‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ (Part One) With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessey, and Van Lathan
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Pew. You better get it right for this. It's crucial, yeah. You better get it right. I'm Bill Simmons. We're about to do Star Wars. It's a major movie and you guys are really, really excited. Let's get it going.

You fucking dork. You guys. You can't bully us throughout this podcast. I had a great time. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Here they come. Star Wars. An adventure unlike anything on your planet. It's an epic of heroes and villains and aliens from a thousand worlds. Hey!

Star Wars rated PG. All right, guys. First installment of the greatest trilogy ever. Peak of the 70s blockbuster era. Godfather, Exorcist, Jaws, Rocky, Star Wars. Return of popular cinema.

The highest stakes ever in an actual movie because the entire galaxy is at stake, man. Yes. What jumps out first for you? Star Wars, 1977. I'm not doing this chapter for New Hope. Fuck that. This movie's called Star Wars. I saw it in the theater. We called it Star Wars. Okay. Okay. Oh, it's already begun. One of the single most important moments of my life is watching Star Wars with my father

It actually opened up my mind to an entire realm of cinematic possibility. Being that deep in space, all of the lore that goes on around it, all the mystery. When you first see it, you're wondering what's happening, what's happening, what's happening. How do you explain some of the things that are going on? It assumes that you understand both the natural hero's arc

but also that you kind of get and understand the stakes of the world. It sets you up for, for me at least, to understand all of the nerd culture stuff and all of the science fiction stuff that I will go on to love for the rest of my life. How old were you when you saw it? Seven.

Yeah. Seven years old. I'm the only one who saw it in the theater. Yeah. I mean, this is the movie that I've seen the most in my life, I think. I was surprised to hear that. You told me that last week and that would not have been my guess. I mean, you have to remember, it's like from the time that I can basically remember from when I was like five or six to now. I mean, it's just been a constant in my life and especially with the last, what, 15 years of its revival pretty much since like 2013 when did Force Awakens come out? 15.

15? Yeah. It's had two revivals because the 97 was the first revival when they re-released it and it like crushed. Yeah. I was partying when that was happening. I was a teenager. It was huge. Over $200 million. I saw them all again at theaters. Well, there was also they added new stuff. So that was part of the appeal. But then again, the prequels too.

The prequel for The Second Life, it feels like the mid-2010s and then this whole Disney and or Mandalorian universe was like the fourth revival. Yeah. I mean, it's like we do these rewatchables a lot and we'll talk about movies from, say, the early 80s or the 70s.

This is the first one I think we've done that I feel like was this turning point where I was born into a world after Star Wars. So I was born at the end of 77. So everything that happened in my life is a world that is reacting to what George Lucas did and,

And it's so I don't even have like a frame of reference for what going to the movies was like before Star Wars. And I think it's a testament to this movie's legacy and impact that movies were never the same after that. And I think also because of what you were saying with Rocky and the Godfather and this era of massive cinema. But most of those movies were for adults and for guys like us who are like in their 40s who were born into a world of Star Wars movies.

These are movies for kids. I mean, you can, I think it's probably four or five when I saw Star Wars for the first time. And so it just becomes a part of your cultural bloodstream at a very, very early age. So it's definitely on the list too for me for the movies I've seen the most. And I vividly remember having the

three VHS cassette box, you know, that expanded size box and just like running that over and over and over again in dead time in afternoons after school. So it's got to be super high on the list. And, you know, I think like all of us, like it just set us up for a lifetime of getting interested in science fiction, fantasy, comic books, like all this stuff that is so present in the culture now starts with this movie. Yeah, I was always, when I was watching it this time, I was thinking a lot about

Luke and Han, and when you're a kid, let's say when you're like six or seven years older, whenever you see this movie and you're starting to get all the toys. I mean, this movie really, it suggests a lot of things about what we would come to understand about the mythology and the lore around Star Wars. But there's so many pockets for your imagination in this. And I was taken back to like having the toys and like writing my own Star Wars stories because it wasn't so everything was drilled down. All the details were nailed down. Like,

All the things about Star Wars that we now know, which is going to make picking nits almost hard because you can just be like, oh yeah, they answered that in Rogue One or they answer that in Jedi or they answer that in Sith. It's like, well, for me, I came up with them. Like, and that was like this thing that became, it almost belonged to everybody because in your mind, you're like, I think about Wedge as much as I think about whoever. And I have like a whole story laid out in my little brain about this. And I think that's why people are still obsessed with it

later in life is because you have this memory of it being like a cortex of how you started to use your creative brain almost. There was scarcity as well. Yeah. Like we didn't have a lot of Star Wars material and content. Obviously they went on to be television specials and it was constantly referenced and all of that stuff. But, you know, there weren't like, there were comic books and stuff like that. But then you, until you get to expand the universe stuff and all of that stuff that we spent all of those years,

reading and then they just said doesn't exist after hours and hours and hours of reading it still feel a way about that you had to make the mythology up in your head you had to wonder how was this a big deal you had to think about what the clone wars were like how they thought what a jedi looked like when a jedi was 25 we only knew

old Jedis and then baby Jedis. We never knew a Jedi in his prime. You have to think about all of these variables because it wasn't given it to you yet. We were still in the baby stages of how gigantic the universe would become. And that sort of goosed your imagination to fill in the gaps of the stuff that you hadn't seen but wanted to see. So it came out, I think I was at the end of maybe second grade. I was still in school.

And people were going to see it. Like he started, I didn't see it right away. People in my, in my class, some of them. And I was in, you know, Massachusetts and people were going like four or five times in two weeks. And it was the first time you were like, wait,

This kid, David, like this kid, David. He saw it six times in two weeks. And it was like, what? Yeah. He went to the same movie six that like, we were just like dumbfounded. And there was like the sports kids. And then there were like the star Wars kids.

and there were these certain kids that they just... Oh, shit. And there was some that overlapped. There'll be other many more times in this episode. But there were these kids that really all of a sudden it became part of their personality like this movie. Yeah. We came back for, I guess, the third grade, whatever it was. And at that point, some of the merch was out and...

They were just into it. And it was like this whole world. I never remember seeing that before. I do think that that is a real generational divide between us, at least, where to me, the kids who were into sports were into Star Wars. The ringer exists, I think, because eventually what happened to the culture is that those things were all the same. That your obsession and your passion... And I told you when you texted me about doing this...

I vividly remember being 10 years old and walking down the hill from my house to go to the local bookstore. And I would just sit in the bookstore and I would read the Star Wars encyclopedia for hours. I couldn't afford to buy the book. The exact thing that Van is describing and that Chris is describing was like there was so much information that you heard uttered one time in one of the movies. And then there was all this lore that was explained about it. But it was the same exact experience as looking at the back of a baseball card.

Where you're getting a better understanding of the history of this thing that you have a passion for. But you can only experience it when you're watching a game or you can only experience it when you're watching the movie.

except there's all this external culture around it. And like, I'm sure when the movie came out, everybody was getting toys and they were like, the Halloween was the first one. Yeah. Halloween was a few years later and everybody was dressed as like Luke or David go is Luke or Vader. I don't know. We probably tried to bully him at some point. Um, the, the, but it just, it, it wasn't for me until empire, uh,

I saw it in the theater. It was cool. We didn't really have cable in the same way back then. I remember there was that famous holiday special they did a year. I didn't see that either. But when Empire came out, that's when it was like... That makes sense, though. When Empire came out, I was like, holy shit. And now there's going to be a third one? We just weren't conditioned to think of trilogies like that. Empire was the serious movie. Yeah. It was the movie where Star Wars grew up, where there was a defined romance in the movie between Han and Leia, where Luke...

Wait, don't spoil me. I haven't seen it. Where Luke has this adversity and personal crisis about who he is and how he's going to get there. And that's the movie where they went, okay, let's take all the ideas from the first one.

and then evolve them into a movie that is for the movie goer. That's a little bit more of a grown-up version of it because it's a lot darker and there's a lot of double-crossing and things that are going on. So they actually kind of made Empire for the guys like yourself who were probably, you know, I mean, you were still pretty young at the time, but were more serious film goers and film watchers. Well, that came out kind of around The Shining. 80 was a really good movie year. Yeah. But...

Look, watching this twice in four days, the first time I watched, I hadn't seen it in a long time. And I was like, ah, it's dated, but nah, this is fun, this is nostalgic. And then I watched it the second time and I was like, this movie's kind of awesome. He was onto something, that George Lucas. I was like, holy shit. We don't need that from you. I'm just saying, I was like, whoa, they really did a good job. Star Wars is a good movie. Would you say over under 10 times you've seen this in your life?

I think I've seen pieces of it for 50 years. Right. But just watching it start to finish. Because when you start it, especially when we had kids, I was like, oh, I wonder if my kids will like it. And C-3PO and R2-D2 go in the desert and the movie just dies for like four minutes. And if your kids can get over that hump, you just basically have to get your kids to the Star Wars bar scene. Yeah.

Once you're there, you're going from that point. But it does get a little slow there. I had kind of the inverted experience re-watching it. I re-watched it a couple times for this. The first time, I was like, man, we are on Tatooine for a long fucking time. This is just a lot of desert time with Luke. And I was kind of bored. And it's probably been between five and ten years since I've last watched it.

But by the time we got to the trench run, I was like, probably best movie ever made. This is the best I've ever felt about a movie. I was vibrating. I was in tears. That's how I felt the second time. I was like, this is just amazing. Everything pulled up. Every time Darth Vader comes in, it's the best entrance. He's the most captivating villain that's ever been in a movie. And he's in the movie for 12 minutes. There's never been a better villain, right? It's funny. The movie is about him.

It's his story. We didn't get it, though. We didn't get it. We did not know that then. Yeah. We didn't know that then. But when you watch it through that lens now, you're still watching his story and the story of his kids and the story of the entire universe. And his surrogate father. But when Obi-Wan tells the story about what happened to Luke's dad, but you know...

