This is madness. I loved Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It was magnificent retro-fun and the look was stylish and classy. It had giant robots, flying air craft carriers, ray guns, and miniature elephants. What's not to love?
I don't know why it tanked at the box office. I did my part and saw it in the theatre. Sadly it seems to have killed the chances of the Conran brothers in Hollywood, which is a real shame.
They deserve to be there.
And we deserve to see their films, no?
There's more good will out there towards Sky Captain than they might think. Going indie and getting funds via Kickstarter is a possibility. Surely someone would back them if they came up with another project.
At any rate, I hope I can one day see more movies by the ubercreative Conran brothers.
By Star Wars of course I mean the original film that screened in 1977, which is now known as 'Star Wars: A New Hope'.
I saw it long before the colon and second clause. My dad drove me around the city to see it, over and over again when I was little, God bless him. I don't think there's any film I've seen as many times as the original Star Wars.
Now, just about everyone out there believes Empire is a superior film to Star Wars. They've been saying this for, oh, decades.
It's simply taken as objective fact.
Well, I'd like to offer an opposing viewpoint, one that rejects popular opinion and opposes reality as you know it.
I assert that Star Wars is the better film. It isn't perfect (nothing is), but it's better than all the other films in the series.
Here's why:
1) Relatable characters
Mark Hamill has been endlessly mocked for his "But I wanted to pick up some power conveeerters!"line, and general whiny demeanor in Star Wars in general, but I think he played the part perfectly.
Look at his performance with the Biggs character in the cut footage: Hamill is his character, while Biggs is stiff and artificial. Hamill inhabits the role in every scene. Think about it: do you think Hayden Christiansen would have been able to pull it off? I don't think so: he'd have been whiny and artificial and I wouldn't buy into his character for a second.
Not so with Hamill, whose performance in Star Wars I bought into completely. His acting choices were spot on, either because that's who he was, or because he was able to find and identify with the character of Luke Skywalker. Maybe he'd worked in a dead end job as a teenager and had dreams of seeing the world… talk about material young people (the target audience) can relate to!
In Empire, as the aspiring Jedi Knight, he's just not as good. At the film's climax, when he delivers the line, "That's not true. That's impossible!" it comes across as (ahem) forced, as scenery chewing. I didn't believe it. Now, there's no question it was a very difficult scene to pull off. The actor and the director might have had conflicting ideas how to deliver the lines.
Speaking of which, some of the dialogue in Return of the Jedi is so hackneyed it'd tax the most accomplished thespian.
Don't get me started on his preposterously convoluted scheme to rescue Han from Jabba. That has to be the most unnecessarily ad hoc, messed up, badly planned rescue in cinema history. Honestly, did he consult Inspector Clouseau or Mr. Bean? And this guy is supposed to save the galaxy? Seriously? He can't competently plan a simple rescue operation!
But back to the relatable characters: we've got the feisty Princess Leia, who won't take no crap from nobody, and the lovable rogue, Han Solo, who everyone wants to either be or be with. People aren't identifying with their jobs (princess and smuggler), of course, but with their personality types.
Can you identify a personality type in the prequels?
No.
Didn't think so.
See Red Letter Media's famed take down for more.
As for Empire, Lando Calrissian is fun and entertaining, but just a mirror image of Han (and maybe a little more of a lothario), so nothing really new.
Yoda's a great character, but even with all the Frank Oz wizardry behind him, is not relatable. He's just not. I'll bet you know some whiny teenagers, back talking riot girlz, and lovable rogues, but I'll bet you don't know any midget sensei who speak in broken syntax.
2) Fresh take on the genre
When the first Star Wars hit the screen it was like a hurricane of fresh air. Nothing like it had ever been seen before. Well. Okay: except Flash Gordon. But this was such a huge leap forward, such a refreshing take on the earlier space pulp material that it transcended its point of inspiration and became something else entirely. It became a phenomenon. People went to the theatre over and over again to see it, and cinema has never been the same since. It was the beginning of a four billion dollar franchise, and it was still unhindered by mounds of marketing crap weighing down the original creativity.
