New Republic film critic Stanley Kauffmann, back in 1977:
… This is Lucas’ tribute to Flash Gordon, and is now enthralling all those who feel that Flash Gordon needs a two-hour, eight-million-dollar tribute. There’s a glitzy attempt at profundity in the opening title which tells us that the story took place on a galaxy far away “a long time ago.” It really takes place in the science-fiction future, a place which is as fixed and fictitious for bad sci-fi writers as the Old West is for bad Western writers. Lucas’ script has Good Guys, Bad Guys, a princess, intergalactic imperialist war, staunch defenders of human and humanoid rights, secrets that will not be surrendered to the warlords—a whole spectrum of simplified earthly problems projected onto cardboard and illuminated with interminable ray-gun flashes and lastminute huge explosions…
But I saw at last—after about, say, 20 minutes—that Star Wars wasn’t meant to be ingenious in any way; it was meant to be exactly what it is. From Lucas’s view it certainly has not failed. I kept looking for an “edge,” to peer around the corny, solemn comic-book strophes; he was facing them frontally and full. This picture was made for those (particularly males) who carry a portable shrine within them of their adolescence, a chalice of a Self that was Better Then, before the world’s affairs or—in any complex way—sex intruded. Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and their peers guard the portals of American innocence, and Star Wars is an unabashed, jaw-clenched tribute to the chastity still sacred beneath the middle-aged spread…
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…. Annnd today, to take advantage of a NEW HOPE!!!!
oh my god pic.twitter.com/rhoqwCQwzi
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) December 18, 2015
this is the lead story on breitbart dot com pic.twitter.com/gYHwdLXCDX
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) December 18, 2015
Open Thread: Well, Kauffmann Was Right About <em>Some</em> of Them…Post + Comments (129)