I mean, we're going to talk about a bunch of shit during this pod, but keeping that secret, not knowing that secret in 1977 at all and watching the movie one way, but now knowing the secret when you watch it, it's a completely different movie. I think the thing that jumped out at me on these rewatches was I always forget how bratty Luke is for that first hour. And there's those funny lines where he's like, I was going to be Tosche Station and get some power converters or whatever. And

It's really like not until they spring Leia that he kind of like starts to grow up a little bit. And then that's also when he has the moment that basically makes him a man when he loses Obi-Wan or whatever. But like, yeah, it's really funny. I remember being a kid. I can't wait to talk about that. And identifying with Luke because I was a child. So Luke was kind of like a cool older person to me then.

And now it's like you go back and you're just like, I just watch. It's just like as soon as Solo shows up, the movie takes off. Well, that's the other thing when you're watching this. It's Harrison Ford, one of the great actors from a popcorn standpoint in the last 50 years. And he's just this young version of him. It's like watching young somebody in college, like some NBA player. It's like watching Purdy at Iowa State. Completely fucking confident.

Every scene is like the movie is written for him. People are talking about stuff and Han's going, that's bullshit. And you're going, what's up with that guy? Are we sure we should be doing the right thing?

You feel like he can sleep with Princess Leia if you give him like three minutes. Oh, he feels like it. Yeah. I can take this down right now. And he's playing with Luke. Luke is like, what do you think of her? He's like, whatever, I try not to. And then Han sees that Luke is, you know, a little into her and he starts fucking with him a little bit. Still, a lot of spirit though. A lot of spirit, Luke.

Yeah, he is also the only person in the movie who's allowed to talk like a modern person. He doesn't have a British accent. The part when he blows up the control panel when he's dressed as a stormtrooper and he's like, boring conversation anyway. He's like the only guy who's sarcastic. He's the only guy who has really like modern jokes. And so he feels like the cool guy you want to be. Luke is a hero, but he's so bland. I mean, he just doesn't have shape as a person.

Han is a guy who's lived. He's 34 years old. Do you think Luke doesn't have shape because of the actor or the way the character is written? No, I think it's supposed to be a kid who's isolated, who's looking for or feels like his life should have meaning, and it doesn't. But if that's 18-year-old Chalamet as Luke in 1977, is Luke a better- We're already getting started on Mark Hamill. Let's get into the double feature situation. But

Here's the deal. Here's what I know now that they built lore around that we didn't know then. Luke is being protected. Yeah. Very directly by Kenobi and by his uncle, right? Luke's call to action is mystical. The Force is calling to Luke.

The thing that's making Luke look out at the stars, and I'm actually feeling the weight of talking about the movie. It's difficult to explain. No, I...

This is like the men's recovery. We're just going to be like, the three of us are going to be crying. Follow the force. He was good too. I'm getting, I'm getting chills. The Luke is being called to something more because it's his birthright. Yeah. And so when you watch the film now, he's annoying, but I'm, I'm watching him. I'm going, let him go.

Let him go. That's Luke fucking Skywalker. You don't know what he's supposed to become. You guys are muting his light. To that point. It's like Ciara was saying this about Anthony Edwards last year in the playoffs. That's right. Let him go. When Uncle Owen kind of gets burnt to a crisp, I'm kind of like, all right, cool. Now the movie can start. You know what I mean? Right. So all of that's happening and he's bratty, but it's a part of the most perfect three film arc to me in movie history.

I have a confession. Okay. I feel like I should have gotten more involved in the Star Wars. This actually made me watching the second time. I'm like, this is a bad job by me. I should have gotten more, but I'm actually excited to watch the second one now. You've seen it though. Yeah. I saw, I saw in the theater. Okay.

The second one. What do you think? I saw all of them in the theater. I went to, you had to go. There was that, you were just left out of the conversation if you didn't go. What was it though? Were you like, I don't want to be perceived as a nerd? Not that at all. What was under? I just never really, never really got me in the way like some sports movies, action movies, all that. I just never really dove in. He also had sick bees tickets. I didn't have that.

But you love lore. I mean, you were like, with basketball, when you talk about the history of basketball, this is exactly like listening to Van talk about Luke Skywalker. It's the same exact thing. I blew it. I was talking to my buddy, Jim Grady, one of my best high school friends, and he had two cassettes

that we're on all the time. We watch Rocky III all the time. And then he would always have Star Wars on. And I would always be, if he was watching that, I would always want to do something else. And he was like, how dare you do rewatchables? I tried to get you to watch that for the entire late 80s. I'm going to dig around in your past. Don't let me find out you were like William Zabka, 80s.

cool kid, karate kid, we'll see the kid. I just never got... I never really liked Star Trek either. I watched all the Star Treks, but I never really... Sci-fi just doesn't grab you. There is an element of sci-fi to this. But when I watched it these two times, I was a little more intrigued because...

I just like how there's big themes and it steals from the past with all these other things. Like, this is basically a Western. It's an adventure movie. This is a Clint Eastwood movie. It goes back. His family's been wiped out. It steals from 90 different things. It steals from Dune to the point that

Frank Herbert was pissed off about the fact that he thought the movie was too derivative. Stole from Flash Gordon. Stole from Flash Gordon. Because that was what Lucas wanted to make. Wizard of Oz. I mean, look at the C-3PO and R2 and Chewie. It's behind the stealing of Wizard of Oz. It just feels like they're... Kurosawa. Yeah, all that stuff is all... 2001. It's all synthesized into this perfect little package. But also a demonstration that even though we're telling the same stories that invoke the same emotions, it is how you tell them.

It is the world that you put people in. It is the ideas and the concepts that you're able to create when you're telling these stories. You have a new, not a new form of government, but you have a new style, a new look. You have the technology aspect of this, which was revolutionary in and of itself, right? You have all the things that you take to take a class that you need, should I say, to take a classic and making it to something that people have never seen. Can I ask you a question? Because you obviously are watching the Star Wars stuff that comes out now with such a close eye.

Yeah. One of the things I thought was really interesting reading, doing research about this was, you know, Lucas goes through all these different variations of the script. It's 250 pages at some point. He has the entire trilogy mapped out when this stuff comes out. It's immediately like there are going to be 12 movies. He's got 12 in his head. But when you watch the first one, we watch a new hope.

The thing that blows your mind is that first 45 minutes, albeit maybe a little bit dull, is not packed to the gills with information. There's not a ton of exposition about like, well, okay, there's the Senate and then they're doing this. And then like, we're going to cut Palpatine and then we're going to cut to here. And these characters are going to meet just to talk about the fact that there's a vote coming up or that the Clone Wars were like this. It's just droids wandering around in the desert, which in a weird way becomes more immersive, right? Like you're like, what the fuck?

is this movie? What is going on? So do you, I guess my question is like, do you have a preference or do you kind of see the difference between how Star Wars has changed over the years? I see how we've changed. Yeah. So during that time, you trusted the audience more. All right. Door opens up

seven foot black droid, black in color and in voice, rest in peace, James Earl Jones, pops in, this guy is evil. The death march plays, you know, it's fucking on, right? When you say the clone wars, the audience then is going, oh my God, clone wars, clone wars. Like in the,

The audience now, we're like, what are you talking about, right? So we kind of demand this interrogation of story that is good. It makes us more sophisticated moviegoers. But it also sometimes, and I can say this about Star Wars fans even now, puts the handcuffs on what filmmakers are able to do. Because it makes you want to roll out the story faster than what it is that they're giving it to you. This movie, the pace is a little all over the place, but it's expecting you

to actually do a little work and putting yourself in the world. And it's giving you enough visually at that time, which I'm assuming we hadn't seen too much stuff like this. And I hadn't seen any stuff like this. Right. So it's expecting that you'll be wowed by what it is that you're seeing. And you'll sort of succumb to or surrender to like what's on the screen. And by the time you know it, you're on a wild ride. They also, there's some cheat stuff that they do. That's really smart. Like even the ways that they named some of the characters, it's like,

Han Solo. Yeah. He's a solo act. Yeah.

Luke Skywalker, not the subtlest of titles. Luke Skywalker. This guy might walk in the sky someday. Darth Vader. Greedo. It's like, I wonder what this guy's about. You go through. And it's stuff that if you're five years old or seven years old, you're just instinctively understanding everybody. I love hearing you say the word Greedo. I just never thought we would get there. A lot of controversy with Greedo. Why Greedo?

Greedo! Who shot first? Greedo! One thing about what you guys are talking about that is interesting, though, is that

Lucas's imagination is unbelievable. I mean, it is like unmatched. The amount of world building that he has done in this franchise is insane. Obviously, he's pulling from a lot of inspirations. Is it only Spielberg who's the only one who's even... Spielberg doesn't have like a nine film universe that's so extended. Even Indiana Jones is still George Lucas too. It is George Lucas. It's almost like Stephen King if he had become a direct... He's a great comparison. He's a great comparison. Stephen King's still writing, I mean, still coming up with ideas to this day. It's crazy. But...

The reason this movie is the way that it is is because it is an after effect of its practical opportunity. So the movie is basically 25% of what Luke has imagined but could get on screen. And part of what's amazing about the movie is the way that the technology develops during the production of the movie to get as much of what he wants on. That practical stuff that we love about this movie that makes this movie so special and so perfect is...

is his biggest frustration and regret and why he kept going back and messing with the movie and changing the movie because he never felt, he says that the final product of Star Wars when it was released, when you saw it in second grade, felt abandoned. That he was like, this is just as much as I could get done before I had to just stop. He's got so many different ways of saying this and the most interesting thing about it is this.

By the time we get to the point that George can tell the story that he wants to tell with the technology at his fingertips, he makes three movies that aren't very good. And it's interesting because...

He makes... You talking about the Portman movies? The prequels. Which I love Revenge of the Sith, by the way. Just came out, made $25 million. People like... Yeah, Jomie likes Sith. He was excited about it. Yeah, I love it. I like Sith. I like Sith. The other two are bad. Yeah, they're not very good. They're deeply political, like almost...

