Here, have an R2-D2 bird

We've been posting here a bit less frequently while we handle start-of-the-semester business, but  with the understandably rising national stress levels, we wanted to send out the week with something positive.

So, please enjoy this bird that sounds like R2-D2. Happy Friday!

The first Star Wars trailer is missing a whole lot

For Throwback Thursday (do we have to use the hashtag if it's on a blog?), here's a neat piece of film history. In December 1976, the first trailer for Star Wars was released, about half a year before the movie. Episode Nothing supplied some context in a recent blog post explaining why it looks so rough.

Star Wars was still a work-in-progress at this point in its production. Apart from a few quick space shots, most of the trailer avoids scenes with special effects; the only lightsabers that appear in screen weren't colo red in yet, for instance. And perhaps most glaringly in hindsight, the trailer doesn't have the iconic John Williams score. Without that adventurous music, the movie seems almost dour.

It's a fun glimpse at how a studio decided to promote a movie they didn't realize would be a juggernaut. The whole thing is a dark mishmash that reportedly cost about $4000. We guarantee that if 20th Century Fox knew what would follow, they wouldn't throw together something like this.

New Acquisitions - June 2016

There has been an acquisition.

Have you felt it?

(We have other things this month, too, like Out 1, a twelve-hour odyssey by recently deceased French New Wave director Jacques Rivette. Follow the link to see what else we added.)

How copyright law makes Star Wars homage, not theft

The fever over Star Wars: The Force Awakens has faded now (we haven't posted about it in over a month!), but there's still plenty to dissect about it. One of the greatest criticisms of the movie was its tendency to retread themes, imagery, and structure from the original film – ignoring that the first movies explicitly, famously stole from classic action serials and samurai movies.

Rather than turn this into a creativity blame game, the Re:Create Coalition, an intellectual copyright law advocacy group, used this as an opportunity to explain the limits of copyright and the difference between infringement and expression. For one specific example, author Jonathan Band cites the early Tatooine scenes from A New Hope by comparing them to sequences and imagery from John Ford's classic Western The Searchers. This isn't theft since it's building on the ideas of an existing work and expressing it in a new way.

That's a tricky distinction in copyright law for any filmmaker, and Star Wars is a great example of how that can be navigated creatively. Band's article is mostly a list of examples connecting Star Wars to previous films, but they make a strong point: ideas are meant to be adapted, not restricted.

The definitive Star Wars remaster came from fans, is super illegal

George Lucas's remastering the original Star Wars trilogy has gone down as perhaps the most controversial decision in film history. Even without discussing the merits of the changes made (many of which stand out like a sore thumb or detract from the original meaning), Lucas's permanent alterations to the films' negatives effectively erased the original versions of some of the most successful films in history. It'll be difficult to get that back... legally.

Film restoration hobbyist Petr Harmy has assembled a "Despecialized" version of the film, using elements taken from Blu-rays, DVDs, television broadcasts, production stills, original film copies, and other fan remasters to create a high-definition version of the film as it was projected in 1977. Often these changes make the film look objectively worse – Lucas at one point smeared Vaseline on the lens to disguise part of a shot – but it accurately represents the original release of Star Wars.

Of course, that edition brazenly violates copyright law and is illegal to obtain. This puts cultural history and the law at a crossroads. Matthew Yglesias at Vox does a good job explaining the ramifications of this, even if his explanation veers into political bluster a bit. As the video above also explains, the Library of Congress never received an archival copy of the original film, so it's up to renegade fans/heroes/criminals like Harmy to get as close as possible.

Alternative programming: Before he was Finn, John Boyega saved London

Much of the early coverage of Star Wars: The Force Awakens has focused on the likely career booms of Daisy Ridley and John Boyega, two actors thrown into the global spotlight by their starring roles. While we have almost nothing to go by for Ridley (a music video and some commercials, basically), we had a chance to see Boyega once before in Attack the Block, a cult British sci-fi film that should be required viewing before Friday. (HU DVD 11432)

Set during Guy Fawkes Day, Attack the Block tells the story of a street gang that fights back against aliens invading London. It's a riotously fun movie that should appeal to fans of movies in the Edgar Wright vein (director Joe Cornish has worked with Wright and appeared in Hot Fuzz). Much of the film's critical praise was reserved for Boyega, who played gang leader Moses; at the time, he was a total unknown who had never acted in a film.

Boyega will never, ever have that problem again. Why not watch him in the role that essentially earned him his headline spot in Star Wars? Maybe we're just jealous that his first ever movie was such a massive success

Star Wars was probably not "brutalizing children" in 1983

With its Disney-fication complete, the Star Wars series has become embraced (or begrudgingly accepted) as a family-friendly sci-fi adventure series. That wasn't always the case. Not that the series was ever adult or hyper-violent – it was meant for kids! – but at least a few cultural critics still objected.

Specifically, watch this bizarre, recently popular clip from a 1983 episode of Nightline where film critic John Simon, noted for his acerbic reviews, decries the Star Wars as empty special effects showcases for "stupid children" that stunt growth and encourage violence. His critique is shockingly rude, calling the stars "lousy" and the script "ghastly" while simultaneously insulting Walt Disney's entire body of work.

