Episode 30: Star Wars

Star Wars (Hvězdné války), vesmírná sága vytvořená Georgem Lucasem, která už po generace uchvacuje fanoušky sci-fi po celém světě a která díky jedinečnému použití speciálních efektů změnila celý Hollywood. George Lucas filmům zasvětil velkou část svého života, nicméně v roce 2012 se rozhodl všechna práva prodat společnosti The Walt Disney Company za 4 miliardy dolarů. Nedílnou součástí filmů je i hudba, kterou složil skladatel John Williams. Za svou kariéru už byl 54krát nominován na Oscara a krom hudby ke Star Wars složil i hudbu např. k filmům Čelisti, E.T. - Mimozemšťan, Sám doma, Jurský park, Schindlerův seznam nebo Harry Potter. 
O Darth Vaderovi, Obi-Wanu Kenobim, světelných mečích a rytířích Jedi nám tentokrát povypráví "Star Wars guru" a autor Star Wars podcastů Donald z USA.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:13

Thank you very much for tuning in to this channel and we can start fun episode. I'm assuming, and I'm hoping and I'm actually sure about it and I would like to welcome my guest for today, Donald Salsky.

Speaker 2 0:47

Hi Donald, How's everything going?

Speaker 3 0:50

Pretty good. No complaints over here.

Speaker 2 0:53

Yeah. So, as I was saying, like, I'm very much looking forward to this episode, because today we're going to be talking about a topic that everyone not everyone, but many people actually love and like, and that's the topic of Star Wars, and I'm very happy to have you here because you are a Star Wars expert and do you have that in your CV? Star Wars Maestro.

Speaker 3 1:16

Yeah, there's some serious Star Wars that happens around these parts.

Speaker 2 1:20

Yeah, well, yeah, my listeners can't see that, but I'm seeing like good, maybe like 10 stormtroopers.

Speaker 3 1:28

Oh, there's at least 20, you can't see.

Speaker 2 1:30

Okay, good Helmets and whatnot?

Speaker 3 1:32

There's a lot of nonsense in here.

Speaker 2 1:35

And so if you were to briefly sum up the story of Star Wars to someone who has never seen the movies, what would you say?

Speaker 3 1:43

Star Wars is a Greek tragedy-inspired story about the rise, fall and redemption of a person named Anakin Skywalker, who has a connection to the universe that most folks don't have the ability to interact with the very nature of the universe and manipulate it.

Speaker 2 2:07

Great Like you actually managed to sum it up briefly. That's wonderful.

Speaker 3 2:13

I've seen it a couple of times.

Speaker 2 2:16

And so Star Wars is described as a space opera. What does that mean?

Speaker 3 2:20

I believe that that term's used to describe specific types of science fiction. That has its own universe, it has its own rules and it's told in an episodic way, like you would. You know like an opera works there's acts, there's this part of the story and it creates this kind of feeling, and then there's this part of the story and then there's another feeling, and then there's this part of the story and then there's another feeling, and then there's a resolve at the end, kind of like a good song, like it's there's the chorus or there's the body of the song, there's the hook and then there's there's usually a relief at the end that makes you kind of feel resolved and that's the way star wars is written. So I think that's why they use the term opera so it has nothing to do with soap operas.

Speaker 3 3:05

No, no more. Like like the opera, like you go see a you know, like going to a theater.

Speaker 2 3:12

Yeah, that kind of thing. And so have you always liked Star Wars, even as a kid.

Speaker 3 3:18

Yeah, the first time I remember going to the movie theater was when the Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980. No, would have been Return of the Jedi in 1983. Right, right, 77, 80. Yeah, 77, 80 and 83. So it would have been when Return of the. Jedi came out, I was a three year old, four year old and it was. I remember just being blown away and I've been a fan ever since.

Speaker 2 3:41

That's really cute that also your parents took you as a three year old to see this movie and you actually enjoyed it. Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 3 3:49

So it's in my DNA.

Speaker 2 3:51

Definitely, and so Star Wars is actually one of the highest grossing franchises of all time. So why do you think it was so successful when it first premiered? And also, why is it still so successful now?

Speaker 3 4:06

I think the reason for its success was it did something that people weren't familiar with. It did things, story-wise and visually, that hadn't been done before. The special effects were created to make this movie. They didn't previously exist, and so when moviegoers went to the theater to see these things, they inspired them in a way they hadn't before. I mean before this. Like there was like buck rogers and stuff which was kind of corny you ever seen buck rogers?

