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The Poppies of Terra #39 - How They Spent Their Summer

By Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

2024-09-25 09:00:10

Summer officially ended a few days ago, but for those who wish to cradle or even cling onto its sun-soaked carefree spirit and usher it with them into the crisp, cozy, autumnal days that lie ahead, Chris Nashawaty’s The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982 might be the perfect book. It’s a summer-published nonfiction blockbuster about, well, you guessed it, summer blockbusters, specifically those that tried to storm US box offices forty-two years ago, some with resounding success, some less so.

In the book’s Prologue, Nashawaty aptly sets the scene for the legendary genre movie summer of 1982, and offers this reflection on the decades that followed: “By the dawn of the ’90s (continuing right up till the time this book is being written), what should have been a new golden age of sci-fi and fantasy cinema became a pop-culture beast that would devour itself to death and infantilize its audience in the process.” Is our obsessive preoccupation with the minutiae of these filmic sirensongs a tacit admission of our infantilization? Could this book exist without the pop culture that flocked to, and gorged itself on, the many sequels and imitative, spectacle-laden movies made in the wake of E.T., Tron, Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, The Thing, and Mad Max: The Road Warrior

With a sure hand and nimble touch, Nashawaty chronicles the major antecedents of these movies, which naturally didn’t arise in a vacuum, and in some instances were specifically borne from their directors’ attention to the nascent commercial success of science fiction. During the book’s first third or so, we learn about the production and shattering success of Jaws; how Steven Spielberg followed it up with the equally popular (and similarly over-budget) Close Encounters of the Third Kind; the flop that was 1941; and the more tightly-budgeted hit Raiders of the Lost Ark, all of which paved the way for both E.T. and Poltergeist. These two modern classics were, despite appearing quite different today, at heart twins in conception and assembly, separated largely only by genre tropes and aesthetic sensibilities but engaging with a similar theme of nuclear families being tested by outside stressors. We follow Ridley Scott’s decision to make Alien after his historical prestige drama The Duelists, a move essentially motivated by Star Wars, in turn pointing him in the direction of Blade Runner. There would be no Star Trek II without a first Star Trek motion picture, and so we’re educated on its troubled history and lukewarm reception. Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn’t have become a leading man without first Pumping Iron. George Miller’s medical background, married with the wish for “B movie filmmaking with A movie aspirations,” had to overcome numerous obstacles before the first Mad Max movie could materialize. What about John Carpenter, whose tireless work ethic saw him helm Dark Star, Assault on Precinct 13–his riff on Rio BravoHalloween and The Fog before tackling his love of pulp science fiction/horror straight on with The Thing? How did Disney’s experience making The Black Hole circuitously lead to Tron? And so on and so forth.

In a way, these contextual preparatory steps, which show the incredible number of factors that had to converge to enable the summer of ’82, are potentially even more interesting than our ultimate destination. Curious what-might-have-beens pepper the way: Ridley Scott, for instance, almost made a version of Tristan and Isolde, and John Carpenter came close to directing an Elvis biopic. 

Another element that emerges from this braided history is the importance of creative partnerships and relationships, as for instance the friendship between Spielberg and George Lucas, George Butler’s early support of and belief in Schwarzenegger’s charisma, how George Miller got along with Byron Kennedy, the initial team-up (which later turned sour) of Carpenter with Dan O'Bannon, Steven Lisberger’s finding of a crucial ally in Harrison Ellenshaw, or Nick Meyer’s ability to creatively solve problems he and Harve Bennett were both subjected to with Star Trek II. Of course, there were bad fits as well: Oliver Stone’s vision for and work on Conan led nowhere, for example, and the cast and crew famously didn’t get along on the set of Blade Runner

Anyone curious about the inception of 1982’s crazy summer who hasn’t investigated movie history will find many interesting tidbits, along with a newfound appreciation for the movies discussed in this kaleidoscopic volume. For those who’ve already turned their flashlights to these backstories, much of the material will probably be familiar. Time has gifted us with countless articles and video/documentary special features that provide incredible behind-the-scenes details on these flicks. The Future Now, yes–but the Future also Then, and practically every year In-Between. Nashawaty does include quotes from brand new interviews he conducted with various filmmakers, but none of these challenge much of the established, by-now almost calcified narratives of reception and mythmaking surrounding 82’s hits and misses.

A few claims bear closer scrutiny. Did Comic-Con really deliver “the birth of fan culture”? (It depends on which type of fans and which culture). Was John W. Campbell truly “one of the most influential genre authors of the first half of the twentieth century”? (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, van Vogt, and many others were all more influential writers. Campbell’s writing was appreciated, but his primary influence lay in editing.) Did Campell really nurture Lois McMaster Bujold in the pages of Astounding? (No, he didn’t. Campbell died in ’71; Bujold started publishing in '85, and it wasn’t in Astounding). There are, too, some stylistic glitches in the descriptive matrix, such as the double “felt” in “The writer felt that the word android felt all wrong in the context of Blade Runner,” or, for instance, the repetitions of Ridley Scott being “restless” (Chapters 2 and 7) and the breakdown of who would have appeared in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ill-fated Dune (Chapters 2 and 10). Still, the pages move briskly, and Nashawaty’s fascinating outline holds true, yielding the same kind of entertainment found in the best beach reads.

For those who wish to dive deeper into the specific histories of the films spotlighted by Nashawaty, here’s a short starter bibliography:

E.T.E.T.: the Extra Terrestrial: The Ultimate Visual History by Caseen Gaines

TronThe Making of Tron: How Tron Changed Visual Effects and Disney Forever by William Kallay

Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - The Making of the Classic Film by John Tenuto & Maria Jose Tenuto

Conan the BarbarianConan the Barbarian: The Official Story of the Film by John Walsh

Blade RunnerFuture Noir Revised & Updated Edition: The Making of Blade Runner by Paul M. Sammon

The ThingThe Thing (BFI Film Classics) by Anne Billson, A Definitive Oral History of John Carpenter's The Thing, and The Thing: A History of a Franchise by Phil Hore

Mad Max: The Road WarriorThe Legend of Mad Max by Ian Nathan

Perhaps unsurprisingly given its polemically perceived production and accreditation, there is, as yet, no dedicated, tell-all book about the making of Poltergeist. Perhaps one day we’ll finally be able to say of those accounts, “They’re here.” 

In the meantime, it’s interesting to note that many of the above titles were published only during the last few years. Is our interest in the wellsprings of pop movie storytelling a direct result of our disappointment with the current conceptual estuaries? Have we simply become more efficient at dissecting what came before via micro-histories? Is cultural fragmentation part of the reason for increasingly niche interests and disconnected sub-fandoms? Do we have so much entertainment that the only way to cope is to divide and conquer? I can envision the day when books will be written about the history of making-of and visual-history movie books. The more the future is now, the more meta we seem to become with regards to the past.

 


Alvaro Zinos-Amaro is a Hugo- and Locus-award finalist who has published over fifty stories and one hundred essays, reviews, and interviews in professional markets. These include Analog, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Galaxy's Edge, Nature, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Locus, Tor.com, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, Cyber World, Nox Pareidolia, Multiverses: An Anthology of Alternate Realities, and many others. Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg was published in 2016. Alvaro’s debut novel, Equimedian, and his book of interviews, Being Michael Swanwick, are both forthcoming in 2023.

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