I would use the analogy of sod busters vs. the evil rancher.
Posted on 06/09/2018 12:04:33 PM PDT by Simon Green
Imagining a world where George Lucas’ space fantasy didn’t revolutionize Hollywood
Despite the decades that have passed since its release, it would be hard to argue that any film is as relevant to the way movies are made today than George Lucas’ 1977 space opera, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope.
Kevin Feige, the Marvel head honcho who presides over what is the most lucrative and successful film franchise currently operating — including Star Wars — talks openly about how much of an impact the original trilogy had on him. The list of filmmakers who directly crib from Lucas would be like a census of Hollywood royalty. And the subsidiary industries that Star Wars has spawned, from toys to novels to video games, has changed how the entertainment business works.
But when you eliminate the biases that come from living in a Star Wars-addled world and look back at the circumstances of its creation, what’s far more surprising is that the film got made at all. That a USC grad in his early 30s best known for a coming-of-age story about small-town America would conjure an original sci-fi cinematic universe out of whole cloth, when the precedent for such a thing simply did not exist. Investors paid for his bizarre, childlike vision. People went to see it.
The release of Solo: A Star Wars Story just five months after that of The Last Jedi makes it clear that Star Wars has never been more ubiquitous than it is now; in fact, if Solo’s box office is any indication, audiences might actually be going a little sour on Disney’s attempts to turn the property from a touchstone of childhood and nostalgia into a never-ending modern-day cinematic universe like Marvel and its imitators. Considering that tension, it makes sense to wonder: What would the last four decades look like if George Lucas had never made Star Wars at all?
Here’s one possibility.
The 1970s
Hot off the runaway success of 1973’s American Graffiti, which becomes one of the most profitable movies ever made, 29-year-old George Lucas tries to write a script about a moral, expansive universe filled with mysterious power and mythological heroes and villains. The first treatment he produces is, by many accounts, incoherent. Discouraged by the negative response, he decides to take up his friend Francis Ford Coppola’s offer to direct a Vietnam War movie called Apocalypse Now, written by their other friend, John Milius.
Lucas brings the film in on time and just barely over budget, delivering a well-reviewed movie shot in cinema-verite style that draws comparisons to The Battle of Algiers and Z. But audiences are tired of the Vietnam War, which had finally ended in 1975, and when the movie comes out in 1976, it’s a modest success rather than a breakout hit like Graffiti. However, combined with the success of The Godfather II in 1974, it’s enough to impress the holders of the rights to Flash Gordon, who earlier refused Lucas’ offer to adapt the property. They agree to allow him to make a movie based on the character, produced by Coppola.
1977 comes and goes. Without Star Wars dominating screens, both William Friedkin’s Sorcerer and Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York gain enough of a foothold to become respectable hits. Buoyed by a more positive reception of Sorcerer, Friedkin receives financing to make an adaptation of Born on the Fourth of July, and Al Pacino wins an Oscar for his performance as Ron Kovic. Scorsese never hits rock bottom, which means he never deigns to adapt a book he has no interest in, Raging Bull; instead, with Marlon Brando available, he finally attempts to make a film based on the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre. But Brando’s a disaster, and the movie goes way over-budget and tanks.
By 1979, Steven Spielberg is the sole king of the box office after Jaws, making the schadenfreude of the disastrous grosses of his war comedy 1941 even more potent. However, he never visits Hawaii on the weekend of the release of Star Wars with Lucas, which is when the pair would have come up with the idea for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Bereft after the failure of 1941 and without Raiders to distract him, Spielberg tries to make an adaptation of Blackhawk. When he can’t get it off the ground, the director dives headlong into a sci-fi film based on his childhood: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
Meanwhile, without the profits from Star Wars, which boosted the company’s stock price from $6 a share to $27 and increased year-over-year revenues nearly 50 percent, 20th Century Fox can no longer justify staying in the motion-picture business. Instead of Marc Rich and Marvin Davis buying Fox for $700 million in 1981, it sells for a much lower price to a group of investors who strip assets like property in Pebble Beach and shutter the film studio.
The 1980s
(continued at link)
Emperor Palpatine would still rule the galaxy. Duh.
For me, it didn’t (happen). I’ve never seen the first “Star Wars”, and I’m never inclined to see one.
I liked the transition to Light Speed effect a lot.
Other than that, it was an absolutely awful upgrade of bad Cowboys & Indians shoot em up movies with special effects.
Space Balls was infinitely better.
You forget, it was a long, long time ago. All of those characters are dust.
I liked the first two, thought they were fun but did not take them even slightly seriously.
The special effects were spectacular. That is actually the worst thing about the movie.
For the next 40 years, movies tried to use special effects to hide awful movies.
I saw the very first one as a kid in the 70’s, and that was that.
No Spaceballs!
Oops!
The movie? If it never happened? Nothing would matter or change from that.
But if Reagan hadn’t gone for “Star Wars” in the ‘80s, who knows what would be different now!
“I saw the very first one as a kid in the 70’s, and that was that”
You must be younger. We dropped our kids off at the movies to see it while we went across the street to the mall to do our Christmas Shopping (in Tallahassee).
Also never would have had this greatness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccfbw2RJ3ow
“Hardware Wars......You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll kiss three bucks goodbye!”
Well i would have had to get to second base with Cindy W somewhere else
Laws had already happened. And nothing was going to make New York, New York or Sorcerer not disasters. Without Star Wars probably Close Encounters is a summer release and does fine. 1979 saw Alien as a summer hit. The summer exploitation franchise bonanza was inevitable.
What’s ludicrous is this article is categorized as “analysis”.
Huh? George Lucas didn’t direct Apocalypse Now, and it came out in 1979, not 1976.
I like to imagine that The Last Jedi never happened.
Ok, the article is supposed to be an alternate history.
Yeah, I’m just shy of 50.
I would use the analogy of sod busters vs. the evil rancher.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.