The inverse of the first movie. I'm old enough to remember how absolutely polarizing and upsetting those movies were to people. I fell asleep during Phantom Menace when it first came out. I refused to believe that it wasn't good. I lied to myself for months and then I woke up one day and I was like... The Godfather 3, my stepfather? You know what? Don't disrespect him. It's good. We're okay. We're okay. They're very similar. They're very similar. So it's...

It's interesting because he talks about this all the time and he'll have a Star Wars situation with anyone. But the constraints on the movie kind of made it what it was. Oh, yeah. Well, this is... Sean mentioned this when we were texting about it. It's such a shame the original thing doesn't exist. I would just be...

It's fascinating to see what the special effects were, because obviously there's stuff in the version. I watched it on Disney+, but then I also got the Blu-ray, because I want to see that. And there's obviously stuff they've added in the last 10, 12 years, whereas you watch Rocky, and that's the movie. It's like there's empty seats when those guys are fighting. You just see empty seats everywhere, and there's really bad eye makeup. And it's part of the charm. They made it in 1976. Yeah.

I don't love that they redid it. Although I shouldn't say much because Sierra and I have done Heat four times. But Michael Mann's not going back and adding, you know, CGI characters in the middle of the shootout. You know what I mean? He could have added like three more mojitos. That would have been great. I think the last time you could watch the original theatrically released version without any of the added stuff was the first DVD that was issued. That the like alternative version you could watch.

I don't have that anymore. I mean, I used to have it in every format, this movie. I've had this movie in every format. Was there a Laserdisc? Oh, definitely, yeah. There was Laserdisc, VHS. So it probably was in that format, I would guess. It's definitely on the VHS and on the Laserdisc, but on Blu-ray, it has not been issued. You can't watch the original theatrical version.

That's kind of a miss by Lucas, who clearly has wanted to profit out of this in every way. Yeah, but Lucas clearly doesn't care. I don't actually think he sees these movies, especially this movie, the way we see it. Right. Totems of our childhood. He looks at it as a professional misstep that, albeit, made him a billionaire.

Like, I don't think he's looking at it as like, oh, what? This is just a priceless, perfect gem. It's like a piece of art that you shouldn't touch. Fincher does this too, right? Doesn't he go dial obsessively? He takes the dust off of a window and stuff. He doesn't change characters. Jabba's in this fucking movie in the new versions of it. He's not in the first one. So when you meet Jabba, you're like, this is mind-blowing. Which, by the way...

steps on Jabba. It's better the other way. It is better. There's no question about it. The idea of who is Jabba the Hutt is the same thing as the Clone Wars. What is this gangster character? Who could it possibly be? And then just by putting him in the movie, it ruins it. But he can't see past that. He can only see into his own imagination. And he can only try to reach for what he was envisioning when he was, whatever, 30 years old when he made this movie. So it's like this never-ending quest

to fix the mistakes of the production that is also the most meaningful. It's like Sam Presti. Just wants more draft picks. And I thought it was bullshit at first. Like he would say,

You do four, five, and six because you didn't have what you needed to do one, two, and three, right? And one, two, and three, there are going to be hundreds of Jedi running around and all of that stuff, and you didn't have what you needed. And so technology has gotten to a point to where I can go back and actually shoot these movies now. And I'd be like, ah, that's bullshit. I mean, maybe he didn't have the story worked out, or maybe all of this stuff about how much of this stuff that he had ready and planned is just legend, but he continues to prove it because he won't stop tinkering with the movie.

He tinkers with it and tries to get it closer, tries to perfect perfection, and actually kind of doesn't get there with doing it. Not just the job thing. Sounds like he needs a girlfriend. He was, he don't, he don't gotta, he gotta. Oh, he's married again, right? Yeah. Lucas? Yeah. Lucas got him a,

You know what I'm saying? A what? He has, he has a black wife. That was Van Coesler. His wife is black. I'm not like, that's what I'm saying. It's like that ended up itself. Once I learned that, I was like, I see where the soul comes from. I see where the light comes from. He's well, the force, the force, he's well taken care of. This movie hits good versus evil.

The galaxy, what the fuck is even up there, right? What do you believe in? Do you believe... I mean, the Force is obviously the key to the whole universe. And what do you actually believe as a human being? Do you believe we're just randomly here? Yeah. Or is there some greater purpose for all of us? Or are you like Han Solo and you just believe in just hitting same game parties with your boys? Are you a good teammate? Yeah.

Are you a mercenary or a good teammate? How far will you go to dominate somebody else? How far will you go to the dark side to get more power? Which is certainly a theme that might be more and more relevant every couple years. This movie's very resonant right now. Including this one. Destiny, Fathers and Sons.

Getting old. Getting older? Like LeBron in this Lakers series, like, you know, where it's like, hey, Obi-Wan, we need 15 rebounds and 40 points. You think Anthony Edwards is going to be stepping on the cloak pretty soon? I think Anthony Edwards is going...

You've got an old, old man. What is he saying in the duel? I am the master now. Yeah. And that's Anthony Edwards. One of my Luke Wilson hot takes, which is, I guess maybe I won't use this one, but there's a direct correlation between the decrease in engagement in organized religion in this country and the rise of Star Wars. And,

Oh, that's a legitimate hot take. I like that. There is a case to be made that's certainly among the vast swaths of mostly young men, but women too, who are obsessed with Star Wars and the kind of mythology that was available in popular entertainment. And because this is a deeply religious movie, it kind of undermines the organizing nature of religion in our society. And it's not the only factor, but it is, in my mind, definitely a factor. I have not heard that.

Really good. But I'm not against it. My only regret is you didn't do that on first take with Molly and Ryan Clark. Ryan Clark in a split screen. Where's my camera? So look, I'll say this. I gotta disagree with Sean. So there's a religion, okay, that my grandmother was a part of at one point. I was not allowed to watch Star Wars in my grandmother's house for a little while. And I remember there's a religion, I won't talk about the religion, but that

There was a videotape that you watched when you were getting into the religion. My grandmother was a part of this religion. And they were talking about all of these things that were bad in society. And there's a part of it where Star Wars comes up.

And it says that George Lucas believes in the Force for real. And he thinks that the Force is a substitute for a belief in God and for a belief in religion. And when I was over at my grandmother's house for a little while, she's no longer with the religion, I could not watch Star Wars. And I remember, it's so funny that you would say that. Back in the day, she deconstructed to me how Star Wars is actually a movie that is giving religious dogma to people.

telling you that you'll be powerful if you believe in this thing. Darth Vader is the devil and Luke Skywalker is Jesus Christ. And she was doing it from trying to like, not poison me, but trying to save my soul.

But she was also telling me why the movie was so resonant for me. Right, right. I mean, the movie is in part synthesizing not just samurai movies and The Wizard of Oz, but like Judeo-Christian myth. Like it is pulling everything from the history of religion into its story. Like in the 80s, especially, we were given...

all of these tokens of our belief in these fucking toys. And you would just sit around all day and be like, this is my Han Solo toy. And now I'm going to think about this guy for three hours, which is more than I thought about Jesus Christ at any given day. You used to wear a St. Christopher medal and now you hold a Han Solo toy. Well, we had less to do. So like for me, it was baseball and football and basketball cards and hockey cards, right? For other people that are playing. What's funny, I forgot doing the research is how late the merch was.

That they made the movie and they weren't even sure. And then it became this race. You could buy boxes that were empty. They were almost like IOU for Luke Skywalker dolls because they hadn't had them made yet. It's fucking crazy. They had no idea the movie was going to become what it did. I feel like all of my toys... The stuff I remember having is more Empire era, like Dagobah. Yeah.

Like, I think I had the Danglebot that you could, like, slip through the mud kind of thing. There was always one kid who had the Millennium Falcon. It was like you had to go to his house to play with it. Like, I didn't have that growing up. That was like the $50 toy. Or a toy saber. Right. I never had a lightsaber either. Toy saber, all of that stuff, man. Oh, my God. Yeah, the kid who had the toy saber was the most popular dude in the neighborhood. Well, this episode is brought to you by State Farm. Life is all about choices. There's a lot of choices in Star Wars and the next three movies that the characters make.

Luke makes some good choices. He trusts the force. He does. At State Farm, their goal is to help you make decisions that you feel good about. That's why with the State Farm personal price plan, you can choose the right amount of coverage to help create a competitive price. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. I had some stuff I wanted to get to, but I had to ask producer Craig.

What's your... You're younger than us. What's your lifespan with this movie? With this, like the original three? Yeah, because you're in it. It's like they've already made the prequels and shit's going down. So how do you walk into the Star Wars universe? I wish I could remember specifically when I saw it the first time. I may have seen the prequels before I saw these. I don't even really know. I had only seen them a couple of times. I was closer to you, Bill, in that I saw them maybe once or twice. I liked them.

But they didn't, like, you know, capture me in the same way that other people did. I don't know. I think the only troubling thing about Star Wars is it's so complex and people go so deep into it that sometimes it feels like you can't be a casual fan because everybody will exclude you. That was part of my problem. But you could be on this. You could be on this. There were no answers yet. Right. You know, like, there really wasn't this, like, oh, you can refer to one of 19 animated series that, like, document this entire thing.

Yeah, it's kind of hard for me to be like, I like Star Wars. And they're like, oh, really? What's your favorite planet? And I'm like, well, I don't know. It's true. What are your thoughts on Alderaan? Because it's a story that stokes obsession. But then I don't think Star Wars nerds like us realized this at the time. But we were just as alienating to other people as we felt alienated from them, too. You know, because it's just you immediately just lock into like,

Talking about Hoth and why Hoth matters. But it is like sports. It's like NHL fans. Yeah. Don't talk about Edmonton. You don't watch all those games. If somebody comes up to me and is like, oh, are you a sports fan? And I'm like, yeah. And we start talking and they don't know who the quarterback of the Niners is. I'm like, oh, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. That's me talking about Star Wars. That's having little kids, man. If I meet a dad at the preschool who doesn't know sports, I'm like, shit, we got nothing to talk about. I took movies. Seen any movies? I took Marie Rout to see Star Wars.

