Last night I thought it might be fun to put on Flash Gordon and watch it with Frankie (my son to the members) and have some laughs at the overall cheesy nature of the movie. So we threw it on and I was a little taken back with a few things. I saw at least three things that you could argue were the inspiration for stuff in ROTJ. Now I'm getting all fanboy here, just pointing them out. I have to wonder if George saw this movie (it came out in 1980) and maybe some of it crept into his noggin. After googling for images I also read up that Lucas wanted to make Flash Gordon in 1977 but someone already got dibs on it , so he made.................................wait for it..............STAR WARS!!

1. The rank and file guards are pretty similar to the ERGs

[img][/img]



2. Arboria (the forest kingdom) Is basically setup like the Ewok village. Big tress and the sidewalks around them. I know you could saw it's a generic way to build a walkway around a tree, but if you see it, it's oddly familiar

3. Flash falls into a swamp and almost gets eaten by a creature laying there, who is just a big mouth and tentacles. Hmmmm................


I have no ability to screen capture but if someone wants to gussy this up, be my guest.

I just noticed all this, am I late to the party? Is this like public knowledge that's been discussed??

DarthBerizing wrote:

Last night I thought it might be fun to put on Flash Gordon and watch it with Frankie (my son to the members) and have some laughs at the overall cheesy nature of the movie. So we threw it on and I was a little taken back with a few things. I saw at least three things that you could argue were the inspiration for stuff in ROTJ. Now I'm getting all fanboy here, just pointing them out. I have to wonder if George saw this movie (it came out in 1980) and maybe some of it crept into his noggin. After googling for images I also read up that Lucas wanted to make Flash Gordon in 1977 but someone already got dibs on it , so he made.................................wait for it..............STAR WARS!!

1. The rank and file guards are pretty similar to the ERGs

[img][/img]



2. Arboria (the forest kingdom) Is basically setup like the Ewok village. Big tress and the sidewalks around them. I know you could saw it's a generic way to build a walkway around a tree, but if you see it, it's oddly familiar

3. Flash falls into a swamp and almost gets eaten by a creature laying there, who is just a big mouth and tentacles. Hmmmm................


I have no ability to screen capture but if someone wants to gussy this up, be my guest.

I just noticed all this, am I late to the party? Is this like public knowledge that's been discussed??

wow it's been a long time since i watched flash gordon but the guard looks more like a model trem red devil or a max/sa hoth trooper maybe the worlds bootleggers watched it to

daren

OT - I saw Seth McFarlane's "Ted" this weekend and ironically the movie touched on both subjects very well.

Vintage star wars toys make a cameo!

I actually bought a vintage Darth Vader bootleg that resembles Ming's guard more than Vader.

Mike_Z wrote:

OT - I saw Seth McFarlane's "Ted" this weekend and ironically the movie touched on both subjects very well.

Vintage star wars toys make a cameo!

I saw it too. The 80's movie has always been a favorite ever since being a kid as well. I knew that Lucas had wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie since it is usually mentioned in the documentaries, but I hadn't ever really taken the time to look up similarities. I think the thing to compare it to would be the old serials as that would be the main inspiration for Lucas, but I'm sure the 80's movie took some things from those too.

The vintage in Ted was fun. It was supposed to be Christmas of '85 and you basically see a kid open a vader case full of figures. Also, Flash himself being in the movie was fun.