I recently heard some of the music from the first film, out of the blue, and out of context. And I was struck by the feelings it dredged up. It felt fresh, hopeful, wistful, like a beautiful lost dream. Just without all the additional hackneyed crap that got stuffed into the franchise over time by dozens and dozens of different, disconnected creators, marketers, writers, artists, and toy and game manufacturers.
As Jonathan Price's High Sparrow might say–if I may mix my franchises–there was something clean and pure about the original 1977 film. Strip away all the bells and whistles and CGI and toy tie ins, and you're back to the first film and something that might even be described as edgy. Daring. Hopeful. It was made by dreamers, invented on the fly, innovated while it was being shot with whatever could be found. No one was saying 'no, you can't do that,' and 'no, you can't do this'.
It was pulp art, but it was art.
A joyous flight of imagination.
Now it's a bloated, multibillion dollar behemoth, and some of that lithe, elegant purity was lost along the way.
It was probably sold off in a value meal.
3) Powerful character arc
Luke goes from being the aforementioned discontented teenager whining about power converters to a can-do man of action who saves the galaxy from The Death Star. At the beginning of the film, he believes himself to be powerless, unable to effect a vast and indifferent universe. Over the course of the picture, he learns he must take responsibility for his own life. He has to stand up and be counted and participate.
And he does.
Big time.
Is that not a great arc? Whiner to winner? From being helpless and outside the system to being a key part of a galaxy spanning adventure?
His outlook changes, his position changes, and he realizes his dreams.
What's his arc in Empire?
He hunkers down with Yoda and must learn to temper his teenage ambitions ("Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless."), and he begins to do so. Then he runs off to save his friends and have more adventure and excitement.
Whatever.
He grew as a character.
But is it as dramatic as in the first film?
Is it as exhilarating?
First time round, he goes from zero to hero. Second time out, he goes from hero to… somewhat more tempered hero.
Just not as powerful a journey.
But wait, you say. That's not fair: what about the revelation at the end, that Vader is his father? That's a great twist, right? Yes, it sure is! But it does come with a price: first, it damages Obi Wan Kenobi as a character. It contradicts the first film. And, secondly, it makes the universe smaller and more contrived. As great a twist as it is, it reeks of the soap opera, where people are forever running in to their evil twin, he's are really she's, and lovers discover they're (ew) siblings.
Star Wars (of Our Bold and Beautiful Lives) was just done with a bigger budget, better score and more heavy breathing.
Yes, true, that's why it's called Space Opera.
But there's good opera, and then there's bad opera.
Empire begins the 'shrinkage' of the galaxy when it reveals Luke's the son of Vader. By the third film, Leia is his sister. In the Prequels, it is revealed C3PO was built by Vader.
Buddhists like to say 'everything changes, everything is connected, pay attention.'
It's all holistic.
And it's standard practice to emphasize this in film, to connect characters and tie them in tightly together in a meaningful way, far more so than in real life, but here? It just makes the galaxy seem small and creepily inbred.
Honestly, couldn't they find a love interest for Luke that wasn't his sister?
4) Epic ending and a sense of scale
We begin with a farm boy, a couple of fleeing droids and some stolen plans. We end with a space station the size of a small moon blowing up just before it was about to vaporize another planet.
Talk about stakes! Talk about tension
Will Luke save the rebel base and all his friends, or will the Empire be triumphant, destroying not only the Rebellion HQ, but the stolen plans along with it?
The villain here isn't just Tarkin and Vader, but the Death Star itself. It's a menace to the entire galaxy, a mobile doomsday machine. And it's already killed a planet full of people!
And what do they attack this planet sized peril with?
Teeny, tiny fighters.
Drama is about conflict and contrast, right? Scale makes things epic. Well, here we have the greatest, most dramatic difference in scale in pretty much the entire history of cinema: man vs. planet.
Goliath has nothing on the Death Star.
Seriously, how much bigger was he than David? Twice his size, perhaps? Maybe even three or four times if we want to be really dramatic.
Have you ever noticed that? When we tell a story, we naturally want to up the stakes. It wasn't two guys fighting us, it was four. And we had to go to school uphill, both ways.