Phantom Menace, like the third time I saw it. And at the beginning of the movie,

both Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, they force dash into the area where they're trying to get. And she goes, how can they move so fast? And my blood started boiling. Yeah. I'm like, hot date. Hot date. My blood started boiling. I'm like, they're using the force. She goes, what's the force? I said, shut up. Shut the fuck up. Just let me enjoy this. You're embarrassing me. Shut up.

Okay? People can hear you. We got to get movie nerdy for a second because there's this whole... I mean, there's so many things to get in with this movie, but there's the whole impact that this movie had on movies for the next 48 years because it became massively successful. It's right at the tail end of all of this great creative explosion, all these directors doing amazing things. And then this movie makes a kajillion dollars and...

there's so much resentment about it that it became a big thing for Lucas. And Lucas has all the stuff he's talked about, about like,

Look, people get mad about Star Wars ruined movies. And meanwhile, we built multiplexes all over the country and the world because of the money people made from this movie. And there's a lot of, and the Biskin book is the best one for this, where just a lot of directors just taking like shots at Lucas. Like he ruined it. We were doing great until that movie. Meanwhile, Coppola's going up to him like Maury in Goodfellas. I need some money. You gotta help me out here. You have that 50K? Sean, do you think that's fair?

I, yeah, I mean, this is, this is my hot take, which is that Star Wars is arguably the most perfect movie ever made in the worst thing that ever happened to movies. And, you know, it starts with Jaws in 1975. It's the first genuine wide release of a movie. It's the first movie that premieres essentially on a thousand screens simultaneously that had not happened before. And it's in part because Universal realizes that they've got something on their hands that they can market nationally and get people to show up.

People didn't go see Gone with the Wind that way. They didn't go see Casablanca that way. They saw the movie opened in their city and then it closed and it went to another city and then it was open across five years and

This movie opens even wider than that. It's an even bigger sensation. It really, really encourages the repeat viewing that you're talking about. And it's edging out other movies because there's, what, three, four movies max in every theater? Yes. And they're just shoving out other things. And also, we're in the middle of a time where movies for adults are dominating the culture. And this is the movie that resets the trajectory for mainstream movies to be made for kids. And that kids is where the pot of gold is.

it doesn't change the fact that I think the movie is wonderful and that I'm a huge fan of star Wars in general. And I still consume star Wars stuff to this day, but it didn't ultimately benefit filmmakers. It benefited corporations and it benefited movie studios who got more and more greedy because they saw that the ceiling was higher than they'd realized. And so, because that ceiling got raised on the potential profits, it just, it,

It had a tremendously negative effect across moviemaking over periods of time. That doesn't mean that there weren't, there aren't good movies anymore. The question is, would that have happened anyway? Well, that was somebody else might've gotten there. Somebody else might've gotten there. I think it happens either way. Somebody else might've gotten there. Obviously when that first movie comes out, we don't know that it's going to be three films, then another three films, then a massive sale to Disney that includes a universal expansion of the property. I do think it's predictive of a kind of feverish monocultural trend.

thing that was happening in the 80s where like Michael Jackson opens up the idea of how big an artist can get in music right like for the first time maybe since the Beatles like it is a literal like

everybody is obsessed with this one thing. And obviously there was something in the water coming that was like, people were ready to have maybe be distracted. I don't know, but your point's really well taken. I mean, this movie famously had to make way for sorcerer, the William freaking movie at man's Chinese theater. And it sorcerer had like a week or two run and they were like, get this shit out of here. We got to put it back in. Yeah. I think the split, the baby there is our appetites were expanding period.

There are more ways for us to experience things.

home video was having a boom. There was more space and opportunity to build these big multiplexes, right? - That's in the '80s. - That's in the '80s. So what you're seeing is that people want more stuff. Cable television is starting to dominate. We could talk about almost any industry that we love. We could talk about the NFL, we could talk about the NBA. The appetites for these things

were met by people who could translate them culturally. Wrestling, porn. Wrestling, porn, all of that. Like, in Boogie Nights, they talk about what it was like going from film to video and porn and how that exploded the industry. It was going to happen. But also degraded the art form. Perhaps. That's the other theme. But it depends on the way. So this is what I would say. I can't say that you're wrong, but it depends on the way that you look at it, right? Because I could make an argument. You're a Floyd Gondoli. Right.

Exactly, right? Johnny Doe comes in. He's got a different way of doing things. I could make an argument that there is no Axel Braun or Kevin Moore. These are porn directors, by the way. I could make an argument that these guys don't exist if there's not an explosion of

I could make an argument that if movie studios don't become corporations, then the smaller films that guys were taking chances on don't get made. Are you still talking about porn or are you talking about... Either way. That because of Star Wars, there are more movies and more movies is good.

Yeah, I was just, I was really just picking, backing off of what Sean was saying, where the idea that. Oh, he's definitely right. But it's like the idea, basically, that somebody who's six years old and 36 year old could be obsessed with the same thing. Yes. That's crazy. And that happens once every 10 years now. Regenerating new classes of young people every five years, basically, who then dive into this movie that did not exist. There's two other things, though.

And I think it had something to do with the backlash. You just have this once in a lifetime, almost like in an NBA draft class where there's just like seven superstars in the same draft. You have all these guys that grew up together. There's been a million books about it. But you have Scorsese and De Palma and, you know, Paul Schrader and Friedkin, all these dudes. Coppola. Coppola. And Coppola hits it the biggest to begin with. And then it basically murders him.

Spielberg becomes the most commercial and the smarter. He's always the smartest, as we'll get to in a couple of these things. And then Lucas is the one that figures out how to put it all together. And all these other people just start having bombs and failures. So it's kind of like, well, we're failing because...

Everyone wants Star Wars. And it's like, no, maybe you're failing because you made a shitty movie that nobody wanted to go see. Or maybe the other reason for all this, the fucking cocaine era is coming in. And cocaine is ruining a bunch of these directors and storytellers. And, you know, it just...

And Lucas and Spielberg were the ones that survived. Scorsese came back. Some of these guys ended up making good movies again. But for the most part, these guys were just built for it. Some of its life, Coppola went through some personal tragedies that changed the way... Wait, the pop-up's now murdered him. You know what I mean? Some of its life... I mean, the freaking thing is the most instructive to me always because he makes...

the French connection and he follows it up with the exorcist. It's that had never been done before. No, no filmmaker had ever scraped the ceiling so profoundly before while simultaneously making like arguably the best movie in both genres. Like arguably the greatest horror movie ever made and the greatest cops movie ever made. Yeah.

And then it's like in the wilderness, like 15 years. Well, he did make Cruising, so that was his apex. I mean, he made great movies, but nobody cared about them for a long time. That was the best Cruising movie. So three apexes. Action, horror, and Cruising. Are you sure it's the best Cruising movie? Have you seen all of them? Apparently there's some Axel Braun film. Yeah, let's check out Axel's work later. I think some of it is luck, some of it is circumstance. I do think that

The studios got very hip to the potential with franchising after this movie. Well, plus these guys, part of their thing, they were acting, how can I get away with spending as much money as possible and these stupid studios will let me do it? And then after a while, the gig's up and you guys start making some money for some of these people. That's right. One from the heart, which Coppola, he bankrolled himself. Yeah.

And it ended up, he thought it was going to be like, I don't know, like what? Eight, 10 million. And it ended up being like almost 30. Oh yeah. And spent all of his own money. It's the dark side of bet on yourself. Yeah. It is the all time. Maybe I should have bet on myself. Your bet on yourself copy is you being like this. And it's with your big blues and your smile. Coppola's got his shirt off in Manila. But he's so important to this story because obviously he and, you know, Lucas is sort of like his apprentice and works under Coppola and is a USC kid. And, and,

He makes THX 1138 and it's a complicated production. I think Warner Brothers puts it out. It's early seventies, early seventies. It's not a big hit. It's, it's acclaimed, but it's not a big hit. Weird, weird movie. It's a strange movie. And Coppola, after that movie comes out and, and Lucas starts telling him his ideas and he's already starting to formulate some of the star Wars. Coppola challenges him and he's like, man, slow down with the science, science fiction stuff and show me that you can make a comedy.

And that challenge leads to American Graffiti. And if Lucas doesn't make American Graffiti and figure out how to write real people, I don't think Star Wars is any good. And American Graffiti is great. It's still great. Harrison Ford. And he finds Harrison Ford. That led to a great bet on yourself moment, Ben. Because they gave him $150,000 to write what would become Star Wars. And then American Graffiti hits. And they're like, hey, you're a hot director now. Here's more money. We're going to give you $500,000. And he says...

I'll keep the 150, but give me all the merchandising and any sequels. And they're like, that sounds great because nobody did sequels. Nobody had merchandising that didn't work for movies. And that was a two billion, kajillion dollar decision. One of the all-time, I'm not stupid, you're stupid movies where it moves where in the moment you think, oh, he sounds like a kid that's high on his own supply. He doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. He's dumb. But either he knows something or

Or he doesn't know something. Either he is so blissfully ignorant that he goes, I'm going to do this because he doesn't understand how it can backfire. Or somewhere in the recesses of his brain, he goes, I know something about this lore and this mythology that everybody else doesn't get. And I'm willing to take less. Because we're talking about a half a million in 70s brand. It's a lot of cocaine. Well, it's like Mark Cuban, right? Buying the Mavericks, super smart. Selling broadcast.com, buying the Mavericks with a super smart brain.

