Josh Reviews Icons Unearthed: Star Wars and Icons Unearthed: The Simpsons

Icons Unearthed is a documentary series from the Nacelle Company, overseen by Brian Volk-Weiss, that digs deep into various nerdy icons of television and movies.  I’ve watched the first two six-episode seasons, which focus on Star Wars and The Simpsons, respectively.  Both those seasons are available on blu-ray; they’re also streaming, as are a number of subsequent seasons that I have not yet watched that explore the Fast and the Furious movies, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the James Bond movies, the Lord of the Rings movies, and more!

Mr. Volk-Weiss has ventured into the arena of pop-culture documentaries before.  I’ve watched a number of episodes of his series The Movies that Made Us; those were one-hour episodes, each exploring the story of the creation of an iconic movie: Ghostbusters, Die Hard, and more.  I thought that show’s heart was in the right place.  I liked their choice of beloved movies to explore, and in theory I understood their approach of eschewing boring talking-heads documentaries in favor of more fun, fast-paced efforts filled with jokes.  But I felt that series tried way too hard, and I quickly tired of all the goofy narration and jokey editing.  I felt those elements were an annoying distraction from the very interesting stories they were trying to tell.

I was a much bigger fan of the Nacelle Company’s subsequent effort, The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek.  That excellent ten-episode series was a deep dive into the history of Trek in its many incarnations.  At ten episodes, they had the space to really dig into the long history of the Star Trek franchise, and while the episodes still had a light and silly flavor, they toned way back on what had annoyed me in The Movies that Made Us.

I was interested when I read about Icons Unearthed, which felt to me like a logical expansion of what had worked in The Center Seat.  A series of six-episode deep dives into various beloved nerd TV and movie franchises?  OK, I’m in!  I’ve watched the first two, and I enjoyed them both.  There’s a lot of history to mine in both Star Wars and The Simpsons, and the show does a nice job of exploring the long and storied histories of both franchises.  I appreciated that they interviewed many below-the-line people involved with both series, who had stories to tell that weren’t the famous ones I’d already heard a billion times before.

The main weakness of both series is that they don’t seem to have managed to score interviews with any of the major players.  The Star Wars doc doesn’t contain new interviews with George Lucas or any of the central cast members.  (Only Anthony Daniels and Billy Dee Williams participated.)  The Simpsons doc doesn’t contain new interviews with Matt Groening or James L. Brooks or any of the major voice cast members, or Conan O’Brien, or any of the show’s many famous guest stars, etc.  They do their best to get around this by using archival footage, but these huge absences are glaring, and prevent either documentary series from feeling definitive to me.  The series also contain what I’ve mentioned as weaknesses in all of Mr. Volk-Weiss’ previous nerd documentary efforts: an over-reliance on jokey editing, and too much of a focus on the stories of behind-the-scenes disagreements and conflicts.  Now, I like hearing those juicy stories that you might not find in a sanitized DVD/blu-ray extra!  Those stories are interesting!  But I think Mr. Volk-Weiss’ shows tend to give too much weight to those stories, and that choice distorts somewhat the picture we’re getting when watching these docs.

The Star Wars doc explores the Original Trilogy and the Prequels.  It doesn’t cover any of the Disney movies or TV shows.  (It’d be fun if they did a follow-up someday, that did explore the Disney era!  I bet there are a LOT of fascinating and delicious behind-the-scenes stories just waiting to be told!!)  The creation of the original Star Wars gets two episodes, while Empire, Jedi, and The Phantom Menace each get one.  Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith are smushed together into the final episode, and I wish they’d given each of those films its own episode, because that final episode feels extremely rushed.

The main “get” for this doc was George Lucas’ ex-wife Marcia Lucas, who has been almost entirely absent from all official Star Wars documentaries and histories for the past several decades, ever since she and George Lucas got divorced back in 1983.  But by all accounts, Marcia’s work as a talented editor was critical to what worked in the OT, most especially the first Star Wars.  It’s wonderful to hear from her so extensively in this doc.  I loved hearing her stories, and her perspective.  Unfortunately, without also hearing from George Lucas, the doc becomes very one-sided.  We hear Marcia’s side of things, and she’s definitely aggrieved towards George.  So that’s unfortunate, and I wish the doc was more balanced.  But Marcia’s participation is fantastic, and I really enjoyed every moment of her interviews.

