George Lucas
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Connections, in both directions
Or Star Wars meets Flying High.
Okay, “The Edge of Tomorrow” and “Lucy” weren’t bad, but “Guardians of the Galaxy” is full of what made movies fun back when “Jaws” and “Star Wars” were igniting the genre.
Guardians of the Galaxy (Disney, Blu-ray+Blu-ray 3D, DVD, VOD) is based on one of the more obscure Marvel Comics to get the big screen treatment, but everything about the film suggests a filmmaker trying to recapture the sense of energy and color and sheer fun of Star Wars and the pop space opera.
With a healthy amount of references to Star Wars, allusions to things like The Wild Bunch and The Dirty Dozen, and way more jokes, heart, and character development than anyone could have imagined, Guardians is a hell of a fun two hours.
The screenplay boldly acknowledges the existence of both “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” – two obvious influences here – but it works in bringing Gunn’s passion for the material to the surface.
Blessed with a loose, anarchic B-picture soul that encourages you to enjoy yourself even when you're not quite sure what's going on, the scruffy "Guardians" is irreverent in a way that can bring the first "Star Wars" to mind, in part because it has some of the most unconventional heroes — would you believe a raccoon and a tree?
With the amount of time to rescue them dwindling—they fled the embassy during the raid and have been living for months in the home of the Canadian ambassador—Mendez comes up with a whackadoodle plan to pose himself and the six people as a film crew making a cheesy Star Wars knockoff called Argo.
They hilariously start reading—with terrible delivery—perhaps the most hackneyed post-Star Wars script since, well, Flash Gordon.
The title comes from an apparently risible Star Wars?knockoff screenplay used as a pretext to get six Americans out of Iran.
After flying to the West Coast, Tony meets with CIA-connected makeup artist John Chambers (John Goodman) and curmudgeonly motormouth producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin, in fine, salty form), who set him up with a script – a Star Wars knockoff called Argo – along with a publicity campaign.
His rather nifty idea was to say they were all location scouts for a big budget Star Wars knock-off, and to support this cover he enlisted Oscar-winning makeup effects artist John Chambers (John Goodman), who had assisted the CIA before by crafting disguises on their missions.
''If I'm doing a fake movie, it's going to be a fake hit,'' veteran producer Lester Siegel (a razor-sharp Alan Arkin) tells Mendez, and there are some amusing gibes as the production of the titular sci-fi epic (it's the era of Star Wars) is publicly launched to provide viable cover.
John Carter (2012)
Directed by Andrew Stanton
influenced by Star Wars (1977), Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002), Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Themes Plot
Although the Burroughs stories have never quite made it to the screen in their proper form before, they have proven to be enormously influential to any number of classic films of the genre--in an ad campaign that decided to remove "of Mars" from the title, supposedly to avoid comparisons with last year's enormously expensive bomb "Mars Needs Moms," Disney has name-checked the likes of "Star Wars" and "Avatar" as works that might not have existed were it not for them.
George Lucas drew from Burroughs' stories for " Star Wars ."
There's the skeleton of a truly epic film on the same scale as Avatar or the Star Wars films, but there's just not enough oomph in the film or willingness to take the risks on such big ideas.
It’s part Star Wars, part Flash Gordon, part The Matrix, and part Lord of the Rings, with an ordinary character—in this case, a Civil War captain—transported to Mars to fight a battle waging between the planet’s inhabitants.
But given Brad Bird's (Iron Giant, The Incredibles) wildly successful transition to live-action thrill-making with the latest Mission Impossible movie, and the fact that Burroughs' work has inspired everything from Flash Gordon to Star Wars to Avatar, it's understandable why Disney rolled the $200 million dice on this potential franchise.
That book and the ones that followed in the John Carter series went on to inspire the imaginations of hundreds of science fiction writers and there’s little doubt that we have the mind of Burroughs to thank for everything from Star Wars to Tron.
It’s a movie of random hilarious bits — they duck into a road house where the boot-scooting band is playing the same music as the cantina band in “Star Wars,” and Paul settles, once and for all, the “Evolution vs. Creationism” debate with a a sheltered trailer park rube (Kristen Wiig, funny).
The whole thing is one big riff on “E.T.” but there are clever nods to “Star Wars” (note the song that the bluegrass band is playing during the bar scene), “Aliens,” “Close Encounters” and a few more.
Graeme and Clive's visit to a Nevada roadhouse, where John Williams' Star Wars cantina theme is played, underlines the actor-writers' debt to George Lucas a connection made explicit in their new vidcast , in which they play C-3PO and R2-D2 as the idiot descendants of Laurel and Hardy.
