Twenty-Five years ago in Genre Cinema
Feb. 11th, 2007 02:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebitterguyOkay, yeah, it's a given that '82 was super great year #1 for SF/Fantasy cinema.
Then it occurred to me: is this really the case? Was it truly a golden age? There's some people out there (and by that, I mean actually reading this) for whom that's a big stretch, and from before they were born.
Let's take a look then.
(this is mostly notes for a proposed panel at Toronto Trek this summer).
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: The high point of the Trek franchise. Nicholas Meyer provided Bill Shatner with a film he could bite his teeth into. The sub battle in the Mutara Nebula, "hey stayed at his post", Spock in the engine room, "like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target", "aren't you supposed to be dead?" Just a blast. They'd never be that enjoyable or, protestations aside, that young.
Blade Runner: The womb that would birth Neuromancer, and the grandmother of cyberpunk, Blade Runner slapped audiences in the face with a dystopian vision and launched a curse that would claim Pan Am, Bell, Coke & Atari. Time to die.
The Thing: A remake, sure, but a genre film that was more horror than SF, it preyed on feelings of isolation and claustrophobia and paranoia. And it's not even Canadian. It's got that happy go lucky ending, too.
Tron: Shiny pretty and ahead of its time. Sure, it's spawned unbearable horror, but it's fun. It also holds the missing fragment of Blade Runner's nascent cyberpunk world, a computer network with hostile artificial intelligences and sneaky hackers.
And it had the light cycles, which were probably the coolest element of the summer of '82, in a sea of cool elements.
ET: The Extra-Terrestrial: Spielberg presents his story of a boy and his alien. Mangled by the revised edition (yes, they had guns, we weren't scarred by it), nothing can ever destroy the iconic image of a boy and his alien flying across the sky. The story is fascinating from an adult's point of view as much as a child's. ET is a stranded scientist seeking his way home, trying to communicate with the only people on the planet he can trust, a group of children.
Conan the Barbarian: Confession from TBG. I haven't seen it. But, hey, Arnold. What is Good in Life?
The Dark Crystal: Jim Henson reveals to everyone who just knew Sesame Street and The Muppet Show what was deep down in his brain. And it freaked the shit out of them.
And those are just the ones people like.
Megaforce. Cat People (the remake, yeah). BeastMaster, Creepshow, Swamp Thing and even Firefox.
Yah,that was a year of the good stuff. Remember THAT when you go see Ghost Rider next weekend.
Then it occurred to me: is this really the case? Was it truly a golden age? There's some people out there (and by that, I mean actually reading this) for whom that's a big stretch, and from before they were born.
Let's take a look then.
(this is mostly notes for a proposed panel at Toronto Trek this summer).
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: The high point of the Trek franchise. Nicholas Meyer provided Bill Shatner with a film he could bite his teeth into. The sub battle in the Mutara Nebula, "hey stayed at his post", Spock in the engine room, "like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target", "aren't you supposed to be dead?" Just a blast. They'd never be that enjoyable or, protestations aside, that young.
Blade Runner: The womb that would birth Neuromancer, and the grandmother of cyberpunk, Blade Runner slapped audiences in the face with a dystopian vision and launched a curse that would claim Pan Am, Bell, Coke & Atari. Time to die.
The Thing: A remake, sure, but a genre film that was more horror than SF, it preyed on feelings of isolation and claustrophobia and paranoia. And it's not even Canadian. It's got that happy go lucky ending, too.
Tron: Shiny pretty and ahead of its time. Sure, it's spawned unbearable horror, but it's fun. It also holds the missing fragment of Blade Runner's nascent cyberpunk world, a computer network with hostile artificial intelligences and sneaky hackers.
And it had the light cycles, which were probably the coolest element of the summer of '82, in a sea of cool elements.
ET: The Extra-Terrestrial: Spielberg presents his story of a boy and his alien. Mangled by the revised edition (yes, they had guns, we weren't scarred by it), nothing can ever destroy the iconic image of a boy and his alien flying across the sky. The story is fascinating from an adult's point of view as much as a child's. ET is a stranded scientist seeking his way home, trying to communicate with the only people on the planet he can trust, a group of children.
