Nobody can deny that the Star Wars movie franchise changed how movies were made forever. The once epic vision of George Lucas, which has sadly faded over the years, raised the standards expected from movies from that point onwards – every movie made after Star Wars tried to measure up to it. Science fiction movies before Star Wars were generally low budget feaures with low budget actors that never did well in the box office.
Oddly enough the other big blockbuster that year was a nuclear apocalypse movie called Damnation Alley which was pretty seminal for its time. Oddly enough Damnation Alley had a much larger budget than Star Wars but when you see the finished movie you’ll find yourself struggling to understand what the money was spent on – $17 million didn’t buy much back then by the looks of things. There were various reasons for Damnation Alley looking so bad in comparison and most of the damage was done post-production – ain’t that always the way?
But back to Star Wars before I totally wander off the subject. It’s hard to think of another movie in cinema history that has had such a profound and long lasting effect on movie making. The merchandising business model that developed as part of the Star Wars franchise was going to be something we both loved and hated over the next few decades.
And one of the largest merchandising hits were the lightsabers that hit the market to fill the demand from children everywhere for his or her own replica lightsaber. The initial efforts were pretty weak but after a lot of testing and fine-tuning Master Replicas finally got it right after they perfected the Force FX lightsabers and the bargain-priced knock-offs died a rapid death.
How come the lightsaber was so much in demand? After all there were plenty of other Star Wars toys to pick from. What made the difference I think was the fact that the lightsaber evoked memories in us of the Arthurian legends and the sword Excalibur. You’ll even notice that George Lucas created Jedi Knights and not just plain old Jedi. The boring old sword got a whole new lease of life as a movie weapon after the lightsaber came on the scene.
What made the lightsaber so cool was that it wasn’t just a big clunky gun and Lucas put a lot of Samurai influences into the creation of the Jedi knights themselves. To use a lightsaber proficiently it took years of training and to be a true master you had to be born into the ways of the Force.
There’s been no weapon since, in any sci-fi movie that I can think of, that has come close to the lightsaber in terms of producing sheer awe in an audience.
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