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Original Trilogy Reception 1977-1983 Part I: Introduction and the Data

Part II of this study is available here.

The following project is among the more ambitious ones I have set out to document on this site, and certainly the most difficult. It began in 2005 and has been ongoing until now. The aim of this project was to measure the critical and public response to the original trilogy--at the time of their original release. There are a few reasons why this is seemingly necessary. One is that there is a notion that the trilogy was universally loved--this was cemented during the 1997 re-release, where the films were now the subject of ponderous analysis of Jungian undertones, mythic subtext, and a golden status as some of the most important works of 20th century culture. No doubt all these are true to one degree or another--however, this view was not necessarily what was held during their time of original release. Although the big picture of the films never changed--in 1997, Star Wars was the most popular, Empire considered more serious and artistic, and Jedi a slightly disappointing ending--the degree to which they were beheld as good and the focus and approach reviewers took veered to a degree from those who beheld them some twenty years earlier.

Secondly, while I note that there is a difference between the re-release in 1997--which basically continues into today--and 1977, that difference has been grossly exaggerated as well. This came from a study conducted by website Rotten Tomatoes in 2005, which claimed that based on a sampling of vintage reviews from 1977-1983, the prequel trilogy was better received. This gave prequel-defenders at the time a seemingly reputable study to validate themselves, but it made everyone else scratch their heads--given the horrendous reputation of the prequels, and a swath of corresponding reviews that anyone could look up themselves, how could this be possible? Had the world really undergone a total amnesia since 1983?

The truth lies in between. As explained elsewhere in this article, that study is fraught with a multitude of fundamental flaws, distorting the results. While the original films weren't quite as well regarded as they are today, they nonetheless were received positively. Jedi had lots of negativity, but positive reviews as well--much like the prequels (which weren't received as total trash, but were lukewarm at best). Empire, with a lot to measure up to, took many aback by deviating from the Star Wars formula--it is truly only this film that underwent a significant re-evaluation over time, considered good but disappointing by many in 1980 but one of the greatest films of all time and superior to the original in 1997.

So, then, this project has two purposes, and for that I have split it into two articles. One purpose is to actually "measure" how well or how poorly the films were received in the time of their release, to document the views of publications and essentially rate the films. This is problematic, but I believe an approximation is achievable. The second purpose is to apply this data to an analysis of the relations between the films and viewers (including critics), and the differences apparent between different sectors of the population (such as critics versus audiences, newspapers versus film journals, early reviews versus later reviews, etc.).

The feasibility of such a project by others has been thwarted, I am guessing, by the scarcity of the source material; while some of it is available online, the aim of conducting a wide sampling requires more than just a dozen like the RT study (my goal was at least 20 per film, which I exceeded). Rotten Tomatoes' study was conducted by microfilm samples from the library, but even that only included a handful of whatever sources were on-hand. To my aid: the enormous Robarts Library in the University of Toronto, the largest in the country and the third largest in the continent, second only to Yale and Harvard. Their holdings spanned decades for many sources, with access to online databases not available to the public. Public libraries brought a few more sources, while I purchased others through e-bay. One problem was that United States publications--unlike many countries of the world--often charge for viewing archives, and so I also funnelled some of the profits from Secret History to purchasing some holdings that I could not locate any other way. As well, while this study focuses on the United States and Canada, I also have included a few British sources (the films were received more or less the same there), for a wider sampling.

With that out of the way, I wish to first present my findings. In this first section I will explain exactly how I arrived at my conclusions, and what techniques I used for measurement, as you will see that this is a crucial element, and I will also include an overview of the general picture.

Methodology

To start, we should first examine the previous study, published by Rotten Tomatoes (RT) in 2005. Here is part of the report:

When “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” was released in 1999, a group of us actually went to our local library and dug up a sampling of available sources that reviewed the original trilogy during the time of their respective release dates in the late 1970s and early 1980s. [...] The results are actually quite surprising.

Tomatometer Scores for Original Trilogy During Original Release Dates:
(Click on the links for the archived quotes from Archive.org)
31% - Return of the Jedi
52% - The Empire Strikes Back
79% - Star Wars
Average Tomatometer: 54%

As one can see, only “Star Wars” managed to be Fresh, with a respectable 79% on the Tomatometer, while the other two sequels got successively worse. Most of the critics thought the first film was an inventive, fun, and entertaining summer popcorn movie. It’s interesting that they complain about the dialogue back then too. “Empire,” which is regarded as the best of the series nowadays, only managed to score a mixed 52%. It received great technical grades, but critics had problems with the plot, one way or other, and thought it was just “minor entertainment.” It got worse with “Jedi” – uneven pacing, no character development, tired acting, and hollow and junky filmmaking. It scored a moldy 30% on the Tomatometer. Prequels were probably the last thing critics wanted back then after the thrashing of the last film.

