Mar
15
What If “Star Wars” Had Never Been Made?
Filed Under Culture
Before I quit reading monthly comics, I started buying old back issues of Marvel’s “What If…?” series. What a fascinating line of books. Each issue of the series changed some important element in a character’s history and then examined the repercussions. The “What If…?” comics harmlessly altered a character in order to explore the storytelling possibilities but left the character’s ongoing book alone. Every book was self-contained and usually exhausted all the ideas of the retcon in 22 pages.
I’d like to apply a similar concept to the movie business and ask what if George Lucas had never written and directed the original “Star Wars.” This blog isn’t intended to rake Lucas over the coals. Rather, I’d like to see how Hollywood would hypothetically be different had one particular movie never been made. But first, here’s a brief history lesson.
Originally conceived as “The Star Wars” while Lucas was working on “American Graffiti,” the plot and characters were more in line with what we saw in “The Phantom Menace” — boring space samurai with oddball names, careering around the cosmos from one loosely connected caper to the next. Lucas labored over his original concept for years until finally it took shape as a modern-day myth about a farmboy from a backwater planet who becomes the savior of the galaxy by embracing an esoteric religion.
No studio wanted to make it. Even Disney turned “Star Wars” down. Lucas finally got financing from 20th Century Fox to do his $8 million film in 1976 and endured a bitch of a shoot in the deserts of Tunisia as well as the soundstages outside London. His crew thought they were making some sort of camp classic. A year was spent developing the SFX for the film, and early effects shots were deemed unusable. Test screenings were a disaster. Director Brian DePalma harangued Lucas’ concept of “The Force of Others,” dubbing it “The Farts of Others;” Lucas ultimately truncated the name of his newfangled religion to simply, “The Force.” Early trailers were met with resounding laughter when shown to audiences.
But surprisingly, the film was released in May of 1977 and became the highest-grossing box office success of its day.
“Star Wars” changed George Lucas’ life forever in more ways than one. He became a victim of his own success, forever shackled to a movie he’d made to simply prove something to Francis Ford Coppola: that he could direct a populist film. Funnily enough, he’d already done that with “American Graffiti,” so I assume “Star Wars” was supposed to be his victory lap.
At any rate, where Anakin Skywalker had ceased to exist and became Darth Vader, the guy who’d made the arty and impenetrable “THX-1138″ turned into the guy who did “Star Wars.” George Lucas would never go back to directing esoteric films. In fact, Lucas didn’t direct anything from ‘77-’99. Making “Star Wars” was so miserable, he relegated himself to an Executive Producer role (and 2nd Unit Director) on “Empire” and “Jedi.” He also Exec Produced the “Indiana Jones” pictures, not to mention middling animated films like “An American Tail” and fantasy clunkers like “Willow.” Two decades later, Lucas would write and direct the “Star Wars” prequels, and we all know how those turned out.
So let’s just say that in the mid-’70s an exasperated Lucas put “The Star Wars” on the shelf when he couldn’t crack the story or that no studio would greenlight the thing. How different would movies and the movie industry be without one “game changer?”
Lucas, for one, would probably have directed “Apocalypse Now” instead of Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas’ approach would’ve been a low-budget, 16mm film, done in the style of the news footage that came out of Vietnam during the war. It wouldn’t have been a bloated and uneven operatic mish-mash that Coppola’s vastly overrated film is. That said, had Lucas directed “Apocalypse Now,” Coppola wouldn’t have lost his goddamn mind on location in the Philippines and perhaps cranked out some other brilliant films going into the 1980s. Lucas, meanwhile, could’ve potentially won that elusive Best Director Oscar and pursued more personal projects.
“Star Wars” is credited with legitimizing the science-fiction and fantasy genres, but I think that would’ve happened regardless. 1977 also saw the release of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” a devastatingly slow, albeit critically acclaimed and financially successful, sci-fi movie directed by Steven Spielberg. The following year, “Superman: The Movie,” directed by Richard Donner, made audiences believe a man can fly. What’s more, producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind had the forethought to shoot “Superman: The Movie” and “Superman II” simultaneously. It might be argued that the success of “Star Wars” is what led to “Superman” getting a greenlight, but in fact, “Superman” was in production before “Star Wars” was released.