Storytellers make villains bigger and more powerful, the cost of defeat more dire, and the hero's disadvantage greater, all in order to make victory sweeter.
How much larger is the Death Star compared to the hero? We're talking single seat fighters vs. a freaking planetoid.
You can't get a more dramatic, more epic difference in scale than that.
Except maybe my ten year old nephew, who'd have the hero fight an anthropomorphized galaxy.
But never mind him.
Finally, and somewhat controversially, there's the sexual subtext. Lots of people say this isn't there, at all, and only a sick perverted mind would even allege it. Sorry. They're in denial. The art direction gives the game away.
What am I talking about? The final attack on the Death Star is analogous to impregnation. Tiny sperm (the fighters) attack the massive egg (the Death Star) which then explodes (in orgasm).
Which just adds to the thrill of the climax.
What does Empire offer us?
Han is captured and put in carbonite (which is pretty inspired, really). Luke learns the truth about his father and gets a hand chopped off to boot, putting him one step closer to being a cyborg like his dear old dad.
It's a cliffhanger.
There's no real resolution.
No payoff.
No real ending.
No adrenaline rush.
True, you can argue that this is a more mature, more nuanced, and more thoughtful film. At least, as thoughtful as a movie with laser guns and a green Buddhist puppet can be.
And yet… is thoughtfulness what you want from Space Opera?
A better argument is that the series is a cinematic version of the old serials from the thirties and forties, each ending with a compelling cliffhanger that makes you want to come back.
Now that I can agree with, and in that sense, the soap opera/serial aspect of Empire makes it great. Yet there is a price to be paid for this approach: the quality of the film ultimately becomes dependent on the next in the series, as Empire is not self-contained to the degree Star Wars was, and requires Jedi to provide the ending.
By making it part of a greater whole, each part must support the others, and if one fails, it reduces the sum of the total.
And unfortunately Jedi is not anywhere near as good a film as the first two in the original trilogy.
True, the character of the Emperor was inspired and played with cackling, divine malevolence. He's the best part of the picture. But much of the rest of it doesn't measure up.
5) Unencumbered possibility
As more detail and baggage was added to the Star Wars universe, possibilities were defined out of existence. What was in the realm of the audience's imagination was turned into products, and the elegance of the original narrative thread became convoluted and contradictory.
It began with Empire ('He betrayed and murdered your father' to 'No, Luke, I am your father) and only got worse from there.
Marketing concerns loomed ever larger, trumping story telling. For example, Han Solo was to be killed off in Jedi, but was spared because Lucas was afraid it would hurt toy sales.
I'm not sure if anyone remembers this series now, in the age of Divergent and Hunger Games and a zillion other post-apocalyptic young adult books, but I have a soft spot for John Christopher's Tripod trilogy.
They're great fun, and the BBC adaptation from the early 80s is entertaining, if rather dated now.
It also sags a bit in the middle when they spend four episodes on – what else? – a farm. A lot of post-apocalypse fiction seem to get stuck for an inordinate amount of time on farms (I'm looking at you, Walking Dead).
Even Z for Zachariah, one of my favorite PA novels, is set on a farm. The enter book happens there, but you don't mind because it's AWESOME. And it's being made into a film which is set for release later this year. Or so I'm told.
So good.
But that's a topic for another post.
The Tripod series follows three young boys who go on the lam to avoid being 'capped' by aliens who rule the earth in the far flung future. Capping is done when a child reaches adolescence, and it, essentially, pacifies them. 'Neuters' violent, rebellious thoughts.
Like a lobotomy that leaves critical thinking intact.
Humans live in service to the three legged aliens, who prowl the earth in mighty tripods straight out of H.G. Wells, and live in great domed cities. Human society is mainly rural, and held in a pre-industrial state.
But there is a resistance movement of humans living in The White Mountains, and the first book is about the boys trying to reach this safe haven.
The second book sees them infiltrate a great city of the aliens, The City of Gold and Lead, and the third culminates in revolution against the alien order.
It's a lot of fun, although the TV show was unceremoniously killed off after season two (which covered the second book).
