I can only review episode 1 of this 4 part series as the rest is not available to me yet, but so far it's good.
You can see it's not the highest budget documentary ever made, with title cards, fonts and flat graphics looking somewhat basic & home-made, but it's good where it counts, with the most important thing in place: plenty of interviews and soundbites with people who actually appeared in the movies, or were involved in making them, plus a surprisingly large number of names from the video game industry. For instance I was happy to see Nolan Bushnell of Atari. The early eighies console and arcade scene was inextricably linked to the films in the minds of kids of the time, one of which I am.
The first episode does have a few too many fast cuts, sometimes the rush of comments from different people spending no more than a few seconds on each person can get a bit messy, but I can see that they are trying to fit a lot in the first episode by way of an introduction to the whole thing, so maybe in the next episodes things will calm down a bit. In this episode, the main focus does eventually settle down on Poltergeist & E. T. and plenty of interesting and entertaining information is divulged, including quite a lot on Spielberg's cancelled project "Night Skies", which directly influenced E. T., which I was not aware of.
The most important thing you take away from it is the sheer Spielbergian wonder of the film and other films of the year, because of course Spielberg was possibly the single most influential person of the early 80s genre blockbusters, so he does deserve the spotlight he gets in the second half of the show. Even though he himself is not interviewed (the is not quite made on the scale to get interveiws with Lucas, Spielberg etc), plenty of people who worked with him and knew him are interviewed, so it works.
I will definitely be watching the coming episodes and can recommend this without hesitation.
You can see it's not the highest budget documentary ever made, with title cards, fonts and flat graphics looking somewhat basic & home-made, but it's good where it counts, with the most important thing in place: plenty of interviews and soundbites with people who actually appeared in the movies, or were involved in making them, plus a surprisingly large number of names from the video game industry. For instance I was happy to see Nolan Bushnell of Atari. The early eighies console and arcade scene was inextricably linked to the films in the minds of kids of the time, one of which I am.
The first episode does have a few too many fast cuts, sometimes the rush of comments from different people spending no more than a few seconds on each person can get a bit messy, but I can see that they are trying to fit a lot in the first episode by way of an introduction to the whole thing, so maybe in the next episodes things will calm down a bit. In this episode, the main focus does eventually settle down on Poltergeist & E. T. and plenty of interesting and entertaining information is divulged, including quite a lot on Spielberg's cancelled project "Night Skies", which directly influenced E. T., which I was not aware of.
The most important thing you take away from it is the sheer Spielbergian wonder of the film and other films of the year, because of course Spielberg was possibly the single most influential person of the early 80s genre blockbusters, so he does deserve the spotlight he gets in the second half of the show. Even though he himself is not interviewed (the is not quite made on the scale to get interveiws with Lucas, Spielberg etc), plenty of people who worked with him and knew him are interviewed, so it works.
I will definitely be watching the coming episodes and can recommend this without hesitation.
