Advertise here with Carbon Ads

This site is made possible by member support. 💞

Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.

When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!

kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.

🍔  💀  📸  😭  🕳️  🤠  🎬  🥔

posted by Jason Kottke  ·  gift link

Where did Star Wars come from?

Yesterday I posted a video looking at the influence of Akira Kurosawa on Star Wars. Well, Michael Heilemann has posted an amazing feature-length exploration of Star Wars and the films that influenced it.

It’s not Heilemann talking about anything…it’s a sort of meta-Star Wars comprised of dozens of elements from other films that influenced Lucas in making it. For instance, here’s the opening crawl from Forbidden Planet (1956):

Forbidden Planet

Heilemann also includes a crawl from a 1936 Flash Gordan serial. For more, check out Kitbashed, particularly the extensive ebook on Star Wars sources.