Recreating scenes from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in painstaking detail or having the house band at a roadside honky tonk playing the Star Wars cantina song is all well and good, but you also have to come up with something funny to happen in the foreground.
They are into comics, aliens, Star Wars and science-fiction, so they naturally start at San Diego's Comic-Con, a geeks' convention where every second person is dressed as a storm trooper or Princess Leia.
A galaxy of fantasy flicks get referenced, but the Star Wars allusions are so numerous that George Lucas could file for a writer's credit.
About halfway through Fanboys, a group of Star Wars geeks decides to make a detour during their road trip.
The cinematic equivalent of Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy — a project delayed so long that many began to doubt its actual existence — Fanboys is about a group of passionate Star Wars geeks who set off on a road trip to try to see the latest film in the series before anyone else.
Fanboys, a sweaty, strenuously overgeeked comedy about Star Wars obsessives (made by an unaffiliated team of filmmakers, but with Lucas’s blessing and original sound effects), is free advertising bordering on a b.j.
That's what a "Star Wars" geek asks his fellow true-believer buddies at the end of "Fanboys," as the obsessed brood prepares to watch the long-awaited prequel "The Phantom Menace" in 1999.
A geeky-buddy road-trip comedy that employs cultish devotion to the Star Wars mythology as its driving force, Fanboys doesn't have much of a reach – 20- and 30-something males raised on video games and sci-fi TV reruns, for whom fraternal hijinx in the wasteland of their high school and college years remain the high points in lives.
The low-budget movie, by and for "Star Wars" geeks, was originally set for a September release, but bitter fights between the filmmakers and the Weinstein Co., resulting in months of re-shoots, leave the integrity of the final cut in question.
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Directed by Lana Wachowski
influenced by Star Wars (1977), Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Themes Characters Visuals Plot
Dazzling to behold yet puny of imagination, the movie takes the “Star Wars” formula — hero myths nicked from Joseph Campbell, cutting-edge visual effects, comic-strip dialogue, goofy-looking aliens — and reduces it to generic Big Box shelf product.
If The Matrix was full of bullet-time thrills and cool Keanu-ness, if Cloud Atlas was goofily cartoonish in its attempt to bring David Mitchell's across-the-cosmos novel to the screen, then Andy and Lana Wachowski's latest, Jupiter Ascending, falls somewhere in between - with Cinderella, The Wizard of Oz, and Star Wars as reference points.
Whether they are borrowing from “Star Wars” in creating a series of nutty looking characters or goofing with a wink and a nod on “Hitchhiker’s Guide” or even “Brazil,” the meaning of it all is hallow and comes off as a pale imitator.
Likewise, they could have approached the design of this far-out film in a number of ways, and they have gone for something that is pulpy and beautiful and that almost gleefully ignores the "commonplace worn-in" look that has been one of the standards for science-fiction ever since "Star Wars" and "Alien."
Jupiter Ascending is like the cantina scene in Star Wars.
Luckily, the political machinations here are more exciting than those in The Phantom Menace .
Licorice Pizza (2021)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced by American Graffiti (1973)
Themes
Not only casting unknowns, but virtually untested, actors Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) in the leads and setting it all in 1973 (the same year American Graffiti opened, a stated inspiration for Anderson), the director has rolled the dice on a story that is loosely based on the youthful experiences of producer Gary Goetzman.
What’s here is a wistful coming-of-age saga akin to George Lucas’ “American Graffiti” (made the same year “Pizza” takes place) without the anxiety and anger and soaring on the chemistry and charisma of Haim and Hoffman, the haute idiosyncrasies of the (eve of Watergate) era and a soundtrack that just can’t be beat.
Although it channels Fast Times At Ridgemont High and American Graffiti , Licorice Pizza delivers a fresh blast of romance and humour, and feels idiosyncratic enough to stand gloriously apart.
It’s a bit shaggy and baggy at first, but once you get on its wavelength—seeing it as a kind of doobie-esque Hal Ashby/Altman-like hang out movie with “American Graffiti” night-on-the-town coming of age vibes—and once it all coalesces—warm, affectionate, nostalgic— it’s a real terrific throwback thrill of captivating, unique characters in a simple, unpretentious story about running around and growing up in 1970s Los Angeles with little tentative romance sprinkled in for good measure.
Some of it was inspired by classics like “American Graffiti,” with its burger-joints-and-cherry-bombs vision of California youth, or plucked from real-life events, like the ’70s gas shortages that caused car lines to stretch on for blocks.
