For better context on the following post, please see Part 1.
A long time ago (about fifty years or so), in this galaxy, a young aspiring filmmaker named George Walton Lucas Jr. (known by his friends as “Luke”) decided that he wanted to make a modern cinematic adaptation of Flash Gordon, a space opera serial he saw often when he was a kid in the late 1940s/ early 1950s. For those out there who don’t know; film serials are an old, outdated format of cinema that involved a story being separated out into small installments that would screen for a weekend at a time at local matinee theaters. If you missed an “episode” one weekend, it didn’t matter because the opening crawl text of the next episode would catch you up (sound familiar?). What also made those serials work though was that each episode really stood on it’s own! More often than not, you didn’t even need to read the crawls, if you really didn’t want to.
As you can imagine, this format of cinema became obsolete once television became a thing in nearly every American home. So when Lucas was hoping to do his own Flash Gordon adaptation, he was only planning to make one movie (as far as we know). Then, after he was denied the rights to the Flash Gordon property, someone told him “just make your own Flash Gordon,” (I’m paraphrasing there). And as we now know, the rest is history…
In 1977, the world was introduced to the original Star Wars film. For the rest of this article, I’ll be referring to it as Star Wars ’77 to avoid confusion with the franchise name (No, I’m not gonna call it A New Hope!). As many scholars have pointed out over the years, there are many influences that can be seen in the movie; King Arthur, Dune, Spaghetti Westerns, The Hidden Fortress, The New Gods (from DC Comics), Valerian, World War II Propaganda, and even bits and pieces of George’s own life. Many people out there also like to point out how closely-tied the film seems to be to Joseph Campbell’s “monomyth” theory (known today as “the hero’s journey”), detailed in Campbell’s book The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Producer Gary Kurtz claims that most of this is just coincidental though, and that Lucas hadn’t even heard of Campbell’s work until after development had already started on the movie. Besides, the whole “hero’s journey” thing is overrated anyways (more on that later).
But despite all of that, it’s still my belief that the strongest piece of influence on Star Wars ’77 is the very thing it was originally supposed to be; Flash Gordon. Luke is Flash (and so is Han, to an extent). Leia is Dale Arden (and also Princess Aura or Queen Azura), Vader is Ming the Merciless, etc. Yes, there are differences (Luke and Han aren’t graduates from Yale University, after all) but for the most part, both Flash Gordon and Star Wars ’77 share the same cheesy, light-hearted “spirit of adventure” that, quite frankly, didn’t really have that much to do with family or chosen ones or what have you (I think you can start to see where this is going). Sure, Luke was told that his father was a Jedi, but this is just a convenient plot device that is often used to get the protagonist to want to “go on the adventure.”
Aside from that one plot point, the rest of Star Wars ’77 doesn’t really have much to do with family legacy or destiny or whatever. If anything, the movie has more to do with friendship, and the idea that anyone can be “the hero.” Remember, this was long before Attack of the Clones told us that Jedi couldn’t fall in love or have kids, one of many things that Lucas obviously only came up with later anyways (oh, we’ll get there!). For all we know, Luke could’ve been one of many Jedi orphans who’s parents were killed by Vader. What made him special wasn’t his last name, but rather that he was us! The binary sunset alone shows that he’s just a small part of an endless, timeless universe (put a pin on this point too).
Tonally, Star Wars ’77 wasn’t too different from Gordon either. It was darker, sure, but only when it really needed to be. For instance, Luke sees his uncle and aunt die, another “push” to get him to go on the adventure at hand, but we never really see either of them being all that affectionate to him earlier (his aunt is a bit, but only when he’s not around anyways). So, if you’re a little kid watching that scene, it probably won’t “sting” too hard. Same can be said for pretty much all of the other “dark” scenes in the movie. The rebel Vader chokes to death in the beginning of the movie? Just a random guy. The mean aliens Obi-Wan slices down? Who cares, they're mean (the blood makes it weird, though). Leia getting tortured? We don’t see it, and are then told after that she’s fine. Alderaan getting blown up? We never actually see anyone on the planet, and the story cuts back to Luke and pals before we can even get Leia’s reaction. The next time we do see her, she’s fine again. Obi-Wan dying? He’s the old mentor! Even a baby can guess that he’s gonna die there. All of the X-Wings pilots who get blown up during the final battle? We hardly knew yah (that scene where Luke talks to some of them before the battle wasn’t in the original version of the movie).