Ironically, if you compare the average Tomatometer of the prequels and the original trilogies during the time of their respective original release dates, the Prequels are actually better reviewed by 16% -- 70% to 54%, respectively!

Tomatometer Ranking of Star Wars Series Based on Critical Reaction During Original Release Dates:
83% - Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
79% - Star Wars
65% - Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
62% - Star wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
52% - The Empire Strikes Back
31% - Return of the Jedi

This study, while noteworthy for the effort, is fundamentally flawed in many ways. To start, the comparison between prequels and originals is unfair--the prequel trilogy takes its rating from websites and the like, while the original trilogy reviews are sources like New Yorker and Newsweek, very different sets of reviewers; RT has a solution to this problem, which is the "top critic" filter, which only counts legitimate publications. When this is selected, we see that the prequels' ratings fall drastically, on average being comparable to its ratings for the originals. Phantom Menace goes from 62% to 39%, Attack of the Clones from 65% to an equally moldy 38%, and Revenge of the Sith's proud 83% becomes 69%. Now, onto the problems with those original trilogy ratings.

First is that their source sampling is rather low--you can browse the sources they used, and for the most part they don't exceed fourteen or fifteen per film; I counted 48 in total. This is impressive in its own right, but a study on the films' reception cannot be accurate when accounting for so few sources. My own study has the same limitation, however as I have included about twice the amount of sources, amounting to 82 popular and [ed: amount forthcoming] academic, it is at least useful as an indicator or guideline. Secondly, and this will be dealt with in the second part of this study, is the context when one is comparing the films to the prequels--the films came out in different eras, and were viewed in different ways. Thirdly is that, because there was no star-rating system in the OT era, perception of the reviews is subjective--an issue I hoped to minimize in my own study. I found that RT's assignment of "rotten" or "fresh" for these reviews to be very inconsistent as well; for instance, I felt that New York and New Leader's review of Empire, while not overtly positive by any means, merited about a 3/5, while RT tallied them as "rotten" (2.5/5 or less), which to me is not representative of these two reviews--that their conclusions are either "fresh" or "rotten" with no sliding scale makes measurement even more impercise. Their sources are also a bit random, with a high proportion of political magazines such as New Republic. Also problematic is the "rating" RT assigns--the percentage isn't actually a rating. It is a measure from the "tomatometer", which is a ratio of "fresh" reviews (positive) to total, which isn't always helpful in determining anything specific.

Now, I wish to explain the methodology of my own study, to demonstrate why it is more valid. To start, academic publications are, in many ways, their own world, with their own standards, tastes and trends--I have included them in a separate study, but I chose to stick mainly to reviews from popular sources. In general, I tried to include as many daily newspapers as possible, but the availability of archives has made this restricted to a large degree; in the summation section below I include information from reviews in local papers that are known to exist but were not available to me. In total, I surveyed 18 daily newspapers from the U.S. and Canada, and 1 from the U.K. However, I included other weekly and monthly popular publications, such as The New Yorker and People, which ran their own reviews. I also was sure to include all of the major national publications--in accounting for media reception, a publication's status and readership matters. For instance, a good review in an obscure small-town paper matters much less than if The New Yorker, with readership in the millions and national prestige, runs a bad review. As such, I feel as though I have accounted for nearly every major review of all three films, even if there are many smaller sources that are nodoubt absent. My source list goes well beyond any review index available at any rate, and it also goes well beyond the "top critics" shortlist that RT employs on its site, being close to the amount that Metacritic.com uses in its modern-day measurements. I regret that I was unable to obtain Village Voice or Hollywood Reporter, but barring these the major critics are accounted for. USA Today didn't exist in 1977, and it seems Rolling Stone didn't review the films.

An equally important issue is how to interpret the reviews. The star rating system did not spring up until the 1980s, and didn't become standard for many sources until the 1990s. In the sources we are dealing with, almost all of them must be judged on the tone and content of the review--which means that any study done is to some degree subjective. To combat this, I tried to be as conservative as possible--for instance, if I felt that a review was leaning towards the positive side but somewhat ambiguously, I played it safe and assigned it the more conservative scale, so that my conclusions wouldn't be overstated. I did this because I knew my ratings would be much higher than the RT study, and didn't want to be accused of favouritism. When possible, I also checked my own ratings against those assigned by sites like metacritic, who rate some vintage reviews themselves; sometimes they were similar, but sometimes there was some discrepancy. In general, I tried to split the difference, but I also didn't want to assign a review a rating I felt was unfair, so this was a fast and loose rule. For example, Rotten Tomatoes assigns Gene Siskel's Chicago Tribune review of Jedi as "rotten," and plunders one of the few bad things he says about it--in fact he loved the film! He also gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up on his TV show. There were a few other instances on both RT and Metacritic where I found some large unfairness.