And then selling probably low to the Vegas family. It was like, you're still going to run the team. He's like, great. And then they cut him out. He's talking about when he sells to Disney. That's what this is. Or is that? No, it's just, you can look like a genius with one decision. And then the next decision you're like, what the fuck was that guy thinking? How did he not know? Can I read you some sour grapes quotes? Oh, is this from, uh, Pauline? It's a bunch of things. Siskel in 77 does the show with Ebert before it was called Siskel and Ebert. And, uh,

Or at the movie. At the movie. Yeah, it was called, what was it called? Sneak Previews or whatever? I think that was the first one, yeah. And he kind of scolded the movie and hoped that Hollywood would continue to cater to audiences who care about serious pictures. This is a tough one because this is the same year as Saturday Night Fever, which is one of Siskel's favorite movies of all time. So he felt like movies like Saturday Night Fever were getting taken down a notch by Star Wars. Then you have Scorsese. These are quotes from the Biskin book.

where he basically says the success of Star Wars coupled with the failure of New York, New York, which was the Scorsese movie. A couple of my raging cocaine habits. Right. Meant that the kind of movies Scorsese made were being replaced by the kind of movies Lucas and Spielberg made. Scorsese said Star Wars was in, Spielberg was in, we were finished. Well, in the long run, it turned out to be horseshit, right? He went on to become an incredibly prolific director that made movies that stand the test of time.

a lot of different types of movies. Big comeback. I mean, a comeback, yes. 80s were rough. He was in the wilderness for a while. Yeah, the 80s were tough. And there might have been a couple lines. Hmm.

The 80s were tough for... We're talking about Scorsese. He's out there trying to get Last Temptation of Christ made. King of comedy bombs. King of comedy bombs, but these movies are... He made Raging Bull after Star Wars. You know what I mean? The Last Temptation of Christ in that particular time, talk about another movie that down in the Bible Belt, we had... There were whole Jimmy Swagger sermons about The Last Temptation of Christ. About Angel Heart. Yeah.

Louis Cipher? I got you. You're booked for that. Don't worry. We're not doing Angel Heart. So what I'm saying is like, I get it, but Mark Scorsese to me was still able to like, you know. He was equals with Lucas and Spielberg. I think a lot of these guys felt like they were all equals. And then within four years, they were the...

you know, half of Hollywood. When we do the Raiders and Lost Ark together and then Spielberg's doing E.T., they're just fucking annihilating everybody. Yeah. When we do the Angel Heart rewatchables, can we all wear Canton NFL Hall of Fame blazers and welcome Lisa Bonet to the Ring of Honor? Is there another Hall of Fame for Vance? Well, there's... It's a final level? What? What do you mean?

For your Hall of Fames. The White Girl Hall of Fame. White Girl Hall. I know, but like she's... Is there a last level of the Hall of Fame? Nah. The Hall of Fame is like, you know... Pantheon? Yeah. John Milius said, Lucas and Spielberg showed there was twice as much money out there. And the studios couldn't resist that. No one had any idea you could get as rich as this. Like ancient Rome. You can clearly blame them. And then Friedkin said...

What happened with Star Wars was like when McDonald's got a foothold. The taste for good food just disappeared. Now we're in a period of de-evolution. Everything has gone backwards toward a big sucking hole. Shit! So then Lucas, his comeback was Star Wars didn't kill the film industry, infantilize it. Popcorn pictures have always ruled. Why is the public so stupid? That's not my fault. I just understood what people like to go see and Steven has too. And we go for that.

One of my core beliefs is that movie making, while it is definitively an art form, is a commercial art form. People don't make movies for movie studios for wide release just because they're artists. They make them because they want people to see them and pay for them. I would hope so. You know, people like Milius, who I really admire and is an amazing writer, that's like kind of a hot take. You know, I generally agree more with what Lucas says, and I really like a great popcorn movie.

It doesn't change the fact, though, that ultimately studios are the organizations that determine the fate of what movies get made. So it's just a byproduct of something that is obviously sincere for Lucas and Spielberg. Like, Spielberg released Close Encounters of the Third Kind this year. You can't tell me that that was, like, a cash grab. That's, like, one of the most personal movies ever made. Yeah. So...

There's like real nuance in this conversation. It's just like... Hook might have been a cash grab. The sad part about... The truth and the sad part about what Milius is talking about is the Roman excess of wealth that exploded in Hollywood for the most part benefited the studios and the corporations and the...

you know, studio heads and the agents and all the people around Hollywood that decided like, oh, look how much money we can make from this. And that's probably what had more profound effect on what kind of movies that got made than anything Lucas ever did. But that's the Lucas case because he's saying the theater owners had more money. They had more screens. So now people had the, wanted to make more money to put in the screens. And now you lead, that leads to the rise of more indie movies, art house movies. And he's like, Star Wars had this

you know, shelf life that basically created where the 90s got there. And now the stuff, the books and magazine pieces in the 90s where they're all like, the movie industry's falling apart, there are no good ideas left. And we like revere all those movies. Oh, yeah. From 95 to 99. We're having the same conversation now. You know, when I think about the movies that were gigantic movies of the past, obviously, like, The Ten Commandments is a gigantic production, right? That is...

A biblical epic, but that's a piece of commerce. That's something that is tapping into something that everyone in the country is behind, which is, you know, Judeo-Christian values. It's a story that everyone knows. And you're trying to do a story that everyone knows to get them into the deal. Mass appeal. Mass appeal.

I think what really changed was, and what Star Wars might have changed, was kind of what was mass appealing, right? Because if you had all these biblical movies before and these epics and all of these things that you would pour all of this money to, and these were some of the highest grossing movies of all time, when you talk about making movies for kids or making science fiction pictures, man,

Maybe there was a thought that that changed the seriousness of moviemaking to making movies that were in outer space or making movies that were in the future. Or maybe it changed that. But as far as I can remember, the films that I think about that grossed a lot of money were always big movies.

huge films that were relatable. Well, think about that. This is why I think the sour grape stuff is bullshit. You go back to the seventies, they were trying to make movies like star Wars all the time. Like Poseidon adventure. I was just going to say towering inferno. A ton of famous in tower inferno. That's another one. But in 76, I remember I'm old enough to remember when they, when they did this and made a big deal, but the King Kong movie was basically a star Wars a year before where it's like, here's a huge movie.

here's Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges. Yeah. And we're going to blow this up. And that's a popcorn movie from 1933. And this is, we're going to make this a giant deal. And I, I feel like jaw, if you're going to blame a movie, I would blame jaws before star Wars. Cause I think jaws fucked everybody up. I just think that what happened in the seventies is not replicable. And Pete, the, the guys who were literally 28 years old and at the

absolute pinnacle of both the artistry and the box office in movies. There's no... It hasn't happened since and it won't happen again. It's like punk rock on the Lower East Side. It's not replicable. I was looking at this 1976, the highest grossing movies of that year, and it's a really interesting kind of mix of what we're talking about here because Rocky's number one, of course.

But then a movie called To Fly, a documentary that was an IMAX movie, is number two. Then A Star is Born, King Kong, Silver Streak, All the President's Men, The Omen, The Enforcer, and Midway.

Wow. And then number 10 is the bad news bears, which appealed to kids. So like, I think that that shows you that the, the cool new Hollywood seventies is still happening and still powerful, but also like King Kong and silver streak and bad news bears are in there. And those are movies that are appealing to broad audiences that are trying to bring in as many people as possible. There's the other thing. I don't think Hollywood really mastered the kids thing because like when I was a kid,

The syndicated shows that we all watch were like Brady Bunch, Gilligan's Island, The Batman. I used to love The Batman show. Those were shows that didn't really do that well on TV. Right. And then they would have the second shelf life on TV.

and they kind of became a thing that way. Yeah, for sure. I'm sure we all watched them on Nick at Night. Yeah, Hollywood didn't understand. I don't really feel like Hollywood understood kids were such big business for them until 77. It's why this movie couldn't get off the ground at first because they said that this is a movie for kids and the only place that does those movies is Disney. Disney was the only studio that made movies for kids. 40 theaters initially, right? Yeah.

But now they understand. But in the 80s, they began to understand because you saw big, huge movies for kids. You saw the Never Ending Story, a lot of creatures, like different stuff, like all the Dark Crystal stuff. Well, because they have the blueprint. I mean, the thing that happens is like there is no graduation out of Star Wars. Yes, most people probably leave it behind. But like what Star Wars invents is the idea that you can continue these people as customers beyond their childhoods.

Absolutely, yeah. Which is, look at the four of us sitting here talking about Star Wars as if it's like a pressing issue. You know what I mean? We are. There's a Star Wars show on right now. It's probably the best thing on TV. It's like... Right. It's still with us. Dude, I was about to cry like 30 minutes ago. I had to stop myself. I was starting to get chill bumps talking about the movie. Like, it's weird because you know what, though? I will say this, though. A lot of people listen to the stuff that we do over on The Rigorverse and it's difficult for me to sometimes...

be the actual grown up that I need to be because the nostalgia is just it's too thick like I can't wade through it right I can't wade through when I look at this when I watch this movie for this podcast I have the exact same feeling as I did I like watch Rosario Dawson acting against an invented digital screen talking to an alien about stuff and I'm just like well I have to do the work I have to finish the job

This great game that we began. I was trying to think of a nostalgia as a business for Hollywood. I think it's, it's 89.

It's when that it's right around there when they had the third indie movie. They do Batman. And they're starting to figure out. And then when we go into the 90s, Disney really starts to figure out the machine of movies and the video cassettes. And it's like we have the Lion King. The Lion King is going to come out. Elton John is going to sing the song. And it became like a almost like a blueprint.

for how to hit kids, how to make parents. And Sean knows as somebody with a little kid right now, there's a five-year window where it's like, I just want to take my kid to a movie theater for two hours and feed them popcorn and hope they don't have a meltdown. We do it every weekend. We do it every weekend. Yeah. Um, that's why Hollywood didn't get it forever. Um, I think you're right that they, they figured out the formula for sure. I think this moment right now in movies is really interesting and instructive because it is a little bit of an echo of a

past period where Star Wars is something that is familiar but new. 2001 A Space Odyssey happened. Like there was a movie that had this same visual dynamism in space. The stations kind of look similar. The special effects, it's a huge influence on the movie. But the big differentiation aside from the story between this movie and 2001 is that this movie is fast.

