By Susan Wloszczyna, USA Today, Jan. 16, 2003
Quick. Name this movie: An innocent lad must save the world, while a wizened mentor gives counsel. A princess is caught in a love triangle, a world-weary warrior rises to the occasion, and a good guy is drawn to the dark side.
Meanwhile, curious being both scary and cute scoot about soaring cinemascapes that tease the eye and turbo-charge the imagination.
Sounds like Star Wars, doesn’t it? Those descriptions do indeed fit Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Leia, Han Solo and Darth Vader, the much-worshiped creations of modern-day mythmaker George Lucas, whose original three-part space opera blasted off in 1977 to rarely-been-equaled success. Nearly $1.7 billion in box office bucks for five out of six episodes can’t be wrong, right?
But for many filmgoers who were born or came of age after the first Star Wars, the answers could easily be Frodo, Gandalf, Arwen, Aragorn and Saruman.
Chances are, these moviegoers are more transfixed by 2001’s The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, the first two entries in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Says Rosie Walker, 15, of Baroda, Mich.: “Rings has more substantialness to it. You know why? The books were written before the movie. Star Wars is no longer on my bedroom wall. Lord of the Rings has won the victory. Sorry, Mr. Lucas, but it’s time to move on.”
Certainly, much of his potential audience is moving on. “This is this generation’s Star Wars,” says Paul Dergarabedian of Exhibitor Relations. “I haven’t seen such excitement since the original Star Wars. These are really amazing films. I don’t think the box office is the result of nostalgia or love of the filmmaker. Since the goods were delivered with the first film, the audience is willing to spend money to continue the journey.”
Instead of Star babies playing with Boba fett action figures, there are children of the Fellowship who eagerly seek more details in the pages of British author J.R.R. Tolkien’s works. As a result, the nearly 50-year-old tomes once more are staples of best-seller lists, and a deceased Oxford don is as hot as boy wizard Harry Potter.
Elly Brinkley, 11, of New York didn’t believe that Fellowship, with its fiendish orcs and gritty battles, would be for her. “I was afraid there would be bore. But I liked it. The Two Towers was even better.” As for Star Wars, “I’ve seen it, but I don’t really remember it.”
Yes, Towers was unceremoniously toppled last weekend by a sourball of a honeymoon comedy, Just Married, after three weeks as the nation’s No. 1 film and $283 million in ticket sales. But most box office watchers expect Towers to gross more than Fellowship’s $313 million, a rarity for a second film in a series. Even more telling, it could beat the $310.3 million collected by last year’s second Star Wars prequel, The Attack of the Clones.
It helps that filmmaker Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema decided to shoot all three movies at once so they could be released in back-to-back years. Plus, Tolkien’s tale is one continuous story, not tacked-on sequels. Momentum for the second movie also grew with the release of the Fellowship DVD, the No. 2 seller after Monsters, Inc. last year with $380 million.
The cultural force appears to be shifting from that galaxy far, far away and toward Middle-earth. Says Brandon Gray of boxofficemojo.com, “Rings is gaining viewers as Star Wars has lost them. It looks as if The Two Towers will end with about $340 million,” depending on its Oscar success.”
An online USA Today survey suggests that many longtime Jedi knights are transferring allegiances to Frodo and the gang. Even those devoted to the holy Star Wars trinity, including 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back and 1983’s Return of the Jedi, acknowledge that the less-than-stellar prequels, 1999’s The Phantom Menace and Clones, have not done the series any favors.
Says Reid Monson, 37, of Salt Lake City: “I was a boy when the original Star Wars came out. I loved it and saw it five or six times. But with each succeeding film, the interest becomes less and less. There was enough sappy teen angst and poor acting in the last episode to make one physically ill.”
Results also ran about 2-to-1 in favor of Rings when more than 700 respondents chose the final chapter they most anticipated: Jackson’s The Return of the King (due Dec. 17) or Lucas’ Episode III (not due until 2005). “I’ll see Episode III,” allows Kevin Seachrist, 35, of Camp Hill, Pa., who, like many fans, says he feels obligated to follow the series to its conclusion. But, he adds, “I’ll see Return of the King OFTEN.”
