Last week, the Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) announced that production on "Rogue Squadron," the Star Wars feature project that was due to be directed by "Wonder Woman" filmmaker Patty Jenkins, has been delayed and will not move forward in 2022 as previously announced. This was supposed to be the first new feature in the franchise since 2019’s "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker."
But rather than revisit the previous Star Wars flicks again (and again and again) until the new flick arrives, here is a potentially dangerous idea: Why not spend some time with the wildest and weirdest of the Star Wars rip-off genre. Ever since the original film came out in 1977, there has been no shortage of crazy works that try to fly with George Lucas' imagination but inevitably take an Icarus-worthy plummet from heights where they could not travel.
For your viewing pleasure (or pain, depending on your masochism tolerance), here are the 10 weirdest Star Wars rip-offs of all time.
1. The Donny & Marie Star Wars. Long before anyone imagined Luke and Leia were brother and sister, singing siblings Donny and Marie Osmond played the characters in an extended musical comedy sequence on the Sept. 23, 1977, episode of their popular variety show. Lucas enabled the show to license several of the Star Wars characters - R2D2, C3PO, Chewbacca and Darth Vader (who was definitely not voiced by James Earl Jones) turned up, but so did Kris Kristofferson (in mirrored sunglasses) as Han Solo, Redd Foxx as "Obi Ben Okefenokee," Paul Lynde as a frazzled imperial officer and a showgirl squadron called the "Ice Angels" as Stormtroopers.
Needless to say, this makes "The Star Wars Holiday Special" look like "The Empire Strikes Back" in comparison. You have been warned.
2. "The Carpenters...Space Encounters." When the 1970s' other big brother-sister music act wanted to traipse through that galaxy far, far away, Lucas didn't license his characters to them. Thus, Karen and Richard Carpenter created their own intergalactic environment with an alien spacecraft that came with its own disco ballroom. (Hey, it was the 70s, after all.)
While Richard Carpenter soloed as the pianist performing a “Space Encounters Medley” symphonic number (a mash of the “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Star Wars” themes with other vaguely classic compositions), Karen Carpenter stole the show in a sexy duet with Suzanne Somers doing the Calypso classic "Man Smart, Woman Smarter" and with her rendition of the brilliantly off-kilter UFO ode "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft."
3. "Message from Space." The first feature-length ripoff of Star Wars was this Japanese romp, which lassoed Vic Morrow and Sonny Chiba into a noisy and frenetic adventure that featured some of the shoddiest special effects in movie history - which was odd, since at $6 million it was the most expensive Japanese film made up until that time.
New York Times' (NYSE:NYT) film critic Janet Maslin opined that the film was "so terrible it has a certain comic integrity" while the Los Angeles Times' Kevin Thomas believed "small children will probably be entertained by it – if they can figure out what's going on." See if you can figure out what's happening on the screen:
4. "Battlestar Galactica." ABC plumbed the Lucas environment for this television series, which ran for a single 24-episode stretch in the 1978-79 season and is primarily remembered today for the lawsuits brought by 20th Century Fox against Universal Studios and that Lucas brought against the FX-house Apogee Inc. The series' pilot episode would be re-edited for a 1979 theatrical release, where it managed to turn in a profit even though American audiences already saw the action on television months earlier.
"Battlestar Galactica" would be successfully rebooted in 2004 for a five-season television run, but the original late 70s offering is more fun for the sheer copycat element of its plotting and design.
5. "Starcrash." Italian filmmaker Luigi Cozzi helmed this low-budget / high-camp 1978 space opera involving a pair of space pirates (frizzy-haired ex-evangelist Marjoe Gortner and Hammer horror diva Caroline Munro), a prince wearing a golden mask (David Hasselhoff, years before "Baywatch") and the royal's father, the Emperor of the Galaxy (Christopher Plummer - yes, that Christopher Plummer).
Widely ridiculed when it first opened, "Starcrash" has taken on a cult following that happily overlooks its multiple flaws and celebrates its zany can-do spirit.
6. "Star Odyssey." Another cheapjack Italian space adventure, this 1979 offering from filmmaker Alfonso Brescia finds a wicked despot who purchases a planet in an intergalactic auction and tries to enslave its inhabitants, only to find a full-throttle rebellion on his hands.
"Star Odyssey" was passed off on audiences under different titles including "Captive Planet" and "Metallica" - and while the title's odyssey reference is designed to spur a Kubrick-worthy link, this mad mess would inspire HAL to keep those pod doors closed.
7. "H. G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come." This 1979 Canadian effort has nothing to do with Wells' classic novel, which had previously been filmed in a 1936 landmark science-fiction film. Instead, it offered another poverty-level space epic with slumming stars including Jack Palance, Carol Lynley and John Ireland in a confused tale of interplanetary conflicts and robots run amok.
The one original aspect of the film is having most of the action taking place on Earth rather than on the other side of the universe. Otherwise, it is strictly been-there/done-that.
8. "Battle Beyond The Stars." This 1980 production has a bit more star power than other flicks in the rip-off genre: Legendary budget-conscious filmmaker Roger Corman produced the film from a screenplay by future director John Sayles that was inspired by Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" and its Western remake "The Magnificent Seven." Plus, the cast included well-regarded actors such as George Peppard, Robert Vaughn, Richard Thomas, John Saxon and Sam Jaffe, and a newcomer named James Cameron who was involved in the special effects creation.
At $2 million, it was Corman's most expensive film to date and the producer cut corners by recycling footage from earlier outer space films - although that cheating was pointed out by many critics. While the film paled in depth and scope against "The Empire Strikes Back" during the 1980 movie season, it earned a decent profit, and it also enjoys a healthy cult following.
9. "Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone." This 1983 3Dproduction was in theaters one week before the release of "Return of the Jedi," but this rip-off adventure of an intergalactic bounty hunter trying to rescue three luscious women on a hostile planet had a killer opening weekend but promptly died once Luke Skywalker and friends showed up in theaters.
Today, the film is primarily remembered as an early starring role for Molly Ringwald, who would return to Earth-bound projects and reign as the 80s teen queen in films including "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club" and "Pretty in Pink."
10. "Starchaser: The Legend Of Orin" This feature film was among the first productions to mix traditional and computer animation, and Atlantic Releasing put it into U.S. theaters in the 3D format. As one of the few non-Disney animated features in theatrical release at the time, it was able to harvest a kiddie audience that was not that picky over its too-frequent lifting of storylines from the Lucas epics.
The film was animated in South Korea by the same studio responsible for animating "Star Wars: Droids: The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO." Small world, isn't it?
Photo: A scene from "Message from Space" (1978), courtesy of Toei Studios.