One of the things that are best given to Quentin Tarantino is to share your opinions about other films, either to elevate them or to the contrary. It is obvious that we will not always agree with him, but it never hurts to listen to what he has to say and now he has claimed a forgotten movie of john carpenter.
Carpenter is mainly known for having directed gems like ‘Halloween Night’ or ‘The Thing’, but one of his films that doesn’t usually stand out too much is ‘Dark Star’. It was his first feature film and Tarantino has not hesitated to describe it as a masterpiece of science fiction:
I want the concept masterpiece to mean something; I don’t want to throw it out there. And I don’t want to use it in the first movie we talked about. Actually I think it applies to ‘Dark Star’. It is a masterpiece of science fiction.
‘Dark Star’ tells the story of some astronauts in charge of destroying unstable planets that may pose a threat to the colonization of other planets. 20 years after starting their journey, the ship they pilot begins to fail too often…
Shot on a tiny budget of $60,000, ‘Dark Star’ was born as a joint college project between Carpenter and Dan O Bannon, who here works as a co-writer and gives life to one of the great protagonists. And among his admirers we don’t only have Tarantino, as well Danny Boyle or Hideo Kojima They have made their appreciation for her clear.
“It’s obvious that George Lucas saw it”
Furthermore, Tarantino notes that “It is a masterpiece of hippie, countercultural and anti-establishment cinema. It’s an early 70’s masterpiece“and he dared to point out that it served as a direct inspiration for George Lucas when it came to addressing a very specific topic in ‘Star Wars’:
They completely predate the jump to lightspeed in Star Wars. It is obvious that George Lucas saw this and used the idea for light speed travel. It is impossible that Lucas had not seen it, and we know that he saw it.
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