What if "Star Wars" never happened ?

[bgrimm77]

Everyone that ever made a movie would not have been smart enough to have been sure to hold on to the licensing rights

[Werewolf]

If Lucas hadn't done it, someone else would have.

It's an age old story with iconic archetypes. It's a heros journey with a wizard, pirate, princess, evil knight, etc. It's The Odyssey, Jason and Argonauts, The Lord of the Rings or Dungeons and Dragons in space. Lucas also didn't invent the sci-fi fantasy genre. Sci-fi was fun and exciting (Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers) before it became cerebral (2001). Not to say there weren't "cerebral" Science fiction movies before 2001 (Metropolis) but you get the idea.

There still would eventually have been a Star Wars type movie or something really close to it. Maybe Lucas would have even done his original plan for Flash Gordon or maybe he would have updated Buck Rogers. Maybe Spielberg would have done it. Something would have filled the void.

[samurainoir]

Star Wars was at the Zenith of a huge Science Fiction trend. Perhaps Westerns or Pirate movies would have made a big comeback in the eighties if Sci Fi hadn't of caught on. Maybe Gladiator movies or swashbuckling epics.

[phil]

I agree with Werewolf. There would have been a highly sucessful Science Fiction/Fantasy film. It may not have become a pop culture phenomenon but it would have started a trend. At least similar to "Goldfinger" launching a wave of
spy movies for several years.

[Hector]

George Lucas was greatly influenced by Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Lucas could see that a grand space opera with fantastic special-effects was possible....he just took it to another level.

[ctc]

Hmmmm....

I think you would have got something remarkably similar. Stuff doesn’t just happen: there are all kinds of other cultural effects that lend to it, and adjust audience reaction. Time was ripe for SOMETHING Star Wars-esque. Remember the flap with Galactica? How they were gonna sue? Courts ruled parallel development.

The ideas were already swishing around out there....

Don C.

[TrueDave]

The world would be better off.

Bold my Man.

[MegoMark71]

la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la i can't hear you la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la

[johnmiic]

It would have set SF entertainment back really hard. The big SF film would have been Close Encounters. Then Spielberg would have made 1941 and then, no Indy. Spielberg would have taken a rest, due to bad reviews for 1941 and he would have made E.T. next. ( If no success on Star Wars- why should we expect Raiders to get made?). If the first trilogy had not been made Lucas likely would have kept directing and made more grown-up type films like his buddy Coppola. I think Apocalypse Now was to have been a Lucas directed film until SW took over his life. Raiders might not have been made until the mid-1980's and maybe not with Harrison Ford. He would not have been known for playing Han Solo. Lucas was still smarting from losses he took making American Grafitti #2.

Every studio embraced Science Fiction film-making because they all thought they could make Star Wars money. Star Wars hit so big and unexpectedly that nearly all SF films/tv shows since 1978-1985 can trace their origin to Star Wars even if they don't necessarily look like Star Wars: Battlestar Galactica, Battle Beyond The Stars, Galaxina, Star Crash, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century(1979), Star Trek-The Motion Picture, The Black Hole, Flash Gordon(1980), Heavy Metal, Ice Pirates, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, The Last Starfighter, Quark, The Martian Chronicles(mini-series), Salvage 1, Blakes 7, The Lathe of Heaven, Galactica:1980, Space Academy, Jason of Star Command, Mork & Mindy, The Powers of Matthew Star, V The Visitors. You might even credit Excalibur being made because of Star Wars's success. You could not say the same for Mad Max, Damnation Alley, The Road Warrior or The Terminator. Apocalyptic Sf was already very well received by audiences, ( Logan's Run, Planet of the Apes), so these films would likely have still been made.

The Star Trek comeback might never have happened. The Trek film was bouncing around for all of the 1970's with no film-able script. The whole thing fell apart the week Star Wars was released. The head of Paramount supposedly asked, "What do we got!?!?!" , and someone said, "Uh, Star Trek?", ( story as told by Walter Koenig, aka. Pavel Chekov). Without the films all the Trek TV series spin-offs would not have happened either. Starlog magazine might not have lasted till today. Certainly there wouldn't have been much competition for them either.