Conan the Barbarian: Confession from TBG. I haven't seen it. But, hey, Arnold. What is Good in Life?
The Dark Crystal: Jim Henson reveals to everyone who just knew Sesame Street and The Muppet Show what was deep down in his brain. And it freaked the shit out of them.
And those are just the ones people like.
Megaforce. Cat People (the remake, yeah). BeastMaster, Creepshow, Swamp Thing and even Firefox.
Yah,that was a year of the good stuff. Remember THAT when you go see Ghost Rider next weekend.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 07:07 am (UTC)I've seen the vast majority of that list, and love most of it dearly. Even with the unspeakable horror.
Watch Conan. you might just be surprised. If nothing else, the film changed the way that soundtrack was used to communicate in film.
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Date: 2007-02-11 07:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 07:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 08:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 09:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 01:37 pm (UTC)I was 10 years old in 82, the exact same age as Elliott. And while all those movies were great (i highly recommend you rent Conan) I think 1981 is a superior year for two reasons:
Raiders of the Lost Ark and Empire Strikes Back.
Kids did not see Blade Runner in the theaters, that took awhile to become more than a box-office flop with lousy reviews. It took video rentals for blade runner to hit. Tron was also something of a flop, and besides wasn't it 1983, same year as Jedi? ET and Wrath of Khan are really the two biggies from that year, but Raiders and Empire OWNED. I saw both Raiders and Empire like five times in the theater each, when movies cost $2.50 and the subway was a quarter and you could get to the movie, popcorn and a drink, and back, on a fiver. With a quarter left over to play missile command.
Such, such were the joys of an urban Toronto childhood. :) My parents letting me skate off to the theater with my slightly older next door neighbor best friend. Sitting in the dark watching Harrison Ford rakishly kick ass.
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Date: 2007-02-11 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 03:01 pm (UTC)THIS Tron Guy.
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Date: 2007-02-11 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 03:06 pm (UTC)Uh, no. Gibson walked out of the theatre rather than have what he was working on -at the time- influenced by the film. It's an example of convergent creativity, like the time Charles Sheffield and Arthur C. Clark produced books with so many points of similarity that Clarke felt he needed to write an intro to the Sheffield explaining that it was just a coincidence.
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Date: 2007-02-11 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 04:00 pm (UTC)I'm sure I'll like Conan, it just seems like one of those things that I've been going to get around to forever (in this case, 25 years).
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Date: 2007-02-11 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 04:14 pm (UTC)And, yes, I will see Conan someday.
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Date: 2007-02-11 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 04:19 pm (UTC)They've made the movie! They should get over it and try to accept it and move on.
What's the release date for the mega ultimate BR?
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Date: 2007-02-11 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 04:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 08:08 pm (UTC)1982 was a good year.. I think I just don't like those movies so much so tend to think other years were better. I cant stand ET for example, and I liked the first Star Trek movie better than the second. :)
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Date: 2007-02-11 09:03 pm (UTC)Conan the Barbarian actually impresses me more now than it did then -- though the sequel takes a drastic nose-dive in quality.
Tron was fun and flashy eye-candy -- and frankly, I liked Cat People, Bowie over the end credits and all.
Even the B-movies from that year deserve their cult-film status.
It really does boggle me that all those films came out in one year.
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Date: 2007-02-11 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 10:27 pm (UTC)Hey, Conan the Barbarian is a decent movie. Conan The Destroyer should've been destroyed.
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Date: 2007-02-11 10:28 pm (UTC)...and I liked the first Star Trek movie better than the second. :)
I respected you up until that point. ;)
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Date: 2007-02-11 10:31 pm (UTC)That's just as rational a reaction as totally buying into the hype.
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Date: 2007-02-11 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 11:13 pm (UTC)(I was just busting your chops, mang.)
Well, good to know we're on the same page, then. :)
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Date: 2007-02-12 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-12 01:52 am (UTC)Empire was awesome, as was Raiders (especially compared to the disappointing sequels). A summer with them would have been good, yes.
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Date: 2007-02-12 01:54 am (UTC)It was a good year for genre cinema, though.
And I'd wager that pretty much every movie is better than Stealth.
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Date: 2007-02-12 01:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-12 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-12 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-12 05:56 am (UTC)My Gubernator, he is.