Doctor Clu's Dissertations - Top 10 Star Wars imitators worth watching

RSS Bot · September 13, 2016

Stars Wars was my gateway into science fiction. I was six at the time, I saw this record cover that my Dad had and the music of John Williams inspired me. I saw they had this guy in black... must be a black knight. And this man in golden armor, that must be the good knight to fight the black knight! And there was a princess. I thought at first glance from the pictures it was some high tech fantasy, ground based, adventure. Much like what Krull came to be now that I think about it.

Then of course I saw Star Wars, and things were put in perspective. As a kid I loved R2D2 and C3P0. To me it was all about the droids. As I got slightly older, and I mean maybe 8 or 9, I had fun daydreams of being Luke and hooking up with Leia.

Yes yes, this was before we knew. Many of us had a crush on Leia. And Wilma Derring in Buck Rogers. Nothing more fun to play with the Starbuck action figure, or Luke, or insert guy here, saving both Leia and Wilma. Good times.

And Han Solo, he was cool and all, but he was old. Yeh, I don't know why I thought he was old. Naturally Luke being younger and more kid like I related to him easier.

In the above I've mentioned Star Wars, Buck Rogers, Krull. The fact is, though Star Wars was amazing I had equal fun with other sci-fi movies that came out. And tonight I found an article that talked about a lot of them and got me thinking back.

Favorites on this list: Black Hole, Last Starfighter, Battle Beyond the Stars, Krull, and of course maybe my love possibly on the level of Star Wars... Battlestar Galactica.

Star Crash... wow, I remember that one. As for Star Chaser, sounds interesting. He-Man was interesting but the cartoon was so much better. :/

http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/lists-top-10-star-wars-imitators-worth-watching/item#1

Did all those capture the magic of Star Wars? Nope. Even Star Wars would show, not to be insulting, how difficult it can be to be STAR WARS itself and recapture that lighting in a bottle. So I don't see any of them, even the cheesy ones like Star Crash and He-Man as failures because they were not Star Wars great. They failed because they sucked.

That said, I listed my favorites and I still those were just amazing on their own. Yes, Battle Beyond the Stars is a fun movie. Go SPACE COWBOY OF EARTH!! YEEHHAAA!!!

Battlestar Galactica still captures my imagination as I read comics, books, rewatch the shows. I even have a complete flight outfit which all total for the parts came to about a grand.

Black Hole, I think they came up with the coolest robot design surpassing R2D2. Fun suspense movie.

Last Starfighter was actually quite good, and with my love for Atari, there was a lot of ingrained video game culture in that movie. A figure line and a Starifghter toy would have been nice.

Honestly I think in some ways Heavy Metal was thrown out there to be a contender to Star Wars. Of course that goes into the realm of not so much rip-offs but existing ideas that got the green light due to Star Wars. Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, the before mentioned Heavy Metal, Star Trek. Really surprised a John Carter of Mars movie didn't happen during this time, but maybe Flash Gordon was not as much a success as hoped?

Oh and bringing nostalgia back to the modern day, if you liked the 80's Flash Gordon movie the Ted movies have had tributes to them. There is a DVD pack that features as the third movie "Ted Vs. Flash Gordon" Zanny stuff.

Enjoy the article and have fun spacing out for a bit. Now to find Star Chaser. I know it's bad, but it looks bad enough to be good...

-Doctor Clu