FIRST FRIDAYS ARTS MAP

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A three person show: ‘The Original Magic Triad’, Chynna Jenkins, Emily Hillburg, Lisa McDonnell. And a two person show: ‘Co:Lab’, Michael Caemmerer & Adele Little Caemmerer

By DOUG and Kayla Nunn

The year was 1997, the Spice Girls were on top of the world, Princess Diana died, and Hanson released “MMMBop.” I was there, ten years old, just killing all the Tamagotchis I couldnot on purpose of course but because I had no idea how to take care of them. I don’t think anyone did. 1997 was a huge year in cinema, television, and pop culture in general. I’m not gonna talk about everything that went down that year because a lot went down and we want to stay on the theme of Movies and Entertainment. But to skim the surface, George Clooney was the sexiest man alive, having played Batman in Batman & Robin, the song “Barbie Girl” by Aqua was released and the Notorious B.I.G. was murdered. Virtual Pets were all the rage and 007 for the Nintendo 64 was released paving the way for first person shooters and multiplayer games all together. Some other noticeable game releases were Star Fox 64, Fallout, Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy VII - the game that would change story based games forever with its amazing cut scenes and immersive story.

1997 was also a great year for televi- sion, releasing some great titles such as Todd McFarlane’s Spawn: The Animated Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, King of the Hill, Daria, and one of the biggest things to come from the year and still staying funny today, South Park. It was a massive year with a lot of great things coming from it but one thing dominated the year: the Box Office. So many great titles were released in 1997 like Good Will Hunting, Men in Black, Starship Troopers, Flubber, the Postman, Alien: Resurrection, Good Burger, Liar Liar, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Wild America, Contact, the Fifth Element, and the live action Spawn! The 90s was the decade of the disaster movies and 1997 did not disappoint with Dante’s Peak and Volcano. I’ll throw in Anaconda as well. Nicholas Cage of course had a killer year with Con Air and Face/Off, both being released. 1997 was a huge year for Star Wars, George Lucas saw what ILM was doing with Jurassic Park and thought that the digital technology had caught up to his original image of Star Wars and decided to release a Special Edition that completely digitally remastered all three original movies with added scenes, one noteworthy scene of Han meeting Jabba and of course the changes to the “Han shot first” scene. As far as animated movies go it was a far less exciting year with only two noteworthy mentions Hercules and Anastasia.

1997 was definitely the year of movies, not only were there a lot of great titles released there were also records broken. On December 19, 1997 James Cameron’s Titanic was released and took the Box Office by storm becoming the highest grossing film of the year raking in a staggering $1.84 billion dollars, beating Jurassic Park: The Lost World which received a still impressive $618.6 million dollars, Jurassic Park: The Lost World also broke box office records, one of them being the first film to reach the $70 million dollar mark on its opening weekend. Titanic became the first film to ever break one billion dollars, and was the highest grossing film of all time. It held on to that title for 13 years until yet again another James Cameron film Avatar would surpass it in 2010. I still remember going to see Titanic in theaters and it being the only movie I remember with an intermission. You might go as far to say this is one of the first great movie experiences I can remember and maybe the movie that got me into movies. I saw plenty of movies before this but on the big screen this was one of the most powerful memories of the movies I had seen.

As you can see there were plenty of movies released in 1997, every month seemed to have a huge title released and they all seem to be classics. Not just a movie you’ll see once but classics that you have to watch every couple years. Is there a reason? How does 1997 stack up to other years? I truly don’t know, I’m not gonna do all the work plus I’m almost done with my 800 words. But I do know some of my favorite movies and shows growing up were released that year, maybe it has something to do with the age I was and just being able to understand deeper plots, maybe it had something to do with technology and the progression of film. Maybe it was a financial thing and somebody high up knew the numbers were gonna be big. We may never know why it was such an impactful year in pop culture but what we do know is box office records were broken in 1997.

Doug and Kayla Nunn are owners and operators of The Time Capsule, a retro media hub that celebrates all things nostalgic and pop culture related.

Find them: @retromediaman | 23 Orondo Avenue, Wenatchee and at timecapsulecollectibles.com C