Visiting and Revisiting: Starcrash (1978) Pt. 2

[This is Part II of a two-part discussion about Luigi Cozzi's 1978 Italian "rip-off" of Star Wars, Starcrash. To read the first part of this article click here.]

Rik: The chief influence of this film is clearly George Lucas' Star Wars; that cannot be denied. But there is a huge dose of the legacy of the late Ray Harryhausen at play as well. Stop-motion animation, not even close to being as fluid as Ray's patented Dynamation process, plays a big role in this film in a couple of scenes. The one that played a big part in coaxing me to the theatre was the sword fight between Hasselhoff and a pair of robots that look like Gyro Gearloose from the old Uncle Scrooge comics constructed them. They even look like they have stylized duckbills. Hasselhoff picks up Gortner's lesser form of lightsaber (it now reminds me more of the way that a Schwartz was used in Spaceballs) and has a battle against the extremely jerky, sword-wielding automatons. The swordplay is actually surprisingly engaging, even if the animation is definitely and expectedly subpar to its influences (most definitely the skeleton fights in Harryhausen's films).

Where the stop-motion animation really fails for me, however, is in the scene with the giant "female" robot (with titanic, possibly titanium, breasts for some reason -- who knew robots breastfed?) on the beach. The entire sequence is clearly modeled after the Talos scene from Harryhausen's classic Jason and the Argonauts, but it is almost painful to watch, so awkward are the relatively simple movements involved in the scene. You could say that Talos in the original movie was also jerky and awkward, but he was a normally inanimate statue that had just been magically freed from its base. Talos was towering in stature and composed of metal, like the "female" robot here, but its limbs were not built for movement at all, merely to support its mass as a piece of art; hence the jerkiness in its motions. However, Talos is imbued with remarkable life by his creator -- that god being Harryhausen -- and as stiff as he is naturally portrayed, he has clearly been brought to life fully and his muscles and joints move, albeit deliberately, in a surprisingly life-like manner. The robot in this film clearly has working knees and elbows, and therefore it must be surmised that it is meant to walk around and perform its duties, most likely to guard the planet upon which it resides. However, it moves every bit as jerkily as Talos, even more so due to an obvious lower range of talent attempting to duplicate the moves of the great Harryhausen. Of course, maybe the Amazons on the planet were just inept engineers and technicians, and they made a shitty robot that could barely move as required.

Aaron: That giant robot not only had breasts, but large gear shaped nipples, as well! In a good film, striking design choices like that can easily be explained as atmosphere-enhancing aesthetics, but in Starcrash it just made me wonder, while watching that scene, why the guard had been built that way. I suppose the fact that it’s a planet of Amazons might explain why they’d choose a feminine form, but it did seem strangely sexual. And why hadn’t they bothered animating even a basic bend of the arm at least once? The animation looked like something a bright, enthusiastic nine-year-old would make in their backyard. I mean, it’s great looking for a nine-year-old playing with his action figures, but for an actual movie projected in theatres, it’s laughably subpar.

Speaking of references, I really got a kick out of how blatantly they stole the look of the Martian mastermind from Invaders From Mars for that of the judge that sentences Akton and Stella to hard labor for their various crimes. On top of those references already noted, there’s at least one shot that seems to directly echo Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Zarth Arn bears a more than passing resemblance to Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon, and some of the ship-launching sequences look suspiciously like those in Battlestar Galactica. That last one may be nothing more than coincidence considering how close their releases are to each other.

Rik: Starcrash gets a lot of surprising mileage out of just how colorful and charmingly fantasy-like its vision of outer space is. The stars at night may or may not be big and bright deep in the heart of Texas, but they are bigger and brighter here. Every planet, moon, and star is represented in the sharpest of hues, and whatever demerits can be attributed to the film on nearly every other level, one cannot deny that much of the film is very pleasing to the eye. I am only watching the film on DVD, and it is awash in the most brilliant colors, far more than I remember. I can only imagine that the Blu-ray I gave you for Christmas is even more pleasing (not that you have seen the DVD version).

Aaron: I have not seen the DVD as you say, but I have watched some clips online (and on the special features) that feature some of the footage before it was touched up, and the Blu-ray is indeed pretty great looking. Aside from some blurriness here and there as a result of aged film stock, everything is pretty eye-popping. There is one downside to this, however, as the added clarity betrays some of the shots of deep space to look like exactly what they are: multicolored light bulbs placed against a black background.