Of course, Star Wars loyalists are fierce when fending off detractors. Says David Lange, 24, of Riverview, Mich.: “The Lord of the Rings is a joke. I am a Star Wars fan and am personally sick and tired of the bad reviews and articles about the prequels. The truth is that no movie will ever compare to the story line and plot of these six movies. We will never be dethroned – especially by a movie that has a midget with furry feet as the hero.”
Others are reluctantly waving the white flag. Like a light-saber to the gut, it pains Harry Knowles to admit it. But the 31-year-old overseer of Web site Ain’t It Cool News, practically an EKG of up-to-the-minute fanboy obsessions, acknowledges that Jackson’s take on Tolkien has been more satisfying.
“Most of the film fans of my generation grew up on Star Wars and still have a special place for it,” Knowles says. “But the new Star Wars movies didn’t awe them in the way that Lord of the Rings has been hitting them. Star Wars is kind of a light and sugary confection with lots of whiz-bang. Lord of the Rings is like a fest, with real acting, writing and characters.”
It might be premature to declare Rings the winner in this war. As Jeff Springs, 32, of Frisco, Texas, points out, “Do you really expect the president ever announce a new defense strategy that will end up earning a Lord of the Rings nickname like SDI did with Star Wars?” Still, Rings wield secret weapons:
The female factor. The Star Wars cult draws its share of girls and women, but it remains a male-dominated fan base. When Fellowship came out, it initially drew a similar demographic; 48% of the audience was males under 25.
Then Fellowship topped the Oscar nominations with 13, “and all of a sudden women went,” says Robert Bucksbaum of box office trend tracker Reel Source. “it became a date-crowd movie.”
The attendance at Towers, rated PG-13 like its predecessor, now cuts across all demographics. The breakdown in its first week: teens, 38%; 20-35, 27%; 35 and older, 26%; and children, 9%. “That’s very diverse for a film like this. Even Star Wars doesn’t skew that old.”
The biggest growth area? Girls 20 and under. As New Line marketing chief Russell Schwartz says, “They discovered the actors like Viggo Mortensen (as Aragorn) are these dashing Errol Flynn types.”
Thematic timeliness. No one, not even Saruman peering into his crystal palantir, could have predicted that the Rings movies would arrive just when its basic plot of overwhelming evil vs. everyday underdogs would ring so true against a backdrop of terrorist threats and rising global conflict.
Notes Griffin Hagle, 19, of Medford, Ore.: “One thing that Rings does well is offer a clear-cut vision of war, a war in which the heroes participate unhindered by doubt over the nature of their enemy. Even those under 25 can feel the level of ambiguity in the war we’re currently trying to fight.”
Michael Drout, an English professor at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., and a Tolkien authority, says his students are responding to these themes.
“There is a feeling of being swept up by events you have no control over,” Drout says. “The key moment in the first film for them is when Frodo says, ‘I wish it hadn’t happened in my time,’ and Gandalf responds, ‘Of course you do. But you have no choice.’”
The fantasy focus. Star Wars, a throwback to Saturday-matinee serials like Flash Gordon, was the perfect tonic for the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era.
But such escape vehicles don’t fly quite as high nowadays. The feeble returns for the 10th Star Trek film is one sign that sci-fi is a genre in decline. Meanwhile, the fantasy realm of Rings offers the perfect respite from everyday trauma.
“Today, clones are a reality,” Knowles says. “Fantasy is something we can’t see in our world.”
Adds Neil Randall, a Tolkien expert and an English professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, “When I feel positive, I look to the future. But when I feel negative, I look to the past. No wonder sci-fi is having a hard time. Instead of going off in a spaceship and conquering a Death Star, it’s better to think of a little person making difference in the world.”
And there should be little worry that New Line and Jackson will succumb to greed and start dreaming up new Rings chapters. Although the studio could attempt to bring The Hobbit, Tolkien’s legit prequel, to life, the tale is too mired in red tape over rights.
Assures Rings executive producer Mark Ordesky: “There are no plans for a prequel or a sequel. Our rights are concentrated in the trilogy – and the resulting films from Peter are as rich a harvest as one could hope for.”