Reading Response 3

Robert Ebert takes a little time out of his day to discuss why Star Wars was so popular with him and the general population. In his article “Star Wars”, he talks about some of the major reasons why it was so endearing, not just because it had all these new special effects of the time. Ebert explains “like The Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane, Star Wars was a technical watershed that influenced many of the movies that came after.” Ebert explains many other movies have tried to mimic the big budget, big production type of movie Star Wars was. Some of these movies included Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Independence Day, and The Matrix.
Ebert attributes the success of Star Wars to “combined a new generation of special effects with the high energy action picture; it linked space opera and soap opera, fairy tales and legend and packaged them as a wild visual ride.” Some of the things that were never done before was the panning of outer space. All previous movies just used a still shot. It also was able to use the jump into hyperspace by blurring the stars to make it seem as if you were yourself making the jump as well, like you were in the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon with them.
The question was posed that how does the mixing of the old and new, familiar and futuristic help make Star Wars so effective. I believe that this was so effective that it didn’t make it so far-fetched that no one could believe it. Only in a few scenes were in there where you were bombarded with onscreen visuals that were so “alien”. Most notably of course is the Mos Eisley cantina scene. I know this is a movie trilogy that I really loved, and even as I watched it as a little kid, I felt drawn to it. Even though there were other, more advanced movies out at the time, something about it. The storyline was compelling, it had characters that were flawed, down to Earth. They weren’t the perfect people I saw in the Disney movies, the hero always got the girl. It was my first “grown-up” movie, and to this day I still watch it. It wasn’t over the top, but it combined just enough magic, just enough to stretch the imagination of the mind, and fully immerse them in a story that was complex, and later on in the series, so many great twists and turns that it sucked you in and wouldn’t let go.