There were a few reviews, however, that did have a star rating, such as Gene Siskel (Chicago Tribune). He rated the films out of 4, which meant I had to translate it to a rating out of 5. His rating for Star Wars, for instance, was 3.5/4, which I translated to 4.5/5, based in part on the tone and content of his review, as I felt that 4/5 was a less accurate representative.

Before I head into the data, I should also mention sources and where they came from. Most archives available online, either through public internet or scholars' portals, do not go back before the 1990s, unfortunately, which restricted many of the newspaper sources I could draw from. Some papers and magazines went back to 1983 or 1981, but it is rare to find online archives for daily papers that go back to 1977--which means that Star Wars has far less sources than Return of the Jedi. Jedi, for example, has about three dozen sources overall, while Star Wars and Empire have only about two dozen each. However, I feel that at approximately 24 sources these first two films get enough representation to make an approximate rating. Because I am located in Canada, there was only limited American newspaper archives available on microfilm (such as L.A. Times and Washington Post), though this was to some degree balanced out by the availability of Canadian newspaper microfilms.

Finally, I should also mention a word of caution about basing conclusions solely on the average totals. These don't necessarily tell the full picture. The trilogy had a very strange pattern where many viewers would give the films 4/5 (80) or 5/5 (100), but then the odd 1/5 (20) and 2/5 (40) would crop up. Did these people see the same movie? They are sometimes incredibly devisive. As a result, even if five people rate the film as a 4 or 5, the one or two 1/5 and 2/5 ratings drives down the average. You can see this in all the films, but especially in Star Wars--most initial reviews gave it 4 and especially 5, but with all the 1s and 2, it's average of 84% doesn't give the impression of how much wide enthusiasm there was. There is also a specific context to both the negative and positive reviews that were posted, as temporal forces (in the case of some critics who reviewed the film later, and explicitly responded to the hype by giving it a low rating) and political ones (such as, arguably, Pauline Kael's New Yorker review) must also be accounted for. Also, I want to mention this now: there is more to a movie's "reception" than just the reviews. There are promotional articles and interviews with the cast and crew that frequently appear, that go a long way to being part of the film's reception, that aren't included--reviews do not give a picture of a film's cultural impact or popularity, and this must also be acknowledged.

Below, I present multiple sets of data. These reflect the many ways one can measure the films' reception. For instance, a review from Variety or Newsweek is much more meaningful in terms of cultural influence and readership than a review from the Calgary Herald. As such, I have the raw data, without adjustment, and then alternate interpretations that attempt to adjust for weighted influence, inclusion of academic sources, and other various schemes. In part two of this study I will attempt to explain and interpret this data, as well as tracking how the films' reception changed or didn't change in the years between 1983 and 1997, and into 1997 and beyond.

Overview and the Data

To begin, I will present a brief overview. A more thorough version of this is included in Part II of this study. 

Star Wars:

Star Wars by far had the best reception. Its most enthusiastic reviews came from the earliest ones, which gave it 4/5 and 5/5 unanimously for the ten samples I have studied from this first-wave period. Negative reviews do not begin to turn up until June, however, they are still very infrequent in terms of their appearance--only three reviews out of eight overall gave the film unfavourable ratings in this second wave. J.W. Rinzler's The Making of Star Wars affords us a much greater indication of the national trends. Rinzler writes:

"Dozens of other reviewers were also won over by the film, in papers throughout the country--in Santa Ana and Sacramento, California; Salt Lake City, Utah; Evansville, Indiana; Camden, New Jersey; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Louisville, Kentucky, to name a few. Negative reviews ran in the papers of Augusta, Maine; Pascagoula, Mississippi; and Statesville, North Carolina." (p. 296)

It should be noted that even here, the negative reviews are in similar proportion to the positive ones, which he writes the film received in "dozens" of newspapers. Of the major publications writing on the film, only New Yorker gave the film a negative review--this negative review in September, by influential critic Pauline Kael, seems to be more a reaction against the cult status the film had earned by that time.