But yes, of course, the visuals are great fun. The exteriors of the ships are off kilter and interesting (though the ship from the beginning, the one that the emperor’s son escapes from, looks a bit like a guitar frame someone stuck some plastic bits to and then spray-painted grey), and the interiors are full of oddly designed furniture and decorated in primary, often clashing colors.

Rik: As I mentioned earlier, in that attack on the Galactic starship at the beginning of the film, Count Zarth Arn's minions use a weapon that creates a field of floating red spheroids that are undeterred by walls or atmosphere, and simply drift through everything in their path. The red spheroids exert a mind-altering force that serves to drive the crew of the starship mad and ultimately cause the starship to explode. This is the terrible weapon that, later in the film, Stella and her pals are recruited to stop. It is a very simple but weirdly effective scene. The spheroids are never actually touching or even in the same plane as anything else; they are merely superimposed by the filmmakers over everything (according to Starcrash historian and DVD commentator Stephen Romano, the images are of various objects floating in a fish tank). While the effect looks as low-rent and cheesy as anything in the rest of the film, I found it to be one of the more memorable images from the film, and it has stuck with me since that first teenage showing. The same effect is used later in the film, on an even larger scale, when Stella's ship is attacked. This time, the effect grows even more psychedelic, with other elements added to the superimposed imagery. Watching it now, even seeing how simple it is, it kind of holds up for me as one of my favorite moments in the film. What did you think of the use of the red balls?

Aaron: I must admit it didn’t quite affect me in the same way. I agree it’s a nice enough image, and a clever use of their limited budget, but the weapon itself seemed so… ill defined. The characters never refer to globular red balls floating through the ship, and instead repeatedly say they were attacked by groups of monsters. But there’s really nothing monstrous about them, other than how unsettling it would be to travel through space and suddenly find yourself inside a red lava lamp. There was a lack of physicality to them that I found hard to connect with, and I couldn’t really suspend my disbelief enough for them to read as menacing in any way. They do remind me, however, of Rover, that giant white ball that acts as a security system in The Prisoner. That’s a similarly cheap and spherical effect that nonetheless still unsettles me when I see it.

Rik: The Prisoner is such a great show, and yes, Rover has always unsettled me, even to this day. Getting back to the red blobs, I did find it amusing that one of the very first things that Stephen Romano says when the scene pops up is to discount the theory that the filmmakers have merely superimposed an image of a lava lamp over the rest of the film. It made me chuckle because that is what my friends and I have always figured it was over the years.

Watching Starcrash now, Caroline Munro is every bit as lovely as I remember her, but there is an odd thing that must be told about her performance. Even though she is a British actress, Munro's dialogue was dubbed for its Western release by Candy Clark, who was married to Marjoe Gortner, who plays Stella's super-powered sidekick, Akton, in the film. Supposedly, when they redubbed the film, both Munro and her husband, Judd Hamilton (who played the loyal robot, Elle), were not flown over to America to save expenses, and so Clark and character actor Hamilton Camp were used in their places. It's a shame that we don't get to hear Munro's own voice as this is her biggest role in a film, and because I find Clark's line readings to be as off-kilter and often stiff as many of her own performances. Though I do adore Candy Clark in certain films, I don't think she is a particularly adept actress, and her voice doesn't quite match some of Munro's reactions emotionally. That said, the only voice I find annoying in the film is that of Elle the robot. The Texas twang with which Camp imbued the robot in the English dub is quite tiring and ridiculous, and it adds undoubtedly to the film's cheese factor.

Physically, Munro is jaw dropping gorgeous as Stella Star. She only wears her skimpy leather bikini outfit for the first chunk of the film, and as a teen, I was upset that her outfits gets increasingly less provocative as the film progresses. By the end of the film, Stella is completely covered up in a full bodysuit and cape (and ultimately, a space helmet). While one would look at any another movie for its psychological implications (has the hell-bent Stella been tamed by her conversion from bikini-wearing smuggler to demure heroine?), the real reason here seems to be Munro wanting more to wear in the film than just a leather bikini. On one of the audio commentaries, Romano quotes Harlan Ellison as saying that they had to ugly up Munro a bit for the film so that the cameras wouldn't melt. I've looked around to verify this quote (unsuccessfully so far), but I do have to agree that such a thing might have been possible.

Does Caroline Munro affect you in the same way, sir, or is my lingering affection merely a by-product of my misspent youth?

