Star Wars v Superman: The two biggest fantasy films of the 1970s

Superman (1978) had a lot in common with Star Wars

Episode Nothing has occasionally looked at some of the other big films of 1977.

But today I'd like to look at a film which arrived more than 18 months after Star Wars – Richard Donner's Superman. It was released 40 years ago this week, and I think it's revealing to compare this huge superhero epic with George Lucas's much cheaper creation.

What Mark Hamill and Gary Kurtz told science fiction fans about Star Wars in 1976

Charles Lippincott, Gary Kurtz and Mark Hamill promoting Star Wars at MidAmeriCon 1976

In 1976, well before Star Wars was ready for release, a campaign was going on to make science fiction fans aware of it. 

Charles Lippincott, who was in charge of merchandising and publicity for the film, organised convention appearances, at which he or producer Gary Kurtz would explain what the film was about. They would take artwork and information sheets with them and slow slides (yes, slides) to give some idea of the look of the movie.

As I wrote in a blog post at Amazing Stories recently, Gary Kurtz was the face of Star Wars for many fans back then, patiently explaining what the film was about.
One of those appearances is available on video – and it reminds us of a time when pictures from Star Wars seemed weird and exotic, and no one knew quite what the movie would be like.

John Stears: the man who built R2-D2

John Stears with the landspeeder

There are a few Star Wars personnel whose names were mentioned a lot when the film was released, yet who don’t seem to get the attention today. 

One of them is John Stears, the British film industry veteran who was the film’s special production and mechanical effects supervisor. He once described his work on the film as “everything that moves, breaks or falls apart” – including R2-D2, the landspeeder, the garbage masher, and hundreds of other effects. 

Gary Kurtz, 1940-2018: an obituary

Gary Kurtz with Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill
on the set of Star Wars

Gary Kurtz died on Sunday, September 23, at the age of 78.

He was, of course, the producer of Star Wars – and screen credits don’t get much bigger than that. And yet I think he has also become one of Star Wars’ unsung heroes.

The best books about the original Star Wars: a guide

George Lucas's own library. A comprehensive Star Wars collection would surely be as big

Last week, we looked at Craig Stevens' new book The Star Wars Phenomenon in Britain, and I recommended it to anyone interested in the impact Star Wars had, in the UK or elsewhere.

But what other books belong on the shelves of anyone interested in the original Star Wars the first time around?

Here's the first part of a chronological list of those I'd recommend. Watch for longer reviews of some of them in due course.

40 years on: Star Wars at the Oscars – part three

George Lucas (bottom right) breaks into a smile as the winner of the Best Director Oscar is announced

Today, we conclude our look at the Academy Awards of April 3, 1978. It was one of the most controversial, often uncomfortable, Oscar ceremonies ever. 

As the biggest awards of the night loomed, how would Star Wars fare against Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Julia, The Goodbye Girl and Annie Hall? 

40 years on: Star Wars at the Oscars – part one

Mark Hamill, C-3PO and R2-D2 at the Oscars, April 3, 1978

Audiences had spoken. They had crowned Star Wars, not only as the film of 1977, but as the most successful movie of all time. But would the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences agree? 

On April 3, it will be 40 years since Star Wars was up for 10 awards at one of the most surprising and controversial Oscars ceremonies of them all. Episode Nothing looks back. 

Review: The Galaxy That Britain Built – a BBC documentary on the making of Star Wars

The BBC's latest contribution to Star Wars documentaries

The BBC has made some pretty good documentaries about Star Wars over the years. I’m thinking in particular of the Omnibus episode George Lucas Flying Solo back in 1997 and its follow-up at the time of The Phantom Menace.

A new show, The Galaxy That Britain Built, was broadcast by BBC4 in the UK on Thursday, December 21, sandwiched between two other Star Wars-related programmes. (Those were a repeat of last summer’s BBC Proms concert devoted to John Williams and Hollywood’s Master of Myth, a documentary about Joseph Campbell.)

Today, Episode Nothing reviews a show that interviewed some of the lesser-known figures in the Star Wars story – including those who really did build that galaxy.

Who was the storm-trooper who bumped his head in Star Wars?

A stormtrooper bumps is head in Star Wars' most famous blooper

At least two actors thought they might have been the stormtrooper who bumps his head in Star Wars' most famous blooper. Episode Nothing considers each one’s case – and reflects on what the interest in this gaffe tells us about the film.

One of our dragons is missing: How Disney’s missing dinosaur appeared in Star Wars

The skeleton in Star Wars that was re-used
from One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing

In the spring of 1976, my birthday treat was to be taken to the cinema with some friends. The film, like almost all of those I had seen at the cinema up to then, was from Disney. It was called One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing. Not only was it the kind of movie that pretty much disappeared after Star Wars, but you can actually see the symbolic death of the Disney family comedy in a memorable moment from Star Wars itself. 

40 years on: Shooting on Star Wars ends with the film's opening scenes

Darth Vader arrives on the Rebel
blockade runner in Star Wars 

Forty years ago this Saturday – on July 16 1976 – George Lucas was able to call "It's a wrap" as principal photography on Star Wars finally finished. The final days of filming had been hurried, with multiple camera crews working under huge pressure. Yet they turned out to be some of the most memorable moments of the film. Episode Nothing looks at the scenes which were the last to be shot, but first in the film. 

What Alec Guinness really thought of Star Wars and its fans: "Idiotic" hobbies and "childish banalities"

Alec Guinness in Star Wars

Sir Alec Guinness brought Star Wars gravitas and star power. In return, it garnered him an Oscar nomination, a new generation of fans, and a good deal of money. But the actor-knight would become increasingly curmudgeonly about Star Wars and its fans, deriding autograph collectors for their "idiotic hobby" and saying of the film: "I shrivel inside each time it is mentioned." 

Here, Episode Nothing takes a look at Guinness's troubled relationship with his most successful film.

May the fonts be with you: the history of the Star Wars logo

The first appearance on screen of the Suzy Rice Star Wars logo, as revised by Joe Johston

Its appearance at the very beginning of Star Wars is a great moment in cinema.  But until recently, I had never given any consideration to the origins of the film's famous logo – and it turns out to have a fascinating history.

Elstree Studios: the home of Star Wars turns 100

The Star Wars crew shooting Darth Vader at Elstree Studios

One hundred years have gone by since a film company with the appropriately space-themed name Neptune founded what would become the home of Star Wars.

The truth about Jabba the Hutt

While re-reading issue 4 of the UK's Star Wars Weekly in preparation for a forthcoming blog post, I came up against a mystery that has bugged me for quite a few years:

How would Jabba the Hutt have looked if he had figured in Star Wars as originally intended?

Star Wars on the small screen: The Making of Star Wars TV documentary

The Making of Star Wars

When a film has already broken all box office records and has been packing out cinemas for more than three months, it isn’t in desperate need of a free hour-long advert on prime time television. But that’s just the boost Star Wars received on September 16 1977, when ABC aired The Making of Star Wars. 

Wars-weary: The production of Star Wars and how George Lucas's stress made for a great movie

How not to dress for a heatwave:
Chewbacca's fur is combed on
the set of Star Wars

Here in the UK, we've been experiencing a heatwave. Or at least, what passes for one in Britain. So what better time to reflect on the summer of 1976, when Britain was sweltering in the most famous heatwave of modern times – and a young film director was struggling to make a science fiction movie.