2001 is slow. Two hours, five minutes. But it's familiar but new. And to me, it's the same thing with what's happening in movies now. Oppenheimer, Barbie, Super Mario Brothers movie, Sinners, Minecraft movie. These are the biggest movies of the last few years. Familiar but new. Like, you've never seen a Minecraft movie. You know what that is? You're aware of it as a video game. You've never seen a movie about it. You've never seen a good movie about Super Mario Brothers. Star Wars is like, we've seen movies, plenty of movies like this before. But never quite this way. George does something. Every couple of scenes...

he gives you something cuddly. Because when you think about it, the first scene is Vader brutalizing somebody, right? Like, Vader is... He kills like a dozen people and chokes one guy out. Yeah, he kills a guy. But...

3PO. The guy was asking for it. Don't talk back to Vayner. What are you doing? R2-D2, cuddly. By the time you get to, oh, well, no, Chewbacca, big cuddly guy. You want to give him a hug. He never lets you get too far away from the fact that you're safe and you're okay watching the movie. 2001 will make you like,

re-examine life and the universe. And it's cold versus warm. Intellectual versus emotional. There's a study in contrast that made total sense. There's also the perfect framing device of saying it's a galaxy far away, but it's a long time ago. A long time ago. So it's immediately timeless because there are recognizable things about this galaxy that you recognize in your world, but you're also like, but is this...

is this like a Western? Is this like a samurai? Is this like King Arthur? Is this like all these, is it a Bible story? It feels very old, even though it's set in the future. And so you wind up kind of losing yourself in the world of pure imagination. Whereas 2001 is about human beings on earth, longing for connection with something greater than they have.

Even the scroll that begins with Star Wars. Now, I realize that that's something that he got from older film reel, Buck Rogers, serials and stuff like that. Serials, Buck Rogers type of stuff.

When I was a kid watching it, I just remember trying to read everything and feeling like something insanely important was being said. Yes. Something really super important is being said. The original Roach Bomb. You're reading it and you're going, should the NBA playoffs do this? You're reading it and you're going, okay, Princess Leia. And then you're trying to, and even that, there's this majesty and this wonder to it.

And I know that it wasn't new, but it felt... No, you're studying Bible scripture. It's called The Scroll. It's like you've unfurled something that Moses read. It's purposefully playing on that feeling. It's starting in the middle. It's episode four. You're like, how did I miss the first three? What happened? You're like, immediately, the urgency of watching is instantaneous. We had Doc Legacy and Influence. I would say this was the first movie to become a worldwide pop culture phenomenon.

I don't know if anyone ever put all the pieces together. You're talking merchandising. Or worldwide. How did the movies play in simultaneous release? There was no sequel to Gone with the Wind. There was no... There was a sequel novel. I think it's called Lincoln. Lincoln.

Two immediate sequels plus all the movies they made. Novels, comics, video games, amusement parks, merch, everything. Multiple TV series in the last 10 years. It's moved with the culture wherever it is. It's like, we're doing streaming now. Okay, here's some streaming. Lucas became, if not the most successful film producer ever. He's in the top four. Harrison Ford comes out of this movie. But then we talk about influence.

I think this movie has to, we have to give it credit for this, the repeatable blockbuster.

You can't say Godfather, even though there were two Godfathers. It's the franchise. It means franchise. I think the only thing that comes to mind... Nobody had done this before. I think James Bond is on this movie's corner in that respect. I think Bond did this. It's different because they kept getting recasts and they're not serialized stories. So there are characters that repeat, but the story doesn't feel like it's woven together. But the idea of let's go to the new Bond...

had existed for years before this. But you could watch... You didn't have to see the last one to know... You could watch Russia with Love without having seen it. Correct. Lucasfilm, all the stuff he created in the 70s, which was cutting edge. Well, Industrial Lights and Magic. ILM. I have a lot on that if you want to talk about ILM. The most interesting thing to me about this movie is those guys. I think we should do that in Half-Fast. Great bet on yourself story. We covered.

May the force be with you. Just as a concept, which we talked about. The evil empire. This became the Yankees for us in Boston almost immediately. But the whole concept of an evil side. There was no reference. In Boston, it was the Yankees? Oh, yeah. It wasn't integration? I knew I was going to walk into that. For some of us, it was June 3rd. Trying to have a nice moment. Trying to have a nice moment.

The Squirrel, The Dark Side of the Force. The Dark Side of the Force, yeah. Harrison Ford. All the directors that this movie influenced. J.J. Abrams, Cameron, Fincher, Peter Jackson, Chris Nolan, Ridley Scott, John Lasseter, who's not a director, but a creator. Michael Bay. Michael Bay. Our guy. Yeah. What else for influence? You just go big-ass picture. Ugh.

I mean, just the technique of world building, which has now become world basically how you get a meeting in Hollywood is like, it's not just this. There's so much more. You know what I mean? There's so many more ways to go. I would add Peter Jackson to your Star Wars influences and the way he made the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I just think, yeah, it's become now the currency of Hollywood is to go in and say, there's so many different stories we can tell with this main story. I mean, I think there is some fatigue with that because people feel like they're not getting a complete statement. And maybe the success of Barbie and Oppenheimer suggests people are pretty satisfied with one story. Sinners. But they're already asking those guys, what about a prequel? They're peppering them on the red carpet about that. We'll see with Cougs.

I'm keeping the faith with Kukla. I want to send a sequel. Why not? Let's take it to the 90s. Can we go prequel and then sequel? Can we go to Chicago with Smoke and Stack? Can we go to Boston in the 70s? Why? Why?

Why he throwed him out the oops? I don't understand. Why do I have to get dunked on? Obviously, Jon Favreau, obviously Dave Filoni, those guys are definitely fruit off Lucas's tree. But you know, this movie also revived...

The David Lynch Dune movie gets made because of Star Wars. And Dino De Laurentiis, who was maybe going to be a part of Star Wars, doesn't get on Star Wars, and so he doesn't get on Star Wars. He failed on King Kong, so he's like, I gotta get Dune to go, and then he gets it to go, and it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It influenced everything, but it's not...

There's nothing like it. I mean, there's really... Is this the number one? This movie influenced the most things of all the movies we've ever talked about? I think there's a strong case that it's the most significant piece of popular culture since like Elvis Presley on Ed Sullivan. You know what I mean? Like there's just these titanic seismic moments where you can feel the whole... It's what Chris is saying about Michael Jackson. You can feel everything kind of shifting. So it's ahead of 8mm. 8mm.

Think about how much we talked about Pulp Fiction's influence. Yeah. Was that like five years? Ultimately, people love Pulp Fiction. It's like a half a decade. But they were making movies like Pulp Fiction for about five years, and people were listening to music like the music on the soundtrack for about five... I'm not even trying to be disrespectful. It's like one of my favorite movies. This thing is now five decades of having kind of...

everything in a headlock. With no sense whatsoever that it's slowing down. I think that's the crazy part. This is what I will say is changing. Because I thought about this a lot before we got on here. So...

When we talk about the dead period in Star Wars, we're talking about a point to where there's not a lot coming out. And like, we're talking to class about the books that we're reading. Now there's still all kinds of stuff. There's still toys and there are conventions and there are all of that stuff. But if you want to watch Star Wars stuff on TV and movies, you have to watch the old stuff. Now there is something that's happening that's interesting. We're starting to wonder if we're running out of stories.

That is new for Star Wars. We're having... I'm not saying that... I'm saying that whatever they put out, we are going to watch and new people are being turned on to it. But there is something that's happening right now to where we're relitigating this exact same time that this movie is set in. There's a show that's set right now in this same time. It's telling the story in a completely different way. You want to laugh. But we're starting to wonder how much Star Wars we need, which...

Well, because everybody's so afraid to push the ball forward because then you're on your own. If you want to just play in the sandbox of like, oh, we already know canon-wise and timeline-wise what's happening leading up to A New Hope, you can do that. The fans have captured the lore. But so much so that one of the only Star Wars related things I watched that wasn't this movie before I watched this movie was just the last 15 minutes of Rogue One, which is a movie that I have always liked and I think is a cool movie, but

What's most compelling to me about it is the last five minutes when Darth Vader shows up. And he is the Darth Vader that you saw in your mind's eye when you were five years old, where you were like, this is the baddest killing machine that ever lived. He actually, to me, looks even cooler. He's way cooler. But the thing that is interesting to me about that is that when that movie ends, it literally ends all the way up to the last second before Star Wars begins.

for A New Hope starts. Goes right up to it. Like that's how much we have exploited the material that we made a whole movie about every little thing that happened right before this movie that we're talking about on Podstars. And now we're making a two season TV show about every moment that goes up into that movie. Into that movie. When Solo came out, this was the first time that I was like, there are limits. I like Solo.

But here's the thing about Solo. And what's the actor's name again? Alden Ehrenreich. Okay. He's good. Yeah. That movie changed his career to me because he was on his way up. Everyone loved him. He had this personality. And then somebody asked him to be Han Solo. Somebody asked him to be Harrison Ford in the most perfect role of all time. And I don't give a fuck who you get. You can't do it.

You can't do it. So there is a part of Star Wars that every Star Wars fan has to come to terms with that cannot be done like the way it was done in the past. And I think people are having a hard time coming to terms with that. It would be funny if, like, White Lotus...

the Star Wars strategy and like, we're doing an Armand prequel. She's like, ripping through, we're going to follow, what was the family that lost, that dad lost the money? The Ratliffs? Ratliffs. It's a Ratliffs. It's a Duke UNC. For four seasons. Let's take one more break and there's more George Lucas stuff. Just a quick backstory. Lucas wants to do a Flash Gordon type thing. He starts working on a treatment in 73, called it The Star Wars.

