Why did Star Wars resonate with youth audiences of the 1970s, whilst Disney’s The Black Hole failed?
[Drawing]In 1968 the Hollywood Production Code was abolished and replaced with a ratings system which lifted restrictions on sex, language, violence and adult content, and creating a new platform for a generation of young filmmakers. The code’s abolition was partly a reaction to social and cultural renegotiations1 taking place in the United States, which resulted in the studios having to readjust from an adult- to a kidult centred mass market. (Brown, n.d.) The Civil Rights Movement, free love, and the growth of alternative media left Hollywood facing a new cultural landscape, in which their traditional approaches were no longer fit for purpose.
After the success of independent hits like Easy Rider (1962, Hopper) (generated $60m from a budget of $360,000)2, and Bonnie and Clyde (BO 70m from est. production costs of $2.5 million), the major studios acknowledged the shift in audience demographics and turned to young, up and coming film students in attempts to reach audiences that “seemed to be changing and looking elsewhere for entertainment” (Telotte, n.d., p. 141). At this time, Disney’s film division had become a significant liability3 to the studio as they resisted the audience shift, continuing to produce U-rated family fare. However, these films no longer registered with young audiences as Disney increasingly “struggled to maintains its traditional audience” (Telotte, 2008, p. 142)
During the transition in to the 1970s, many of the studios began “re-focusing their attentions towards youth audiences” as shifting social and cultural attitudes contributed to what George Lucas describes as a “state of confusion” within the industry. As studios struggled to attract new audiences, Lucas recalls how this presented young filmmakers with opportunities to “make projects they ordinarily would not have been able to make” (Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy, 2004), in attempts by the studios to push boundaries and attract youth audiences. Disney, remaining true to their status as a family studio, attempted to “re-engage ‘traditional’ small-town family audience with movies thought to possess family/adventure elements” (Brown, n.d., p. 216) with films like The Million Dollar Duck (V. McEveety, 1971), but they failed to find mass audiences as youth audiences began demanding more complex cinematic output that reflected changing attitudes.
Despite their poor performances at the box office Disney remained the second most profitable studio between 1966 ($12.4m) and 1986 ($74.4m) – but the numbers mask the decline in quality and success of the film production unit, as revenue from theme parks and ancillary lines helped mask the significant liability the studio represented, maintaining only 4% of the market by the mid 70’s. Whilst Disney were trying to rediscover the “spirit of advancement and experimentation” (Telotte, 2008, p. 143) 4 missing from the previous productions, High Concept, special effects laden films were emerging as the new dominant force, as films like The Poseidon Adventure (Neame, 1972), Earthquake (Robson, 1974) and The Towering Inferno (Guillermin, 1974) topped box office charts. These films of the early 1970s were gritty, grim, and, reflective of a decade American journalist Walter Cronkite describes as “A terrible decade of great storm and violence in our history” (Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy, 2004).
In this essay, I will compare Star Wars (Lucas, 1977) and The Black Hole (Nelson, 1979), and identify the ways in which Disney failed to capitalize on the new Hollywood market, and how Star Wars helped create a new landscape in Hollywood. I will explore how the generic roots of each film, as well as key decisions regarding creative decisions at the executive levels, contributed to the relative success and failure of the two films.
At the start of the 1970s much of Hollywood was now focused upon the production of youth-orientated, High Concept, effects-drive narratives that combined some of Hollywood’s most successful traditional genres with new, emerging visual effects technology. A significant factor in the push towards High Concept effects-drive blockbuster films was the emergence of Multiplex theatres which were perfectly suited to the “‘kidult’-inflected Blockbuster aesthetic” (Brown, Hollywood Family Film) that was rapidly becoming the new paradigm for the major studios. The reduction in the number of smaller cinemas and creation of these Multiplex cinemas helped create ‘the economies of scale required to fully exploit blockbusters”, driving demand for more spectacular modes of cinema. Disney’s The Black Hole symbolises a commitment by Disney to new modes of storytelling, whom, until this point, had been “making decisions looking over their shoulder at what was done before”, but were now willing to engage in the BB market, but only on their own terms.
Following a turbulent decade in which the Disney brand shifted from the symbol of family entertainment to one that was “putting off young adults”, the studio decided to move into the blockbuster market with their own high concept, sci-fi special effects piece, The Black Hole (1979). This was new territory for Disney who had not produced a science fiction film since 1954’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Fleischer), and would require significant investment across the company. At the same time, George Lucas was completing a third draft of his The Star Wars project at 20th Century Fox and was already deep into pre-production.
