Page 47 - Star Wars Insider #181

CINEMATIC FORCES

C C CINEMATIC FORCES
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R

The movies that inspired
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Writer, director, and cinephile Rian Johnson
imbued his entry into Star Wars with themes and
imagery influenced by the movies he loves. So

how do they help us understand The Last Jedi?

W ORDS: MI CHAEL K OGGE

t its heart, beyond its mythological trappings, Star Wars is
a series of movies that draws inspiration from a multitude
A of genres. This was apparent right at the beginning. The

original 1977 film was born of George Lucas’ love for
Westerns, samurai films, old-time slapstick, screwball

comedies, war pictures, and 1930s science-fi ction serials.
His genius was taking what he loved about each and creating a fantastical
bricolage set in a galaxy far, far way. Subsequent chapters in the saga
continued this method of blending genres, and the latest episode, writer-
director Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, proved no different.
No stranger to homage, Johnson had imbued his previous fi lms with
a reverence for cinema of the past. Brick (2003) is a high-school pastiche
of 1940s and ’50s American film noir and Italian Spaghetti Westerns; The

Brothers Bloom (2008) is a crime caper with loving nods to Federico Fellini’s
8 ½ (1963) and Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970); and Looper

(2012) is a science-fi ction film that mixes Blade Runner (1982) and Children

of Men (2006) with French New Wave films, the Western Shane (1953),
and the Harrison Ford thriller Witness (1985). When developing the script
for The Last Jedi back in 2014, Johnson returned to his cinephile roots.
He found inspiration in old Hollywood war pictures, particularly Twelve
O’Clock High (1949), along with the classic Japanese fi lm Three Outlaw
Samurai (1964), the Alfred Hitchcock-helmed To Catch a Thief (1955), and

even the gonzo sci-fi camp of Flash Gordon (1980).
One of the best ways to fully understand a creative work is to study its
influences, so let’s take a closer look at these four films, and see how each

one made its mark on the direction and themes of The Last Jedi. By no
means a definitive list, what follows is, instead, merely a jumping-off point

from which to explore the wealth of cinematic visions that helped shape
the latest entry in the Star Wars saga.

STAR WARS INSIDER / 47