Speaker 1 4:34

it's very spaghetti western?

Speaker 3 4:37

oh, do you have. Are you familiar with spaghetti westerns?

Speaker 2 4:40

I am familiar with the term. I'm'm not really sure how like it's probably not like a common knowledge. So if you want to explain it like that's great too.

Speaker 3 4:48

They're generally kind of cheesy, short, pocketbook novel, like there's not much to them, they're just a quick in and out story and they don't didn't spend a lot of money to make them. They made them on a spaghetti budget, so there's just not a lot of meat and potatoes to it. It's visually not that interesting. You know what I mean. They would just take a farm and the whole thing would happen on that farm and it would be, you know, just low budget. So Buck Rogers and those kinds of science fiction shows were very cheaply made. They weren't taken very seriously.

Speaker 3 5:27

And this movie, it looked like it was in the future. You know what I mean, not shot on a Hollywood lot, it looked like it was a real thing. One of the things that George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, him and his team invented was the idea of, instead of using a fixed camera and moving things past the camera, they built large models and they moved the camera past the models. So it created a completely different visual effect. It created the illusion that you were the thing that was moving, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 6:01

It just captured the imagination of a whole generation and yeah, I'm also like thinking maybe you know, with the story it's very like, as you said, it's very complex, very intricate, which was not like people were not actually used to that before, so you know it completely changed the hollywood landscape and way of making films. So what are the things that actually changed Hollywood?

Speaker 3 6:26

Well, like I said, the way that they filmed this is completely different. They changed the way that they interacted with environments, as far as the way they built sets, and they really did a lot of location filming, which was not a thing that they did much of that like, which just wasn't a thing that they did much of that like, which just wasn't a thing that they did for science fiction movies, then they just didn't do stuff like that. But because this movie took off the way it did, hollywood was forced to look at the idea of the money that they could make from these films, because the concept of a blockbuster hadn't happened yet. This is the first time people lined up, you know, for blocks to get into the movie theater, and they would, you know, they would wait, and then that show would happen, and then the next people in line would get to go to the next show until they were done for the night. That just didn't happen before that.

Speaker 2 7:21

Is that how the term blockbuster?

Speaker 3 7:24

Yeah.

Speaker 2 7:27

Oh wow, that's enlightening. I never knew that. That's very cool.

Speaker 3 7:29

Yeah, that's where that comes from.

Speaker 2 7:30

That's where it comes from. Yeah, and so you already mentioned the name George Lucas, obviously the creator of Star Wars. So there are nine movies, right, and the six of them.

Speaker 3 8:07

But they are actual full-blown Star Wars movies.

Speaker 2 8:11

And so George Lucas. He made six of them.

Speaker 3 8:14

Yep.

Speaker 2 8:15

He had this company called Lucasfilms and then he sold Lucasfilms to Disney in 2012. So why did he do that?

Speaker 3 8:25

I think it was because the fan base had soured him on working with the project. When he made the original three movies, the fans kind of at first they didn't like it and then they warmed up to it and then they loved it. So then he came back to make the beginning of the story, because the first three he made is actually the end of the story. So then he came back to tell the story of how Darth Vader came to be a bad guy, more or less. And then the fans hated that, the fans of the original three movies. They hated those movies.

Speaker 3 8:56

But what actually happened was a whole new generation of people loved those movies. So you have the people that are older than me, my age, and older than me love those first three movies like it's the Bible. And then there's a whole other generation that looks at those next three that George made like it's the Bible. And then there's a whole nother generation that looks at those next three that George made like his third Bible. But those two groups don't get along. They generally made George Lucas go. I don't want to play with these toys anymore because everybody's mad. It doesn't matter what I do, somebody hates it. So then Disney came along and was like we would like to dump a truck of money at your house if you'll give us these toys. So he sold them, sold them the rights to everything I want to say it was four, four billion dollars US Pretty insane amount of money.

Speaker 2 9:41

I think he's well off now, Like yeah, he's not struggling. Yeah, he's having a good life now, and so I also read that it wasn't that easy for him at the beginning, that many studios actually refused the story, refused Star Wars. Is that true?