The books are well written with peppy, easily accessible prose that had me hooked and flipping pages as a kid.
You can watch the whole thing online. For the time, the effects were cutting edge.
But there's blood on the tree in the image above, and it's official art for the series.
Since there was no blood on Brienne's sword before she struck, well… it's either highly disingenuous or Robert's last brother is currently sans head.
There's also this interview with the director of the episode, David Nutter, in the WSJ:
The scene between Stannis and Brienne ends with Brienne
chopping at him with her sword. Why did you not show the actual moment
of Stannis’s death, whereas you guys always show characters getting it
so definitively? I think there was a real sense of inevitability toward what was going
to happen, and I think anything beyond that would have been somewhat
gratuitous. I know for us to say that about “Game of Thrones,” that’s an
interesting way to put it, but you could really get a sense that
Stannis knew that his time had come, and there was nothing else really
to say, nothing else really to do. I always believe that editing is the
kind of thing where you want to cut into a scene a little bit after it
starts and get out before it ends. This is exactly what we did in this
sequence, and I thought it worked perfectly. Did you actually film any kind of violence toward Stannis, her sword going into him?
Not at all. It wasn’t even filmed for safety. Dave and Dan were very
clear with how they wanted the scene dealt with and handled, and I was
there to provide that for them.
If you like time travel, and you like the post-apocalyptic fiction, you owe it to yourself to watch the source material Monkeys is based on.
For my money, La Jettée's mournful, artsy post-apocalylpse is better and more evocative than the Terry Gilliam version.
And I love the Terry Gilliam version.
Yet this black and white slide show set to music and narration stills makes me feel more. And it's in French, too, with subtitles.
Perhaps the very limitations it labors under gives it a sense of verisimilitude that make it seem more real and immediate than Bruce Willis in a puffy, goofy looking transparent suit.
It seems a fitting topic of discussion for a blog about the Post-Apocalypse, although this is a particularly old one.
But why did it happen?
You don't need to read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to find out; this blog post reduces it to six easily digestible points. How's that for brevity?
Of course, anyone and everyone interested in history eventually stumbles across this question, and the answers are just as numerous.
Every ideological agenda has an explanation to fit, ranging from Marxist to Libertarian. Some say it never happened at all, that the empire just morphed into a different form.
Theories wax and wane. Historians, believe it or not, follow trends.
Here's what Matthew White has to say about it:
"…There is also a tendency to downplay the violence associated with barbarian invasions—as well as frowning on calling them barbarians. In fact, some scholars argue that the whole fall of the Western Roman Empire is overrated as a milestone, and that the changes sweeping Europe were mostly the peaceful immigration of wandering tribes, who imposed a new ruling class but were culturally assimilated in a couple of generations. This view is especially popular among the English, Americans, and Germans since they are the descendants of the aforementioned barbarians, who would now seem less barbaric… Every now and then scholars grow bored with overrated golden ages, and they gain a renewed interest in former dark ages. It is never permanent, and we shouldn't take it too seriously."
One paradigm or narrative will hold sway for awhile until someone comes along who wants to prove their intellectual bonafides by upsetting the applecart and overturning the accepted narrative.
The pendulum swings one way, then the other, hopefully going to less of an extreme each time, until a better, more accurate picture of the past emerges.
Or at least the most egregious errors and ideological agendas are purged.
I was going to go with a list, starting with peripheral causes and then zeroing in on the biggie, but the biggie is so big it cascades over into all the others, so it makes sense to start with the main cause and expand outward from that.
The Roman Leviathan, which dominated the Mediterranean for centuries, essentially fell because it was subjected to more stress than the system could absorb. The empire was an organization, a kind of information system. If you disrupt a system enough, introduce enough chaos, it will eventually reach a tipping point and dissolve.
So what were the primary sources of stress?
Here's my Quick Start Guide to the Fall of the Roman Empire.
1) Barbarian invasions
This is a controversial thing to say these days, as the current trends is to absolve the negative impact of barbarian attack ('migration'). Damage inflicted by barbarians is downgraded or simply ignored by the hip historians, leaving it to the fuddy duddy's to hold barbarian feet to the fire.
