This oft-overlooked space opera provides food and shelter.
By Joshua Tyler | Published
The early ’80s obsession with imitating Star Wars wasn’t all bad, even if it was largely ignored by audiences.
Set in a future where humans have become space truck drivers, Battle Beyond the Stars The story is about a farm boy named Shad who is sent out into space to find a warrior to defend his home planet from the space tyrant Sador and his mutant army, the Malmori. He sets sail aboard the planet’s only starship, the cranky Corsair Star Cruiser, and the oddly named Nel.
If you’re looking for something different to stream, consider a journey to Akil, a peaceful planet under siege by a brutal warlord and in need of a few heroes. Battle Beyond the Stars.
It’s a race against time for Shad and Nel to find the help they need before Sador returns with the stellar converter and turns their entire planet into a miniature sun. Well, it should be a race against time, but truth be told, the film doesn’t do a very good job of actually making it feel all that urgent. Battle Beyond the Stars It’s far from perfect.
Battle Beyond the Stars It made its box office debut in the late summer of 1980, when the disco boom was still in full swing, and it hit the screens with a stunning opening scene, complete with a fantastic score by the now-famous composer James Horner.
Fight It is a blatant fact that I will never hide. Star Wars It’s plagiarism. The giant spaceship flyby in the opening credits is Star Wars.
The ship itself is a jumble of the two ships seen earlier. Star Wars shot. The front half of the ship looks like the Tantive IV from which Princess Leia attempts to escape, and the back half looks exactly like the back half of the Imperial Star Destroyer pursuing her.
Battle Beyond the Stars Refer to The Magnificent Seven Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai If this idea sounds familiar, it’s because Zack Snyder recently attempted the same thing with his two-part Netflix film series. Rebel Moon.
Battle Beyond the Stars Make it better.
The name of the planet Akiru is, in theory, supposed to be a homage to Akira Kurosawa. For some reason, I think he didn’t pay much homage. Reusing Kurosawa is The other side of the battle it is The Magnificent Seven.
It probably didn’t help that the film’s making was primarily motivated by greed. Fight The late producer Roger Corman Star Wars The screenplay by John Sayles was the closest this production came to success.
At the very least, Roger Corman didn’t try to take it cheap: At the time, the film was the most expensive he had ever made, with a reported budget of nearly $2 million, most of which was sadly rumored to have gone towards paying actors George Peppard and Robert Vaughn.
They didn’t have much of a budget left for special effects, but luckily they had James Cameron. Yes, James Cameron. More on that later.
First, let’s jump ahead in the film to see Shad’s daring escape from Nel’s Akil and his attempt to leave the planet in search of help…
If you like any of the films you see here, you can thank James Cameron for his production design and art direction. Battle Beyond the StarsThe film was produced under the direction of director Jimmy T. Murakami.
By the end of the film, he was responsible for most of the special effects, the first significant job for Cameron, and he pulled it off on Corman’s typically shoestring budget.
Despite not having the necessary funding, Cameron appears to have taken it seriously and improvised using what most people would consider rubbish.
The ship’s hallway? It was made out of painted McDonald’s containers. I wonder if you could smell Big Macs on set?
Set in the distant future Fight It takes a vague stance on the possible path of humanity, with the best of us supposedly embodied in an earthly figure named Cowboy, played by George Peppard.
The cowboy is the usual Han Solo knockoff, but this time he takes it to an incredibly extreme level, looking like a cross between Sean Connery’s James Bond and Burt Reynolds’ bandit. He even has a scotch dispenser on his belt. Yes, a scotch dispenser.
As the Cowboys demonstrated, Battle Beyond the Stars It’s one of those cartoonish extremes that sees humanity in the distant future, and yes, I’m talking about Sybil Danning’s, erm… proportions.
And what about Nell’s proportions?
Akil assumes they are human because they look human, but the film never says they are not. It’s like a story about what would happen if Nixon found a way to launch all the hippies into space. It’s often said that their wealth is in their culture, but there is no evidence in the film that culture has any value.
Most of the time Akir just stands there talking about not wanting to do much, yes a total hippie.
On the other hand, the cowboy is the only representative of humanity left on Earth, and judging by him, the Earth hasn’t really changed much, except for the technology of making portable and ready-to-drink Scotch. Come to think of it, that’s the world I’d like to live in. Everyone can have a Scotch belt.
Humanity remains largely the same as before, Beyond the Stars Our technology has had to undergo a major overhaul, and for some reason the humans decided that things would be better if the vehicles were flashier. I think Nell’s attitude was a harbinger of things to come in science fiction. Navigator FlightIt ended up being even better with some vocal help from Pee-wee Herman.
Space may never be the frontier Battle Beyond the Stars It’s hard to put into words, but I hope that one day I’ll be able to hop on a foul-mouthed pirate ship and find myself in a battle beyond the stars. It actually takes place in the stars, but I’m going to call it “Beyond the Stars” because it just sounds bigger and better. Star Wars.
George Lucas, look at that.
