BEFORE: It's Star Wars Day again, and if you have to ask why it's today, then you just don't get it. I've got a heavy heart after hearing the news about the direction the franchise is heading in. You might think I'd be super-stoked about the upcoming Episode Seven - geez, at one point it looked like the perfect way to end this crazy movie-watching process, but now I just don't know. I've been a consumer of all things Star Wars since I was 9 years old - t-shirts, bedsheets, action figures, comic books, cookie jars, autographs and most recently, collectible flash-drives. But let's focus on books for a second.
There's this thing called the "Expanded Universe" - fiction written by other authors, with the consent of Lucasfilm (that bit is important) that takes place before, after, and occasionally even during, the action you see in the movies. How did the Jedi order start, thousands of years ago? How did Boba Fett become such a bad-ass bounty hunter? What did Luke Skywalker do after "Return of the Jedi" to get the Jedi Order going again? Did Han and Leia ever settle down and raise younglings? All of these questions and more have been explored by numerous authors in books and comics, and I've bought them all, or as many as I could. I may be outside the desired demographic now, but I've got disposable income.
Now word comes out from the companies involved that from this point on, the movie stories and the book stories will work together in synergistic fashion. (Funny, I thought that was the way they were working before...) When you read between the lines, this means that instead of cherry-picking the best story elements from the Expanded Universe, they're choosing to wipe the slate clean and make sure that the new E.U. is what the new caretakers want it to be - so many of the stories I bought will now no longer have happened. They're going the way of Spider-Man's marriage and the old Star Trek universe.
To me, this is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A lot of creative people worked hard on those stories, and a lot of fans worked hard to earn the money to buy them. Look, it's a big universe - it's even fictional, so it's as big as you want it to be. And if you didn't want people playing in your sandbox, you should never have given them pails and shovels. Not only does it show a lack of respect, but it makes it seem like there's no one properly minding the store. Why couldn't the new films work around the continuity that's already been established? For the same reason that "Man of Steel" chose to ignore "Superman III", I suppose - but that film sucked, and the Star Wars E.U. is really good!
For further information, I refer you to track #11 on Patton Oswalt's comedy CD "Werewolves and Lollipops", which is titled "At Midnight, I Will Kill George Lucas With a Shovel". Yes, I know Lucas sold his franchise to Disney, so just replace his name with "J.J. Abrams" and all the times Patton says "prequels" to "Episode 7", and you'll see where my head is at.
These Hitchcock films do have a bit of a "Star Wars" connection - they were filmed at Elstree Studios in London, and every SW fan should know that's where much of the original trilogy was filmed. Linking from "Easy Virtue", Ian Hunter was also in a 1930 film titled "Escape!" with Gordon Harker (last seen in "The Farmer's Wife")
THE PLOT: A spoiled heiress defies her father by running off to marry her lover. But Daddy has a few tricks up his sleeve.
AFTER: Well, it's clear now that Hitchcock started focusing on the suspense genre after he tried darn near every other possible form of storytelling. He's still in his romance phase here, and honestly the guy's got about as much right making a romantic comedy as Woody Allen had to make a sci-fi time travel film.
Actually, the Woody Allen comparison is fairly valid, because there's a fair amount of mistaken identity here, such as one might see in, say, "Broadway Danny Rose", it's about the relationships of the idle rich, as seen in films like "Alice" (and, umm, all of them), and it's set in the 1920's, like "Radio Days" and others. Gee, I wonder if Woody ever was inspired by this film, despite the fact that I can't think of two filmmakers who are more disparate.
This free-thinking flapper girl runs off to be on a cruise with her boyfriend - we don't see it, but she flies in Daddy's plane to crash near the ocean liner, which is not a recommended way to board a ship. Despite the warnings that the boyfriend is a gold-digger (that's a bit of a switch) she meets up with him anyway, leading her father to pretend to have lost his fortune in the stock market crash. (Ha! What a wacky mix-up!)
There's also a mystery man on the cruise, and he's still around after the trip is over. The Girl is forced to sell her jewelry and work in a restaurant before the ruse is uncovered, so I can't imagine why she gets so upset. Ha ha! We are still rich, and I made you get a thankless, tiring job just to teach you a lesson! Isn't it great that we can all laugh about it now? Um, no.
NITPICK POINT: The film depicts life on a cruise-ship, and yes, it's usually a few days before the passengers get their "sea legs". But when the ship leans to the right, the passengers and crew here are depicted leaning further to the right in response. (This is what they did on the original "Star Trek" when they tilted the camera to make it look like the bridge took a hit...) However, if people did this on an actual cruise ship, they would fall over. If a ship leans to the right, the correct human passenger response is to lean to the left, in order to maintain some form of balance. It's instinctual after a while.
Also starring Betty Balfour, Jean Bradin, Ferdinand von Alten.
RATING: 4 out of 10 handwritten notes
No comments:
Post a Comment