Hipster historians are willing to write off the 40 million people killed, for example, during the campaigns of Genghis Khan as insignificant. Because trade routes and culture exchange! They're trying to offset the previous focus on Mongol city razing and balance the account, but they're swinging the pendulum too far in his case.
Of course, Genghis arrives on the scene long after Rome succumbed, but he's nevertheless part of the same phenomenon: the collision of vast, wealthy, and well-established agrarian states and mobile, poor, yet militarily superior steppe peoples.
Barbarians were always at the borders of Rome. That's very true. But the pressure they exerted increased greatly over time, and escalated from footmen to mounted archers. Areas that had been quiet, such as North Africa, also became more active threats over time.
During the Classical period, the legions of Rome dominated the region with their professionalism and highly flexible formations. Armed with a short sword (gladius) and throwing spear (plum), they were better organized and frequently better led than those of their opponents around the Mediterranean basin.
And they were almost all foot soldiers.
Fortunately, their opponent's armies were composed, primarily, of footmen as well. Cavalry were expensive to field. When the proportion of cavalry eventually increased, they frequently weren't Romans at all, but hired barbarian mercenaries.
Nomadic peoples of the steppes began to impact the borders of the Roman during the third century AD, which was a calamitous period for Rome thanks to a mixture of invasions, revolts, plagues, civil war, economic depression, currency debasement, and secession. Rome went through 20 emperors in 50 years. It brought the Mediterranean Leviathan to the brink of collapse.
The arrival of the Goths complicated things further, and it would get worse when the Vandals and Huns showed up.
Why? Agrarian based states at this time were unable to effectively counter the masses of horse archers that nomads deployed. This was true for all the states bordering upon the steppes: China, Persia, India, and Rome all experienced devastation at the hands of mounted invaders.
Settled civilizations had to adapt to an enemy that could literally ride circles around them. That or perish.
Both China and Rome, the two most easily accessible from the steppes, tried bribery. China was expert at playing on nomad people off against another, and did so with aplomb for centuries. Rome hired barbarians to provide cavalry forces for their armies, until, eventually, the barbarians essentially became the Roman army. But they were never accepted as Romans. Just foxes guarding the hen house.
Rome's riches were extremely tempting to poor steppe peoples who didn't have the food surpluses necessary to support as much specialized labour.
Given how easily settled states could be crushed militarily, it made sense for the nomads to prey upon them and extort vast tributes.
2) Military inferiority
The legions built an empire for Rome, and for hundreds of years, nothing could stand against them. But by the third century, things had changed. The legions found themselves outclassed by new, mounted opponents.
In addition, the population of Germany had increased, and with it pressure against the borders of the empire, so there would have been some increase in military spending to meet the rising tide regardless of whether or not the steppe peoples arrived.
But horse archers were much more dangerous than the axe wielding barbarians Romans were used to: the hordes were the equivalent of Classical Era Panzer Divisions, practicing early Blitzkrieg.
Foot soldiers simply couldn't keep up, nor could they force a faster moving enemy to battle. Mounted troops would ride up, fire an arrow from their powerful composite bow, and retreat out of range before defenders could respond.
It is not known if the Huns brought stirrups to Europe. It's within the realm of possibility, but just their mobility and composite bow was enough to give them a decisive edge. In fact, the horse archer dominated the world militarily until rifles were developed. Only then could foot soldiers cut down mounted troops before they had a chance to loose their arrows.
Obviously the first two points (barbarian invasion and military inferiority) are intertwined. The fact that China and Rome could not beat the nomads mano a mano meant they had to co-opt, bribe, or hire nomads to fight for them. China, which had a much larger population and was, relatively speaking, more culturally powerful and homogenous than Rome, was better able to absorb invaders than its polyglot Roman counterpart, and did so repeatedly. Barbarians would conquer China only to become Chinese.
3) Increasing internal oppression and erosion of rights and security
In order to deal with the inability of Roman forces to hold the enemy at the border, whole regions were abandoned by civilians, who understandably did not want to be casually raped and pillaged by raiders.
