The great serial challenge

[Tabonga | 2,533]

Both Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark were heavily influenced by the old cliffhanger movie serials.  (Star Wars also owed a great deal to the Japanese classic The Hidden Fortress.)  If you are into serials at all I suggest you check out Flesh Gordon - it started out as a porno film that paid homage to the old science fiction serials and they had so much fun that they cut out the most adult stuff and made a pretty darn good pastiche that used the serial tropes to great effect.  Not a great movie but pretty amusing if your mind runs to such things.

 

Edited February 21, 2021 by Tabonga

[Dr. Morbis | 2,121]

10 minutes ago, Tabonga said:

 (Star Wars also owed a great deal to the Japanese classic The Hidden Fortress.)

And Raiders owes a huge debt to "Secret of the Incas" starring Charlton Heston.  Seriously, Indiana Jones is like Harry Steele in pretty much every aspect other than his name...

[Reed Rothchild | 9,965]

[Hammerfestus | 4,107]

Raiders.  If Jedis are so awesome how come there’s only like 1 of them?  

[BortLicensePlate | 658]

Hey you leave Canada out of this 

[Tanooki | 5,137]

Indiana Jones, definitely.  It's the far better written, more grounded (earth vs space alien stuff) and just well shot stuff.  Keep in mind one is a campy wonky space opera of sorts, the other is straight up adventure writing at its best.  There is some honest level of cheese and humor, but it's with intent.  That which you find in star wars was mostly a mix of questionable writing and acting.  Star Wars is excellent too, but while it has a massively larger and more thought out lore and layers of bs built up over the decades, Indy is just more concise and refined compared so it's hard to actually compare them.

 

It personally has bothered me since I guess the late 80s/earlier 90s that Star Wars gets its ass kissed so much more than Indiana Jones in lucasarts/film/games circles.  Indy gets crapped on when so much could be done at such an excellent level from books, games, comics, tv shows.  Lucas just kind of gave it this rude second fiddle status and it irked me...still does.  Shame it doesn't get a much bigger presence as i was hoping Disney would correct that oversight since they love to milk stuff to death.  Even moderately so it would be great, much like the era of those great Young Indiana Jones TV shows(then movies) and the games we used to get in the 90s too.  I miss that effort.

[Tabonga | 2,533]

@tanooki

Not pulling the age card here but you have to take into account the times the two films were released and how much of a leap they were over previous films.There were 3 films* in that era that I consider fairly iconic - these 2 and Alien.  They were effects laden films that pushed the envelope on that aspect of films.  I vividly remember going to each of them a while after they opened (I hate crowds and waited until the furor had subsided for them) and basically being blown away by each of them. 

Star Wars in particular came out at a time when the country was basically in the doldrums.  This movie made such a large impact not only for the special effects extravaganza it was but more so for the story that involved good versus evil (with a clear delineation between the two) - and everyone I knew walked out just feeling really good - something most people needed since the country was still in the doldrums lingering from Vietnam and the terrible shock to the collective psyche it delivered.   

I can make similar arguments for Indiana Jones and Alien - but I think Star Wars  had a greater impact simply because of when it was made and what it was. 

*That's not to say there weren't other great films in that period - just that for  various reasons they did not have the impact those 3 did.

[Tanooki | 5,137]

@TabongaI get that, and well I'm as old as that movie so I saw it in the 80s after Jedi was out, in the period basically when no one figured there would be an episode 1-3 because Lucas was just weird and started with 4.  I caught 2 of the 3 Indy's the same way too, TV run movies with cuts and commercials, or cable network paid where it was full original.  The first 3 movies I ever saw in the theater first was the Pinocchio re-release by Disney, the other two were serious...Indy and Red October.  I get the impact angle, kind of, I mean I know what was going on in the 70s and it was one that lifted people, I get that.  But I guess having seen 5 of the 6 movies off the big screen, I can maybe get a little more objective since I didn't have a stronger attachment to either until the 90s.  And trust me, it's close, damn did I ever get sucked into X-Wing and TIE Fighter games on DOS PC(then the 3D re-do for XP.)  Best game games STILL for the franchise, and overall space shooter nipping at if not inching out Wing Commander.  Indy, well that's Fate of Atlantis, the 4th movie we should have had back in that day (not that Crystal Skull is crap, it's not, despite posers knocking it.)  I think they both have equally solid impacts, just different types.

[fox | 1,775]

Pretty much a love letter to Western serials.  Each episode usually included a classic style cliffhanger where the wagon goes over the cliff, come back from commercial and they show you a different angle that they jumped out right before it went over or something to that effect.

While it clearly had one foot in the past, it had one in the future.  Each episode was largely stand alone, but several mythology episodes deal with John Blthyes Gang and the mysterious orb, in ways similar to later shows like X Files, Lost, and well pretty much every modern show does.

Plus you got to love Bruce Campbell and that theme song (so good they recycled it for the olympics)