I’ve no idea how much of it is true memoir and how much fiction, but Anderson has absolutely nailed the essence of its setting in much the same way George Lucas did with “American Graffiti”.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
Directed by Kerry Conran
influenced by Star Wars (1977)
Visuals
While never "realistic", the world that Conran has created is as convincing as those that George Lucas and Peter Jackson, respectively, developed for the "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings" sagas.
Conran, however, does not fall into the trap of George Lucas' recent Star Wars prequels; SKY CAPTAIN is sagely aware that story is still king.
It attempts to capture the same kind of dizzy, delirious fun that's made such romps as "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Last Ark" all-time cinematic landmarks, decades after they first burst onto the screen.
While the blue screen is hardly a new film technique--George Lucas used it back in 1977 with "Star Wars" and extensively in the latest installments--no director has forsaken sets and locations completely, making "Sky Captain" a unique new way of filming movies.
The flavour of an intergalactic western, echoing both Star Wars and The Mandalorian and Grogu, is always there, complete with bizarre aliens and cumbersome, rusting but somehow still functioning spacecraft.
…the Star Wars cantina–influenced space bar scenes are fun…
…a young girl trying to recruit help at a local Mos Eisley-like cantina…
And speaking of bars, many of the scenes in this film feature some of the most imaginative and bizarre looking creatures this side of STAR WARS.
With SUPERGIRL, written by Ana Noguera and directed by Craig Gillespie, it’s not only a down-in-the-mouth slog, but it’s so derivative of STAR WARS, MAD MAX, and yes, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, it makes me wonder if Gunn genuinely has the vision the WB executives thought he had.
That’s right, folks, Supergirl just introduced its own Mos Eisley Cantina – and, as well a chance for the show to have fun with its creature effects, it gives Alex and Maggie a chance to show off their sparky chemistry…
“Booksmart” also cuts its manic horniness with a meandering weirdness that recalls Richard Linklater’s ambling “Dazed and Confused” as well as hints of the low-key dread running through “American Graffiti,” the urtext of this genre.
Booksmart borrows elements of many coming-of-age classics, from American Graffiti (1973) to Risky Business (1983) to Superbad (2007).
It borrows its it-all-happened-during-one-night time frame from “American Graffiti” and “Dazed and Confused,” some soundtrack concepts from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and one of the lead characters is more than a little bit related to Cher from “Clueless.”
Although its “nerdy misfit high-schoolers seek darkness and transformation at an epic party the night before graduation” premise is a time-tested formula, seen in every era from American Graffiti to Dazed and Confused to Can’t Hardly Wait to Superbad, Wilde’s film feels totally original and new.
The high school coming-of-age comedy is a subgenre unto itself, with each decade delivering movies that have become classics, like American Graffiti, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Can't Hardly Wait, Superbad, Easy A and more recent films such as The Edge of Seventeen and Lady Bird.
It owes a debt to generational classics such as American Graffiti, Dazed and Confused, Can’t Hardly Wait, and Superbad—movies about high schoolers running wild as they edge up to adulthood and obsess over the specter of an uncertain future.
A standard carriage chase is into into a canyon run akin to Star Wars, with moles on bats attacking the carriage.
Besides the aforementioned Thompson ties, it fuses Dali surrealism, film noir (Beatty’s corrupt mayor is modeled on John Huston’s character in “Chinatown”), “Don Quixote” (for Alfred Molina’s quixotic armadillo) “Star Wars” and “Apocalypse Now” (for a batty canyon chase set to “Ride of the Valkyries”), Peckinpah’s “Ride the High Country” (for the dysfunctional family of mole varmints), and, most notably, Sergio Leone’s famously over-the-top Westerns.
This involves tough talk in saloons, face-downs on Main Street and a chase sequence between high canyon walls that's a nod in the direction of "Star Wars."
But Rango piles on the references to other movies like Tarantino on a bender, extending the tribute to many great films of other genres which are actually Westerns in a different guise, from Star Wars to Chinatown.
(Think Star Wars bar meets old Western saloons.)
The company certainly has a history in character creation from its inception, when George Lucas set it up for " Star Wars ."
Oblivion (2013)
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
influenced by Star Wars (1977), Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Plot Themes Visuals
It calls up fleeting images from things like Star Wars , The Road Warrior , and Top Gun, but more importantly, it borrows at least half the plot from Duncan Jones's amazing, underrated Moon (2009).
There are distracting vibes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Wall-E, Total Recall, TV’s Battlestar Galactica, the underrated Moon — even Star Wars.
And writer-director Joseph Kosinski has nabbed bits of "Star Wars," "WALL-E," "Independence Day," "The Matrix" and so many other films that after-movie discussions will surely involve pin-that-scene-on-what-donkey games.