The change was noticed: Emperor Diocletian saw that the empire was caving under barbarian pressure and implemented sweeping military and civil reforms.
First he divided the military into two branches: a limited, fortified, stationary border guard to sound the alarm and hold back small incursions, and elite mobile legions held in the rear to deal with major invasions. These would ride out to meet enemies who penetrated deep into Roman territory. It was now defense in depth, the same defensive tactic adapted to thwart Blitzkrieg during the Second World War.
The idea of holding barbarians right at the border was a thing of the past. Front lines were too brittle.
Yet Rome was already spending half its budget on the military (the United States spends roughly 20%). This not only increased, but in order to secure a stable supply system for the military, Diocletian forced people to remain in place, forbidding them from moving, as well as forcing male children to take up the vocation of their father.
People were robbed of choice.
Anyone unfortunate enough to live in a border territory was now stuck there.
Yet this way Diocletian could guarantee that the supply system for the army wouldn't erode or collapse as people decided to move or switch professions.
It unquestionably made the Roman Empire a worse place to live. Only a very small, rich minority would have been unaffected.
The reason for these changes? Pressure from barbarians. Without that pressure, there would be no reason for such drastic changes to the circumstances under which the civilian population lived.
Diocletian also brought in a system of guilds, to which workers were compelled to belong.
The predation by barbarians changed everything and resulted in the militarization of an entire society.
Rome was now a military with a state, rather than a state fielding a military. This kept the empire humming along for another century or two. From Diocletian's harsh reforms to the final collapse of the (Western) Roman Empire, we are looking at an interstitial period, Late Antiquity, that bridges the gap between the Classical Era and Medieval Feudalism (and The Dark Ages, if you believe they happened at all). The knights of the feudal era, and the peasants who supported them, are a response to the threat of mounted troops.
One thing you will find over and over again throughout history: trade increases wealth, so savvy leaders protect merchants and trade routes, because they generate wealth, and wealth can be taxed.
As the Roman state could no longer guarantee the security of merchants, long distance trade declined. Drastically. The payoff was no longer justified given the increased risks involved.
And so the state and everyone in it became poorer.
It had already been through a major depression during the Crisis of the Third Century, and Roman currency had been badly debased. Diocletian tried to rectify this with strict price controls and draconian punishments, but they didn't work and didn't last.
4) Lack of a peaceful means of succession and state fragmentation
Democracy allows for the peaceful transition of power, and it's one tool the Romans didn't have.
When an emperor died, every ambitious noble and power hungry general scrambled for the diadem.
This handy chart from Randal S. Olson's site shows length of reign and means of death for emperors between 27 BC and 395 AD/
Emperors were often assassinated by their successor. Sometimes this impacted just the emperor and his immediate family (all would be hunted down and murdered), other times it devolved into civil wars that would convulse the state and disrupt trade for a year or two. Armies would be stripped away from the frontier to fight for the Imperial Purple, allowing barbarians to flood into Roman territory unhindered.
Over time, any highly coveted position will see the investment contenders make to seize it increase, until, eventually, the investment made far outweighs the actual benefit of the position itself.
This is very much the case with the Imperial Throne. After moving Heaven and earth to gain the it, many emperors perished within a year or two, murdered by the next in line. It was like a revolving door.
The actual benefit of the position declined precipitously. Power began to be wielded more by people behind the scenes, as sitting on the throne was simply too dangerous. The last emperors were little more than puppets of barbarian power brokers holding the position of the Magister Militum, head of the (now not so) Roman Army. Eventually the barbarian generals decided to do away with the figurehead emperor entirely.
Many governors, if they couldn't take the throne, seceded from the Empire and established their own, separate domain where they could be numero uno. Britain, for example, was a separate domain for years, first as part of the Gallic Empire (259-274 AD) and then as the Britannic Empire (286-296 AD) until finally being brought to heel.
This sort of secession was so common that Diocletian separated military and civil powers to prevent any one man from holding too much power. Diocletian even divided rule of the empire between four Tetrarchs.
Then he retired to raise cabbages.
It wasn't enough.
