Star Wars knock-offs

[Alan Smithee]

I can't believe you are defending Krull...
As labored as your argument is..
Lol..

[Alan Smithee]

Uh, Stormtroopers/Empire was fashioned after the Nazis..
Sorry to burst your bubble, Nazis aren't mutually exclusive to The Land That Time Forgot.

[AndyC]

Actually, I never said they didn't owe a lot to Star Wars. In fact, I said more than once that they do. Star Wars proved there was a market, Star Wars introduced new special effects technology, and Star Wars introduced a new look for sci-fi. Of course other movies would follow in that climate. That doesn't make them knock-offs.

[ulthar]

Alan Smithee Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I lose?! Is this some kind of contest?

Figure of speech.  Colloquialism. Slang.

[ulthar]

It's not so much that I am defending KRULL as I am rejecting your thesis that KRULL (and others) is a "clone" of Star Wars.  The whole basis of my point so far has two components:

(1) STAR WARS was not an original story but borrowed heavily from long-known story elements

and

(2) LOTS of movies, both before and after STAR WARS, used those same story elements.

Therefore, it is incorrect to claim that those "other" movies are "clones," "rip-offs", etc, of STAR WARS just because they share some of the same age-old story elements.  Your "clone" assertion is based on story similarities and release date (ie, after SW), which might hold up if the ideas were original to STAR WARS.

Just my opinion...

[Scott]

Has anyone seen the film Alexander Nevsky (1938)? In this film you will see a few very important image ideas Lucas uses in Star Wars.



If you mix the film Lost Horizon and Alexander Nevsky you will see Conan the Barbarian.

[LilCerberus]

I don't think anyone's mentioned Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jarod Syn.

This one not only owes a lot to Star Wars, but also borrows heavily from Mad Max.

[ToyMan]

i feel like it's worth noting that even if "message from space" was a rip-off, it's a really good b-movie, and that the following star wars flicks stole elements from it afterwards.

[Shadowphile]

Which brings up an interesting question.

If it's better than the original, is it still a clone?  I'm not saying Krull was better.  Not even close.  There are those that argue that the Magnificent Seven was better than the Seven Samurai, or Fist Full of Dollars was better than Yojimbo, despite the fact that it was almost a scene for scene reshoot, with only a change of genre (from samurai epic to western) to distinguish it.

[AndyC]

We could get into a whole debate about the distinction between a knock-off and an adaptation or reinterpretation of a story. If your story is supposed to be Yojimbo in an old west setting or The Tempest in space, is it a knock-off?

[Shadowphile]

I think Shakespeare rolled in his grave when they made Forbidden Planet.  Leslie Neilsen as a romantic lead.  How the mighty have fallen...

[AndyC]

Hey, Leslie Neilsen was quite a hunk in his day. For that matter, Forbidden Planet was ahead of its time, and still holds up better than most of its contemporaries.

Forbidden Planet is also interesting in a discussion of ripoffs, because while it was an SF movie adapted from Shakespeare, it's SF elements, as well as some characters, elements of the setting and large chunks of the story, were pretty thoroughly ripped off by Gene Roddenberry in creating his pilot for Star Trek.

[Shadowphile]

Now that you point out the plot similarities, I can't believe I didn't see them before....