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>Arguably, the original trilogy was simply dungeons and dragons in space. Wizards, rogues, and knights in space. It was basically Flash Gordon plus WW2 movies
by hax0ron3 3y ago
>Arguably, the original trilogy was simply dungeons and dragons in space. Wizards, rogues, and knights in space.
It was basically Flash Gordon plus WW2 movies plus samurai movies plus fairy tales and Arthurian fantasy in space.
I think one of the reasons why The Force Awakens is not good is that it tries to copy previous Star Wars movies, but Star Wars has always been best when it copies stuff from other genres and mixes them together into a new thing, not when it tries to copy from its own previous films.
>it's pretty much the only widely known sci-fi films from the last 70s early 80s
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, Blade Runner, and The Terminator are all widely known late 70s / early 80s sci-fi films.
Probably not as well known but still pretty widely known are Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Thing, and 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
- petsfed 3y agoEvery single film you mentioned came out after Star Wars. The closest, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, came out only 6 months later, so hard to argue that its derivative. Even so, its inarguable that Star Wars was the first of its kind to reach the kind of mass appeal that it did. Likewise (to the parent), references to D&D or Kurosawa are red herrings, because those were sort of niche at that point. Flash Gordon is/was debatably niche, but even then, Flash Gordon wasn't made into a movie until 1980 (after Lucas gave up on pursuing the rights, and instead made Star Wars). I'm not here to defend Star Wars as great art, but I am here to say that its place in the cultural canon is 100% earned, and trying to dismiss it as cliche, formulaic, or derivative is to wildly misunderstand the cultural impact of its forebears, and anachronistically criticize it for its similarities to the things it inspired.