Steve Hart is absolutely on the money in his comments on "Star Wars" (cf. my own review of the first movie, originally called "Star Wares" and retitled "3.2.1 Rip Off" in the UK's New Statesman). Leigh Brackett was a good friend of mine, and her account of the job matches Hart's. My experience of working with Kershner about three years later also echoes Hart's view. Kershner was a nightmare to work with, and all his ideas were derivative. I eventually wound up giving him an unfilmable script in an effort to extricate myself from the project (cf. my memoir "Letters From Hollywood"). Leigh was a great, original screenwriter. She told Hawks that he might as well use her script for "Rio Bravo" and just change the names for "El Dorado," since he was asking her to write exactly the same script over again. He told her to shut up and take the money. I was delighted to read Hart's excellent piece and am glad there is at least one other voice saying very similar things to what I've been saying since 1977. I would add that Lucas and Spielberg between them hijacked adult science fiction and put it, as Tolkien put fantasy, straight back into being identified as a juvenile form. Literary science fiction has still not entirely recovered from their out-of-context borrowings.

-- Michael Moorcock

As you must have heard from many others by now, one main and direct "subculture" influence on Lucas' "Star Wars" saga was the work of visionary comic book creator Jack Kirby. In the early '70s, burned out from his tenure as main artist and idea man at Marvel Comics (where he co-created "Fantastic Four," "Thor," "The X-Men," "Silver Surfer" and many others), Kirby launched an ambitious science fiction epic that he called "The Fourth World." Without boring you with the details, "The Fourth World" contained many of the key ingredients of the "Star Wars" story in suspiciously similar terms. Kirby's bad guy was Darkseid (pronounced "dark side"), a powerful, brooding giant cloaked in black, master of the evil empire of Apokalyps; the hero, Orion, turns out to be Darkseid's son, raised on another planet by the benevolent Highfather and the Jedi-like "New Gods." There's even a mystical field of energy that binds everything together, called "the Source" by Kirby and "the Force" by Lucas.

Comic fans have debated for years whether "Star Wars" was a direct ripoff of "The Fourth World," or if they were both based on similar sources in pulp SF. Lucas has, I believe, admitted he was familiar with Kirby's epic. That's not hard to believe, since it was pretty big news in the comics/SF world around 1971-2. Anyway, in an article that mentions Leigh Brackett and E.E. "Doc" Smith, it would not have been out of place to give props to Kirby as well.

-- Rob Salkowitz

You can tell there's a new "Star Wars" movie coming out soon because once again Salon has printed a hatchet job on George Lucas. Three years ago, Salon printed not one but two laughably stupid pieces by David Brin (auteur of classics like "The Postman") in which Lucas is all but accused of promoting fascism. This time, a certain Steven Hart takes a stab at Lucas, which can only mean David Brin is too busy working on a sequel: "Postman 2 With a Vengeance."

A few months ago, a few of the more dimwitted fans of "Lord of the Rings" tried to claim that "Star Wars" was so chock-full of motifs from myths and fairy tales that it had to be ripped off from J.R.R. Tolkien. Of course if these people had ever read anything other than "Lord of the Rings" or the "Dungeonmaster's Guide," they would know that both are based on ancient myths -- especially the Germanic myth "Ring of the Nibelungs." This is fairly obvious since both "Lord of the Rings" and "Star Wars" share many things in common with the "Ring" stories and little if anything with each other.

I bring this up because Steven Hart is doing what a few of the less intelligent Tolkien fans have done, which is to bask in his own ignorance by assuming that because he never read Flash Gordon comics, or watched Errol Flynn movies and old westerns, that George Lucas couldn't have either and that Lucas must have "stolen" "Star Wars" from Tolkien, Asimov, Herbert or someone else.

Here's an example: Part of the first "Star Wars" movie takes place on a desert world, "Tattooine." In the background of one scene is what looks like a brontosaurus skeleton. Now since so much of what takes place on the desert planet resembles old westerns from "cantinas" and the gunslinging braggarts and ruffians who hang out there (notice Han Solo's space cowboy vest and Wyatt Earp gun rig?) to hostile natives to dull whitebread farmers, it's pretty clear that the dinosaur-ish skeleton is just an over-the-top version of the livestock skeletons that are standard issue in the backgrounds of western movies. I guess Hart will soon claim that the way Solo keeps calling Princess Leia "sister" à la John Wayne in "True Grit" was somehow lifted from Philip K. Dick. It's obvious that Lucas owes more to Flash Gordon and Monument Valley than to Frank Herbert.

The rest of Hart's hit piece is clearly written by a man with no shame. He accuses George Lucas of being a derivative hack while a good part of his article is just the regurgitated ritual attack that has been chanted about Lucas for years. From the misquote of Harrison Ford's "You can type this shit" statement, to the accusations of cribbing, to trying to give credit for "Star Wars'" success to everyone but Lucas, it's the same nonsense that has been parroted about the man for years. I would say Steven Hart's article belongs in the Mike Barnicle Portfolio of Plagiarism, but his writing isn't good enough to be considered hackwork. You can type this shit Mr. Hart, but I sure can't believe it.

-- Lance Peppers

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