Aaron: All I can say is that Caroline Munro is delightfully cute, and it was a pleasure to spend a couple of hours watching her traverse the stars. I can only imagine what my opinion would be had I been exposed to her in my formative years. However, it saddens me to know that I can’t really appreciate her performance in this film, as her lines were dubbed by someone else. She certainly appears to be giving it her all, but the lines come out a bit stale, which is a problem that affects almost everyone in the cast, even those who were able to dub their own dialogue. You mention in particular disliking Hamilton Camp’s portrayal of Elle, and while I can’t argue with you, I have to say I kind of enjoyed the hillbilly twang he gave the robot. It was such an out of place detail that some part of me loved the randomness of having a robot in this fantasy galaxy speak like an extra on Hee Haw.

I would like to take a moment to talk about Marjoe Gortner’s character, Akton. As I said, he seems like a Han Solo analog at first, but turns out to be more Obi Wan Kenobi. That may not be entirely accurate, but he’s certainly supposed to be Starcrash’s version of a Jedi master, complete with light saber. But it continually bothered me how little they go into Akton’s powers or background. He just randomly exhibits new powers whenever the plot demands, and while no one ever expects him to have these powers, no one ever questions them either. Discussing plot holes or story inconsistencies seems almost beside the point for this film, though. Starcrash feels beyond criticism, in a way, as if the normal rules of storytelling don’t apply to it. Still, I think a little bit more information about this character would have been much appreciated.

Rik: No one is ever going to mistake Starcrash for Star Wars. But I also think that some of the spaceship design is pretty interesting. One of the ships is even named after science fiction author Murray Leinster, who specialized in pulp adventures such as this (though his works were often more elevated intellectually than Starcrash). By the time I saw this film, I was not only immersed in the technology of Star Wars, but also Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers (I actually watched the TV pilots for both series in theatres). I was swamped with outer space dogfighting, and so when I finally did get to see this film, I had already gotten a bit tired of spaceships due to the over-saturation of the market. Honestly, I really just wanted the film to get to the parts with Stella, so maybe my teenage boy sex drive had overtaken my patience with everything else. Watching the film since, though, I really enjoy many of the ship scenes, especially the quite appropriate design of the evil Count's ship, which looks like a giant, clawed hand.

Aaron: The ships are great, and straddle the line between innovative and old-fashioned. Some of the ships are clearly on tracks, and look like the planes that would attack Godzilla in his early decades, but then some of them are quite interesting and feature more detailed movement. Zarth Arn’s fist-shaped ship (try saying that five times fast) is the clear standout, though it does beg the question; what is that design for? Have you ever wondered why Zarth Arn would need five extendable digits on his space fortress? They don’t appear to provide any protection or added benefits beyond being a cool visual gimmick. Then again, given how flamboyant Zarth Arn is in his fashion sense and demeanor, that would probably be enough for him. In a quick side note, Joe Spinell as Zarth Arn really reminded me of Dave Grohl, which gave me a quick chuckle any time he was stomping around the screen.

Having now seen the film two-and-a-half times, I think I might be done with it for a while. I enjoyed it, but I think I’ll let it sit in my memory for a little while, where I can let the neat visuals and the fun swashbuckling moments overshadow the more perfunctory plot motions. Seeing the film for the first time as a man in his late thirties, I think that might be the best way to experience this film; as a burst of juvenile excitement. Best to allow it to sit in your mind and remind you of how totally awesome sword-fighting robots, spaceship dogfights, and the very idea of ‘the haunted stars’ can be.

Rik: Obviously, the design of Zarth Arn’s fist-shaped ship is so he can pull four of the fingers back to flip the bird at his enemies. He’s just that type of guy. I see your point about Spinell reminding you of Dave Grohl, and I must admit it did cross my mind briefly and made me chuckle a bit. Spinell, as he often does, sort of reminds me of the younger and not yet enormously rotund Ron Jeremy as well.

I, too, am probably done with Starcrash for a good while. Having just watched it about five more times in the past couple of months, I think it is burned in pretty good for the time being. In those two months though, my estimation for the film has gone up ever so slightly, but not so much that I ever forget my long-running disappointment with the film. Loves and hates that stem from childhood or your teen years are awfully hard to shake. I still think Caroline Munro is one of the most beautiful women to ever appear on the movie screen, but I also think Starcrash is well below what constitutes a good film, even on a pure entertainment level. That said, were I ever to throw a video party again (not that I have in the past twenty years), this might be one that I would choose to show everyone a crazy, weird time and allow everyone to riff at will.