I strongly disagree on Galactica. Battlestar was definately a Star Wars rip-off. Just because the courts declared it was "different enough" doesn't prove anything. Glen Larson has a terrible rep in Hollywood. He is called Glen Larceny behind his back by a lot of people, (source: Haralan Ellison), because he is a copy-cat writer/ producer. He could have beat the lawsuit by Lucas in 5 minutes if he had handed in a writers bible or first draft script dated before Star Wars came out as Exhibit A in court. Instead he sweated it out and got lucky when the judge declared the series "different". Larson even hired Lucas's SPFX people to design the show. Ever wonder why John Dykstra only did the first SW film?

Tom Baker and his co-stars had planned a Doctor Who movie. After Star Wars they sort of abandoned it because they felt they needed a much bigger budget so the project died off. The animated shows Battle of the Planets and Star Blazers might not have ever been adapted into US syndication either. No Voltron, Thundercats, Go-Bots, Transformers, Macross would have followed. The whole Anime` invasion might have not happened for another decade.

I agree that the the next big film/trend would have been Superman: The Movie & Superhero films. A Batman:The Movie might have followed, earlier than 1989, pre-Frank Miller 's Dark Knight Returns. Any other Batman film-not so dark-would likely have killed Miller's chance at making Dark Knight as a comic. Batman would likely not have returned to his dark avenger roots, ( also no BTAS or JLU).

As for toys, many people who love the 8 inch Megos despise Star Wars for killing the format off but truth be told, many people here were done playing with toys when the 3 & 3/4 inch revolution came. I have seen lots of posts by members here over the years, saying they did not play with Micronauts because they were too old when they came out. If there had not been Star Wars the Micronauts toys would likely have filled that void and the 8 inch Megos would still be gone in the late `70's. The smaller format developed by Kenner was to accommodate the vehicles in SW and the large cast of characters.

The 8 inch Megos might have made a comeback in the early to mid 1980's when you had shows and films with smaller casts of characters who did not depend on such a wide variety of vehicles. Rocky, James Bond, Tarzan the Ape Man, Popeye, Clash of the Titans, Condorman, Dungeons & Dragons, Beastmaster, Swamp Thing, The Legend of the Lone Ranger, The Road Warrior, The Terminator, Ghostbusters, Quest for Fire, The A-Team, Greatest American Hero, Magnum P.I., Doctor Who, Fame, Manimal.

[huedell]

johnmic said a lot of cool stuff but what he said at first really sticks out
to me as hardcore stuff for a movie/toy geek like me...

Say what you well about Lucas' supposed lack of talent,
but STAR WARS enabled a resurgance of what the geeks Lucas' age
grew up on and loved... and brought it STRONGLY to a new generation
and: the generation that followed with the "BIG TEN" INDY and SW flicks
...and everything that surrounded them... MERCH and all,....

...and, yeah, it stinks that maybe the merch took on a life of it's own....but
I sure as heck like a LOT of that dang merch! (The flicks ain't
that bad either!)....that's just awesome stuff...for me.... personally

....and I bet fer a lot of you all too.

[huedell]

Hmmmm....

I think you would have got something remarkably similar. Stuff doesn’t just happen: there are all kinds of other cultural effects that lend to it, and adjust audience reaction. Time was ripe for SOMETHING Star Wars-esque. Remember the flap with Galactica? How they were gonna sue? Courts ruled parallel development.

The ideas were already swishing around out there....

Don C.

Probably on TOS Trek momentum, eh?

[ctc]

>Probably on TOS Trek momentum, eh?

That’s entirely possible. My original point is that nothing exists in a vacuum. NOTHING just comes out of nowhere.... it’s always primed in some way. Audiences never go for something that’s completely new. They’ll have no frame of reference and it’ll just be “weird.” (Or maybe a “cult classic.”) Looking back, I could see Trek priming a lot of the audience for something like this, considering the big Trek resurgence was around ‘74-‘76. For the most part it was a merchandising surge.... which could also have prepped the way for the Star Wars merchandising boom.

