Don't waste time investigating Billy Jack

Because a collection was at Walmart featuring the character's entire legacy, I finally had a look at Billy Jack (1971), a movie I first heard about when investigating historic box office results.  Until then I had no clue it existed, which is incredibly rare for a large box office hit, which is a phenomenon that happens because a movie makes a significant impact on the pop culture and will be referenced one way or another for years to come.  The Oscars are a completely different matter.  Most nominations are minor films featuring performances or production work Academy voters are keen for one reason or another to recognize, and it's always been that way.

Actually watching Billy Jack explained why this happened to it pretty quickly.  It's a terrible movie.  Its predecessor, The Born Losers (1967) is terrible.  Its sequels, The Trial of Billy Jack (1974) and Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977; which doesn't fail because it's an almost complete reshoot of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but because it retains the same hairbrained production values as the rest of the series, which has as its dubious legacy forcing the blockbuster concept on the wide release schedule movies have been following ever since), are terrible.

I mean terrible.  The title character (which is itself terrible) is a macho hippy.  But a hippy all the same.  All his supporters are hippies.  The real hippies, not the ones the media has tried for decades to sell on a gullible public in the post-hippy era.  Basically the ones Quentin Tarantino features in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, only the Billy Jack hippies are presented as the counterculture heroes of legend, a huge emphasis on "heroes."

The most offensive part, for me, is that these hippies believe they make good music, but they seem fundamentally incapable of any such thing.  The whole series features, proudly, the anthem "One Tin Soldier" which, if you're keeping up with me, is terrible.  Just so completely convoluted it's difficult to understand how even one film, much less any audience member (it's described elsewhere online as iconic) could believe for a hot minute it isn't complete garbage.

Billy Jack himself is pretty awesome.  He's a dude who can't help but get into fights, and he pioneered martial arts as a cinematic way to do so.  He's worth rooting for, but nothing around him really justifies his actions except in the most cardboard way.  It's like the charisma of Steve McQueen without the cool.  Basically every successful Steve McQueen flick was all about selling the cool image.  It was the whole point.  McQueen went well out of his way to make sure he looked cool.  He had an ego.  In the right context, that's exactly all you really need.

Billy Jack desperately needed anything, anything at all to work.  The success of the films, such as it was, owed everything to guerilla marketing.  It worked.  For that time.  But no one in the Hollywood establishment respected the results.  You don't need that.  But you do need good filmmaking.  

So do yourself a favor, and don't waste time investigating Billy Jack.  It's not worth your time.  Unless you have morbid curiosity.