He wanted romance and adventure and fun and space and started showing it to people and nobody was supportive. And they were like, why the fuck are you doing this? Why don't you make some real movies? And people are just shitting on him. And then 20th century Fox finally liked it. They wanted to be in business with Lucas, give him 150 grand American graffiti crushes. They're like, here's 500. He does the sequels merch thing. Um,

He bets on himself and wins to the point that no studio ever does this again to this degree where they're just like, yeah, take it. It never happens again. It's a one and only. This was the only time. The only one. I mean, there's been some close ones, even Kugler recently with Sinners where you can get it back in 25 years. Nobody was ever like, yeah, yeah, it sounds great. Take it. Well.

I mean, Megalopolis did just happen. You know, like you can still pay for the movie yourself. Right. But it's very rare for someone to actually own the creative rights... Of a studio film. Of a studio movie. Immediately, basically. Immediately and in perpetuity. So he said the screenplay was...

Almost 300 pages long. Ended up, I don't know if you want to go into how we took Revenge of the Jedi and ended up moving stuff around and saving stuff for later. Yeah. They filmed it in Tunisia in England.

He did ILM. This is where you could talk about ILM if you want. He created basically a company to do all the special effects that he also owned. If he hadn't signed with Fox to make this movie, I don't know if it would have happened because Fox had just closed their special effects department. So there was no one to do the special effects for the movie. Do we have special effects? Maybe we just never have them. Maybe not in the form that we have them now. Right. Because he brings together this group of people.

John Dykstra, Dennis Mirren, Phil Tippett, Joe Johnston, like guys who go on to be some of the most important movie makers in the next 50 years. And all of these guys move into this warehouse in California and he's off in England making this movie and they're figuring out how to make the things that are the indelible images that we still see from the movie that still look good. The opening image of this movie with the spaceship flying and then the star cruiser overhead is

There's an incredible documentary series called Light and Magic on Disney+. If you are even one-tenth of a movie nerd and interested in how they do these things, you have to watch this series because the first two episodes walks you through specifically how they developed the technology. All these guys in this warehouse that made all this stuff possible. The motion cameras that they invented, the way that Phil Tippett is creating evolving animation styles. All that shit that they did is so cool. It's dorky.

It's no doubt dorky, but it changed movies because ILM eventually becomes the place that evolves digital animation and computer generated animation that takes us to where we are now in movies. Some of that is for the worse, in my opinion. But what they were doing with practical filmmaking effects, you mentioned the Ten Commandments. They literally get VistaVision film. The last time a U.S. film had been shot on VistaVision is the Ten Commandments. And they're like, we're going to shoot these models that we built.

on this ancient film stock. So the Death Star looks like a moon. So this movie looks amazing and wide and grand and beautiful. So just like really ingenious young guys who have nothing else going on in their lives but trying to come up with cool ways to make this movie that is out of George's head. There's a shot. And then Floyd Gondola comes in and he's like, guys, I don't see it. That's right. I think the future's video. I think that's like the ones right here. Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer come in and say, hey, why don't we hose her down a little bit? Yeah.

There's a shot when Millennium Falcon's first flying towards the end of the movie and they're about to land at the Rebel base and there's the red planet and then it comes around that red planet to be able to see the Rebel base planet.

And I still, to this day, I'm just like, that is outer space, right? I can't get my mind around the fact that guys made that. Like, it looks like a spaceship traveling in outer space to me. Well, and also how fucking cool it was in 1977. That's what I think. But that's why the movie hit like it did, because people were just like, I can't believe they did all this shit. That's why David's going four times in two weeks. Back to Sean's point about the first shot. You see the first shot.

The Rebel Cruiser is trying to outrun the Star Destroyer. I thought to myself watching it back, you guys must have lost your fucking minds. My mom said that. You must have lost your shit. The first ship goes by and you're like, cool. And then the fucking Destroyer comes from the top of the screen over the audience. And she was like, everybody in the theater just gasped. Because even the depiction of a space battle...

when the laser is coming and then it kind of dissipates, there's not really very much sound. They invented the way space battles are supposed to look. They had to invent that

From scratch. We never went to the moon. That was all made up by the government. They shot that in Burbank. We don't know what space is even like at this point. They had to invent what space travel looked like out of nowhere. Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica, all those shows are happening and Star Wars just seemed like it was crushing it. Was Galactica before Star Wars or after? It was right after. Dykstra goes to work on

Battlestar Galactica right afterwards. But he said something really cool that I hadn't really thought about, which is that in this shot that we're talking about where the destroyer goes overhead, he's like, the entire ship during the whole shot is in focus. You don't realize how hard it is to do that. There's never a moment where in the foreground or the background of the image, nothing is blurry, nothing is shadowy.

in space that you can see every detail of that ship. And because all of those models are handmade, they made all of these doors and widgets and windows on the ships handmade and to scale. So it seems like this is something that was built by people. It felt like a real thing. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. You can see that again at the last battle. Absolutely. When they're flying over the surface of the Death Star and it's like, you can see every nook and cranny and you're like, oh my God. Guys, George Lucas underrated? There is a case. I mean, for real. But when,

When you're looking at the Star Destroyer or the Death Star, you're wondering, I wonder what that does. I wonder what that does. I wonder what these things are. Is that a satellite? What's happening here? And those are the things that spawned decades and decades and generations of wonder and curiosity. Well, Fox wasn't impressed.

They gave the movie very little marketing support. Did some licensed t-shirts and a couple posters, which are now worth like insane amounts of money. Like insane. Like millions? You go on eBay. No, they're like $80,000, $90,000. You think your former classmate David is sitting pretty with all of his merch from back in the day? It's impossible. The lunchboxes.

anything like those toys. If you have the, the IOU box that you never actually cashed in or whatever that thing was like, that's the, everything's worth. Um, anyway, they, Lucas wanted it on Memorial day weekend and everybody was like, that's bullshit. We don't, it's a summer movie. We don't do Memorial day weekend. We don't do stuff in may. And Lucas was like, no, no, we get word of mouth for kids again, George Lucas. Um, so they do may 25th.

They pair it with a movie called The Other Side of Midnight starring Susan Sarandon based on a Sidney Sheldon novel. Sean, I don't know if you've letterboxed that one. Haven't seen it. Okay. I do love Susan Sarandon. Next week on the rewatch. Pair it together. Yeah, it's a one for us. They pair it together and that movie gets dumped in a week and the rest is history. This is one of my favorite anecdotes. Lucas and Spielberg, who are buddies...

And they're arguing about whose movie is going to do better, Close Encounters or Star Wars. And Lucas says, your movie is definitely going to do better. I'll give you 2.5% of the profit on my film. You give me. We'll trade. So we'll root for each other's film. And Spielberg accepted because he thought Lucas was going to have a bigger movie.

And Spielberg ended up with 2.5% of Star Wars. Pretty good. Fucking Spielberg, man. I gotta tell you, man. If I was Lucas, I'd go back to Spielberg and be like, look, man. We didn't pay for that. I don't remember doing that. Lucas was so sure the movie was going to flop that he went on vacation with a bunch of people, including Spielberg. And the movie's taking off and they're in Hawaii. And they come up with Raiders of the Lost Ark on the vacation. So he's just winning...

I don't think anyone's ever winning more over the span of a month than George Lucas. Do you remember pre-release what the energy around the movie was? No. No memory whatsoever. I don't remember until after it came out and the kids in class were starting to talk about it. Their lives had changed because of it. Yeah. Like, we're going Saturday and then we're going Sunday. When you look at the critical response, it's such a huge spectrum response.

where it's like, you know, some of the high-end places are just like, this is empty, there's no characters, blah, blah, blah. Then there's a lot of people who are like, this is definitely going to change the trajectory of culture. I'm sure you have the Ebert quote. Yeah, Raj was a fan. Harrison Ford, Borderline Hottest Take, is this his greatest role? I mean, he was Indiana Jones. This is the argument. Is there a better movie role than this? I went to a bar mitzvah one time where there were two tables. It was a movie-themed bar mitzvah.

And at one table, there was this guy that was Harrison Ford and he was Indiana Jones. And another table, there was this guy and he was Han Solo. That moment, I was trying to think to myself. Is this a recent bar mitzvah? I was thinking to myself, is Harrison Ford?

Han Solo or Indiana Jones? Like what jersey is he in? What's his Hall of Fame? I have the sort of the answer. My answer for this is I think Indiana Jones is his more iconic role, but I think he wins Star Wars A New Hope.

Like, I think that... You're stepping in the last category? I'm just saying. I think... Not even the correct answer to that question. Without Harrison Ford, this movie actually doesn't work on a total level. But in my mind, he is Indiana Jones. I've thought about it for such a long time. Indiana is more important for him. Probably. I think it's his most enduring role. Mm-hmm.

We haven't seen the legacy of Red Hulk yet, though. So we can't actually answer that question. Don't step on Thunderbolts, man. I love Han Solo. I think he's Han Solo. It's such a great character. Every moment, he's the coolest guy. I love Indiana Jones so much. I think he's Han Solo. But he gets to cook in this. He gets to just come in and have fun and flirt and have the best lines. He's in every frame almost of Indiana Jones. It's true.

I mean, look, Indiana Jones is probably his most enduring role. It is. But for some reason, when I think of that character, when I think of him as a guy, I think Han Solo. I would go Han Solo one, Indy two, regarding Henry three, where he had to get shot in the head to learn how to be a good guy.

We'll be doing that on the rewatchables at some point. I love that movie. You know what that movie is, by the way? The first screenplay ever authored by J.J. Abrams. Is that true? Known as Jeffrey Abrams. He must have been a fucking child. Yes. Directed by Mike Nichols. You didn't give your take on Indiana versus...

I think Indiana Jones is the one. I think the way to measure this will be when he dies. And I would imagine that the obituary is already written. The New York Times will say, you know, Harrison Ford best remembered for his roles in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars. Anchorman 2. And 42. Working Girl. And Clear and Present Danger. And, you know, I.

