Star Wars: homage or stealing

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Star Wars, at least ANH anyway, borrowed form a bunch of stuff. The old Flash Gordon serials, WWII flicks and most notably Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. With Flash Gordon and the WWII flicks, I would definitely say homage. The Hidden fortress, he just flat out took the basic plot from that.

Yeah Lucas mixed it around a bit. Cameron just flatout did a Dances with Wolves in space.
 
Yeah Lucas mixed it around a bit. Cameron just flatout did a Dances with Wolves in space.

Yeah, it definitely had a strong Ferngully meets Dances with Wolves vibe, but to be fair, that "going native" theme was around in both movies and just basic storytelling long before any of those flicks. There's not really too many diferent ways you can tell that type of story. It's like zombie movies, if you've seen one, you've basically seen them all.
 
Yeah I mean it's underlying in many movies but nowhere as noticeable as in Avatar.
 
I'd say homage. He had the imagination to see the correlation between a WWII dogfight and a dogfight in space, so kudos for that. He was creative enough to use great original material to base SW on, like Hidden Fortress, etc. like ObsoleteMan mentioned. Now, if only he had "homaged" more movies for his prequels, then perhaps they wouldn't have been so poorly done!

No, I can't stand stories based on that premise and no amount of pretty space forest could entice me to endure it.

I hope you at least saw Dances With Wolves, though. I admit that I personally had written that movie off when it first came out and never bothered to watch it. But I ended up watching it for a film class in college, and WOW! It truly is an incredible movie. I was completely wrong to dismiss it so quickly.
 
I'd say homage. He had the imagination to see the correlation between a WWII dogfight and a dogfight in space, so kudos for that. He was creative enough to use great original material to base SW on, like Hidden Fortress, etc. like ObsoleteMan mentioned. Now, if only he had "homaged" more movies for his prequels, then perhaps they wouldn't have been so poorly done!



I hope you at least saw Dances With Wolves, though. I admit that I personally had written that movie off when it first came out and never bothered to watch it. But I ended up watching it for a film class in college, and WOW! It truly is an incredible movie. I was completely wrong to dismiss it so quickly.

Yeah it's in my top 10 list. I highly recommend the 4hr. version though as it adds more to the overall story.
 
Nowhere as socialist either. Hate it to death. Star Wars was never red.
Though there was a pro-nature theme and, obviously, peaceful natives vs. aggressive "imperialists" trying to subjugate the aliens and take over their resources, etc., I didn't really see an anti-capitalist theme in Avatar. If there was one, it probably applied just as much to Star Wars IMO.

It is very possible that I dozed off during the speech about the proletariat revolt against the bourgeoisie, though.
 
Though there was a pro-nature theme and, obviously, peaceful natives vs. aggressive "imperialists" trying to subjugate the aliens and take over their resources, etc., I didn't really see an anti-capitalist theme in Avatar. If there was one, it probably applied just as much to Star Wars IMO.

It is very possible that I dozed off during the speech about the proletariat revolt against the bourgeoisie, though.

As long as governments keep f___ing up, it's fodder for movies. Star Wars came out after the Vietnam debacle which left a sour taste (like the current wars) in a lot of people's mouths. Hollywood just was able to filter it into their movies. A lot of anti-government which is echoed even today.
 
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