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert then provide a terrific counterpoint: "I feel badly," Siskel says, "that [...] John Simon didn't have a good time at these pictures. That's too bad for him." Ebert follows up, agreeing that "it made me laugh. It made me thrilled. And that's what a movie like this is for."

There's no retort to that. Sorry, Simon.

That snottiness aside, the conversation is relatively interesting, especially Siskel's discussion of whether we should reward films "for aiming low and hitting that mark." It's great to see two of the most renowned popular critics defending the gold standard of Hollywood blockbusters.

The Star Wars saga, as seen for the first time by kids

The Star Wars series has understandably become a major cultural touchstone for several generations. For parents of a certain nerdy persuasion, introducing a child to R2-D2 and the Jedis for the first time can be a make-or-break moment. What order do you show the films in? Does the "I am your father" twist matter? What do you do about the prequels? And what if they're disappointed?

HitFix film critic Drew McWeeny put a great deal of thought into this as part of Film Nerd 2.0, a column about introducing his two sons to the world of film. McWeeny is a dyed-in-the-wool Star Wars veteran, and to celebrate the series's release on Blu-ray, he documented his childrens' reaction to the series, starting with the fourth film, A New Hope. McWeeny was one of the first critics to advocate for a staggered viewing order – cutting to the prequels after The Empire Strikes Back – and his methodology paid off here.

Apart from the fun of reading about kids screaming and making a ruckus after meeting classic characters like Chewbacca (here called "the monster" by the younger child), McWeeny offers some insight into the series's thematic heft for young viewers. Watching Anakin Skywalker turn to the Dark Side helped teach his sons about morality as defined by your actions. Credit where it's due to the prequels!

You can read all six chapters in the series via the links below, including McWeeny coming to terms with his kids loving The Phantom Menace.

• IV – A New Hope
• V – The Empire Strikes Back
• I – The Phantom Menace
• II – Attack of the Clones
• III – Revenge of the Sith
• VI – Return of the Jedi

Yep, it's Star Wars Week

As almost every human being on the continent is aware, Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits theaters this Friday (with some early showings Thursday). We recognize cultural critical mass when we see it, so we're dedicating this week of blog posts to the juggernaut movie franchise.

We realize that Star Wars exhaustion has also reached new heights, so we'll do our best to keep it interesting and insightful. May the synergy be with you!

How big movie franchises are bypassing the critics

Last year, we mentioned the idea of a post-plot movie, where property-driven movies transcend the need for strong narrative drive. Bryan Bishop at The Verge has noticed an odder, more troubling trend: the post-critic movie.

Films have historically depended on advance screenings for critics to generate positive buzz. This is especially true for smaller or less-promoted films, which can capitalize on high marks on Rotten Tomatoes to generate pre-release attention. Now, rumors indicate that the upcoming Star Wars film will not screen for critics... because it doesn't need to. Bishop points out that major franchises like Star Wars or Marvel have seized on fans and online communities to generate hype, and for movies with stratospheric expectations like The Force Awakens, studios have no reason to put more information out early.

There's a separate but adjacent phenomenon where studios won't screen bad films to hide their quality (see this summer's Fantastic Four), but this is different. The worry isn't bad publicity: it's losing control of the publicity. If you already have loyal fans at Comic-Con and pop culture sites sharing every trailer, why let critics change the direction of the conversation?

Bishop makes a convincing argument of why this is happening and what it portends for the future of the film. The short version is that people who will see The Avengers in theaters on opening weekend don't care about the quality, so expect more direct marketing to those fans instead of indirectly through reviews. The doomsday scenario Bishop predicts in which non-fan cultural media vanishes is a long shot, but we're definitely steeping in that direction.

Watching all of Star Wars at once is a surrealist nightmare

We understand that the Star Wars movies have exciting stories, loveable characters, and terrific sound editing. Forgive us if, for the remainder of the day, we remember it as a video art provocation that almost gave us a headache.

Archer animator Marcus Rosentrater created Star Wars Wars (embedded above), a mashup of all six of the current Star Wars movies into two hours of total cinematic chaos. Iconic scenes flit in and out of view, often covered by lightsabers, bright lights, sand dunes, or subtitles. Sound effects and now-incomprehensible dialogue slam together into a Star Wars-approximating white noise. People often lazy call any psychedelic or surreal experience a drug trip, but this is legitimately close.

Enjoy before it's taken down... and grab some Motrin or Dramamine.

Today's reminder to read: Even Jedis are illiterate

Media Services primarily deals with films, so even though we're part of the American University Library, we don't often get to talk about literacy and books. But once in a while, we get an opportunity to talk about both.

Ryan Britt, an author at science fiction blog Tor.com, wrote a funny-but-deeply-concerning essay pointing out that no one in the Star Wars universe reads. Almost never do you see a single character pick up a book, read a sign, or get the news. Ancient historical artifacts come in the form of holographic videos. Everyone relies entirely on oral communication, farmers have to buy droids to do math, and the Galactic Senate makes major decisions based on non-empirical anecdotal evidence. It's exhausting and saddening to read.

Britt suggests that the entire overthrow of the Galactic Republic could have been avoided if people learned to read, picked up a newspaper, and disputed what the Emperor claimed with written facts.

None of this was probably intentional on the filmmakers' part, but it's a funny reminder to pick up a book. Please.