If J.J. Abrams wanted to hire him to revamp the look of Star Wars, I doubt anyone would object.
Oblivion is so much like and influenced by so many other movies that it doesn't top or transcend The Matrix, I Am Legend, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, Aliens, Vertigo, Cloud Atlas, Inception, An Affair to Remember.
You know a pictures derivative when a list of titles in the same genre technically constitutes a string of spoilers Blade Runner, Independence Day, The Matrix, Moon, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, WALL-E, 2001.
He's done some fine work as a second-unit guy on the "Star Wars" movies (he directed the pod race in "Phantom Menace"), but he's no match for Hubbard's story and Corey Mandell's screen adaptation.
The movie is directed by Roger Christian, a former second-unit director of "Star Wars."
Though based on Scientologist founder L. Ron Hubbard's 1982 novel, this screens like "Mad Max" meets "Star Wars".
It would certainly kill fewer brain cells than this mess, which wastes the considerable talents of John Travolta (for whom the movie was a pet project) and Forest Whitaker on a film that mixes equal parts "Star Wars," -"Braveheart" and "Plan 9 from Outer Space."
The plot is the tried-and-true fight of the righteous against oppressors -- it could be Indians against the cavalry, the "Star Wars" rebels against the evil Empire, the colonialists against the Redcoats, etc., etc.
The movie plays like an uglier, Earth-bound "Star Wars," interrupted by frequent Psychlo temper tantrums.
Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)
Directed by Kevin Smith
influenced by Star Wars (1977)
Plot Themes
After convincing fellow coffeehouse counterman Delaney (Craig Robinson) to spend his money on a film as the producer instead of on a flat-screen, they put together a motley assortment of actors, aka a cast, a cameraman, build sets and plan a plot and characters around "Star Wars."
They begin with an eroticized reinvention of Star Wars, which remains one of Smith’s most exhaustively referenced obsessions.
I expected Star Wars or similar sci-fi debates amongst underachieving nerds; crassly inventive, testosterone-fueled trash talk I might require a translator to decipher; and the sometimes soft center that lies beneath the adolescent exteriors of the potty-mouth master’s characters.
True to form, Smith can be indulgent here, leading to the odd dry stretch (a tiresome geek-out digression into Star Wars porn, for one).
They are so committed to this project, which begins its life as a Star Wars parody (this is a Kevin Smith movie, after all) before morphing into a multiple-partners marathon set in a Starbucks-style coffee joint, they decide to perform the film's centerpiece sex scene.
To that end, the crew's first attempt is called "Star Whores" — "Star Wars" being a favorite subject of Smith.
TRON: Legacy (2010)
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
influenced by Star Wars (1977), Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Visuals Plot Themes
Though he wears his influences on his sleeve ( The Matrix , Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey are all obvious visual inspirations), he fuses them into a consistent creative vision.
We’ve seen that imbalance many times before with films like the new “Star Wars” movies where money was so heavily plunked into technology that its humanity and acting suffer dramatically.
This sequel is also goofy, also eye-popping - see it in IMAX 3D if you really want to fry your optic nerve - and also weakly scripted, borrowing from various Star Wars films plus The Elephant Man ("I'm not a program!").
Screenwriters Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz (TV's 'Felicity,' 'Lost') toss a bit of Frankenstein, every Super Hero who ever kept is hand in corporate, "Star Wars," "The Matrix" (which itself borrowed from the original "Tron") and yes, even "The Wizard of Oz" to come up with a story that exists mostly to prop up the special effects.
The narrative may be stronger than that of the 1982 production but, except for a few half-hearted allusions to Frankenstein (which are less obvious than the nods to Star Wars ), there's not much interesting going on here.
What isn’t lifted from “The Matrix,” “Star Wars” films, “Rollerball” “A Clockwork Orange” or “Triumph of the Will” is a Ducati commercial.
Star Wars borrows from numerous sources, but the most obvious inspirations are the serialized adventures of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, Arthurian legends, Greek mythology, and Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress .
Now, add to this myth business the fact that Lucas borrowed his plot for "Star Wars" from Japanese director Akira Kurosawa´s "The Hidden Fortress," 1958, and we can see that his sci-fi epic has more to it than meets the eye.
As I'm sure we're all aware by now, Star Wars is really just a remake of Kurosawa Akira's 1958 jidaigeki adventure The Hidden Fortress , seasoned with elements of the old Flash Gordon serial, but that's in and of itself the dream project of an unapologetic film buff.
When they wander the sandy surfaces of Luke Skywalker's planet, in scenes suggested by the comic wrangles of Minoro Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara in Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress," the movie's special charm is in full gear.
