the great cinematic appropriation

Rating: Null/10 (22 August 2009)

Loosely based on the 1973 SF book by British SF writer Edmund Cooper called The Cloud Walker, Star Wars stands out as the movie with the most appropriations from SF novels in the history of film. It's not that it's a bad movie, quite the contrary, it is a great film, and it should be, the film maker borrowed ideas from about 50 different SF writers. Anyway, there is some very good visual work based on some very good conceptual SF artwork. Personally, I never liked the sound the Wookie kept making in the film-I think since it was done about 50 times, and I didn't care much for CV3PO and I thought R2D2 needed some work to be more than just a talking garbage can, just like Hewy and Dewy from Bruce Dern's SF film Silent Running made in the early 1970s-yet another appropriation, that time from an earlier American SF film no less. If I was George Lucas I would feel a very embarrassed to have used so much of other peoples work to complete a 'masterpiece.'Not recognized to have spawned mediocre television SF show Battlestar Galactica in 1978-despite the repetition of key word 'Battlestar'. I guess one rip off deserved another. I gave it a seven because I liked it when I saw it as a young person, but in truth it probably deserves only a one for its high number of appropriations, and its coy character names that are really nothing more than cheap sex jokes.