5 Things 'Star Wars' Fans Don't Understand About 'Star Wars'

5 Star Wars Was A Cynical Mashup Of What Worked Before

Luke, Han, and Darth Vader were literally among the first names I ever knew. George Lucas was writing the first draft of Star Wars at the exact same time my parents were entering the pre-production phase on me -- spring of 1974. When my little growing brain was figuring out the names of things a few years later, Star Wars was everywhere -- my tiny little universe was Mommy, Daddy, Big Brother, Grandma, Grandpa, Luke Skywalker. I spent more of my childhood imagining how I would live in the Star Wars universe than I did imagining being an adult in ours. This is why I have no idea how to manage my life today, but I can guarantee every exhaust vent on this house has a fucking screen on it.

When I was old enough to understand what a "movie" was -- that it was just a thing people made up and not an actual alternate universe I was viewing through a rectangular portal -- I was even more amazed. How can a human brain even conceive of something like Darth Vader, or The Force or ... any of it? Yeah, I knew pretty early I wanted to create things, too -- it seemed like a form of magic.

"Seemed" is in past tense for a reason -- these days I know that the roots of Star Wars go back to 1912, when Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a novel about a human having a swashbuckling space adventure called A Princess of Mars. It was the first mainstream hit that featured a now-familiar formula: spaceships, sword fighting, and magical fantasy shit like telepathy. A decade and a half later, this inspired a writer named Philip Francis Nowlan to create the swashbuckling space adventure Buck Rogers, which launched a wildly successful franchise that spanned radio, TV, film, novels, toys ... you name it. The bad guys were called "The Han" and the main villain was a flamboyant dictator in a cape named Killer Kane:

Seeing the success of Buck Rogers, a comic strip publisher called King Features Syndicate went to one of its writers and said, "Write us something like that. And we mean exactly fucking like it. Make it rain money up in this shit!" The writer, Alex Raymond, came back with Flash Gordon, a shamefully identical comic strip that debuted in 1934 and launched its own lucrative media empire. Flash's swashbuckling space adventures involved fighting a flamboyant dictator in a red and gold robe with a long mustache named Ming the Merciless:

Oh, and the live action Flash Gordon episodes would open with a slanted crawl, stating the "Chapter" and giving some backstory:

This is what George Lucas grew up watching. Flash Gordon was his Star Wars. An adult George Lucas, hot off the enormously successful American Graffiti, tried to buy the rights to Flash Gordon to turn it into a big-budget film franchise. They couldn't come to terms on a deal, so Lucas just decided to just write his own version. That's all it was.

I mean, you can't feel bad for King Features Syndicate -- it's the exact process by which they created Flash. In Lucas' knockoff, the hero was to be called Kane Starkiller, his friend was Han, the villain was to be an emperor with a long mustache and a red cape with gold trim. Lucas was just copying and pasting shit, later changing enough to avoid getting sued.

The rough draft of Star Wars was an incoherent rambling mess, borrowing entire scenes from other movies, mostly Akira Kurosawa samurai films (then again, Kurosawa had borrowed his from American Westerns). This is probably why Darth Vader looks a lot like he's wearing samurai armor ...

For the space dogfight that would mark the climactic battle at the end of the film, Lucas literally stitched together footage from war movies and documentaries, then just re-filmed them with spaceship models, shot for shot.

In other words, Santa Claus isn't real. The wondrous fantasy universe I spent every spare moment daydreaming about as a kid turns out to be a young director's crass, hacky grab for fame and fortune. Lucas had remixed two enormously popular franchises, tossing in the coolest moments from several other movies he liked, to create something that everyone in the industry agreed was a piece of shit. Oh, you didn't know that part? Yeah, Lucas delayed the movie for six months so they could do emergency re-shoots, and even then most theaters were refusing to show Star Wars until studio arm-twisting and early box office returns changed their mind.

Of course, it defied the odds and became a phenomenon. At which point ...