No one ever figured out the plot was stolen from Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress" until it didn't matter.
Prometheus (2012)
Directed by Ridley Scott
influenced by Star Wars (1977), Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005), Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Themes
I want to remind people that when it came out it was on the heels of "Star Wars" and all the "Star Wars" inspired films that served up likable, even lovable aliens, robots, and exotic creatures.
Let’s put it this way: Prometheus’s relationship to Alien is the equivalent of a Star Wars prequel based in Cloud City before Han Solo and Princess Leia landed; relevant but incidental.
What I loved about the movie, though — among other things — was that it was the anti-“Star Wars.”
Unlike, say, the Star Wars prequels, which felt like they existed simply because there was serious cash to be made, Prometheus does impart a sense of earnest intent.
Although the connections between “Prometheus” and “Alien” don’t fit perfectly (think the glossy “Star Wars” prequels compared to the handmade quality of the original trilogy), the upgraded sci-fi toys are interesting, climaxing in one devilish scene where a character endures impromptu surgery inside the suffocating confines of a medical pod, watching robot arms work their horrifying expertise.
Much like the Star Wars franchise which looked irredeemable after George Lucas sabotaged his own reputation by directing The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, the last film, Revenge of the Sith, was compelling enough to at least bring the saga part of the way back.
Doctor Who (2005)
influenced by Star Wars (1977), Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Visuals Characters
He brings the Doctor and Clara to the Saturn-like rings of the planet Akhaten, which contain a bustling marketplace (clearly inspired by the Mos Eisley scenes in Star Wars) where many different creatures from the seven inhabited planets of the system come together.
Maybe it’s Marvel. Maybe it’s Star Wars. But it’s not Doctor Who.
Russell T Davies, show runner and writer of the piece, said he felt a Christmas special was always in danger of working out too nicely. He slams on the brakes, bringing the vibe to a halt by having Harriet call upon the mysterious Torchwood to activate a Death Star-like weapon, which destroys the fleeing Sycorax ship.
A shot of the Earth from space turns into a brilliant evocation of the Star Wars opening as an enormous spaceship bristling with intimidating weaponry glides over the camera.
Disney had already built two massive extended universes with Marvel and Star Wars and were keen to add a third.
…introduces a charmingly absurd polishing droid that deserves its own Star Wars-esque merch line…
Director Drake Doremus ("Like Crazy," Breathe In"), whose story was written by Nathan Parker ("Moon"), revisits ideas well known from films like George Lucas‘s "THX 1138" and the recent YA adaptation "The Giver" without adding anything new.
You’ve seen this brand of sterile, monochrome fascist compound before, in movies such as George Lucas’ “THX 1138” and Michael Bay’s “The Island,” which at least had the wisdom to spike the formula with motorbike chases, dead bodies and regular surges of adrenaline.
The characters all live in clinical white environments that recall the George Lucas pre-Star Wars effort THX 1138 (1971); they dress and look like catwalk models.
"Equals" is what I call "jumpsuit science fiction," not because everyone in it wears a jumpsuit (they wear white suits with jackets and trousers here) but because the movie worships the sort of 1970s future-vision showcased in films like " THX 1138 ," " Logan's Run " and " Star Trek: The Motion Picture ."
The Fifth Element (1997)
Directed by Luc Besson
influenced by Star Wars (1977), Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002), Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Themes Visuals
Bruce Willis stars for imaginative French filmmaker Luc Besson in this English-language futuristic saga that deserves a place on the same shelf with such other innovative trend-setting films as Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien, Blade Runner and Brazil.
This is one fantastic space opera from French filmmaker Luc Besson, who doesn't have much to envy to George Lucas... besides the fact that the "Star Wars" creator thought of all this 20 years ago.
The Fifth Element is a junk-heap melange of Blade Runner, Total Recall, Star Wars, Splash, Die Hard, StarGate, Scarface, Diva, the Star Trek series, and God knows what else.
The "Star Wars'' movies look deep, even philosophical, in comparison, but never mind: We are watching "The Fifth Element'' not to think, but to be delighted.
In some sequences there is that grunge look that harks back beyond "Star Wars" to John Carpenter's "Dark Star" (1974), which may be the most influential least-known movie of the past couple of decades.
There's an "Indiana Jones"-style prologue set in an Egyptian crypt; a quick-cut transition from past to future out of "2001"; a "Blade Runner"-style cityscape (lightened up a bit) with deep-canyoned streets filled with flying automobiles; and a "Star Wars"-like death star that takes the form of a roiling lava-globe, headed straight for Earth.