In short; the movie “dabbles” into family and darkness whenever the stakes need to be appropriately raised, and then immediately pulls back just before it’s about to “cross the line.” It knows that the primary audience is still children, and keeps that in mind the whole way through. This same sense of theme and tone can be seen in the small amount of expanded universe content that came out from 1977 to 1980 (between Star Wars ’77 and it’s sequel):
1.The Star Wars ’77 Novelization
Originally given the subtitle The Adventures of Luke Skywalker (like most merchandise from this time), this official novel told us that Emperor Palpatine was not force-sensitive, or even evil. He entered politics thinking he was gonna do the right thing, but was only able to rise to the top by surrounding himself with corrupt politicians that controlled his every move. Feeling guilty because of this, he gave up on trying to stop corruption and basically locked himself away in his office forever. As far as this book is concerned, Vader wasn’t tricked into turning evil by some “Sith master” or whatever. He was just a Jedi who became bad. Nice and simple. The force conflict and the political/war conflict were not so connected, at this point, which honestly might’ve been for the better (once again, more on this later).
2.The original Marvel Star Wars comics
This series kept Star Wars pretty close to it’s “pulpy” roots. The adventures were light and cheesy, and felt like something you’d see from, well, Flash Gordon! The heroes would often find themselves crashing onto strange worlds and having to resolve some sort of local conflicts with bizarre aliens before finding a way to get back to the rebel alliance, all while dodging Vader and the empire in the meantime. At times, things got a little too cheesy (there was a green Bugs Bunny-like character named Jaxon that Lucas, wisely, ordered to be removed). But for the most part, the “tone” here wasn’t all that different from the original movie. Supposedly Marvel wanted to move the story forward more, but Lucasfilm forced them to keep things more “status quo,” so that they wouldn’t contradict the movies. While I understand the frustration, I actually think the franchise ended up changing it’s own status quo too much (as we’ll discuss). Also, there was a UK variation of these comics that differed slightly from the US version.
3.The Pizzazz Magazine comic strips
I honestly don’t know too much about these, other than that they were probably very similar to the mainline Marvel comics that were running around the same time, but apparently meant to be directed more towards “tweens and teens.”
4.The original newspaper comic strips
Once again, I don’t know too much about these, other than that one of these strips says that Luke’s father was named “Tan Skywalker.” Also, like with the Marvel comics, there was a UK variation of these strips that differed slightly from their US counterparts.
5.The animated segment of The Holiday Special
First of all, let’s just forget the live-action parts ever happened… Second of all, the animated segment feels just about the same as the marvel tie-in comics that ran around this time. Luke Han, Chewy, and the droids crash on a planet that looks like it’s made of jelly and run into Boba Fett (riding a giant dinosaur!). Bad animation aside, it’s actually pretty fun! More importantly, however, it once again maintains the “pulpy roots” and “light-hearted adventure” feel that’s at the very core of the franchise.
6.The novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye
Also originally given the Adventures of Luke Skywalker subtitle, this book adapted the low-budget “backup script” that was gonna be used for the second Star Wars movie in case ’77 bombed financially. Once again, we find some of our heroes crashing on a planet. This time, it’s Luke, Leia, and the droids. Where are Han and Chewy? Gone, because had ’77 bombed, they wouldn’t have been able to get Harrison Ford to sign on for more movies, and you can’t have Chewy without Han (I guess). Believe it or not, as much as I like Han, I actually don’t mind his absence too much. As we’ll discuss when we get to the other two original trilogy installments, the love triangle got weird (very weird). Furthermore, Han and Leia never really got much to do again after ’77. I honestly don’t mind the idea of getting one of them out of the picture. And out of all three of them, cutting out Han makes the most sense, since Luke’s personal motivation for rescuing Leia in ’77 was that he was infatuated with her hologram, and their romance is expanded upon here (funny, in hindsight). As much as people love to ship HanLeia, I feel their relationship is pretty toxic (yeah, we’ll get there too). More on-topic; this story once again maintains the episodic, self-contained, standalone yet “serialized” feel of the IP’s roots. Is it a good story? Not really, no. Most of it is overly-violent and too “adult-ish,” the dialogue is very rough, the pacing is a mess, and some of the scenes are pretty creepy/sexist. There’s some cool moments, though. But overall, this is something that definitely needed revision still.
7.The Han Solo Adventures novel trilogy
Just some simple adventure novels centered around Han & Chewy (probably to make up for their absence from Splinter). I actually haven’t had time to read these yet, but from what I can tell, these books also have that “pulp” feel. Funny enough, they actually seem to be a little similar to Ford’s other big franchise, Indiana Jones. Heck, one of these novels even has a crystal skull on the cover! The most interesting aspect of all though is that these books are listed as part of The Adventures of Luke Skywalker, despite Luke being completely absent here, and the words “Star Wars” are nowhere to be found on the cover (just like with the first edition of Splinter). So much for Lucas saying that this whole franchise is actually about Vader or Leia (depending on his mood).
Let’s stop there, for now. Next time, we’ll talk about the movie that (literally and figuratively) shook Star Wars to it’s very core; The Empire Strikes Back…
Peace!
PS: When Lucas and his writing partner, Alan Dean Foster, were crafting the story for Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, Lucas said he wouldn’t mind having Leia killed off and/or having her and Chewy run off together to have an affair and leave the story forever. Still think this was all planned?
Click here for Part 3.
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