Empire:

Empire reviews were very often tinged with disappointment. Particularly, critics felt that the film lacked the humour and sense of fun that the original had. However, even these "disappointed" reviews gave the film a relatively good rating, usually 3/5 (60) or 3.5/5 (70). On the score results, this means the film overall has a much lower rating than Star Wars, but a better tomatometer rating--which means, basically, that there was less ultra-low reviews and more general recommendations (hence the tomatometer score), but less overall enthusiasm (hence the overall score).

Jedi:

Jedi has often been noted as the disappointing film of the trilogy, and the one that earned the lowest ratings. This is true, but the picture is not so simple. Many felt it was actually the strongest of the three. On the other hand, many vehemently despised it. The true picture that emerges of Jedi is this: many disliked the film, but many liked the film as well. Most who disliked Empire did not find anything positive to say about Jedi, and some who liked Jedi were nonetheless disappointed it wasn't as good as the others, but a great many also felt that it lived up to, if not surpassed, any of the previous films. The result is that the film was often very divisive, which is why it scores the way it does. There were more positive reviews than bad ones, but the bad reviews were more frequent than the previous films and frequent enough that they brought all the positive reviews down in the score, and it had less 4/5 and 5/5 per capita. Its tomatometer and overall scores are not nearly as good as the other films because of this, but the film was critically successful by these measurements all the same. The difference was that it wasn't as unanimous as the first two films. A final observation of note is that even among many enthusiasts the sentiment is that the series had run its course--Jedi was either the series' entertaining swansong or its final, bloated groan, but the series was finally over and the world can move on.

 

Here is a useful calculator for the ratings:

1/5=20    1.5/5=30     2/5=40     2.5/5=50     3/5=60      3.5/5=70     4/5=80     4.5/5=90     5/5=100

The raw data:

Star Wars

Empire

Jedi

Boston Globe

3.5/5 my 21

4.5/5 my 25

Calgary Herald

3.5/5 my 23

4/5 my 26

Chicago Sun Times

4.5/5 my 25

4/5 my 25

Chicago Tribune

3.5/4= 4.5/5 my 27

3.5/4=4.5/5 my 21

5/5 my 25

Christian Science Monitor

4.5/5 jn 2

4/5 my 21

4/5 my 19

Cineaste

3/5

Globe and Mail

2.5/5 my 22

3.5/5 my 27

Films and Filming

4/5 dc

2/4?=3/5 july

Films in Review

4/5 ag-sp

4/5 ag-sp

3/5 jun-july

Hartford Courant

4/5 my 23

3/5 my 26

Los Angeles Times

5/5 my 22

4/5 my 18

4/5 my 25

Macleans

4/5 jn 27

3.5/5 my 26

3.5/5 my 30

Miami Herald

3/4=4/5 my 25

Monthly Film Bulletin

4/5 july

Nation

4/5 jn 25

3.5/5 jn 21

2/5 jn 18

National Review

2.5/5 jn 24

New Leader

1/5 my 30

New Republic

2.5/5 jn 18

3/5 my 31

N/A

New Statesman

1/5 jn 3

New York

2/5 jn 20

3/5 my 26

3/5 my 30

New York Daily News

3.5/4 = 4/5

4/4 = 5/5

New York Post

2/5 my 25

New York Times

4/5 my 26

4/5 my 21

2/5 my 25

New Yorker (other)

4/5 jn 13

N/A

N/A

New Yorker (kael)

1.5/5 sp 26

4/5 my 26 kael?

1/5 my 30

Newsday

3/5 my 25

Newsweek

5/5 my 30

4/5 my 19

3/5 my 30

People Weekly

N/A

3/5 my 30

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

5/5 jn 2

Time

5/5 my 25

4.5/5 my 19

5/5 my 23

The Times

5/5 dc 16

2/5 my 23

3.5/5 jn 3

Toronto Star

5/5 jn 11

3.5/5 my 22

4/5 my 25

Vancouver Sun

5/5 jn 25

3.5/5 my 16

3/5 my 25

Variety

5/5 my 25

4/5 my 7

3.5/5 my 25

Washington Post (other)

NA

3/5 my 23

NA

Washington Post (G.Arnold)

4.5/5 my 25

5/5 my 18

3.5/5 my 22

Washington Spokesman-Review

4/5 july 2

Washingtonian

2.5/5 july

2/5 aug

Winnipeg Free Press

2.5/5 jn 24

5/5 jn 18

4/5 my 25

TOTAL AVERAGE

82

73

64

Converted to RT's "tomatometer", which is calculated by the number of "fresh" reviews (60% rating or more) divided by total reviews, this results in:

Star Wars: 83%

Empire Strikes Back: 92%

Return of the Jedi: 76%

Part II of this study has more detailed analysis of what the above scores can tell us.

