sci-fi comedy, Spaceballs. The Deconstruction stage is when the generic elements are placed out of context, for example, Kurt Wimmer’s Equilibrium (2002), where the mise en scene is sci-fi, yet the story is dealing with other issues, such as emotion and fascism.
A strong sense of Star Wars’ popular culture impact was discovered in the British 2001 census. An Internet campaign that spread via email encouraged the public to identify their religion as ‘Jedi’ or ‘Jedi Knight’ in the other religion section. According to the BBC, the number of people in the U.K that were faithful to the Jedi religion that year was around 390,000 strong.
Both movies also showed new technological innovations and furthered some already used.
Jaws used rare filming techniques such as the reverse dolly zoom, originally used in Alfred Hitchcock’s movies. This is when the dolly on which the camera is held moves backward on its track, whilst the camera zooms in on the face. This is used when Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) spots danger in the sea during the beach scene. Special effects were further improved with the use of animatronics. The mechanical shark, named Bruce (Times online) was actually three sharks, used for different movements. One of these was just for use in the water, improving technical areas of special effects.
Star Wars’ special effects however have changed the movie industry forever. The effects used in the movie were way ahead of its time and have set a certain standard for future film productions.
The use of foley sound is one of these. Foley sound is when sounds effects are recorded in a studio and then later placed in the film. For example, the sound of the Tie Fighter spaceships in the movie are actually noises of a bellowing Elephant and the sound of the character Jabba The Hut moving is actually the sounds of a trash can filled with wet towels.
Throughout the film, Lucas used a variety of special effects techniques, new and old combined. From the use of puppets, animatronics and stop motion animation, to the use of green screen and CGI. People were willing to pay the ticket price to simply witness in awe the effects that Lucas had brought to the screen with his special effects production company, Industrial Light and Magic. This company in itself has had a massive impact on the movie industry alone, regardless of the Star Wars movies, as it has provided special effects for countless movies and Hollywood Blockbusters. These include E.T, Star Trek Movies, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Jurassic Park and Men In Black just to name a few from Industrial Light and Magics’ impressive C.V. These movies clearly range from the origins of sci-fi that they were created to work for, and are now a more general company rather than a niche in the sci-fi genre. The movie trilogy also created the company Skywalker Sound, that have also progressed to work on such movies as Speed (1994), Forrest Gump (1994), Titanic (1997), Fight Club (1999) and even video games, such as Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008) and the Mercenaries (2005) games series. Therefore without Star Wars, these effects companies wouldn’t have helped create films through time.
Although with this in mind, many re releases of the original Star Wars trilogy have been issued with improved Special effects, CGI and sound. These are included years later in the special edition video and DVD versions. George Lucas stated that ‘There were various things I wasn’t happy with, special effects, scenes that hadn’t been included due to money and time.’ (Star Wars Special Edition Video Interview). Many hardcore Star Wars fans and purists argue that the films shouldn’t have been tampered with and left alone, however if they had not been restored, the original films would have deteriorated with age. Also from the same video, Rick McCallum, the producer of the special edition video stated that: ‘if they had not been restored for this particular edition, they might not have been available ever again.’
With other versions of these films in mind, fans of the original Star Wars trilogy became very critical when regarding the later made prequels of the movies, especially episode I, The Phantom Menace (1999). A re edited version of the movie was created entitled, ‘Episode 1.1: The Phantom Edit’, that was allegedly better than Lucas’ version. The revised version contained the more ‘promising’ footage from the movie. Tapes of the movie were quickly circulated through the underground scene of die-hard Star Wars fanatics.
However, although with special effects making the visuals impressive, we could say that this could diminish the plots and storylines to these films.
We could apply this with Vladimir Propp (1928) theory on narrative structures. He studied the narrative structures of Russian folk tales and discovered that regardless of individual differences in plot, settings, genre etc such narratives share common features, particularly character types. I shall apply his list of character types to the Star Wars movies (although may change over the course of the trilogy) in the table below.
So although the film may drift from this slightly, the basic concept and structure is there, and still exists today. It can be applied to many films. This therefore showing that the characterisation and roles of characters are not necessarily as diverse desired.
These films also gave an introduction to the popularity of ‘family movies’.
Before, movies were aimed toward more adult audiences, with adult themes. However, with movies such as Star Wars and Jaws aiming at a more varied target audience, the whole family can enjoy the movies, also relating to higher ticket sales and repeat viewings of the movies, driving profits in Hollywood even higher. The trend seems to have continued, as kids films have continued this. Some films tend to include more ‘adult’ humour hidden away. For example, in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), a line reads: ‘Is that a rabbit in your pants or are you just glad to see me?’ and in Ghostbusters (1984) in the ghostbusting montage scene where Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyed) is ‘pleasured’ subtly by a ghost.
In conclusion, I think that both Star Wars and Jaws were incredibly important to Hollywood and the movie industry. The films themselves have set certain standards that must be reached when creating a movie, changing the way we make and watch movies through time. The movies also show the prospect of how much money can be made not only through the actual screenings of films, but countless forms of merchandising also. The influence that these films hold as well as their directors will be renowned for many years to come, and will remain as timeless Hollywood gems that will never be forgotten.