>Just because the courts declared it was "different enough" doesn't prove anything.

Except in court. And I don’t consider Ellison a reliable source: he’s kinda like the guy on the street corner yowling about how the government killed his wife by poisoning her wig and school kids are stealing his dreams while he watched the news. As I recall, the suit was dropped when Paramount threatened a countersuit, saying that R2 was a rip of Huey, Dewey and Louie from “Silent Running.” So again, stuff moves in tight little circles.

....but wouldn’t it have been funny if they pushed the suit, and Disney COUNTER-counter-sued? That case would still be going on today....

>The whole Anime` invasion might have not happened for another decade.

THAT’S an interesting one! Japanese cartoons as cheap filler has been a tradition since the 60's, so it’s possible that the big 70's sci-fi boom might have been based around Japanese cartoons. They were still cheap, and you had a lot of shows in Japan aimed at older, more general audiences. If the sci-fi boom WAS inevitable, we might not have got such edited versions of Battle of the Planets.

Ultimately we’ll never know; but it’s kinda fun to speculate! Something totally off the wall might have come down the pike and thrown the entire thing for a loop. What if the CB fad never ended....?

Think about THAT one! Yeah.

Don C.

[Bruce Banner]

Yes, indeed, as stated, pop culture as we know it today would be a remarkably altered entity. So many aspects of sci-fi and fantasy media would be quite different.


As for Galactica... yes, the lawsuit ultimately failed, and Larson had the idea for Galactica in mind for a long time, but his original concept for it was called Adam's Ark and was more of a Star Trek type of odyssey show.
When Star Wars hit, Larson retooled the concept significantly to include stuff like fast paced ship to ship dog fights and such.

Interestingly, Larson and Gary Kurtz (SW producer) actually had a "good faith" agreement before the lawsuit which stipulated, amongst other things, that the robot daggit not be referred to as a droid, but rather a drone, and that the character's hand weapons not emit laser bolts. (The latter actually suited Larson just fine because each laser blast a weapon fired cost about $1000 to add during the FX process, apparently.)

But there you go. Star Wars is my all time favourite movie and Battlestar Galactica is my all time favourite TV show, so I guess I'm glad things worked out like they did!

[TrueDave]

Ellison was Okay till I watched the 1976 TV interview with him and Kelly, Doohan, etc. Hes a jerk.

Pirates were the Comic backbone in Watchmen not Superheroes. Alternate stuff.

I agree with the dystopian future . There were a lot of Sci Fi films very much rooted in Horror just before that.

Maybe all that dark fantasy ( and Reality)in the Spiraling Seventies was what made Star Wars so big.

I know that before STar Wars I liked other stuff. My neighbor had her house decorated with a butt load of that cheap tin knight suits and decorations . She gave me one. In fact when My birthday was coming up when Star Wars was big I asked for the StormTrooper and C3po in the paper because they looked like knights.

I also thought Batman was cool.

But Star Wars was like a inescapable Tidal wave.

PLUS I grew up in Cincinnati so "misfits" were coming home from the Kenner plant with everybody!

[johnmiic]

Yeah, Ellison comes accross as a real jerk most of the time. I don't know why he has never been checked out for bi-polarism or tourettes syndrome. I remember in that clip on the Tom Snyder show. Jimmy Doohan was ready to shove his fist down Ellison's throat. Still Ellison has won nearly every court battle he ever entered into. He does know the ins and outs of the industry because he has worked for many TV shows going way back to the second decade TV existed; the 1960's to 1970's. Also if Larson's first draft of Galactica resembled Star Trek and he changed it to be more like Star Wars that pretty much sums up the lack of his talent, lol.

I think you meant to say Universal threatened counter-suit? Huey, Dewey and Louie from “Silent Running” is Universal Studios, who made Galactica and Buck. That's why the Valley Forge ship footage keeps winding up in Galactica episodes as the Agro-ship. I probably over-wrote that post but like exploring the causes and effects in a time-travel story, like CTC said, it's damn fun to speculate!