It’s amazing to think that, as Kevin Burwick of MovieWeb reports, Roger Ebert might have once seen that Disney might take over Star Wars and make it into something that would be even bigger than it had been, but obviously he was talking in hypotheticals and had no idea what would happen decades later. John Simon is the kind of guy you almost expect to see with his nose in the air as he regards the entire Star Wars franchise as ‘low-brow’ and possibly just ridiculous, but in this day and age you can imagine that social media platforms would explode as people rushed to defend Star Wars and a good number of fanboys started rattling off statistics to show why Star Wars still is and has been one of the greatest stories ever told. His words do seem a bit prophetic however, and lo and behold, decades later, George Lucas up and sells his franchise to the Disney corporation, and while the box office numbers have been going up and up, the reputation of the overall story has been going down.
Some might want to argue with this and some would no doubt agree without hesitation since the original trailer did set the bar for the movies that would come after, though whether it was set too high or not high enough is a constant debate. There are still quite a few people that aren’t as smitten with Star Wars as many people have been over the years, and John Simon is proof of this viewpoint. There was a time when Siskel and Ebert were two of the most hated critics around when it came to the movies since they would either tear apart some of the most well-liked movies or agree that those movies that weren’t all that great had some redeeming qualities. But all in all they did serve as two of the best critics that have ever taken up the position since they were entertaining to watch and listen to for a while. Whether or not a person wanted to listen to their views on certain movies was always a matter that was more personal in nature, but a lot of people did happen to listen and even model their movie viewing habits around this. Let’s be honest here, critics are not without bias. They have their favorite movies, genres, actors, and so on, and as a rule this makes them entirely fallible when it comes to judging which movies are great and which are not. This is a big reason I don’t happen to like critics and think that they have a very easy, sometimes TOO easy, job.
Oh yes, I said it. I won’t bother saying that they risk nothing and only critique because they can’t create anything, since some of those that have taken the role of a professional critic do have the skill to create something of their own. They also risk their reputation, their livelihood, and their validity as critics if they happen to put too much of their own personality into the job. It won’t happen that personal bias is seen to be completely absent in the life of a critic, at least one hundred percent of the time. One way or another just about all critics will find a way to put their own two cents in and it will come from a very personal experience that they’ve had. It’s just part of the job, and one that’s better to embrace than to reject since without it they can’t possibly do the job to begin with. So it’s a kind of Catch-22 when you really look at it, critics will be reviled or loved depending on what they say and the script will flip the moment they move on to another subject. Those critics that learn how to ignore the more negative aspects of the job are usually those that are easier to listen to since whether you like their estimation of a movie or not, they’re at least giving an honest and very forthcoming opinion of a movie that comes from their own expertise. Those critics that attempt to appease people are generally those that are the least effective in the long run.
Back in the day when Return of the Jedi was still a big thing, a lot of people likely didn’t think that Star Wars would be that big of a deal years later. And now here we are and Star Wars is one of the most well-known franchises in the world. Ebert no doubt knew what he was talking about back then but it’s more apparent now that he was able to see something in the movie that others thought was just whimsy backed up by special effects. It was kind of amusing to realize that John Simon thought that Star Wars was completely bolstered by the special effects and nothing else.
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