4 It Soon Became A Vehicle To Sell Action Figures

George Lucas took a massive pay cut in his director's salary in exchange for all rights to Star Wars merchandise and future sequels. The studio happily complied, saving a cool $350,000 against what they were sure would be purely imaginary merchandise sales (movie merchandise wasn't a huge business at the time, and remember they thought the movie would bomb).

But George Lucas knew exactly what he was doing: Star Wars toys would wind up generating $27 billion(!) in revenue over the next few decades. Lucas knew that he was, in part, making a series of toy commercials. This is the reason Han Solo didn't die in the middle of Return of the Jedi, as originally planned -- in the words of Harrison Ford, "George didn't think there was any future in dead Han toys." Even though these stories took place a "long, long ago" and all of these people are surely dead anyway.

It got to the point that Kenner was cranking out action figures of every single extra seen in the background of every shot (over 100 separate action figures for just the three movies). These were characters who didn't even have names in the script -- George Lucas quickly came up with their names and backstory when it came time to make the toys.

This is Stage Two of my cynicism cycle. Not only is Santa not real, but behind Santa is a whole bunch of grown-up money concerns. ("So that's why 'Santa' always gave the rich kids nicer clothes!") See, today no movie studio would make that deal with a young director -- merchandising is too important to the bottom line. And I mean, to the point that the merchandising now shapes the movie.

It turns out that one of the several thousand reasons Batman & Robin sucked is the studio forced Joel Schumacher to cram in as many vehicles and costumes as he could, so they could be turned into toys (the studio famously told him the movie should be "toyetic," a word that should instantly give you a seizure). This is why today big movie franchises get so, well, crowded.

This is why you need three or four villains in every superhero movie, and like two dozen Transformers designs for each of their sequels. It's why the third Iron Man movie needed 10 different Iron Man suits ...

All of those movies needed bloated, convoluted plots to accommodate all of these characters/vehicles/costumes. You can thank George Lucas for that. Because ...

3 George Lucas Created A New Business Model, And Hollywood Would Never Go Back

The question, "Why are all of the most popular movies big-budget special effects spectacles?" seems like a no-brainer. It's all exciting, dazzling, light-hearted stuff that anybody can enjoy, right? Of course that's what will rise to the top. But check this out: Here's a list of the highest-grossing movies for each of the 10 years before Star Wars came along in 1977. I'm putting the genre first; you'll see why:

1976 - Inspirational sports drama (Rocky)
1975 - Horror/Monster movie (Jaws)
1974 - Screwball parody (Blazing Saddles)
1973 - Heist movie (The Sting)
1972 - Serious gangster drama (The Godfather)
1971 - Musical (Fiddler on the Roof)
1970 - Romance drama (Love Story)
1969 - Action/Western (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)
1968 - Serious sci-fi drama (2001: A Space Odyssey)
1967 - Comedy/Drama (The Graduate)

Now compare that to the last 10 years:

2015 - Action/Sci-fi (Jurassic World)
2014 - War drama (American Sniper)
2013 - Action/Sci-fi (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire)
2012 - Action/Sci-fi (The Avengers)
2011 - Action/Fantasy (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2)
2010 - Animated comedy (Toy Story 3)
2009 - Action/Sci-fi (Avatar)
2008 - Action/Fantasy (The Dark Knight)
2007 - Action/Fantasy (Spider-Man 3)
2006 - Action/Fantasy (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest)
2005 - Action/Sci-fi (Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith)

Not that I have any problem with sci-fi/fantasy action -- that's my genre, too! I'll let them make action figures out of all this shit.

And hey, it's not like great original films aren't still being made -- they absolutely are, and some of them are now in the form of TV shows. It's just that the mega-blockbusters do matter. They're the cultural touchstones, the shared experiences that bond our childhoods. They're the movies you can bring up on the playground (and then, the break room) and know that everyone has seen them, the shared references becoming a second language. You know, like how when the Jared Fogle story broke, every single person immediately made the same joke.

Well, today if you're making a movie that can stand at the center of the collective cultural imagination, you'll need $200 million in production (split between big stars, elaborate stunts, and CGI effects) and another $100 million in promotion. And you'll need a concept that is a very safe bet -- usually a sequel, remake or spinoff. You can thank George Lucas for that, too.