Visiting and Revisiting: Starcrash (1978) Pt. 1

"What in the universe is that?!" -- Stella Star (Caroline Munro), Starcrash

[This is Part I of a two-part discussion about Luigi Cozzi's 1978 Italian "rip-off" of Star Wars, Starcrash aka The Adventures of Stella Star.]

Rik: Considering that we very nearly flirted with the heavens in our last discussion regarding Hirokazu Kore-eda's After Life [Wandâfuru raifu], I am crashing us right back down to earth by making us jump over to a "Z" picture like Starcrash. But when I found out that you had never seen the film, it seemed like perfect fodder for our Visiting and Revisiting column that we share across both of our websites. For the uninitiated, in Visiting and Revisiting with Rik and Aaron, we hold a prolonged discussion/dual review about a film of which one of us has a long and possibly intimate history but that the other one has never seen previously.

There is no point in my life where I could admit, after having seen it, that I thought Luigi Cozzi's Starcrash was what most would consider to be a "good" film. Despite some fun and often very silly effects, crazy set design, and a mostly game cast, the Italian-made Starcrash betrays at every turn its third-rate inspiration (and often outright burglary) derived from practically every science-fiction and fantasy film that ever came down the pike, but most especially the original Star Wars film, released to great and never-ending acclaim the year previous in 1977.

However, there was a point where I truly believed that Starcrash was going to turn out to be a great film. In the years of 1978 and 1979, long before the internet, the primary way that a young movie fan such as myself got all fired up for films that were yet to be released, outside of trailers shown at the movies and on TV, was through movie magazines. In my teen years, I was a huge fan of the later years of the original run of the highly influential Famous Monsters of Filmland. Around the same time that I was discovering Hammer horror films on late night TV and other science fiction classics on an afternoon matinee TV show, I had begun an addiction to Famous Monsters. I had no way of knowing that many of the articles were merely reprints of older material, but there were also articles about upcoming films. So what did I care when they were written? All of it was new to me, and I lapped it up like the aspiring horror novice that I was. Other magazines caught my eye -- titles like Starlog and Fantastic Films -- and unlike Famous Monsters -- which was cheap and pretty much newsprint -- these other mags were slick and in gorgeous full color with loads of photographs.

When I read those magazines and saw my first images of Caroline Munro dressed up in leather as Stella Star in the movie Starcrash, I knew instantly that I just had to see this picture. As a not quite teenage boy chock full of raging hormones, I was already deep in adoration over Ms. Munro. She was among my earliest crushes, and ranked pretty highly at that. I had already seen her on the movie screen in such films as The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, At the Earth's Core, and The Spy Who Loved Me. In that last film, she was way hotter than Barbara Bach, but Bond dispatches her without a second thought while he makes off with Bach in his submarine car.) That Caroline was usually quite scantily clad in these parts made her all the more memorable, and like any youth in his near-to-early teen years, I was smitten. Starcrash summed it all up for me. I just had to see this film... but not just for Caroline. The images I saw in the movie magazines not only showed her in wonderful, lascivious detail, but also shots of the spaceships, and a giant robot chasing our heroine, and a lightsaber battle against two other robots. Even then, I knew it was clearly ripping off Star Wars (which I had already seen three or four times), but I didn't care. If Starcrash could get even somewhat close to replicating the style of the far superior film, then that would be all I needed. And Starcrash also had Caroline. How could it possibly be bad?

In 1979, after months of wondering whether I would ever get to see this film (we were not quite to the moment where video madness would change everything for me), Starcrash was released in America. Luckily, the film actually showed up in Anchorage, Alaska -- my hometown, though I grew up in a nearby town called Eagle River (to this day, it pisses me off to be told that Eagle River is merely a suburb of Anchorage, especially since there are 14 miles of unconnected wilderness between the two locations) -- and I went on a frantic campaign to get my family to go see Starcrash. My mother knew exactly why I wanted to see the film, but she was fine with me being all pervy about an actress twice my age. She drove us to the Totem Theatres in Anchorage for a night at the movies. In those waning days of the cinema double feature, Starcrash was paired up with Future World, which was also exciting to me since I had only recently seen Westworld on TV, and Future World was its direct sequel. But my mom opted to see another film that I don't remember, only that the second bill feature for that pairing was Old Dracula with David Niven. My brother Mark chose to go with my mom, and my youngest brother Chris stuck with me. But not for long, as it goes, as Chris grew bored very quickly with Future World, which we saw first, and I had to escort him to the other screen to leave him with my mom and Mark. (I remember being angry then, just as I would be today, that I missed a couple minutes of screen time to perform this task of familial responsibility.)

