Page 53 - Star Wars Insider #181

CINEMATIC FORCES

“Johnson wanted his Star PLAYLIST
Wars episode to possess Several classic feature fi lms
some of Flash Gordon’s echo the themes, events, and
escapist pleasures.” character interactions of The
Last Jedi. For fans of cinema, or
if you’re just looking for a great
movie to sit down with, then
10 / Snoke’s you could do a lot worse than
throne room The Force Awakens, but he didn’t want darkness give any of these a try:

resembles that to overwhelm the whole film. “I also made a real
of Flash Gordon’s conscious effort for it to be a riot,” he admitted
nemesis, Ming RASHOMON (1950)
the Merciless. to Rolling Stone magazine. “I want it to have all Anyone who ever enrolled in a fi lm
the things tonally that I associate with Star Wars, studies class has probably watched
11 / Johnson which is not just the Wagner [operatics] of it. It’s Akira Kurosawa’s debut fi lm.
wanted The Last A masterpiece of world cinema (and
Jedi “to have all also the Flash Gordon.” unreliable narration), Rashomon
the things tonally Like Flash Gordon, Johnson’s film includes a presents multiple contradictory

that I associate accounts about the murder of a
with Star Wars.” healthy dose of zany humor, from Luke’s casual samurai, just as The Last Jedi retells
tossing of the lightsaber over his shoulder, to Poe Luke and Ben Solo’s encounter in
the Jedi Temple from—as Obi-Wan
Dameron’s taunting of General Hux as “Hugs.” Kenobi might say—their “certain
The saturated colors of Flash Gordon’s visual points of view.”
palette are also to be seen in The Last Jedi—in
the colored crystals buried in the salt fl ats on THE BRIDGE ON THE
Crait, the striking armor of the Praetorian Guard, RIVER KWAI (1957)
This Oscar-winning classic directed
1960’s Batman television series. and Supreme Leader Snoke’s red-curtained throne by David Lean tells the fi ctional
De Laurentiis instructed Semple room, which bears a striking resemblance to that story of American and British
prisoners-of-war forced to build a
and Hodges to stress the “comic” of Flash Gordon’s nemesis, Ming the Merciless railway bridge for their Japanese
aspect of the Flash Gordon comic (played by The Force Awakens’ Max von Sydow). captors. Johnson refl ects the tense
strip, and what resulted became In one of Flash Gordon’s wackiest scenes, relationship between William
Holden’s brash American army
one of the campest sci-fi romps Flash communicates to love interest Dale Arden offi cer and the strict British colonel
ever committed to celluloid. using telepathy. Instead of utilizing technology to played by Alec Guinness in the
tug-of-war for authority between
Flash Gordon never became the transmit thoughts, as Flash does, Johnson chose
hotshot Poe Dameron and the
blockbuster hit that De Laurentiis to have Snoke bridge the minds of Rey and Kylo wiser Vice Admiral Holdo.
intended, yet it lives on as a cult Ren through the Force, expanding on the Force
classic, owing to the fact that few telepathy between Luke and both Leia and Vader GUNGA DIN (1939)
Starring Cary Grant, director

science-fi ction films so thoroughly in The Empire Strikes Back. George Stevens’ adaptation of a
embrace their own absurdity, and Finally, Johnson also packed his fi lm with Rudyard Kipling poem and short
have so much fun while doing it. last-second escapes, never-ending cliffhangers, story follows three British soldiers
on a mission to defeat a religious
Johnson wanted his Star Wars and nick-of-time rescues, which propel the plot cult in 1880s colonial India.
episode to possess some of Flash of The Last Jedi. Fittingly, these are the stock Johnson’s fondness for the fi lm’s
sweeping, swashbuckling adventure
Gordon’s escapist pleasures. He ingredients of the same 1930s adventure serials
and sense of camaraderie, made
knew he had to deal with some (like the original Flash Gordon staring Buster him want to impart the same light-
dark material set up by J.J. Abrams’ Crabbe), which inspired George Lucas. hearted touch to The Last Jedi.
LETTER NEVER SENT
(1959)
11 A landmark of Soviet cinema, Letter
Never Sent is the bleak tale of a
team of geologists searching for
diamonds in the forbidding tundra
of Siberia. Director Mikhail Kalatov’s
panoramic black-and-white footage
of the desolate wilderness immerses
viewers in the natural environment,
much as Johnson does with his
shots of Crait’s barren landscape.
SAHARA (1943)
In this World War II fi lm directed
by Zoltán Korda, Humphrey Bogart
plays the U.S. master sergeant of a
lone M3 tank on the run from Axis
forces in the Libyan desert. Johnson
appropriated this plot element for
The Last Jedi, as the First Order
chases the Resistance’s dwindling
forces to annihilation.