Despite all of Diocletian's efforts, the Romans preferred fighting amongst themselves when they should have been dealing with invaders. Internal competition led to alliances with external enemies that further damaged the state.
5) Cultural fragmentation and bigotry
Over time, the invaders of China became Chinese. This didn't happen with Rome, which was incapable of assimilating the barbarians. Indeed, the Romans resisted making Germans, in particular, into Roman citizens, to their own detriment. Emperor Honorius indulged his prejudice against them and had the families of the Goths, some 30,000 women and children, who were under Roman protection at the time, murdered.
Not a good way to co-opt people.
6) Slavery and wealth polarization
The rich got richer and the common free man got poorer as the empire aged, and it wasn't good to begin with.
Slavery only benefits a small minority at the top of the totem pole. Vast slave estates made it impossible for free men to compete as farmers, and eventually the free men were driven into debt or fled to Rome to live on the dole. Others took shelter under rich lords, accepting their protection from debt collectors in exchange for labour.
It was the beginning of serfdom.
It had become much harder for the little people to make a living. Whatever middle class had existed was being squeezed out of existence as the rich pressed their advantage and impoverished everyone else.
Enormously wealthy senators didn't pay taxes and were exempt from military service, into which ordinary people could find themselves unceremoniously dragooned.
There was no Solon to strike a balance between the interests of the rich and the poor. The system had degenerated too far and become too corrupt. What few protections there were for the average citizen had been eroded away, and they had less and less reason to be loyal to the state that oppressed them in the name of protecting them.
From the point of view of the elite, there was little reason for technological innovation, as slaves (human beings) are incredibly sophisticated machines, capable of a wide range of functions. Disposable people made automation irrelevant and held back the development of practical, labour saving devices.
The ancients knew of all sorts of things, of course, including steam power. They just didn't see any economic reason to harness such marvels, except as toys or for spectacle. It was far cheaper to use people.
When the Roman state collapsed, the barbarians kept some elements of the bureaucracy functioning. The rich certainly faired better than the poor, and the senate continued to meet. Some of them cooperated with their new, barbarian overlords while others fled to Constantinople.
But eventually all of the state systems that Rome had built withered away. The remarkable Roman roads became overgrown. Long distance trade dried up. Aqueducts, stadiums, and magnificent baths slowly collapsed and no one knew how to rebuild them.
The forum, centre of life in Rome, became a cow pasture.
That's my top six. Other possible factors:
7) Plague
The Roman Empire was hit repeatedly by massive plagues, and some of the worst occurred during its later years, such as the Plague of Justinian. That one, of course, was too late to account for Rome's collapse, just as the Antonine Plague was too early.
No doubt there were others, and they may have impacted the ability of the empire to defend itself.
As was seen in the collapse of the Incan and Aztec Empires, disease can devastate not only the military forces of a state (indeed, large concentration soldiers were breeding grounds for disease, including The Spanish Flu), but the bureaucracy and supply systems behind it, making the government incapable of defending the state and its people effectively.
But I'm really speculating with this one. The barbarians would have been affected by plague as well. When Pope Leo I turned back Attila from the gates of Rome, some say it was less because of God and gold and more because plague had broken out in the Hun camps.
8) Climate change
Areas in North Africa were already abandoned and left fallow before barbarians overran them, suggesting that they were already no longer economically viable. Food production declined. There is evidence that life in general had become more difficult.
Rise and Fall
The animation below shows the expansion and contraction of the empire from the time of the republic:
Lead poisoning may have reduced the effectiveness of the ruling elite and driven some of them mad, but I'm not sure how major a factor that really was. Christianity was militarized by Constantine, so its earlier pacifist, slave ideology origins were successfully co-opted by the state and seem an unlikely cause of its collapse. It did cause instability for a time as various factions competed for dominance.
Rome hit a high with Marcus Aurelius and the golden age of the second century, got slammed in the third, was saved by Diocletian's reforms, which helped it trudge through the fourth, but then got finally overwhelmed in the fifth.
Acting together the top six points created a perfect storm.
The Eastern Roman Empire, however, would continue to exist until Constantinople fell in 1453.