Two years earlier at 20th Century Fox, George Lucas and his producer, Gary Kurtz, screened a smuggled copy of American Graffiti (73, Lucas) for then studio head Alan Ladd Jr, who was looking for the studio’s next blockbuster hit. Ladd, attuned to the desires of new audience demographics, optioned the script and gave Lucas the green light to begin production on The Star Wars. Ladd said of Lucas “I believed in him. His genius… and I recognised off American Graffiti he was a genius”, which Lucas expands, “he (Ladd) understood what talent was, he respected talent and was able to say ‘I think this guy’s talented… So Alan Ladd Jr invested in me. He did not invest in the movie” (Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy, 2004)
Ladd’s decision to invest in a combination of youth, talent and technology, despite the later area being “completely over my head5”, marks a major contrast with the approach Disney took to the production of The Black Hole. Whilst Disney did recognize a “need for a commitment to new approaches to the production”, and, after failing to secure the services of Lucas’ start-up visual effect team, ILM, began developing their own Automated Camera Effects System (ACES)6. However, the company’s commitment to new approaches to filmmaking did not extend to the cast or production teams behind the film. Rather than trusting in youth, Disney hired fifty-year-old company-man Gray Nelson (Freaky Friday, 1976) to direct the film, and in a further link to the past, lured Academy Award winning production designer and artist Peter Ellenshaw out of retirement to create matte paintings, and supervise the films visual effects. Ellenshaw, who had overseen the matte paintings and visual effects on many of Disney’s previous science fiction (Inc. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Fleischer,1954), The Swiss Family Robinson (Annakin, 1960) was given complete control over the film’s visual design, becaming the person most responsible for the films aesthetic, having painted or overseen an industry record 550 effects shots, and more than 150 mattes7.
When casting the film, Disney turned to experienced veterans, Anthony Perkins, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Forester, Yvette Mimieux, and Maximillian Schell as primary antagonist Dr. Hans Reinhardt. With an average age of over 42 years, the cast, whilst prestigious, did not evoke images of youthful exuberance or a desire to break away from the status quo that Lucas had demonstrated was a key draw for youth audiences. Lucas, on the other hand, continued his tradition of casting young talent with little to no film experience, but his casting of unknowns did not sit easy with Ladd Jr, who was very uneasy with Lucas’ decisions8. The actors’ status in the industry was not what makes this decision so fundamental to the film's success however, it is the reflected ages, desires and optimistic attitudes of the youth audiences the characters embodied - someone who looked and acted like them fighting against the ills of the world. This was, as Ladd had wanted; a film for young people, by young people.
When searching for a definition of ‘science fiction cinema’, it is almost impossible to find a definition that does not highlight, in some form, the genre’s close links to the horror genre, with Richard Hodgens going as far to argue that science fiction “means horror, distinguished from ordinary horror only by a relative lack of plausibility”. Judith Merril (SF writer and critic) adds more insight by arguing that science fiction is best understood as “speculative fiction9”, whilst British author Kingsley Amis argues that science fiction narratives are identifiable by “situations that could not arise in the world we know” (Sobchack, 1980), but are extrapolated from real life innovations and advancements in science. These definitions of the genre conform to the mode of science fiction Disney adopted for The Black Hole, a mode (Telotte, 2008, p. 144) terms “techno-science; a kind of social construct, reflecting attitudes and ideologies of the moment”. This mode of reflective filmmaking resonated with audiences during the 1950s as clear and obvious contextual links to the Cold War made the films relatable, and culturally significant. However, Disney, unwilling to take unnecessary chances, ignored the evolutions taking place in the sci-fi genre and were reluctant to deviate from approaches to Sci-fi that had worked in the 1950s.
At the time of Star Wars’ release, 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) was the most successful sci-fi film to date, generating $56 million at the US box office10, but Lucas knew that the science fiction genre was no guarantee of box office success, and instead opted for a fantasy aesthetic. By negotiating the pitfalls of the science fiction genre by placing his story within a fantasy framework, he liberates his work from the “not very inspiring” science fiction aesthetic of the 1970s, which producer Kurtz described as being “all about apocalyptic societies, death and destruction” (Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy, 2004).
Lucas’ decision to adopt a fantastical aesthetic came from a desire to “create a modern myth” (Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy, 2004) that would fill the vacuum he felt remained after the demise of the Western genre in the 1950s. Rather than drawing inspiration from science fiction of the same era as Disney had, Lucas borrowed from the dialect of Saturday morning serials like Serial Adventure Theatre, and Flash Gordon (1954-55). Lucas, whose understanding of how to best utilize nostalgia was underscored by the
success of American Graffiti, knew that depicting our future as a dystopian one would not appeal to young audiences, and would not align with the ideologies of the cultural youth movement of the 60s and 70s.