And my reaction to Starcrash? I was dumbfounded. The movie that I was sure was going to be a masterpiece was nothing but complete crap. Trying to show my mom that I had made the right decision that day and they were all fools for watching the other films (hey, Old Dracula is still no treat) I feigned joy openly at what confronted me in the theatre that day. Inside me, however, I believe it was the first time in my memory that I was actually sorely disappointed in a trip to the theatre. Seeing a movie in a theatre, even though the frequency went way up in my teen years, was still something of a novelty to me, having grown up in a smaller town outside of Anchorage where there were no real movie houses. I cherished every chance I got to go to the movies. (This is probably why I remember most of my visits so sharply.) But then it happened... Future World was nowhere near as cool as Westworld, and even then, the sense of being caught in an inferior, dull rehash swept over me. And after that debacle, Starcrash thoroughly broke my heart...

I will relate the details of my initial disappointment at the film throughout our comments to come. But first, Aaron, knowing that you have never seen the film before, I've been wondering if Starcrash has ever even been on your radar leading up to this moment. Had you heard of Starcrash before or did I hit you from out of deep space when I asked you about it?

Aaron: It’s quite possible that I had heard of Starcrash before, since, like you, I grew up reading a variety of film magazines, chief among them Starlog. Though of course I would have been reading about it as a reference point, or possibly a retrospective piece. To this day I’m an avid reader of books about film, video guides, and retro cinema websites, so it’s almost certain that at some point the title Starcrash had entered into my personal orbit. And yet the first time I actually remember hearing about the film was when you mentioned it to me, and I recall picturing one of those cheap Mill Creek sets of films that have fallen through the cracks in the United States copyright code. Then you mentioned Marjoe Gortner had a prominent part in the film, and I knew I had to see it. I’ve had a small fascination with this odd, middling actor ever since seeing the documentary about his child-preacher background and career as a revival preacher (titled simply Marjoe) that led to his brief moment of fame in the late ‘70s (though he continued acting until 1995).

So when you gave me with the Blu-ray this last Christmas, the packaging alone surprised me. Scream Factory has a bad habit of creating packaging that promises much more than the films can deliver, but even knowing that I was amazed by the design, and the smorgasbord of extras that were included. It appeared as if I had completely misjudged the level of quality Starcrash achieved, and the cult that had grown up around it. I remember I watched it pretty quickly after receiving it, maybe a day or two, but certainly on my next full day off work it was the first thing I popped into the Blu-ray player. I’ll get into my own reactions to the film as we go along as well, but at the time the only information I had about the film was gleaned from the painted cover it came wrapped in. I didn’t even read the plot description; I wanted to have a fresh experience with it.

Rik: Let's get to the basic plot. Starcrash concerns the adventures of Stella Star, a space-crossing heroine who zooms around in her starship alongside her companions, the strangely super-powered Akton (as Aaron mentioned, former child evangelist turned actor, Marjoe Gortner) and her robot bodyguard Elle (played by Munro's then-husband, Judd Hamilton). Like Han Solo, Stella is a smuggler and on the run from the law, but she is given a chance at clemency by the Galactic Emperor (a greatly slumming Christopher Plummer, who apparently did the part so he could spend time in Rome) if she will help him recover his missing son and also seek out the source of the weapon of mass destruction that the evil Count Zarth Arn has been using in his attacks on the Emperor's fleet. The Count is played with mustache-twirling sliminess by none other than Joe Spinell, a character actor who appeared in the first couple films in The Godfather and Rocky series. Spinell later gained film infamy for his role in the ultra-gory, female-scalping, horror epic, Madman (which also co-starred Caroline Munro).

At the outset of the film, the Count uses his weapon on a Galactic starship, which explodes from the attack, but not before ejecting three escape pods, one of which might contain the Galactic Prince Simon (David Hasselhoff... yes, that David Hasselhoff). The pods each land on a different planet, and so Stella and her crew skip from one to the next. They will encounter subzero temperatures, internal betrayal, Amazon warriors, barbarian cavemen, sword-wielding robots, and attacks by the Count's minions. Can they save the Galaxy? Did they save the Galaxy for you, Aaron?

