The One And Only Thing I Will Ever Write About STAR WARS
June 13th, 2006 | brainjuice
I picked up an odd piece of information the other day.
I’ve long been interested in the chambara form, the Japanese stories of wandering heroic swordsmen. Chambara is a subset of what the Japanese called jidai geki, period drama. I bet you’ve all seen one of them — YOJIMBO, SEVEN SAMURAI, RAN. And you’ve all seen THE HIDDEN FORTRESS, though you know it better as the first STAR WARS film. George Lucas was, of course, a huge fan of Kurosawa.
It didn’t occur to me until I read this tidbit the other day that Lucas, famously struggling with the writing of STAR WARS in San Francisco — neurotically slicing off bits of his hair, getting OCD about his writing materials and forgetting how to spell Chewbacca every day — would of course have been reading books and articles on Kurosawa, and, in looking for his faded knights of dynasty, would have coughed and California-mispronounced jidai into Jedi…
Just struck me as curious and funny, is all, and I wanted to note the thought before it left.
is the award-winning creator of graphic novels such as 
A fun game to play whenever you’re watching a Kurosawa film: “What part of this did George Lucas rip off for STAR WARS?” Besides the entire basic plot of THE HIDDEN FORTRESS, I’ve spotted “a villain’s severed arm flops to the ground” in YOJIMBO, “heroes escape detection hiding under false floorboards” in SANJURO, and the entire “devastating battle in a bright green sunny meadow” (from EPISODE I: THE FADED TALENT) in RAN.
I actually wish George remembered the old samurai movies when he was making the prequels. I always pictured the Jedi as wandering swordsmen, even in the “Old Republic” but he has them as these centralized officials that were like boring, bureaucratic versions of Shaolin monks. But these days, you even mention “Star Wars” and we geeks can talk for hours upon hours about the missteps and our disappointment in the work.
The best things about Star Wars were other people. Akira Kurosawa, Ralph McQuarrie, Joseph Campbell. Even the best lines were adlibbed (like Harrison Ford’s last line in Empire). The only way to maintain the “George Lucas was a genius” myth is to believe that he was killed and replaced by a synthoid. The diabolical machine’s purpose was not only to kill the man, but to destroy his legacy, hence Special Editions and prequels that make Samuel L. Jackson a Jedi and can’t even make that cool.
I should mention, before the geeks get warmed up, that I’ve only seen the original three films, back when I was a kid and they were first released, and I don’t think I’ve ever rewatched them as an adult.
[...] Warren Ellis über Star Wars: It didn’t occur to me until I read this tidbit the other day that Lucas, famously struggling with the writing of STAR WARS in San Francisco — neurotically slicing off bits of his hair, getting OCD about his writing materials and forgetting how to spell Chewbacca every day — would of course have been reading books and articles on Kurosawa, and, in looking for his faded knights of dynasty, would have coughed and California-mispronounced jidai into Jedi… [...]
You’re a lucky man, then.
They don’t hold up well at all.
Give me Spaceballs, any day.
Lucas preceded the current hollywood formula of “take japanese movie and remake it with white people” trend by a couple decades it seems.
The first SW was interesting, but from then on out it became a vehicle for selling action figures. Another swipe from Japan was george going for a fat cut of the merchandising.
In the commentary for the orriginal film he says that he followed C3PO and R2 D2 because that is what was done in The Hidden Fortress.
I’m not familiar with the Japanese genres, but one of the primary Chinese genres is Wuxia (Martial Hero), which typically follows a wandering knight errant through all manner of heroic period/historical drama. No idea if this has any shared origin with the Japanese versions…
The whole Joseph Campbell universal-hero-as-inspiration thing was retro-grafted onto Star Wars.
Lucas made it up as he went along.
Also, the inside of Darth Vader’s suit probably smelled really, really bad.
I only recently realized that Luke Skywalker is Lucas. Ah well.
Yeah, he culled a lot of things from Kurosawa and they do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. From the technical aspects of Kurosawa (the wipes and fades) to the numerous story elements that were already brought up. I love Kurosawa but I really don’t find Lucas’ acts to be offensive at all. Everybody is influenced by someone whose art they enjoy to varying degrees. Lucas wasn’t the only one to be heavily influenced and liberal in taking Kurosawa’s ideas. One only has to look at some of the westerns that followed to see that. While granted, they were remakes even these americanizations influenced other works that followed and on and on and on…
Speaking of which, I think I lost my train of thought.
How did I not see it before? It’s so obvious! Jedi– of course.
Even though Kurosawa’s story was liberally borrowed from to make A New Hope, Lucas also went on to make two more really damn good films from that story. Five damn good films if you’re willing to include the new trilogy…I’m not.
The Star Wars movies are just mediocre, all 6 of them. If it wasn’t for John William’s brilliant soundtrack, we never would have seen “Empire”. It never would have been made.
The Kurosawa films, on the other hand, were just great all-around. Soundtrack, cinematography, acting; All were fantastic.
Kurosawa’s films are far more human in nature than Lucas’s action flicks.
Gee Warren your in the perfect position to sit down and watch all 6 movies and give us an
objective review!
My Geekish contribution – Empire and Jedi were directed and co-written by other, competent people. Lucas didn’t miraculously extrapolate them out of his mishmash of characters and plot lines lifted from Kurosawa and Kurosawa-inspired westerns.
So if he was that influenced by the source material he was interested in at the time what sort of blaxploitaion/minstrel movie was he using when he came up with the Jar Jar character?
That’s great and all, but it’s time to spill about the TV news. Rich Johnston didn’t have the scoop, and I’m utterly floored by that.
Rich, bless ‘im, only gets what people tell him.