It's true Lucas didn't invent the sequel craze (James Bond had already cranked out nine movies before A New Hope came along, even though scientifically Bond's dick would have fallen off by then). But I do know this: There absolutely was a time when you could look at the top 10 movies of the year and not see a single sequel. That was the case in 1976, the year before Star Wars came out, for instance. But by the time Jedi hit in 1983, sequels had begun to dominate. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, Rambo, Batman, Die Hard, Star Trek ... Hollywood was looking for franchises, the promise of a bunch of sequels helped justify the initial investment.

And that was crucial, because those initial investments were getting obscene. The average wide-release film budget in the 1960s was $12 million (adjusted for inflation). By the 1980s it had risen to $40 million. Today? Try $140 fucking million. Oh, and the marketing blitz that it takes to get enough people into the theater to make that money back can run an additional $40 million to $200 million on top of that. Just to get people in to a movie they probably already want to see.

That right there is why they're scared to make a blockbuster that doesn't have built-in brand recognition, so they know they have a certain number of fans in the bank. That's why the top 10 movies of this year (as of the writing of this article) are six sequels, a remake, a spinoff, and two originals. By the time the year is over, it's likely only four of the top 20 movies will be originals (I'm going to take a wild guess that Episode VII and the last Hunger Games movie will both wind up there).

Now we reach the "Santa is just a crass corporate mascot" level of cynicism, the point at which you decide there is no magic, or wonder. It's all just a soulless assembly line. You see The Hunger Games become a hit, and then watch the knockoffs flood in (Divergent, The Maze Runner) and you roll your eyes because it's just so transparent, so cynical. You decide that it was never about trying to give us a fantastical journey that would elevate our imaginations; it was all about a series of buttons they could push to make money shoot out of our little wallets. "Oh, hey, I wonder if the young attractive guy/girl who's down on their luck in the first scene will turn out to be the Chosen One?" Screenplays that are just fill-in-the-blanks.

And just when you think it can't get worse ...

2 Next Comes The Nostalgia Cash-In

There was some mockery on the Internet toward this adult man who wrote a whole article about how crushed he was by the lack of Star Wars toys available on the first day. But I get it -- where the original trilogy seemed to have been aimed at the 8-year-old me, the upcoming movies seem aimed at the 40-year-old version, rather than at the new crop of 8-year-olds. There's a geriatric Han Solo in the trailer, there's X-Wings taking on TIE fighters in a trench ... all the imagery from the late-70s original that modern kids probably have no reason to watch.

Remember, those original Star Wars fans from my generation are old enough to be movie producers and decision-makers now. J.J. Abrams would have been 11 years old when the first Star Wars movie came out, Rian Johnson (the director of the next film) would have been 4. We're talking about people who played with Han Solo action figures as kids who are now directing the actual Harrison Ford in an actual Star Wars movie. I guess it makes sense that they're trying to recapture their childhood the same as everyone else. (Now imagine growing up and being the guy who tells Princess Leia she has to lose 35 pounds if she wants to be in the movie.)

Take a moment to appreciate the cycle here: Star Wars starts the blockbuster era. The blockbuster era forces Hollywood to make safer and safer bets with sequels and remakes. Finally you get the 2010s, when the studios get so risk-averse that they just start "rebooting" everything from the '80s. Ghostbusters. Rocky. Indiana Jones. Batman, Superman, Star Trek. So scared of losing their (massive) investment that all they can do is say, "You liked this, right? We polished it up for you! This will retroactively make your childhood happy!" Finally we find ourselves back at the source, with a nostalgia-fueled Star Wars. Now the circle is complete.

But none of this nostalgia shit has worked on me, and not just because I'm dead inside. The trailers for The Force Awakens look just as crass and empty to me as Jurassic World, a mishmash of homages and "remember this?" rehashes. I saw what J.J. Abrams did to the Star Trek franchise (no, Star Trek isn't about dudes screaming, running, and dangling off ledges). I see how tired Harrison Ford looks ...