Aaron: Well, here’s where I tell you to brace for disappointment, because I did not enjoy Starcrash on my initial viewing. Even in an ironic fashion, I found little enjoyment out of the film. Stick with me here, because I think I’ll bring you back around in a minute. On my first attempt at watching the film I kept falling asleep, and I had to restart the movie in order to give it a fair shake (I figured I owed it, and you, at least that much). But in the end, I found myself mystified by your excitement for the film, and surprised by the lavish, lovingly prepared 2-Disc Blu-ray set you gifted me with. The film not only felt near-criminally derivative (and not just of Star Wars, but almost every major sci-fi/fantasy work you could think of), but also very slapdash in its presentation. The care that went into designing some of the sets and spaceships didn’t quite mask how threadbare they looked upon construction, and plot-wise, events seem to just occur with no sense of drama or forward motion. There’s no real cause and effect in Starcrash. While ostensibly the plot boils down to ‘save the Emperor’s son and stop Zarth Arn from deploying his horrific weapon,’ those two acts come across as fairly unrelated. Instead we follow Stella, Akton, and Elle from location to location, event to event, and it’s all fairly lifeless and lacking in forward momentum. If you go back and watch the original Star Wars (which was clearly the template over which Starcrash was laid, though Luigi Cozzi would claim otherwise), it’s easy to notice how incident-free it is, how relatively light on story. And yet it has a simple unifying goal and a strong sense of drive that Starcrash is lacking, though more ‘things’ happen in that latter film.

So, I didn’t like the film, but I was curious as to what had given the film such a warm place in your heart. Beyond, of course, childhood nostalgia and the overall effect Caroline Munro had as she helped usher you from child to awkward hormonal teenager. To that end I began digging into the movie’s special features (I said it before, but it bears repeating; the presentation of this film on Blu-ray is opulent to a ridiculous degree for a film that might otherwise be called inessential), and one special feature in particular really hammered it home for me: Joe Dante’s commentary for the trailer. Joe Dante used to edit trailers for AIP, and the last trailer he ever put together was the American trailer for Starcrash. He talks a bit on the commentary about how Starcrash is not a very good film, but that it has some really neat visuals, so he decided to focus solely on the visuals and cut together a two-and- a-half minute music video featuring wordless clips from the movie set to John Barry’s score. Suddenly it all seemed to click, and hearing Joe Dante speak about the visual merits of the film while seeing a procession of cherry picked images made me realize that perhaps I had been ignoring the film’s true merits. [Editor's note: Here is the trailer below, shown on the Trailers from Hell YouTube channel, featuring comments by Eli Roth. To hear Dante's commentary, you will have to check out the DVD or Blu-ray...]

On a second viewing, Starcrash performed much more admirably. I’m in agreement with you that it will never quite meet the qualifications for "good," but it certainly met the requirements for "fun." I started paying closer attention to design elements, color schemes, references to older (and often better) sci-fi films. Little details stood out, like that weird revolving hallway on the imperial ship in the beginning of the film, where you walk into a room, hit a button, and wait for the room to do a 180-degree turn so you can continue on your way. Why not just remove the middle man? We see people enter from both sides, and it doesn’t appear to be a security measure. It’s just one of those additions that are supposed to make everything look more futuristic. What could be cooler and more futuristic than a hallway with a slow-moving Lazy Susan in the middle of it? Once I stopped worrying about story or plot or even acting, everything became much better. That sounds like very faint praise indeed, but a fun bad film is still better than a boring good one.

One thing I did both times I watched the film was play "spot the Star Wars analogue," which was never a very hard thing to do. Some of them are really obvious, like the always-worrying robot companion or the trademark-taunting name of the villain, Zarth Arn. You mention the similarities between Han Solo and Stella Star, but I initially felt that Akton would be the Han Solo figure, since he has early dialogue about being a simple smuggler, and what could be seen as an oblique rejoinder to one of Han Solo’s most famous character traits from the first Star Wars. When Stella and Akton are about to make a particularly risky move, Stella wonders aloud what the chances of success would be, and Akton begins to rattle off a detailed list of all the possible outcomes and the exact probability of their occurrence. It could just be a coincidence, but I like to think that the film is making an intentional swipe at Han Solo’s ‘never tell me the odds’ line. But then, of course, Akton turns out to be more of an Obi Wan Kenobi figure, with a very vaguely defined set of powers derived from his religion.

[Part II of this discussion can be read by clicking here.]