Below are weighted scores, based on stature, influence and readership of the publication. Again, this is based on my own interpretation. Sources such as Time, Variety, New Yorker, New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, L.A. Times, Toronto Star, Newsweek, Macleans, and The Times were given five times the weight of all other sources.

Star Wars

Empire

Jedi

Weighted Total Average

86

75

68

Based on this interpretation, the weighted "tomatometer" scores would be equivalent to:

Star Wars: 89%

Empire Strikes Back: 89%

Return of the Jedi: 79%

Below are scores based on date of review for Star Wars. I have grouped this into three waves. First is the reviews based on the 32 theatres that the film first opened on during May. The second is the expanded release in June--for instance, the film did not play in Canada, even in Toronto, until the second week of June. The third wave of reviews is based on anything written in July and later, which includes London's The Times as the film did not open in the U.K. until the end of the year. The sequels are largely exempt from this, as they more or less opened widely at the same time (there are limited exceptions--for instance, Empire mandated that all theatres it opened on had to be 70mm equipped, which prevented it from playing in Winnipeg until June; however, this is the only exception in the sampling). Some monthly and weekly publications reviewed the sequels in their June and July issues, but this is more due to the deadlines of monthly/weekly printing, which must have copy ready weeks before the shipment date. For Star Wars, however, I have included all monthly/weekly reviews from July and later in wave three. I also included the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and Christian Science Monitor as wave one, as they were printed on June 2 and reflect the first wave. These stats are of slightly limited use, however, due to the smaller sampling rate for the first film, especially in wave three, where most of the U.K. is not represented, however I felt it would be an interesting experiment nonetheless.

WAVE ONE

Chicago Sun Times

4.5/5 my 25

Chicago Tribune

3.5/4= 4.5/5 my 27

Christian Science Monitor

4.5/5 jn 2

Los Angeles Times

5/5 my 22

New York Times

4/5 my 26

Newsweek

5/5 my 30

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

5/5 jn 2

Time

5/5 my 25

Variety

5/5 my 25

Washington Post (G.Arnold)

4.5/5 my 25

WAVE ONE AVERAGE:

94

WAVE TWO

Macleans

4/5 jn 27

Nation

4/5 jn 25

New Republic

2.5/5 jn 18

New York

2/5 jn 20

New Yorker (other)

4/5 jn 13

Toronto Star

5/5 jn 11

Vancouver Sun

5/5 jn 25

Winnipeg Free Press

2.5/5 jn 24

WAVE TWO AVERAGE

73

WAVE THREE

Films in Review

4/5 ag-sp

New Yorker (kael)

1.5/5 sp 26

The Times

5/5 dc 16

Washington Spokesman-Review

4/5 july 2

WAVE THREE AVERAGE

73

Finally, I present below the reviews taken from more academic sources during 1977-1983. Some of these are included in the master "popular" list because they skirt the line--Films in Review and Films and Filming might be considered academic by some, but their approach and style is often the same as the popular sources (for that matter, New Yorker might be considered an academic source due to its self-esteemed "high brow" approach to art), and skirt the line between "insider" industry publications as well (Variety, for example, is not normally read by the public, as it is an "insider" trade magazine, but appeals to non-academics). I include these sources in their own category for a number of reasons. First, their obscurity relative to the popular sources. Second is that the academic world is in many ways its own bubble, with its own sets of tastes, values and politics, and it seemed unfair to group these together with the popular sources. For the sake of completism, I do however offer an adjusted score accounting for both popular and academic together.

One bit of commentary I should offer here is that academic sources largely paid no or little attention to the film--just based on the film journals, you would hardly know that such a cinematic cultural landmark had landed. There are few reviews, and even in the years following, very little analytical articles focusing on the films.

-ACADEMIC ARTICLES WILL BE POSTED SOON-

Conclusion and Part II

Altogether, these stats show us many things; because of potential limitations in sampling rate, they should not be taken as gospel, but at the very least considered an indicator. I attempt to analyze and interpret them in part two, and also offer more detailed probing into what the reviewers actually said, and why. I also attempt to contextualize them. Following that, I offer further study into how the reviews and receptions of the films shifted (or didn't) in the two time periods that followed--1984-1996 (between the theatrical releases), and 1997-present (during and after the theatrical re-release and prequel trilogy). With that, turn to where the real information is, in Part II.

01/02/10

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