Speaker 3 9:57

Yeah, absolutely A lot of companies didn't want to make it and a lot of companies didn't want to invest their resources into signing on to help the project either. So he made ILM and they did all the puppeteering and all that. He made ILM and they did all the puppeteering and all that. So he birthed a whole nother company in order to make his vision. Because it was hard to get some of the major studios to invest their resources to do what he wanted to do Because, like we said, it hadn't been done before. There was no real known market to do that. So they were like, well, we're not going to give you all this stuff because it's probably nobody's going to show up to watch your movie, george. And they were wrong. That might have been the biggest wrong in all of movie history. Really, I can't imagine being the guys that said no to that.

Speaker 2 10:43

You know what? Now I have to tell you, this is totally like off topic, but when I was in LA I met a guy and then he was like I was reading this thing and it was really weird, bizarre story about kids killing each other. That's a no for me. So then his company didn't look for the rights and everything and then he was like, yeah, of course it was the Hunger Games yeah, exactly, exactly and so back to Star Wars.

Speaker 2 11:07

So you explained the timeline. So so there's, I would think you know this Lucas era and then post-Lucas era. And I also read that George Lucas, you know he has mixed feelings about the movies that were made by Disney. So can you see a huge shift.

Speaker 3 11:25

I think that a lot of the perceived shift has a lot to do with the political climate in this country for the last like 20 years, 15 years or so, and I mean some of it is legitimate.

Speaker 3 11:37

You, you're talking about taking a thing that was made by somebody with a singular vision, someone who had enough artistic license that they could make their own vision, taking it to a corporation that's ran by groupthink concept, where there's 15, 20 people writing a script, not one or two, and I think that that comes across and I think that's why George doesn't like some of it. It doesn't tell a story in the way George would tell it, and sometimes the stories were too ambitious in the last three movies so they ended up getting chopped up a little bit to the point where there were some things that you were like I don't even know why they bothered to tell this part of the story, because it didn't make the story better and we took a long time to do it and George wouldn't have done that. George would have been like, well, this is garbage, but George also can't write dialogue. So you know, you take the good with the bad.

Speaker 2 12:34

And do you think that it's okay for him to be stating his opinions when he sold the project, the rights and everything?

Speaker 3 12:43

I honestly don't see why not. I'm sitting here stating my opinions and True, I didn't make anything.

Speaker 2 12:50

Yeah.

Speaker 3 12:50

So I'm just saying that you're only saying good things about Star Wars we talk about bad things on our show, but for the most part we try and stay positive because I feel like there's enough people out there on the internet that are saying terrible things, because it gets a reaction, so we don't need to do that. There's enough people shouting at the darkness and we're just here to bring a little light, you know.

The Star Wars Cultural Phenomenon

Speaker 2 13:16

Yeah, that's nice. And so who is your favorite Star Wars character and what appeals to you about them?

Speaker 3 13:24

That's a tough one and it's always evolving. But I think right now it's Ahsoka Tano. I find her backstory and her character development kind of the most interesting in all the Star Wars right now and she's kind of touched all the parts of Star Wars, like she used to be Anakin's Padawan and then she ends up essentially cleaning up a lot of his messes as time goes on. I think she's kind of the best.

Speaker 2 13:52

How great.

Speaker 3 13:53

So she's lots of fun.

Speaker 2 13:55

And so we also have to mention one more name, not just George Lucas, but also John Williams, who is the composer of the music. So how do you think that his music contributed to the emotional impact of Star Wars?

Speaker 3 14:10

Well, I mean, I think you nailed it right there. John Williams is the emotional impact of Star Wars. Anytime you're in a position where you're supposed to have a feeling, there's a John Williams score that swells up and tells you this is to pay attention to it. Maybe one of the most prolific movie composers to date. Anyway, I mean, it's possible somebody better could come along, but I don't know that it'll ever happen. He understands music in a way that most folks just can't.

Speaker 2 14:38

I think he has had like 42 Oscar nominations, I think.

Speaker 3 14:43

Incredible career.

Speaker 2 14:44

Yeah, most nominated person in history, right or sorry. 52, 52 nominations.

Speaker 3 14:50

And it's not just Star Wars. Like, if you look at everything he's worked on, he's worked on dozens of the best franchises, not just, not just. Like he's worked on dozens of movies like the best of the best. Like he's the kind of guy that gets to pick the job, not the job picking the guy so it's jaws right, the Schindler's List.

Speaker 2 15:13

What else? Harry Potter as well? Yeah, so many.

Speaker 3 15:16

He's the greatest. He is the greatest of all time.

Speaker 2 15:18

He's the greatest, yeah, he's the magician of music.