... I see that soccer ball droid that was clearly designed with a toy-first mentality.

I know Disney has six freaking Star Wars movies in the pipeline and that they've lined up marketing tie-ins with Verizon, Kraft, General Mills, Subway, Duracell, Chrysler, Lego, Southwest Airlines, HP, Nestle and Pottery Barn. And that's not even mentioning the avalanche of Hasbro toys or the EA Star Wars video game that just happened to launch within weeks of the new movie's premiere. Here in the real world, it turns out Star Wars is the Empire, a sprawling force whose reach spans the globe:

It's not that George Lucas "ruined your childhood." It's that you look back and realize there was nothing to ruin. We were all just cogs in that man's greed machine.

Sigh.

1 And Then, All At Once, You Remember

But here's the thing ...

The happiness Star Wars brought me as a kid was real. It wasn't a trick. It was the product of a fictional universe in which everywhere I looked, I saw or heard something that stuck in my mind for the rest of my life. I'm talking about the little things you don't even appreciate at the time, like Ben Burtt's sound design -- he's the one who came up with Darth Vader's labored, mechanical breathing (it's so weirdly ominous it gave me nightmares). He gave the lightsaber that deep electric hum, subconsciously letting you know just how much juice was pumping through that blade. The stormtrooper's gleaming white armor, the menacing, angular Star Destroyers the size of a city ... all these striking design choices, all the little touches. The tens of thousands of tiny details on the ship models, crafted by hand.

And all that overpriced plastic crap my parents worked overtime for every Christmas? Those toys helped me act out thousands of my own stories. George Lucas created a universe I wanted to live in, and gave me a way to live in it. Some of us have spent our entire adult lives trying to be that happy again. You'll see them in line on opening day, many of them with their own kids. Kids who probably only saw the original films because Dad made them watch the DVDs.

That is, unless they fell in love with the prequels, as millions of kids did. Does that bother you, if you're around my age? To think that those kids feel the exact same joy watching Jar Jar flop around on screen as you felt the first time you saw Yoda? Do you see them enjoying Transformers or Shrek and find it hard to admit to yourself that their love of that cynical trash is also genuine?

Because it is.

The Force Awakens isn't out yet, as of the time of this writing, and if it is in fact just a Greatest Hits collection of famous scenes from the last six movies ... well, how can I complain? That's pretty close to how the original was made, too. A recycling project. But then you realize that, actually, we've been "recycling" the same stories with the same characters for thousands of years. You groan when you hear they're making a live action remake of 1989's The Little Mermaid, but we've actually been re-telling that story since 1836. And that's nothing -- the earliest written version of Cinderella is more than 2,000 fucking years old, and the oral telling of the story probably predates the written word. And you know what? Five hundred years from now, they'll probably still be making Star Wars. The movies will be just as cynical, the shelves will be full of products, and little kids' eyes will go just as wide the first time they hear that ominous, mechanical breathing.

And that, there, is the final step in the cynicism progression, the "Santa is Real After All" phase. The realization that joy persists, not in spite of cynicism, but alongside it.

It's a microcosm of how all of society works, every day. You watch the news and hear about ISIS and mass shootings and evil corporations and you think, "Damn, it's a miracle society even functions at all." And to that I say, you're right -- it is a miracle.

The realization that much of our society is made of pure bullshit doesn't have to ruin your happiness, because there is still joy everywhere you look. Probably a hundred million people will gather to watch The Force Awakens this month. They will sit down together, in peace (for the most part) in America, China, Russia, Vietnam, Israel, Pakistan, and 67 other countries, everyone getting swept away in the same fantasy.

Even a cynic can see the magic in that.

David Wong is the Executive Editor of Cracked.com and a New York Times best-selling author. You probably don't know that his long-awaited new novel is out right now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BAM!, IndieBound, iTunes, Powell's, your local bookstore, or anywhere else books are sold!

Check out more from David Wong in 4 Reasons 'The Walking Dead' Hates Humans More Than Zombies and 5 Mind-Blowing Facts Nobody Told You About Guns.

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