The 'Star Wars' saga can be considered as one of the most widely distributed franchises in the world. Since George Lucas directed 'Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope' in 1977, the eternal struggle of the Sith and the Jedi has managed to capture many of the great blockbuster films of cinema and its expansion into other media avenues. Animated television series such as 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars', the novel trilogy 'The New Republic', or the video game 'Star Wars: Jedi Knights' are some examples of the might of the Force beyond the movies.
This new book is signed by almost 50 authors who have already worked on novels or similar works in this universe. These creators of the new material have refused to receive any money for them so that the book becomes a non-profit work. In addition, publisher Penguin Random House has donated $100,000 for the organization of the book, while Disney and Lucasfilm has also provided 100,000 books for children.
'Rogue One' on television?
Thanks to CBR, we recently learned that the intentions to materialize the story of Jyn Erso and the rebels who are preparing to steal the plans of the Death Star were very different from the ones we finally saw in the movies. According to John Knoll, supervisor of Industrial Light & Magic VFX, the plot of 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story' was conceived at first as a television series. Some plans that were made when the filming of 'Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith' was taking place in Sydney. Knoll told the media that "I had heard that Lucasfilm was developing stories for a possible television series, and that they were active in the development of the story at that time... my thoughts were: How about something Style 'Mission Impossible' in the safest facilities of the Empire to steal the plans of the Death Star? " However, in the end the Gareth Edwards film did not thrive for a format on the small screen.
8 Star Wars Substitutes/Knock-offs
1 'Buck Rogers in the 25th Century'
1978: Universal counterattacks the success of 'Star Wars' with two consecutive space launches. On the one hand, it premieres on the small screen 'Battlestar Galactica', which was the most expensive television show in history, and a year later, bet on 'Buck Rogers', an adaptation of the adventures of the character created by Philip Francis Nowlan in 1928 and whose pilot episode was released in commercial rooms. It was not too bad at the box office, but his artistic results were a real disaster, and his baggy hero, his bald FX, and his toy-like droids baffled those who expected something better, given the achievements of 'Battlestar Galactica'. The crushing release of 'The Empire Strikes Back' in 1980 led to the cancellation of the series and Rogers was forgotten. Thankfully.
2 'Starcrash'
We are faced with one of those crummy jewels that attract trashy cinema lovers like the Holy Grail. With a tiny part of the time, resources and budget relative to 'Star Wars', transalpine Luigi Cozzi (signing with the pseudonym of Lewis Coates) directed this Italian pastiche full of (bad) camera tricks, heroines in bikinis, Masters disguised as robots and terrible dialogues that were cheap copies of the Jedi philosophy. Why does it make us laugh so much? Do not tell me to see an ex-Bond girl stuck in this eggplant (Caroline Munro, 'The Spy Who Loved Me'), a fledgling David Hasselhoff as a Han Solo clone or the one and only Christopher Plummer (Colonel Von Trapp from 'The Sound of Music') imitating Obi-Wan Kenobi. And the music unmistakably mimics the original score of John Williams, is orchestrated by none other than five-time Oscar winner John Barry. Hilarious, yes, but seeing that in countries like Spain, it got millions of views, who's the one laughing now?
3 'Flash Gordon'
Okay, today we remember him with a certain affection because he had an enviable plethora of followers (Topol, Max Von Sydow, Ornella Muti, Timothy Dalton, Brian Blessed), some inspired sequences (the erasure of memory of Zarkov, that Russian roulette around the Tree Of Initiation) and we will never forget the soundtrack composed and played by Queen, with that crushing main theme that surely is already resonating in our heads. Objectively, this production of Dino de Laurentiis, with scenes photocopied directly from 'Star Wars' (the corridors of the Ming Palace look rather like the Death Star) and almost identical characters (let someone tell me that Klytus is not Darth Vader), it is, however, a heartfelt carton of stone with a script more concerned with trying to overcome the saga of Lucas than to be faithful to the original comic of Alex Raymond.