Speaker 3 15:21

Almost everything that you've seen in the last 30 years that had an incredible score he worked on.

Speaker 2 15:27

Yeah, so it's him and Hans Zimmer.

Speaker 3 15:30

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 15:31

And, in your opinion, what makes Star Wars a timeless and enduring cultural phenomenon?

Speaker 3 15:38

That's a good question.

Speaker 3 15:39

I think that it speaks to everyone's desire for redemption.

Speaker 3 15:45

I think that's the thing that makes the Star Wars saga mean so much to people, because everyone that's a main character that makes these large mistakes gets an opportunity to redeem themselves. They don't all succeed but, like Anakin, saves his son and regains the love of his son. That's the whole crux of those first three movies. It's a man who's destroyed and has an opportunity, through multiple interactions with his family, to realize what's important and save his family, even at the cost of his own life, and that happens again in the last three movies that Disney made. Kylo Ren goes through that same path and, at the end, gets to be redeemed, even though he's been a monster for three movies. There's something about the human experience that we need to feel like, even when we make the largest mistakes, that there's an opportunity for us to be redeemed in the end, and I think that's why people identify so much with these movies and how do you think that the movies you know have influenced the pop culture or popular culture around the world, not just in the us, like everywhere?

Speaker 3 17:01

I think that gets back to the striking visuals. George Lucas created a look for these characters, especially with Darth Vader and the Stormtroopers, where they have this menacing, sterile kind of look. Essentially, the Stormtroopers' helmets are designed to look like a skull and Darth Vader's helmet is designed to look like a samurai overlord. So you get that contrast, that black and white contrast, where there is no gray area with them. Everything that is in the way is destroyed, and what's being destroyed is the uniqueness in the universe. So when you look at the Rebellion, everything is pieced together, has bright colors, it has inventive technology. Everything on the other side is black and white and sterile, and square lines and polished hallways. You know what I mean.

Speaker 3 17:57

And those images, I think, stick with people. So when, when people interact with that, they it becomes like ingrained into their minds and then when they see it again, they're inspired to. You know, think about things that happened in that movie and then apply that further. So then that movie inspires somebody else to have a concept that's similar. So it's kind of like. Like, are you familiar with the Dune franchise?

Speaker 2 18:24

Yeah.

Speaker 3 18:25

Okay, so Star Wars borrows heavily from Dune, so between that and the Kurosawa samurai films, that's 90% of what Star Wars is. You know, it's a. It's a story of a family making their way in space, and and I think that that's universally identified with, and so it seeps into everything.

Speaker 2 18:44

And so what are your expectations for the future of, you know, Star Wars franchise? You know, maybe new films, TV series, maybe other things. What do you have in mind?

Speaker 3 18:55

I think that the TV series right now are kind of killing it. Like they've learned that they can invest the money in episodic storytelling and make these TV shows look like they're feature films and people are in for it. That was the big gamble. They were like if we make these TV shows, will people watch them? And not only do people watch them, they watch them at the same rate or more than they were going to the movie theaters to see them. So I think we're going to see a lot of that, because they can tell stories that are not as big. They're not like Skywalker related stories. They can branch out and build the universe and they have a movie that's supposed to be being made in the next few years that tie in a lot of the TV shows into a feature film. But after that, who knows? I can't see an end to this. If anything else, it seems to be building momentum. This just keeps going and going and going.

Speaker 2 19:55

Yeah, and so actually this is my very last question. So in many, many, many years to come, can you still see yourself, you know, as an old man sitting on your couch with 30 Stormtroopers helmets and passionately watching star wars and still loving it?

Generations Bonding Over Star Wars

Speaker 3 20:12

100. I remember sitting with my grandfather watching the old james bond movies and so he there were two or three things like that that he sat down and taught me. And one day I will sit with my kids or my grandkids and we will watch star wars and I will raise a bunch of grandkids that run around with lightsabers and fight in my backyard. I promise.

Speaker 2 20:33

That's a nice promise to hear. Well, thank you so much, donald. This has been great and, yes, this has been very fun, very informative, very. What's a good Star Wars adjective, I don't know Lightsabering.

Speaker 3 20:45

Oh, definitely, definitely Good Star Wars adjective. I don't know Lightsabering oh, definitely Definitely. Nothing like being stabbed with a lightsaber.

Speaker 2 20:50

Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 20:51

Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1 20:52

And thank you to everyone who's listened to this episode as well, and I'll see you next time. Bye, thank you.