Chapter 18 Summary

Two main reasons for the return to success for the film industry:

1.     The rise of blockbuster film in 1970s and 1980s

2.     The appearance of the home video market which completely changed the economics of the industry

The economic turnaround in the American film industry

·      First during the 1970s the number of movies that Hollywood released began to fall and the amount of money that had to be spent on each movie increased; for example prior to the 1980s the average negative cost of a movie was $1.97 by 1981 it was $11.34

·      The trend was to spend more on each individual film and this trend even continues up until now

·      A major changed also occurred during the 1970s.Hollywood began to release fewer films but to more theatres on opening day which came to be known as “Saturation release.  “Prior to then,like Hollywood released movies  to smaller numbers of theatres and then gradually increased the number

·      The “Godfather” was one of the first successful blockbuster films which was released to 350 theatres

·      Since Hollywood was making fewer films that cost more, they had to do something in order to prevent the risk of huge failure.  So studios began the joint of financing of big blockbuster films.  This way several companies shared the risk in case the film flopped

·      Another way for studios to make more money was to pre-sell additional TV and video rights and to ask exhibitors to guarantee money that wasn’t refundable and to produce tie-ins like books, toys, records

·      The  1970s also aw the rise of talent agencies as key players in the movie business

·      Under the new system, agents representing the biggest movie stars would order scripts, put together production packages and then have a studio finance and distribute the film

·      Talent was hired only for the time it was needed

·      The type of movies that were being made also changed

·      In 1977 the largest demographic of movie audiences was between 12-24

·      Western movies went into a permanent decline while horror and science fiction films grew

·      Home video players and recorders became available and by 1980s almost everyone had one and because of this movies started to have a second life

·      During the 1980s the income that was earned from home video sales and rentals grew from 7 to 38.6 percent

·      Even today box office sales help the industry to indicate how well a film may do in ancillary markets such as home videos, cable...

·      Low budge B movies continue today in the form of straight-to-video market

·      The fact that all these big industries were putting millions dollars of money into a movie helped smaller industries begin to fill the gap and the rise of these “indy” films became a permanent feature of the film landscape in America and allowed a great variety of films to be made

Star wars (1977) and the rebirth of militarism

·      First of all what militarism means is the idea of a political orientation of a people or a government to maintain a strong military force and to be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interest This means that society should follow concepts that can be found in culture, system and people of military.  The most important aspect in militarism is discipline which means to follow a set of rules.

·      Star war is the quintessential example of a blockbuster. In addition to its financial success, this film was also an important text in cultural and political transformation of American society in 1970s because it represented a return of hero figure to film story

·      This wasn’t the first film with heroes in it; instead it was the most successful one just like any other films the hero of the film was also a good-looking military hero, Luke Skywalker

·      In the time when this movie was made, the image of military was changed to the

·      So all the military recruiters had to work really hard to make the military an appealing career choice for young people and so many expensive advertising campaigns were run for many years

·      The appearance  of military heroes in films such as top gun also helped too and their popularity was because of the positively overwhelming of the can-do attitude

·      In order to repair the image of military, many various branches of U.S military made their resources available to filmmakers, and in order for military to have access to scripts they had to let filmmakers to borrow equipments such as ships, planes and by doing so they did saves many dollars

·      Star wars in part is a reflection of the way in which American culture addressed the defeat in Vietnam.  This film is a deeply conflicting film that has both liberal and traditional attitudes set in it.  In part of its success is because of its ability to settle opposite views and clearly depict good vs evil

·      The film tried to restore older genres by blending a number of them together

·      The film also tried to put up with some similarities to WWII combat films which involved multi-ethnic bomber crews who worked together to accomplish a mission so instead of having actual people it used unfamiliar beings and robots but the whole structure was the same

·      Elements of western genre could have been found throughout the film

·      The film also included the simple structures of B science fiction serials of 1930s and 1940s

·      It’s the simplicity of the film that is conforming what it does is it constructs it’s adult audiences as children reminding them of simpler times when the world was easier to understand

·      It also shows a simple view of the world where good and evils were really easy to recognize and it’s star’s war most obvious cultural gift as it was mentioned before it also offers traditional male heroes

·      This film helped to popularize the idea of “sanitized high-tech war” which has become one of more dangerous aspects of US military

·      In star wars the results of combat was never really seen

·      Keller suggests that the empire in the film is represented as totalitarian and characteristics of society similar in appearance to Nazi Germany.  The generals of the empire in the movie do also wear uniforms similar to those of Soviet Union during WWII making this some kind of Hollywood image of Evil

·      Peter did saw similarities between the film and Vietnam War and he believes this one done consciously by the director.

·      The overall story of the film talks about a war between the old republic (a government with no king and queen) and the imperial successor to this political order

·      Like the empire in star wars films, American empire crudely tries to hold back the tiniest uprising against its control.  So it shows how U.S.A government is caring too much about its military, weapons, and how this new American empire has a military presence it has major military bases nearly in 40 countries all around the world.  It shows how a country that has the nerve to questions US policy and that doesn’t have the means to defend itself will be attacked.  The director of the film included all of these similarities which is a pro-American film.  This could explain why this film is very popular even in places where American empire is not well considered.