What movies were directly influenced by “Star Wars” then? Well, “Alien,” “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” “Moonraker,” “Flash Gordon,” and so on and so forth might not have happened or have taken a different shape. Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon toiled over “Alien” (aka “Star Beast”) prior to May 1977. But it’s doubtful that 20th Century Fox, the same studio that released “Star Wars,” would’ve bought it or that director Ridley Scott would’ve been hired to make it. But it stands to reason that O’Bannon would’ve scraped together the money to do the film himself. “Star Trek” probably would’ve never hit theaters, but rather, returned to the small screen. Attempts to restart the “Trek” franchise on television, minus William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, had been made throughout the 1970s. They were this close to launching a new TV series when “Star Wars” hit and gave Paramount the idea that “Trek” could be a viable film franchise. The gritty “For Your Eyes Only” would’ve come out on the heels of “The Spy Who Loved Me,” not the hokey “Moonraker.” And my favorite “Star Wars” wannabe, “Flash Gordon,” probably wouldn’t have happened at all. Believe it or not, George Lucas originally wanted to make a “Flash Gordon” film, but couldn’t secure the rights. So he made “Star Wars” instead. Its boffo box office lit a fire under Universal to make “Flash Gordon,” which subsequently bombed. Wah-wah… I still love it.
What about career trajectories? Lucas and Spielberg enjoyed a friendly creative rivalry that began with “Jaws.” (To me, “Jaws” is the film that really changed the filmmaking landscape in the ’70s, not “Star Wars.”) Lucas topped “Jaws” at the box office with “Star Wars” in 1977, and “E.T.” topped “Star Wars” at the box office in 1982. The two also collaborated on the wildly successful “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and its subsequent installments. But the character of Indiana Jones first came to Lucas during his development of “Star Wars.” As far as I’m concerned, if “Star Wars” never had happened, then neither did Indy. And if Indy never happened, well, “E.T.” would’ve looked a hell of a lot different. Harrison Ford’s then-wife, Melissa Matheson, wrote “E.T.” after breaking the story with Spielberg on the set of “Raiders.” Spielberg probably still would’ve made his first bomb, “1941,” but not bounced back with the double-whammy of “Raiders” and “E.T.” No, he probably would’ve done the sci-fi thriller “Watch the Skies,” a film about a family menaced by extra-terrestrials. Would it have been a hit, though? Well, both “Poltergeist” (ghost-directed by Spielberg) and “E.T.” are based in part on his original concept for “Watch the Skies,” so it’s very likely the film would’ve at least had the box office take of the former. Spielberg naturally would’ve enjoyed a strong career as director and executive producer without a rivalry or collaboration with Lucas.
When it comes to careers, Harrison Ford suffers the worst here. Without “Star Wars” or Indy, the man would’ve probably disappeared entirely from the acting scene after “American Graffiti” and become a professional carpenter. That sound you hear is my mother fainting.
What about the ancillary market? “Star Wars” wasn’t the first film to have all manner of tie-ins (toys, games, lunchpails, clothing, cereal, etc.), but it hit shortly before programming laws were changed. As such, TV shows aimed at children became 30-minute commercials for action figures. The animated series “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe,” a fairly obvious marriage of “Star Wars” and “Conan,” burst onto the scene in 1982 and became a merchandising giant for Mattel. “G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero” and “The Transformers” followed shortly thereafter. These same cartoons had “educational” PSAs at the tail end of each episode, but they were chiefly designed to market toys to the same young audience that gobbled up “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back.” If “Star Wars” hadn’t come out, it’s possible that tie-ins might not have proven themselves to be such a cash cow, and children’s TV may have been vastly different going into the 1980s.
Removing “Star Wars” from the cultural zeitgeist would even change the name of Ronald Reagan’s shitty missile defense shield. The arms race was impacted by a film that no studio thought would get an ROI on an $8 million budget!
In the ’70s, there was a rapid succession of mega-hits: “The Godfather,” “The Exorcist,” “The Godfather, Part II,” “Jaws,” and “Rocky.” Yes, “Star Wars” outgrossed them all, but it didn’t exactly invent the blockbuster. Had it not come out when it did, another film — perhaps Donner’s “Superman” — would’ve filled the vacuum as the science fantasy razzle-dazzle crowd-pleaser of its time. We’ll never know how different cinema would be, but it’s always fun to ask the age-old question, “What if…?”
-Brad Lohan
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One Response to “What If “Star Wars” Had Never Been Made?”
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Good analysis, except I think Indiana Jones would have happened regardless. It was more inspired by the James Bond series than Star Wars or anything else. If the science-fiction serial movie had proved unmarketable to the studios, it stands to reason Lucas’ next best shot to do a similar concept would have been the more realistic yet still serial-inspired Indiana Jones. In fact, maybe he would have directed it himself since without Star Wars he might not have had the clout to sit back on his heels and be the executive producer, he would have more time since he wouldn’t be producing the Star Wars movies simultaneously, and he would have needed the money. If the timing had changed, than Tom Selleck might have been able to get the part, especially since Harrison Ford was only settled upon after Lucas and Spielberg watched his performance in The Empire Strikes Back. Possibly Lawrence Kasdan could still have written the script, since he actually did write it after selling Continental Divide to Spielberg but before taking over for Leigh Brackett on The Empire Strikes Back.