4 'Battle Beyond the Stars'
Another dancer in waters similar to De Laurentiis was Roger Corman: and was he successful? We are undoubtedly faced with a paradigmatic case, worthy of study: from the beginning, is no where near the originals it took its name from ('Battle Beyond the Stars'), given that the film of aforementioned blatantly blends situations, characters and plots Both from 'Star Wars' and from 'Seven Samurai' (or perhaps from his American remake, 'The Magnificent Seven'?); And, the funniest thing, it must be the only film in the world in which the artistic director, the screenwriter and the composer have more importance than the director himself in the promotional poster.
5 'Space Raiders'
George Lucas must have had an ulcer, at least, when the title of another of his greatest hits, 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', served as the basis for another substitute of 'Star Wars': 'Space Raiders'. Namely: a ten-year-old boy is accidentally abducted by a ship in which a varied group of space pirates travels, and lives with them an endless series of adventures. Come on! Did you advance to the Anakin of 'Episode I'? Well, it actually almost reminds us more of the starting point of the sixties comic book 'Guardians of the Galaxy'... Roger Corman had no qualms about recycling ships, explosions and James Horner's score of 'Battle Beyond the Stars' to fill this forgotten and forgettable film, only seen (and suffered) by American and West German spectators.
6 'Turkish Star Wars'
Well, well, well... yes, you have to discover yourself before the complex impudence of Cüneyt Arkin, a star of the Turkish cinema of the eighties, that together with the director Çinin Inanç perpetrated this 'Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam', best known internationally, thanks to the internet, for the generic title of 'Turkish Star Wars'. The film opens with a long introduction about the fate of mankind in the distant future, and to illustrate it has no qualms about catching the original scenes of 'Star Wars' and plant them in his film, without taking the trouble, if anything, to use a color filter...
It does not end there, of course. 'Turkish Star Wars' has its own sequences, yes (Although some backgrounds are once again, Lucas' scenes, especially in space), such as those fighting on a desert planet (look how clever) set to the soundtrack of... Indiana Jones!!! Needless to say the tape is completely insufferable, but if you want to make a few laughs, you can find it on youtube.
7 'The Last Starfighter'
The equator of the eighties began to be the ground for space and video games to inevitably intersect. Maybe someone remembers the VHS of this young adventurer who manages to defeat the video game 'Starfighter''and is therefore recruited by a man from space to lead a battle in a galaxy far, far... a starting point that is half 'Tron', half 'WarGames', which ends up focusing on yes or no in 'Star Wars', becoming a small mishmash of spaceships, latex aliens and a certain futuristic look at 'THX 1138'. But with certain discoveries to discover, like that fantastic steering-wheel space vehicle that was ahead of DeLorean's 'Back to the Future'.
8 'Masters of the Universe'
For much of the prodigious decade, Kenner ('Star Wars') and Mattel ('Masters of the Universe'' fought for the children's favors with their action images and countless complements. Until the ineffable Menahem Golam and Yoram Globus said eureka: How had I never done a movie with He-Man, Skeletor and all that amalgam of fantastic characters? Okay, but it's one thing to be clear about all the good and bad and another very different thing is to have a script, and here's where it is clicked 'Masters of the Universe', the movie: Characters of Lucas, and although much of the action takes place on Earth (a planet that, it is true, does not belong to the Lucasian universe), that was not enough to raise a film too soda starring the inexpressive puppet Dolph Lundgren, without a lightsaber, but brandishing the sword of Grayskull to the battlecry of "I have the power!". They say that when entering this signing, he did not hesitate to exclaim: "But you gave him dialogues?", Referring to his rival in 'Rocky IV'. But they were other times, now they share good roll and mercenary adventures. By the way, the chords of Frank Langella (under the makeup of horrendous) and a teenager Courteney Cox also in the cast? Also note the name of Bill Conti (composer of the mythical soundtrack of 'Rocky').