I also quite enjoyed hearing from OT producer Howard Kazanjian.  It’s very cool to hear his stories and his insight.  This was mostly new to me.  I was also very interested to hear from Roger Christian, who was the second unit director on the OT and then returned for The Phantom Menace.  These are examples of the cool interviews they were able to get, from people who had an important role in the making of these films but whose stories haven’t been so widely told.  I also loved hearing from David West Reynolds, the man who crafted that spectacular and iconic first teaser trailer for Episode I.  Wow, I still remember the thrill of seeing that trailer.  I taped it off of a late-night cable show that showed trailers, and I rewatched it about a billion times.  Sigh.  I wish the movie was one-one-hundredth as good as that trailer.

I mentioned Anthony Daniels (who plays C-3PO).  I like that he’s able to tell his stories without being overshadowed by the bigger stars from the OT.  But it’s sad to me how bitter and negative he seems.  Maybe they just edited his interviews to focus on his blunt criticisms?  But I felt he comes off very poorly.  He’s particularly critical of Return of the Jedi director Richard Marquand, who can’t defend himself (having passed away decades ago).

Turning to The Simpsons doc, the first two episodes explore the series’ origins, its early days as shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, and the creation of the pilot episode.  The third and fourth episodes focus on the shows’ writers over the years, and the animation process, respectively.  The final two episodes give an overview of the subsequent thirty-plus years the show has been on the air.

As with the Star Wars doc, there are a number of fun interviews from people who were important to the run of the show but who haven’t often been given time in the spotlight.  There’s Gyorgi Kovacs-Peluce, who was the woman responsible for the characters’ iconic yellow color.  There’s Wes Archer, Jon Vitti, Rich Moore, and Mimi Pond, all of whom were key creative voices on the show during the tumultuous production of season one.  There’s Garth Ancier, a Fox exec who played a key role in the show’s getting on the air.  There’s Bill Oakley, who (along with Josh Weinstein) wrote a number of terrific episodes in the show’s early years and was co-show-runner for seasons seven and eight.  I also enjoyed hearing from Julia Prescott, who’s been a Simpsons writer in the more recent seasons from the past few years.

I enjoyed that the first episode steps back to give us a history of the fledgling Fox network.  It’s very cool to get that history.  Episode two digs into the many, many challenges involved in getting the show up and running.  I knew a lot of those stories from the wonderful DVD commentaries on the season sets of those early seasons, but it was cool to see that history explored here.  I particularly enjoyed the way we get to see comparisons of the disastrous original animation for “Some Enchanted Evening” with the re-animated version.  (That was supposed to have been the first aired episode, but when the animation came back, it was so awful they felt it was unusable and they had to almost completely redo the episode from scratch.  I’d heard those stories, but it was wild to actually see clips from the original awful animation.)

I really enjoyed episodes three and four, which were thematic rather than chronological.  Episode three, which focuses on the show’s original writing staff, was fascinating.  (I loved seeing all the times that Simpsons-ized versions of the writers were animated into the show.)  As a viewer, I noticed the shift in animation (in my view, dramatically for the better) between seasons three and four.  It was interesting to explore, in episode four of this doc, the process of animating the show, and what went down when the original animation company (Klasky-Csupo) was dumped in favor of Film Roman.

I wish this series had a few additional episodes to give more time and attention to the later seasons of The Simpsons.  There’s some good stuff in those final two episodes, but it’s very rushed.  It’s interesting to listen to some debate over if/when the Simpsons lost some of its original magic as the seasons went on (and on).  One person identifies the death of Maude Flanders (in season 11) as the show’s first major misstep, and I definitely agree that, when I first saw that episode, I felt the show had lost its way.  (Weirdly, in episode six of this doc series, when they start exploring the show’s ratings decline and possible loss of direction around season 20, after The Simpsons Movie, they give us clips of a bunch of people talking about “The Principal and the Pauper”.  I agree that that episode — in which principal Skinner is revealed to actually be a man called Armin Tamzarian — was one of the show’s first truly awful stinkers of an episode, and one of the first times I felt the show had lost a step.  But that episode was from back in season nine, not season twenty!!  It’s a bizarre and glaring mistake.)

So these documentary series might not be perfect or definitive… but they’re well made and they’re a heck of a lot of fun.  I enjoyed both of these seasons, and I hope that soon I can find time to watch more!  I’m not interested in the Fast and the Furious franchise, but that 007-focused season is calling my name…!

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