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Madison Avenue rolls out the red carpet for the re-release of the Star Wars trilogy by Chris Lee
There's nothing more that I can tell you about Star Wars. Nothing really new, anyway.
By the time this issue is published, you'll have already seen it. You'll have bought the new toys, stuck the "Feel the Force" game pieces on your forehead, seen The Empire Strikes Back, and will be waiting for Return of the Jedi. And then there's the all-new prequels, coming in 1999, 2001, and 2003.
Besides, Newsweek probably already got to you anyway, with the skinny on the $15 million worth of technical improvements. Or Details, where the details got as down and dirty as listing the mint condition dollar values of the original action figures (the Jawa with the vinyl cape now fetches a stunning $1,400!). Even The New Yorker found enough literary nonfiction to fill 14 supposedly highbrow pages with news of this supposedly lowbrow entertainment. And if you didn't read all about it in one of these sources, then you've surely seen the commercials.
Ah, yes, the commercials. I started noticing them in mid-January. I remembered thinking that Star Wars hype seemed confined to the realm of journalism-there were so many articles about the "Special Edition" re-release of the trilogy, but few ads for the actual movie. But like the Death Star making its sudden appearance on the horizon of a galaxy far, far away, the commercials materialized and they did it in a big way.
The first one sneaked up on me. A television monitor, about an eighth of the size of my TV screen, was centered and surrounded by darkness. On the monitor within my monitor, Princess Leia's trademark hair-pastries and an Imperial fighter flashed by. A narrator spoke of a generation deprived of seeing Star Wars on the big screen . . . until now! The monitor disappeared and the image I'd been straining to see went full-screen. Wow! And even though it was TV, it gave me the desired sensation: that bigger is better, that this is the cultural experience of the year, that-wait a minute, who were those people?! Shots of ecstatic, cheering audience members jumping out of their seats and screaming with arms flailing flashed before my eyes! It made me sick!
Let me explain. A friend once gave me a word of advice regarding Hollywood marketing. "Never trust a movie that uses audience reaction shots in its advertising," she said. You know what she was talking about: the tennis match of images from the film juxtaposed with shot-on-video moviegoers exclaiming, "I loved it!", "The perfect date movie!", "It's awesome!", or "Phat!" Oftentimes, a film is so bad or universally panned by critics that studios have to rely on morons who actually liked it to help turn a bomb into a success.
I found myself worried about Star Wars. True, I'd seen the entire trilogy many times. In fact, I've got all three on tape. But what if Star Wars didn't measure up anymore? What if Star Wars was just another '70s or '80s childhood novelty that-seen through adult eyes-was suddenly embarrassing, like parachute pants or reruns of "Who's the Boss?" Discarding Tony Danza I could handle, but what if I'd outgrown Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewie? What if the story that captivated my 6-year-old imagination in 1977 was a disappointment 20 years later? What if the new footage failed to impress? So many questions-and so many more commercials!
Some were for Pepsi products, some were for the movie itself, and they were often indistinguishable. A fast food restaurant (was it Taco Bell or Burger King, I lost the message somewhere) had a sweepstakes where you put a game piece on your forehead or another greasy expanse of skin to see if you'd won anything. The ads featured Chewbacca, C3PO, and R2D2 acting like present-day superstars and posers, strutting down a red carpet as fans and paparazzi lined the sidelines.
On Thursday, Jan. 30, the commercials and the hype were unavoidable. Whether it was nostalgia, good marketing, or a cultural phenom, people really believed it was important to see Star Wars in the theater-especially if they didn't get to in 1977.
"I did get to see the third one in the theatre, and I have a slight memory of the second one," says 20-year-old civil engineering and journalism major Jacqueline Couillard. Born in 1976, Couillard missed Star Wars mania the first time around. But Couillard and her friends were definitely going opening weekend this time, citing "the fact that they've upgraded the shots, and it's always neat to see something on the big screen." I made a mental note to avoid all multiplexes showing Star Wars; it was going to be a mob scene, like being in the Mos Eisley bar at happy hour.
Richard Nelson, a 25-year-old graduate student, did go, however. "I was happy to see the long-awaited dinosaur scenes, and the new Jabba the Hut scene was good," he said. Were people jumping up and down, cheering and screaming? "No," he said. "But this is Minnesota, remember."
But what is the true measurement of happiness and satisfaction in a movie? According to studio execs, it's money. The lead story in Monday's Hollywood Reporter, after the opening weekend, screamed: "Star Wars blasts $36 million!" All that advertising, hype, and nostalgic marketing led to the biggest January movie opening in history, the ninth biggest three-day film opener ever, and, as the Reporter mentioned, "exceeded even the most optimistic predictions," further ensuring more toys, prequels, fast food tie-ins, products, and articles like this one. And let's not forget-redder, plusher carpet for droids and wookies.
