A Quote by Lorne Greene
Star Wars' was derivative of 'Buck Rogers' and 'Flash Gordon,' wasn't it?
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When I was a young writer if you went to a party and told somebody you were a science-fiction writer you would be insulted. They would call you Flash Gordon all evening, or Buck Rogers.
As a youngster, I read of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. As a student, I wrote English reports on science fiction. And as a fighter pilot, I observed the selection of the Mercury astronauts. All this was fascinating, but I really didn't think I would ever be a part of it. It was only when my good friend Ed White was selected as a Gemini astronaut that I decided to join NASA as part of the Apollo program.
Suddenly Star Wars came out while we were on hiatus, and we looked like the old Buck Rogers series, where they had cigarette smoke blowing out the back of the rocket ship.
I did grow up watching Buck Rogers and Buck Rogers didn't stop at Mars. In my lifetime, I will be incredibly disappointed if we have not at least reached Mars.
I hate to date myself, but my earliest memories are Flash Gordon. I would love playing Flash Gordon in the neighborhood.
When I was a kid growing up in the '80s, the BBC showed those old Buster Crabbe serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. So instead of ponderous sci-fi or depressing sci-fi or dystopian sci-fi and all the things we're kind of used to, where it's always raining and it's always dark, I thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to do something that was just fun and absolutely nonstop?" Like, I love writing action, and this thing is that. It's all action.
I used to watch the old 'Flash Gordon' series on TV, and it was thrilling to rocket to the planet Mongo every week. But after a while, I figured out that although Flash got the girl and all the accolades, it was really Dr. Zarkov who made the series work. Without Dr. Zarkov, there could be no Flash Gordon.
When I was young, I ran to see Astaire and Rogers, Huston, Lubitsch - they were formative for me. I also read 'Flash Gordon' when I was 6, but if I were still reading it when I was 16, I'd have been an imbecile.
I rewatched a lot of 'Star Wars' when I did 'Rogue One,' and the thing I learned was that as a young person, consuming 'Star Wars' at the level that I consumed 'Star Wars,' it kind of molds your visual psyche, so you see the world in 'Star Wars'-ian fashion.
My friends and family are not really fixated on the specifics of 'Star Wars.' My parents don't know anything about 'Star Wars.' They've never watched a 'Star Wars' film.
'Star Trek' is science fiction. 'Star Wars' is science fantasy. Based on the episodes I worked on, I think with 'Star Wars: Clone Wars,' we're starting to see a merging, though. It does deal, philosophically, with some of the issues of the time, which is always something 'Star Trek' was known for.
I talked to George Lucas once, not about Star Wars. Everyone wants to talk to him about Star Wars, and I didn't want to be one of those people. In person - at least on this occasion - he wasn't effervescent and giddy, as the Star Wars movies are. He's more focused.
'Star Wars' is life, but 'Star Wars' is also not very good, which is why 'Rogue One' - a Frankenstein's monster assembled from a butchered first cut and an excessively large space antenna that only exists to add another 30 minutes to the film - is one of the better 'Star Wars' movies.
I don't consider it jumping ship. The 'Star Trek' philosophy is to embrace the diversity of the universe, and 'Star Wars' is part of that diversity. I also think 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars' are related beyond both having the word 'Star.'
In terms of the film itself, there was nothing much very new about 'Star Wars.' 'Star Wars' was a trailblazer for the kind of monumentalist pastiche which has become standard in a homogeneous Hollywood blockbuster culture that, perhaps more than any other film, 'Star Wars' played a role in inventing.
The only answer to the question 'Which is the worst of the 'Star Wars' movies?' is, there is no worst 'Star Wars' movie. There - one might be the least amazing and fantastic, but there's none that is the worst of the 'Star Wars' movies.
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