Stefan beat me to it, but it bears repeating: the whole “inspired by Joseph Campbell” line about Star Wars was a piece of mutually beneficial revisionist horseshit foisted off jointly by Lucas and Campbell on a gullible and uncritical press. (There’s more, much more, about the genuinely horrifying mutual masturbation society that Lucas and Campbell founded, but really: just go search for Paul Riddell’s archives.)
God, I’m regretting having written that note…
Thats what you get for writing the words “Star Wars” on the internet
Heck, you can write “Star Wars” on a turd it would sell on eBay!
George Lucas = Quentin Tarantino?!?!!?!?
>>what sort of blaxploitaion/minstrel movie was he using when he came up with the Jar Jar character?
Gunga Din. See it.
I’m a bit late, I guess to this one. Sorry, Ellis, for adding another nerdy comment.
I was big into Star Wars when I was younger, to the point where I got a hold of an early draft of the original film. The script followed The Hidden Fortress much more closely, but there was one bit I found particularly interesting that continued into later drafts (and can even be found in the official scripts released by Premiere magazine in the 80s).
The exact section of the script where Obi Wan Kenobi cuts off the space-thug’s arm in the Mos Eisley Cantina is lifted not just from Yojimbo, but from the description of that scene in Yojimbo from film critic Donald Ritchie’s book, The Films of Akira Kurosawa. In the early draft of Star Wars I read it even included the part of Ritchie’s phrasing where the Yojimbo character sheaths his sword, despite the fact that it had already been established that no sheath was necessary for the “laser sword.”
Someone must have pointed this out because the description was later changed in the book of annotated Star Wars screenplays edited by Laurent Bouzereau.
I suppose that if you were writing a film script that you imagined would never be available to the public and wanted to pay homage to one of your film heroes you wouldn’t worry much about plagiarism, since you would know that your visual expression of the material would be different enough to make the whole point moot.
And yes, even though I’m not so into Star Wars anymore I still remember this stuff. I am a total dork.
George Lucas went absolutely insane with the wipes in the new trilogy. If you make it a point to look for them you will go blind.
Also, may i mention that for the Empire George Lucas also borrowed heavily from Leni Riefenstahl, the german female director who worked under Hitler and did such films as “Olympia”, a film about the 1938 olympic games(which was gorgeous, although very aryan), and more importantly to this thread, “Triumph of the Will”, her documentary of Hitler, which she was later criticized for, accused of being a cog in the wheel of the 3rd Reich propaganda machine.
So yeah, go check that out.
You should read the original novelization sometime. Lucas adapted it into novel form right from his originakl script, and it’s basically “The Hidden Fortress” set in space. Not a bad read really, if you like space operas.
Actually, karl, the one shot that was cribbed directly from “Triumph of the Will” (which was Riefenstahl’s filming of the Nuremberg Rally, not a full Hitler documentary) was the Rebel Award Ceremony at the end of the first film, (Lucas actually admitted that in an interview some time in the past, he’s probably since revised his story) and now that I think about it, the Emperor’s arrival on the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi was probably heavily inspired by “Triumph,” but not as directly lifted as the aforementioned ceremony.
And the original novelization was written by Alan Dean Foster, but published as having been written by Lucas.
I’m almost done vomiting geek all over.
If you’ve actually got any rose tinted memories of the original films, Warren, you might want to revisit them, if you can find the original originals, in my opinion they do hold up surprisingly well. But if you don’t have any fond memories at all, you probably won’t create any new ones by watching them now, because they don’t hold up quite THAT well.
“I should mention, before the geeks get warmed up, that I’ve only seen the original three films, back when I was a kid and they were first released, and I don’t think I’ve ever rewatched them as an adult.”
That is probably about the only perfect way of watching any of the SW flicks.
“George Lucas went absolutely insane with the wipes in the new trilogy. If you make it a point to look for them you will go blind.”
Forget the wipes, count the number spaceships taking off and landing and taking off and landing. That’s where he went nuts.
Guys, I’m not going to rewatch the Star Wars films because they are films for children and I am 38 years old. Snap the fuck out of it.
I’m off to kill myself now. Thanks, boys.
Ah, damn. I was expecting Old Man Ellis to at least hold out until the inevitable “Han/Greedo shot first” arguments.
Modblog may fortify the brain against some kinds of horror, but SW fanboy arguments have no vaccine.
As a writer he’s always been a bit…stuck for names. I remember an interview with him, where he basicaly said he’d been through dozens of names for each character before the first act was written, all abysmal. But he had the Jedi name from day one, so I can certainly buy him just bastardising japanese to get it.
Still, it’s an evocative name, it SOUNDS full of history, storied and mystic, so why the hell not?
And also? Sith is a Gaelic word, I believe (though pronounced Shee, if I’m correct), for a fairy…
Oh, God. Sidhe. Sidhe.
(BANG)
Hey uh, Lucas wrote no novelizations.
Alan Dean Foster was the writer of that book, contractually obligated to allow Lucas authorship.
Aye, Star Wars is Kurosawa in space…but from what foetid Yokai blister crawled Jar-Jar Binks?
[...] Two great (probably) true anecdotes about Star Wars from Warren Ellis. [...]
[...] As usual, Warren Ellis is on to something: I’ve long been interested in the chambara form, the Japanese stories of wandering heroic swordsmen. Chambara is a subset of what the Japanese called jidai geki, period drama. I bet you’ve all seen one of them — YOJIMBO, SEVEN SAMURAI, RAN. And you’ve all seen THE HIDDEN FORTRESS, though you know it better as the first STAR WARS film. George Lucas was, of course, a huge fan of Kurosawa. [...]