{"id":5109,"date":"2018-08-30T20:38:26","date_gmt":"2018-08-31T00:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/?p=5109"},"modified":"2022-10-25T10:09:51","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T14:09:51","slug":"battle-beyond-the-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/battle-beyond-the-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle Beyond the Stars is Star Wars gone wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Battle Beyond the Stars<\/em> is the rare bad movie worth experiencing. How can you not be at least a little curious about a Roger Corman-produced Star Wars<\/em> pastiche, starring John-Boy from The Waltons<\/em>, Hannibal from The A-Team<\/em>, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.<\/em>, with a screenplay by John Sayles and special effects by James Cameron?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Starcrash<\/em> a few years earlier, Jimmy T. Murakami’s Battle Beyond the Stars<\/em> crassly copies a number of superficial elements from Star Wars<\/em>: sassy robots, radial wipes, exploding planets, severed arms, and heavy borrowing from Akira Kurosawa and John Sturges (Seven Samurai<\/em><\/a> and The Magnificent Seven<\/em><\/a> in this case).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it betrays a total cluelessness regarding the real feat that George Lucas<\/a> pulled off: iconic characters, mythic underpinnings, and a tantalizing sense of a larger world worth exploring. Its spaceships, lasers, and robots are all in service of the story, not the other way around — otherwise you wind up with Battle Beyond the Stars<\/em>, essentially a special effects reel with cursory linking material. Everything Star Wars<\/em> gets right, Battle Beyond the Stars<\/em> gets wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Battle
They really know how to party, beyond the stars.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As for those aforementioned James Cameron<\/a> special effects, there sure are a lot<\/em> of them. The ratio of effects shots to live-action studio footage must be near-equal. There’s a tremendous discrepancy between the level of effort expended on the models and matte paintings, vs the dialogue, characterization, and story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The performances certainly don’t commend it. Robert Vaughn sleepwalks through it, and George Peppard hambones as an Earth cowboy. Richard Thomas doesn’t seem to have a handle on his character, which I suspect is due to a lack of clarity in the writing & direction. Like Luke Skywalker, he’s an everyman farmboy with aspirations to be a pilot. What appears to make him unique among his people is his ability to pilot a A.I.-powered spaceship, but he later claims to not know anything about computers. He’s also an embittered jerk who seems resentful for the ragtag army that sacrifices everything for his world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it would be a waste of time to outline the ways in which it is ridiculously sexist. It’s only 3 years younger than Star Wars<\/em>, but decades more retrograde.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Battle Beyond the Stars is the rare bad movie worth experiencing. How can you not be at least a little curious about a Roger Corman-produced Star Wars pastiche, starring John-Boy from The Waltons, Hannibal from The A-Team, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E., with a screenplay by John Sayles and special effects by James Cameron? Like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,2],"tags":[1779,206,639,1778,1775,1776,1777,1774,85,636],"class_list":["post-5109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1-star","category-movies","tag-1779","tag-akira-kurosawa","tag-george-lucas","tag-george-peppard","tag-jimmy-t-murakami","tag-richard-thomas","tag-robert-vaughn","tag-roger-corman","tag-science-fiction","tag-star-wars"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/battle-beyond-the-stars.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa9lhB-1kp","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5743,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-smothers-all-hope-and-wonder\/","url_meta":{"origin":5109,"position":0},"title":"Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker smothers all hope and wonder","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"December 21, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"My brilliant wife had the following absolutely perfect appraisal of the first two entries in the new Star Wars trilogy, which I will paraphrase here: \"Most of the criticism of The Force Awakens was absolutely correct, but I loved it anyway. Most of the criticism of The Last Jedi was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2 Stars"","block_context":{"text":"2 Stars","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/ratings\/2-stars\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, and Oscar Isaac in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/star-wars-rise-of-skywalker.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/star-wars-rise-of-skywalker.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/star-wars-rise-of-skywalker.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/star-wars-rise-of-skywalker.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/star-wars-rise-of-skywalker.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1173,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/seven-samurai\/","url_meta":{"origin":5109,"position":1},"title":"Seven Samurai protect others to save themselves in Akira Kurosawa’s Shichinin no samurai","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"October 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is awesome and perfect, and this most recent viewing has affirmed its place among my all-time favorites. It's a big movie, by which I mean it makes the best use of its generous running time with just the right amount of everything: romance, comedy, drama, suspense,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "5 Stars"","block_context":{"text":"5 Stars","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/ratings\/5-stars\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Seven Samurai","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/seven-samurai-feature.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/seven-samurai-feature.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/seven-samurai-feature.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/seven-samurai-feature.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/seven-samurai-feature.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1865,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/star-wars-clone-wars\/","url_meta":{"origin":5109,"position":2},"title":"George Lucas Cedes Control, in Star Wars: The Clone Wars","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"July 23, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"After writing and directing three Star Wars prequels between 1999-2005, it's easy to forget that back in the 1980s, the series' godfather George Lucas opted out of directing The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Now Lucas appears once again to be ceding control over his most famous\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2 Stars"","block_context":{"text":"2 Stars","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/ratings\/2-stars\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Star Wars: The Clone Wars","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/star-wars-clone-wars-featured.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/star-wars-clone-wars-featured.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/star-wars-clone-wars-featured.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/star-wars-clone-wars-featured.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/star-wars-clone-wars-featured.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1178,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/magnificent-seven\/","url_meta":{"origin":5109,"position":3},"title":"John Sturges honors Kurosawa honoring Ford in The Magnificent Seven","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"October 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven is Hollywood's answer to Akira Kurosawa's hugely popular Seven Samurai. It suffers in comparison, especially if, like this blogger, one watches them in quick succession. The remake is quaint, chaste, and dated in ways the fairly frank original isn't. 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But also like a big bowl of candy, generations raised on too much Star Wars are going to gorge themselves sick on nostalgia. Who filled that bowl, and why? 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