View-Master Mock-up: Flash Gordon

Seminal 80's sci-fi masterpiece Flash Gordon was never released as a View-Master reel set. If it was, it might have looked a little something like this...

To see more View-Master reel sets that never existed, click the VIEW-MASTER tab at the top of the page.

Hell Is Other People (And Demons): The Conceit Of Jacob's Ladder

Jacob's Ladder was released almost 30 years ago, so it would be safe to assume that if you're reading this, you've had a chance to see it. If not, spoilers ahead. The film stars Tim Robbins as Jacob, fresh from his lead performance in Erik the Viking and stand-out supporting roles in teen sex romps Fraternity Vacation and The Sure Thing. He plays an American soldier killed during the Vietnam War, with the bulk of the movie taking place in nightmarish 1970's New York City (or more specifically, in his own head as he slowly succumbs to his wounds).

Jacob is recently divorced with three children, one of whom, pre-Home Alone, post-Uncle Buck Macaulay Culkin, is dead. In his hellish fantasy, Jacob works as a postman and lives with co-worker Jezzie (short for Jezebel, a not so subtle hint as to her true nature). She is one minute caring and sympathetic, the next, passive-aggressive, nit-picky, vindictive and malicious. He is melancholic, withdrawn, and unable to express his true feelings; in other words, your typical, male/female relationship. Jacob also suffers from chronic back pain and has a tendency to throw his back out, frequently requiring the services of angelic Danny Aiello to make his waking life bearable. 

All of Jacob's post-war experiences are occurring in a sort of purgatory. He is haunted by his past and tormented by his present, his world spiralling further and further into madness. As Danny Aiello says (and sampled in the UNKLE song Rabbit in Your Headlights), “If you're frightened of dying and holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.”

The film tries very hard to avoid the use of stereotypical representations of the afterlife and spirituality, and for the most part, succeeds. It shows us that hell can simply be the repulsive, claustrophobic presence of others and a life full of regret and dissatisfaction. On occasion, it does resort to horror movie clichés of hell: A nurse with poor customer service skills appears to have horns growing from the top of her head. A reptilian tail is glimpsed between the legs of a sleeping homeless person. Jacob's girlfriend snarls at him with demonic, black eyes. Demons with blurry or featureless faces watch Jacob from afar or stab needles into his brain.

Personally, I feel the movie could have made its point and been even more shocking in its twist ending by avoiding these tropes, and instead focused on the mundane and grotesque aspects of everyday life - the hay fever, the lactose intolerance, the stubbed toe, the unpaid overtime, the persistent cough, the loveless marriage, the keyed car. Granted, a film in which the hero has an impacted tooth or infected sore doesn't make for riveting viewing, yet these are the daily occurrences that make us question our existence and purpose in life. For the less resilient, they can be the difference between living a content, productive life or refusing to get out of bed and wallowing in your own filth.

Jacob's Ladder is a creepy thriller with imagery that will stick in your head long after the film is over. A Jacob's Ladder View-Master reel set would therefore be entirely unlikely, and completely unnecessary. So you're probably wondering why I spent my afternoon designing one? That's a very good question...

School Of Rock And The Reluctant Teacher

The portrayal of teachers in film generally falls into four distinct categories:

1. The downtrodden individual who failed at life and is scraping together a meagre living with teaching's notoriously low wages. Resting precariously above 'rock bottom', this archetype usually presents at the beginning of a character's story arc.
2. The martyr or Christ figure, reviled and persecuted by those in power, and an inspiration to his pupils due to his rebellious, non-conformist teaching methods.
3. The 'drill sergeant' or disciplinarian, instilling fear in students via daily torment and torture.
4. The reluctant teacher who, despite lacking appropriate qualifications and doing everything in his power to avoid actually teaching, builds relationships with his students and inevitably discovers teaching is his one true calling.