I guess I'll say Indiana Jones. I like the Star Wars movie more. What did you say? You said... It's Indy is what he's most known for. But for you, it's Han Solo? I think Han Solo is the most important part of this movie to me. Who else in the history of recent history movies last 50 years could have been as good as Han Solo that we have? Honestly, you have to be... To me, when I watch him in this movie, I'm like, this is like if Brad Pitt and George Clooney were the same guy.

It's like, it's got the ineffable cool and did like that kind of remove, but also like can make fun of himself and seems like a joker. And it's, it's so hard to put that together. There's, there's a Denzel case.

He's a little edgier. He's like a little closer to training. Now you got me thinking about Denzel when he asks for the money from ladies because I'm leaving with something. There's a Denzel case is all I'm saying because it's a charisma role. It's a charisma. I'll steal your girl. I'll steal your money. I think the most realistic one is if it was a couple of years later, I think Kurt Russell, if you put Kurt Russell on this part, that's like that movie works. He's basically Snake Puskin as not bad. Because here's the thing.

Han has to be dashing, but not too pretty. Because he has to look a little rough around the edges. He has to be an asshole, but he's got to be lovable. He's got to be somebody that like a face that you can kind of forget.

Because he's got to get past imperial technology. Well, Mallory would be furious right now because she thinks Harrison Ford walks on water and is the most handsome man who ever lived. But in Witness, though. So that's a couple years after. He got better as he got older. Music by John Williams. You guys might have heard of him. He blacked out here. Yeah.

he grabs the belt in this movie. He grabs the belt and he has never relinquished the belt. He has been the goat. Can you imagine just being like, he's like, that shit works.

There's an argument to be made, and it's just artistically, that he is the most successful person to come out of the movie, artistically. Well, we've talked about whether he was the Joe Montagnon searching for Bobby Fischer. He's better at this than anything you've ever been at. Like, is he the number one? He's better at his job than anyone's ever been at a movie job. He's the greatest film composer of all time. I actually don't think it's the biggest. Hamer Kaminsky?

Kaminsky as the cinematographer? I have a couple of guys above Janusz. I just wanted to plug Janusz. I think there's obviously tons and tons of great film composers. Right now, a big reason why Sinners is so great is because Ludwig and Kugler's partnership. It's very similar to what

John Williams and Spielberg have. There's tons of great people who do this. But John Williams, as recently as five years ago, was still writing incredible scores. And getting nominated. And writing great scores for Star Wars. He's still iterating on this music and making it sound great in new material. And he's in his 90s. He's just writing and now typing, banging the keyboards on a piano that's just on a pile of cash. I'm thinking...

It's a piano. He's got a chair. It's like all in $100 bills, and he's just rocking in the hundreds doing this. You know how Harrison has the... I would say that not very many actors have that to that level. Are you Indiana Jones or Han Solo? John Williams has that. Is it this? Is it Indiana? E.T.? Is it E.T.? Is it Superman? Yeah. Jurassic Park. Ridiculously recognizable. You...

I would say that it's Star Wars Eddie Murphy's Axel Foley shut up that's Walter Beyer man I'm trying to think of like if you just associate one thing with oh you're talking about what music who is Eddie Murphy yeah what's Denzel what music

No, I'm talking about associating somebody with one. You're talking about all these different things. What is John Williams' one identifiable thing? I'm saying, what are some other ones where it's instantaneously? Because for John Williams, I honestly think of Jaws before Star Wars. I actually forgot about Jaws for a while. I think Jaws has to be the number one for him.

It's probably the most famous theme, but I think... Nah. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe. It's... We're picking from the most iconic movies of our lives. I know, but think about the fact that everyone is so memorable. Now, Donner Superman is not...

as big of a movie as the rest of these movies. It's a pretty big fucking movie, but it's not. But the theme from the movie is as enduring or even more enduring than the movie itself. He also just has 10 movies that are not as big as these where he just absolutely cooked. Empire of the Sun is a gorgeous movie. It'd be funny if you asked John Williams, what do you think the number of movies? Yeah, he's like, War Horse. Secretariat. Yeah.

One other thing I want to talk about before we get to the Oscars and all that stuff. We talked about Lucas's imagination with things. And you really, I think one of the reasons this movie was so cool the first time you saw it in the theater was because there's just all these different creatures. Like in the seventies, we had the Muppet show, right? And there were the two guys in the balcony and then there were different things. And we knew all those people and we had like Sesame street and Lucas, like,

basically quintuples down on all these things. Jim Henson is a great comp though. We were talking about Stephen King. Jim Henson is one of those guys who's like, I have this world in my head and I'm going to keep trying to get it out as much as I possibly can over the course of my life. He doesn't half-ass it. It's like, okay, we have

the evil sand people. And there's, but then when we get to the bar and every single person in the bar looks different than the next person, there's that one guy that comes in and it seems like he's got like balls on his chin. And there's another guy with a big pig on his nose. Yeah. You're just going around. It's like, where the fuck are we? So to me, the secret MVP of the entire movie is Ralph McQuarrie. Who's the illustrator who Lucas told all of his ideas to for all these characters and McQuarrie draws all of them.

before storyboards, before they totally know what all the financing is. These are the proofs of concept that they share with everybody to say, this is what the characters in the worlds will look like. And if you look at the original Ralph McQuarrie sketches of C-3PO and R2-D2, of all those characters in the cantina, of the whole world, it's so close to what the movie looks like. So close. And that's why when people are like, ah, George Lucas, his dialogue is terrible, his direction can be stilted at times. People can be really critical of him,

All that stuff comes out of his head and from Macquarie's pen. And that to me is like the ultimate case for why he is so, so, so, so, so critical to this, this whole machine. He won five Oscars and got nominated for best film, but did not win. Yeah. Do you know, do you want to talk about what was nominated that year? Yeah, go do it. Well, Close Encounters is also nominated.

No, Close Encounters is not nominated, but Spielberg is nominated and doesn't win. I believe it's... Is it Julia? The Turning Point? Annie Hall, which wins that year? And... What else? What is the other one? The Goodbye Girl. Oh, right. So, The Goodbye Girl, Turning Point, and Julia...

Show of hands, how many of you have seen all three of those? I've seen Julia. I haven't seen all three. I saw The Goodbye Girl. I don't know what Turning Point even is. What is that? It's a Herbert Roth movie about LA. I've never seen that. What's that? I think the Annie Hall thing, I've always thought it was nuts even before the stuff that happened with Woody because then Titanic, 20 years later, basically, everyone's like, yeah, Titanic, that should win. But how does Star Wars not win?

I don't think it was taken that seriously. Obviously. Maybe not, yeah. It's still hard for movies like, to be honest with you, it's hard for movies like Star Wars to win the top award. I wonder if you could even sense any of the burgeoning backlash, rejection of Star Wars in the embrace of Annie Hall that year.

I mean, Annie Hall is a quintessentially 70s product. It is. I mean, Annie Hall is a revolutionary movie in its own way. I mean, the way that the movie is made and the way that the story is told is remarkable. And so to me, it's not like a

a safe pick per se over a movie like Star Wars. It's just weird that Star Wars didn't win. If Julia won, you'd be like, nah, come on. That would be a classic travesty. But this movie is nominated for picture, director, supporting actor, screenplay, and then all of the tech categories. And then it wins all the tech categories. Chewbacca.

Alec Guinness. Oh, okay. Yeah. I knew that and it jumped right out of my mind. Which is a classic, like, we got the celebrated old guy and he got a look in the big movie. Yes, exactly. He's the guy that kind of, in a film with a bunch of newcomers and kind of new faces, was like, okay, this is a serious movie. Yes, yes. A lot of conflicting reports on how pumped he was about this movie. Sounds like he was a really good co-worker, but was like, why don't you kill me? I really don't want to do this anymore. Like, they gave him some points. Yeah.

to kind of keep him happy. Pretty, pretty. It must be nice for the Guinness estate to have a couple of points on Star Wars. It ended up being, you know, this guy won an Oscar and was one of the more famous actors of the 20th century. And this ended up becoming the thing that outlived him. Yeah. And I mean, he's in Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia. You know what I mean? Like he's in some of the biggest movies of all time. People are like, hey, Obi-Wan! Yeah. There you are. Greatest Jedi of all time. Wearing a rug. Yeah.

We're in a rug. Yeah. We're in a rug. Yeah. It's time to finally say it. I was like that. As you know, I spot the toupees out of nowhere. It's like that rug doesn't seem. You think you would have gone to Turkey? Oh, for sure. Or.

Zeroing medical in Beverly Hills. No free ads. Five Oscars. Score, sound, visual effects, special achievement, scientific and engineering, which I don't even, is that even an Oscar anymore? No, definitely not. 11 million dollar budget, ultimately made, who knows, 775 million. It seems like it's higher. It initially grossed 410 million worldwide and surpassed Jaws to become the highest grossing movie ever. And then E.T. came out.

It was reissued so many times that they had to start changing titles and doing special editions and all that stuff. If you do the inflation-adjusted list, which I know Sean is very passionate about, Gone with the Wind is still number one and Star Wars second. Chris's two favorite movies of all time. Roger Ebert. Are you nervous? No, not really. Four stars. Yeah.

Every once in a while, I have what I think of as an out-of-the-body experience at a movie. Raj! I simply mean that my imagination has forgotten it is actually present in a movie theater and thinks it's up there on the screen. In a curious sense, the events in the movie seem real, and I seem to be a part of them. And then he just raves and raves and raves about how fucking cool Star Wars is. Me too. Raj. Raj. I knew he'd come through. Me too. Um...

I feel like we should take this to a part two. I was going to say, we're 95 minutes in. Is this the longest intro of any rewatchables? No, I think Boogie Nights was seven hours. We're going to take this to a part two. Thanks to Craig Horlbeck and Jack Sanders. We will see you for part two. We'll see you for part two.