The fantasy and science fiction genres are often confused for one another as there are many similarities and overlapping themes. A primary similarity between the genres is the ‘What if…?’ scenario, a narrative device that both propels the story and fundamentally grounds the genre’s films in our reality. In Science-Fiction, the ‘What’ in the scenario represents a problem faced by society11, usually extrapolated from fears surrounding developments in science and technology. For example, James Cameron’s The Terminator (1982) arose from a recurrent dream of Cameron's in which he would see a metal skull emerging from flames – which would later become Terminator 2's opening shot – representing his latent dread over technological progress.
At the time of The Black Hole’s production, the concept of a black hole was only beginning to “trickle down from the ivory towers of Cambridge” (Ebert, 1979) to the general public, with little being understood about the phenomenon. This is pointed out by Roger Ebert in his review of the film as he points out the public’s lack of understanding of the concept, going on to say that even he does not understand the phenomenon, before offering his own perspective:
They are “intergalactic bathtub drains… that we’ll all whirl down them some day and turn up in the sewer system of the universe next door.”
This helps push the aesthetic of the film towards the horror end of the spectrum, a vision that is fully realised during the film’s climax when it is revealed the Black Hole is portal to hell. This fatal flaw in the design of the film is demonstrative of Disney’s strict adherence to the science fiction genre. By linking the events of the film to a real phenomenon, worst yet a phenomenon of such destructive force that is not fully understood by the audience, the producers doomed any chance of success in the youth market as the downbeat themes did not resonate with them.
The ‘what’ of the fantasy genre is quite different and does not rely on a connection to a specific technological development, or even attempt to depict our reality, instead the genre’s focus is characterised by what (Walters, 2011, p. 59) describes as “the potential to make us look sideways at the everyday world and see the things we otherwise would not be able to.” Instead of showing us what will be, the fantasy genre show us how the world can be. At no point throughout Star Wars does Lucas directly reflect the dystopian nature of the 1970s back upon his audience, instead, he provides a tonal and emotional alternative to the present; one that embodies liberal ideologies of the time, and sees disparate groups unite in the face of oppression, tyranny and evil – and win!
This distinction between Lucas’ and Disney approach to genre is never more clearly expressed than at the 22:20 mark of each film. After boarding the Cygnus in The Black Hole, the crew make their way slowly through the different levels of the ship until they reach the bridge. Upon arrival, the characters are shown to be paranoid and fearful of technology which builds upon the sinister and down beat tone established earlier. As Borgnine’s Harry Booth takes in his new surroundings, he has the following exchange with Dr. Kate McCrae (Mimieux) as he strips any sense of wonder from the scene:
Booth: They appear to be some sort of robot, Dr Kate. Look over here (point at the robots and computers around the room) Look over here!
McCrae: Incredible!
Booth: It oughta be. Sure cost the Tax-payers enough
The simple reference to the bureaucratic nature of the real world contrasts sharply with the tone created by Lucas, as, at this exact moment in Star Wars, Luke is receiving his call-to-adventure as he watches a holographic Princess asks, “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope”.
The Black Hole opens with a credit sequence consisting of a single computer-generated image; (the longest single CGI shot up to that point) a green, two-dimensional grid representing the black hole, which the camera tracks towards. The image is dark and sinister and establishes a downbeat and negative tone from which, like a real black hole, no light escapes. Accompanied by John Barry's theme, which has more than a passing structural similarity to Herman's theme to Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), the sequence carries heavy connotations of a decent, of downward momentum, that utilises Barry’s peaking high notes at the start of each bar, before each phrase then works downwards before rising and falling again in a repeating pattern. This combination of formal elements introduces a dark, mysterious and foreboding tone for the narrative, preparing the audience for a much darker depiction of space exploration than more successful science fiction films released at this time, including Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Robert Wise, 1979), that opts for a more optimistic depiction of our future, (The film opened to the highest grossing weekend in history at that time.12) The importance of identifying the correct aesthetic for a story is discussed by Jim Kitses (Sobchack, 1980), who argues that the mise-en-scene of a film acts as an active agent with the narrative, dictating character choices, situations and actions, and operates as the primary carrier of meaning and emotion in a film. The Black Hole is never able to transcend the gloom and doom it establishes at the opening of the film, and, over the course of the narrative does little to lift the downbeat tone.
In stark contrast, Star Wars’ audiences were first greeted with the caption "A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy far, far away..." - even before the fanfare begins, Lucas evokes a sense of mythology, and both spatially and temporally places a distance between spectator’s reality and the events that take place in the film. Lucas’ use of the fantasy genre helps erase any links to the difficulties of the 1970s form the spectators mind as they are propelled into an allegorical reflection of society, presenting an allegorical image of what could-be.