George Lucas Is Luke Skywalker ... And Darth Vader

The story of George Lucas is the story of the Skywalkers, both Luke and Anakin. It's no coincidence that Luke's story was told before Anakin's, as the narrative sequencing of both perfectly correlates with the events of Lucas's life. Like Luke Skywalker, George was an idealistic young man with dreams of leaving the family business and making it big in the outside world. That meant breaking into the heavily restricted, unionised old man's club known as Hollywood, while Luke hoped to one day apply to the Academy and become an Imperial pilot. Both Luke and George quickly became disillusioned and instead joined forces with like-minded individuals to form cooperatives.

In George's case, this was Francis Ford Coppola's American
Zoetrope. In Luke's, the Rebel Alliance.

Their ultimate goal, to take down the previously coveted, exploitative and dehumanising establishments of Hollywood and the Empire. Through sheer determination, both Luke and George eventually beat the system - one blows up a Death Star or two, while the other secures his place in American pop culture history.

With the success of Star Wars and its sequels, Lucas was able to build a number of business ventures such as Lucasfilm Ltd, Industrial Light and Magic (which would later spawn Pixar), Lucas Arts, THX and Skywalker Sound. He would realise his dream of becoming totally self-sufficient. It was this process, the artist becoming the businessman and building an empire, that was reflected in the prequels and the origin story of Darth Vader.

Anakin Skywalker was mentored by the slightly older, somewhat wiser, Obi Wan Kenobi, just as Lucas was mentored by Francis Ford Coppola.

George and Francis's relationship was notoriously tumultuous. Like Anakin and Obi Wan, they considered each other as brothers, yet beneath the surface was resentment, rivalry and jealousy. George even suspected Francis of hitting on his wife Marcia, just as Anakin believed Obi Wan and Padme were secretly conspiring against him. With Lucas's string of hits from American Graffiti, through Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Star Wars films, he surpassed his mentor - the student becoming the master, just as Darth Vader would brag to Obi Wan before murdering him.

Anakin held particularly strong views about politics, believing that the people needed a leader, a singular voice to guide them. George too, felt that the collaborative process of film making inevitably resulted in a distilling of the auteur's vision. He, then, would oversee every aspect of production like some kind of movie making, flannel wearing dictator. Although he appointed others as directors of his movies, he would continue to micromanage them, something he despised the studios for attempting to do to him in the past. Lucas eventually surrounded himself with a cadre of 'yes men'; specifically, producer and sycophant, Rick McCallum. George's power over opinion became greater and greater and consequently, his movies became worse and worse.

As a young film maker, George believed that story and audience engagement were more important than the technology or tools used to create it. Video proof here. Similarly, Luke switches off his electronic missile guidance system when making his attack on the Death Star. By the time Lucas was restoring and releasing the Star Wars Special Editions, the technology was being used not to aid or improve the films, but merely for the sake of the technology. 

Cut to: Jawa falls off Ronto.

The prequels then, can be read as the tools no longer serving the story, but the story serving the technology. Character, plot, emotional investment, audience engagement - all took a back seat to the wonders of digital film making. George's 'used universe' gave way to a six hour, shiny, yellow and chrome advertisement for toys. In essence, he became "more machine than man", just as his filmic counterpart did at the end of Revenge of the Sith. 

Darth Vader was redeemed in Return of the Jedi, but as that film sits in the middle of the six film story arc, the same cannot necessarily be said for George Lucas. As the sole shareholder of Lucasfilm Ltd, he embodied the very same system he had railed against in his youth - rewriting his scriptwriters's words, directing his directors and reediting the work of his editors. Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader in order to save Padme's life, and in doing so, caused her death. Padme, in this scenario, is 'the art', and Anakin's choking the life from her is (prior to relinquishing control to Disney in 2012) a fitting metaphor for Lucas's stranglehold on Lucasfilm and the Star Wars universe.

To see more pointless comparisons between Star Wars and other, non Star Wars things, read this.