There are certainly some differences. Dune openly embraced the “same as the old boss” notion, with the chosen one assuming the throne of the emperor and leading a galactic army of conquest. Also, whereas Lucas’ attitude toward women seems to be a childlike idea that girls are icky except when they’re tomboys, Dune embodies a more adult-style misogyny (women scheme to hide deadly secrets, but they’ll throw the sisterhood over for the love of a good man and motherhood of a strong boy).

David Lynch’s excesses were indeed unfortunate, but his was a unique vision. A different director could have easily followed the Star Wars template and made just another adventure story.

I’ve heard so many theories about how this or that book or movie influenced Lucas, but when I sat down and watched F.G. Conquers the Universe, it was the first time I sat, open-mouthed, and said, “It’s Star Wars. Holy shit, it’s Star Wars.”

I suppose you didn’t like The Hidden Fortress either? The screen wipes, IMHO, are on the nice “quotes” in the film.

Alas! Wright’s desert fantasia went unbuilt, due to that very political context – the king (?) who commissioned it was desposed before a single stone was laid.

As a freshman architecture student in 1991, I had only just learned of those plans, and was relieved, in an odd, alternate-universe way, that at least those architectural wonders wouldn’t be bombed to oblivion.

Salon had a good article debunking the Lucas/Campbell link in 2002. “…the roots of George Lucas’ empire lie not in “The Odyssey” but in classic and pulp 20th century sci-fi.”

That may debunk any conscious imitation, but since Campbell’s claim is to be uncovering an archetype latent in our culture, the fact that Lucas didn’t base his story on Campbell only strengthens C’s claims.

(N.b. that I hold no brief for Campbell, let alone his master, Darth Jung.)

Within the past year, we’ve rented the original series for our girls, because they’ve wanted to have some part of the Star Wars craze. We managed to find an old VHS of the original Star Wars at Blockbuster, and enjoyed all its Han-shoots-first glory. Yes, the screen-wipes drive me insane, and so many of the special effects are weak, but it holds together brilliantly nonetheless, delivering fun and thrills unemcumbered by a pointless, subsequently grafted-on mythology. For years, carried along by geek opinion, I’d assumed Empire was the best of the original series, but watching it again changed my mind—crummy acting, worse dialogue, and contextless humor all weaken it. If it wasn’t for Harrison Ford’s clearly improvised additions, and Frank Oz’s fascinating creation of Yoda, the movie would sink as quickly as ROTJ. Which, in all fairness, my daughters loved: they couldn’t get enough of the Ewoks. They’re five and eight…and I suppose, by 1983, Lucas had figured out that that’s where the merchandising money was, anyway.

That’s the main problem with the prequels – too much literal kids stuff. There was less of it in the original trilogy. I’m now imagining an entirely R-rated Star Wars, and I’m convinced it’d be far superior.

Same here. Don’t forget Thomas Disch. But remember—that group was something like a literary movement, not at all representative of what you got off the racks at American airports. (I was introduced to many of these authors by British publishers like Pan.)

My SF Lit (as if!) teacher in high school asked me who I thought were the best SF writers of the day. She didn’t recognize any of the names in my answer. I dropped the course.

Dune (the movie) is a good example of the damage wreaked by Star Wars. Ridley Scott attempted it—I remember the rumors when Salvador Dali quit the set. Then Scott got a chance to do Blade Runner (even as he was couchsurfing in LA, penniless from his great North African adventure) and the rest is history—the other history of SF film in this generation.

When Dune became a David Lynch/de Laurentiis project, I worried. Wwhen it came out, my fears were confirmed. Lynch claimed that he’d had to make compromises, because the book was so long. Yeah, David, but if so, why did you spend all that money on that weird sequence of a Spacing Guild navigator (mutated all out of proportion to how they appeared in the books, which could have been portrayed with a left-over suit from “Creature from the Black Lagoon” and a fog machine for his tank). Why were we treated to minutes of a Navigator vomiting cosmic ectoplasm? It’s not even in the book, and if you didn’t know the book, you couldn’t make sense of it anyway. Why? Because, after Star Wars, you had to spend lots of money on special effects.

Dune could have been the best SF movie ever. It could also have been one of the best desert-romance political movies since Lawrence of Arabia (there is significant story resemblance, after all.) Instead it became Lynch’s Big Stumble. He learned his lesson and went back to Ectoplasmic Mutants in Smalltown America.

The place to film Dune now would be Iraq, of course, not least because of all the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in that country, and the thematic resonance from political context. Anyway, people there need jobs! And the way to make it would be on a budget that might be considered pathetically small for epic SF films these days.

A friend of mine pointed out that, even though through most of the movie the Empire has the Nazi fashions, that last scene owed a lot to Triumph of the Will.

I’ve my doubts as to whether he’s read the book, rather than the exhibition programme notes: in the book the whole ‘belly of the beast’ thing isn’t necessarily when transformations occur, but does involve the realisation that ‘out is through,’ and he can’t turn back. It’s after this he goes through the transforming ordeals.

And oh, the way he sneers that if Campbell’s formula was so right then Lucas’ career should have had more hits, then complains at the number of successful films based on Campbell’s formula is just priceless!

I’m not begrudging the guy his obvious passion, but the article is about the standard I’ve come to expect from Salon- although I can’t find the link I’m certain I did not hallunicate that a month or so ago their top story concerned penis extension.

However I thought the special effects were a fantastic piece of technical work. But even as I was sitting there with my eyes popping out at the rockin’ FX, I remember thinking that the X-Wing scenes, while well-done, were clearly inspired by the wing cameras on World War II fighter planes; how likely was it that interstellar warcraft would do battle at closing speeds of five hundred miles an hour, like the Spitfire or the P-51 used to do?

I eventually figured it out, but the impression stayed with me.

Meet the new boss…