Attack of the Star Wars Clones: Battle Beyond the Stars

04/06/20 • 55 min

Journey with us back to 1980, as we revisit one of the most notorious Star Wars rip-offs of them all – Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars !
To celebrate the new season of The Clone Wars, we're taking a look back at some of our favourite Star Wars clones – the films that tried their hardest to recreate the magic and replicate the success of Star Wars, even if they didn't always succeed.
A blatant attempt by B-movie mastermind Roger Corman to cash in on the success of Star Wars, 1980's Battle Beyond the Stars essentially takes Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai – which had, of course, already been remade for the West in The Magnificent Seven – and sets it in space.
This week, we discuss how this relatively obscure 'classic' helped launch some of the biggest names in film, and how the movie holds up today against Baz's starry-eyed childhood memories.
Force Material is a podcast exploring the secrets and source material of Star Wars with hosts Rohan Williams and Baz McAlister. Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Stitcher, PlayerFM and Castro; stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; and support the show by browsing our range of shirts, hoodies, kids apparel, mugs and more at TeePublic.

Previous Episode

Attack of the Star Wars Clones: Star Trek (2009)

This week, we look back at JJ Abrams' first Star Wars movie: 2009's Star Trek .
To celebrate the new season of The Clone Wars, we're taking a look back at some of our favourite Star Wars clones – the films that tried their hardest to recreate the magic and replicate the success of Star Wars, even if they didn't always succeed.
In our first 'socially distanced' episode, we explain how Abrams infused his Star Trek reboot with the style and storytelling tropes of Star Wars, and how the highs of Abrams' Star Trek and the lows of Star Trek Into Darkness should have prepared us for the trajectory of his Star Wars movies.
Force Material is a podcast exploring the secrets and source material of Star Wars with hosts Rohan Williams and Baz McAlister. Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Stitcher, PlayerFM and Castro; stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; and support the show by browsing our range of shirts, hoodies, kids apparel, mugs and more at TeePublic.

Next Episode

Duel of the Fates Script Review

It's the Episode IX we'll never get to see. This week, we look at Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly's unproduced script for the finale of the Skywalker Saga!
Colin Trevorrow was announced as the writer-director of Star Wars: Episode IX in August 2015, with writing partner Derek Connolly in tow. At the time, Lucasfilm was riding high on the success of The Force Awakens, and Trevorrow and Connolly had hit a home run at the box office with Jurassic World. But in September 2017, they were removed from the project, and JJ Abrams returned to direct what would become The Rise of Skywalker.
A leaked script purporting to be an early draft of Trevorrow and Connolly's Episode IX, which would have been called Duel of the Fates, has been doing the rounds online for the last few months, but Baz and I hadn't taken the time to read it – until now.
Now, with nothing but time on our hands, we sat down to read this alternate version of Episode IX and discuss what we liked, what we didn't like, and what we would have missed the most if The Rise of Skywalker didn't exist.
Force Material is a podcast exploring the secrets and source material of Star Wars with hosts Rohan Williams and Baz McAlister. Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Stitcher, PlayerFM and Castro; stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; and support the show by browsing our range of shirts, hoodies, kids apparel, mugs and more at TeePublic.