ST New Flash Gordon Film versus Sequel Trilogy

TigerCraneFist I coveted those FG novel reprints. I had about 5 or 6 of them. I envy your collection!

FRAGWAGON That movie is a million times better than the Dino De Laurentiis feature. It wasn't aired when it was first made, I think it was finally aired in 1981 or '82, and I remember seeing it, vividly. I was waiting for it to air and on the air-night I was out shopping with my parents & the commercial came on one of the display TV's and I made it clear that we had to be home in time to see it! It was one of the only times they ever let me have my way. I guess they could see how important it was to me; or maybe they were finished shopping, ha ha.

 

GOD, Baby Jesus, Tom Cruise...noooo

 

How about a Buck Rogers vs Flash Gordon movie. if Jason and Freddy got together why not them.

 

On the crappy 80s movie, I vividly remember the disappointing horror of it. We came in expecting Star Wars, and we got a lascivious rock movie with subpar effects. You cannot do that to a child who has heard John Williams and loved R2D2.

Now excuse me, I have to get back to this Filmation FG!

 

Classic. I even have a copy of the rarely seen "Pilot" episode, which for some strange reason was not included on this release.


Yancy

 

I've always loved the irony of this whole dynamic. Star Wars ripped off - uh, I mean borrowed - a lot from the old Flash Gordon episodes. Things that began with Flash Gordon have now become synonymous with Star Wars.

If a new Flash Gordon movie started with an opening crawl, people would go crazy saying they ripped off Star Wars. But Flash Gordon was doing it about 40 years before Star Wars was.

 

I believe the "opening crawl" predates FG. And Flash was created, along with the Buck Rogers strip, to beat John Carter into comics syndication, and FG nicked more than a few things from Burroughs.

 

Leia's "cinnamon bun" hairstyle was taken from that sported by Queen Fria, too:

 

What in Star Wars came from Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers?

 

Flash Gordon? I dont see him putting the current gen in the seats. Star Wars may have been inspired by Flash Gordon but its long ago surpassed Gordon by orders of magnitude.

 

As per the above, some things are the opening crawl, Leia's hairdo, Palpatine (based on Ming to some degree by Lucas'own admission, Hoth (based on Frigia) and Chewbacca (some similarity to Thun the Lionman).

The relationship is reciprocal though: Filmation's animated Flash Gordon and the late 1970s live action television Buck Rogers took stylistic queues from Star Wars and the robed, masked character of Klytus in the 1980 Flash Gordon film who acts as Ming's chief henchman is a Vader parody.

 

I always wondered how true it was that Lucas's original intention was to actually make a Flash Gordon movie. It seems to me that his ambitions were always greater than that, but that he wanted to make something that would be so similar to a FG movie that he might need to secure the rights just to be safe. Does anybody know for sure that he wanted to do a literal FG movie initially?

 

I *think* I heard him say so in a documentary on the making of SW.

 

Death to Ming!!!!!!!!

 

Or from a Hopi princess, as GL always maintained:



I love FG as much as I love SW & GL definitely took some stuff from specific sources, like E.E. Doc Smith, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Frank Herbert and numerous films; but he also mixed/melded ideas and sometimes he just stumbled upon things that had been done before, whether he realized it or not.

Mystery Roach GL definitely wanted to do Flash, I think he mentioned it in the 1977 Rolling Stone article, I'll find the quote. What happened was twofold:

1. King Features is notoriously difficult to deal with (just Google Matt Stover's FG novel or an interview with any of the recent FG strip artists). In a 1960's Playboy interview, Fellini stated that his dream project was to direct a Flash movie; so KF's was literally waiting for the call! They had no idea who George Lucas was. They thought that one day Fellini would be calling.

2. Plus, GL didn't want to use Ming and wanted to make other changes, which they would not allow.

GL realized that FG was a "type" of character and story; he decided to mix all the sci-fi/sci-fantasy/fantasy tropes he loved into something original instead of adapting something existing. All of this arose from his problems with writing and working with writers.

EchoBase I've GL mention Nixon multiple times, as well as some Roman emperors, but never Ming as an influence on Palpatine.

 

EternalHero Yes, I have wondered about King Features in the past since they have often seemed to have shot themselves in the foot, passing up good opportunities for Flash but then permitting incompetent people (like the SyFy team) to run the franchise into the ground. They have never merchandised their properties very well either.

In the United States, they also control the rights to thePhantom and Mandrake the Magician as well and these characters have never been well marketed in their home country, whereas overseas, including in my country, they are extremely popular comic characters.


In fact, you cannot even go to the King Features website and subscribe for a free dailyFlash or Phantom comic strip. Most other comic sites allow people to subscribe to read archive strips.

Can you provide some more explanation into why they are so hard to deal with? It seems to me they are sitiing on a goldmine but don' know how to exploit it.

 

Back in the way-back the newspaper Syndicates are what Disney is now. They really controlled the existing media and had their fingers in all the cookie jars. Even in the 1970's they still wielded a lot of power. So I can understand at the time a feeling on their part that they could wait for the "best" offer. Warren Beatty acquired the rights to Dick Tracy in the 70's when he was at his height of stardom, Little Orphan Annie was turned into a blockbuster Broadway musical etc.

Nowadays, I'd say that they are probably so far down on the entertainment totem pole that they aren't attracting the kind of talent that major film studios, TV networks and cross-media entertainment companies are. I know that Warren Beatty tried to take over the merchandising for the Dick Tracy brand and they fought him in court for decades before he finally won last year. He remains convinced that Dick Tracy could have been a huge franchise in the 1990's if he'd been in control of the whole property and he's probably right. I doubt anyone at King Features has much of an idea of how to manage a brand in the modern sense and they probably don't have the money to put together creative teams to manage it for them. That's my take on it.

They absolutely are sitting on potential goldmines, not just in terms of revenue but in terms of enduring, high quality entertainment. One problem is that many of the ancient contracts signed many decades ago are still in action and sorting out the legal tangle would be as expensive as developing the properties. It's probably easier to just stay put for them. Flash Gordon could easily come back strong if they utilized every platform available intelligently and focused on quality; but whether that's possible remains to be seen.

 

ibtl

 

Huh? Why?? We're just calmly discussing Flash Gordon.

 

And it would wipe the walls at the box office...

 

Must have been filmed in Seattle, Denver or Amsterdam....

 

it's a great film. classic 80's. it just isn't sw. i'm not sure how faithful it is to the source material either.