Then, the fanfare explodes from the speakers as a text crawl, borrowed from the Flash Gordon serials, further builds upon the fantastical, mythological nature of the narrative. The camera pans down as two ships mid-space battle drag the spectator in to the action, which is fast paced, exciting and revolutionary. The opening of the film could not be more different, technically, tonally, or, in its effect on the audience than that of The Black Hole. Instead of a universe devouring phenomenon barely understood by the audience, the audience of Star Wars were presented with clear binaries of good and evil, oppression and rebellion - everything we need to know about this world is established in the first five minutes and the audience are thrown head long in to an exciting adventure offering hope in a time of darkness, resonating deeply with youth audiences.
After The Black Hole’s credit sequence the film cuts to an exterior shot of space as a large ship slowly ambles across the screen to the accompaniment of Vincent, the film’s friendly-robot, and the crew, narrating technical information as they approach their destination. Cutting to the ship’s interior, one of the first lines of dialogue comes from Booth as he evokes Dante's Inferno to describe the black hole, before being followed up by the crew who all give their own opinions - one evokes Satan, whilst Dr. Durant (Perkins) and McCrae (Mimieux) discuss a black hole’s potential to consume the entire universe and end life, building upon the pessimistic tone.
The film then transitions in to a visually impressive yet painfully long eleven-minute docking sequence as the ship docks with Reindhart’s Cygnus, contrasting sharply with the depiction of physics in of Star Wars, which does not require a strict adherence to the understanding of space travel within the audience. Once on board the ship the crew slowly make their way to the bridge where the design of the ship is presented to the audience as a fusion of futuristic and Victorian architecture. Ellenshaw’s design of the Cygnus' glass canopy and large, cold environments do little to invite the audience in to the world - they instead convey a disorientating and uninviting glimpse in to the future, and is further evidence of Disney's unwillingness, or inability, to "alter the terms of the bargain" they had made when adopting this particular approach to genre.
Compare this to the tone created by Lucas as Luke looks out at the binary sunset after being told he must remain on his uncle’s farm instead of chasing his dreams of joining the Empire’s academy. Here, Lucas uses formal techniques to capture a universal desire of the youth audience, of escaping their surroundings to explore and find their place in the world, reflecting anxieties of the youth audience “in some way transformed” (Walters, 2011) via the fantasy aesthetic. Throughout the film, Lucas does not relate to the audience via technology or science, he instead liberates his film from such connections and speak to young audiences about experience, and dreams for the future.
After successfully defeating Reinhardt, the crew of both ships are sucked into the black hole in a sequence mirroring the transition sequence in 2001, before cutting to a wide shot of Reinhardt floating alone against a red-tinged backdrop of space. He then, through a clumsily constructed sequence, merges with Maximillian, his robot henchman, before the camera tracks backwards to reveal that this man who used technology and science to play god, is on a mountain top overlooking hell, warning the young spectators about the dangers of scientific advancements and technology. The protagonists are then drawn towards a well-lit tunnel that connotes their enlightenment, having earned redemption through their rejection of Reinhardt’s ideologies and of being cautious of technological and scientific developments.
In a manner similar to the open sequences, the finale of Star Wars could not be any more different. After defeating the Death Star and seemingly putting an end to the Empire, and by extension all traces of tyranny and oppression, Luke and our heroes return to a rapturous welcome, before an incredibly up-beat medal ceremony that leaves the audience walking out of the cinema with a sense of hope and optimism. Even the enigma surrounding the fate of the damaged R2D2 is never given serious consideration, as by this point, the overwhelming positivity of the film teaches us that the droid will be fine.
In the face of a changing world, Hollywood studios were at a loss as to how best attract youth audiences back into the cinema. The dystopian blockbusters that characterise the early parts of the decade had waned, and the family film genre that had been the backbone of the industry, were no longer capable of attracting a mass-audience (Brown, n.d.). Despite trying to appeal to emerging youth market, Disney failed in their attempts as their film was too reliant on existing, worn out genre tropes than not even cutting-edge visual technology could overcome. The success of Star Wars appealed to the youth because, as Joseph Campbell states, “this thing communicates. It is in a language that is talking to young people today”13.
Bibliography
Brown, N., n.d. Hollywood Family Film. 2 ed. Liverpool: Liverpool Hope Universtity.
Ebert, R., 1979. Reviews. [Online] Available at: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-black-hole-1979 [Accessed 20 May 2019].
Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy. 2004. [Film] Directed by Edith Becker Kevin Burns. USA: s.n.
Sobchack, V., 1980. Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film. New Brunswick(New Jersey): Rutgers University Press.
Telotte, J., 2008. The Mouse Machine: Disney and Technology. 1 ed. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Walters, J., 2011. Fantasy Film: A Critical Introducion. 1 ed. Oxford: Bloomsbury.

Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXjnYL2GncU
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