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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9782805" data-attributes="member: 7035894">I'm reevaluating my Star Wars is fantasy/western in sci-fi drag thesis. In terms of story and themes, I'll stand by that assertion all day long. But, given that this is a film discussion, I should be giving more weight to the look and sound of the movie.So I asked myself, "given that SW is a purely fantasy story, would it work as a purely fantasy film?" In other words, had they shot it but swapped all the sci-fi visuals and sounds for fantasy equivalents, does it still work? Is it still the history-altering behemoth it became? And I think the answer has to be that it doesn't and isn't.A lot of the sequences would work just fine. All of the stuff on Tattooine could be done as a fantasy film, as could the quest inside the Death Star, which is essentially a dungeon crawl.But that opening sequence that blew my mind as a little kid? The final two space battles? Those were barely achievable with 1970s technology, and machines in space are a lot easier to do than are dragons in flight or whatever the fantasy equivalent would be. And the scale and scope of those shots...it's hard to imagine a fantasy equivalent. Not to mention the mind-blowing sound design.And in terms of influence, SW really boosted sci-fi as a genre (there was some carry over into fantasy; they've always appealed to a similar readership). Even if it was kind of the wrong kind of sci-fi (i.e. actually fantasy) from the perspective of a lot of "serious" sci-fi authors, they weren't saying no to the book advances and screenplay options.If there's no Star Wars, Alien and Bladerunner, in particular, don't get budgeted.</blockquote>

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