George Lucas discusses the movie that was “far superior” to ‘Star Wars’
In 1977, George Lucas established himself as a heavyweight of the New Hollywood wave after releasing the first movie of his era-defining franchise, Star Wars. Titled A New Hope, this first instalment was an instant global success, ushering in a golden age for sci-fi cinema.
Although Star Wars would ultimately define Lucas’ career and the sci-fi genre as we know it, he had become a notable cinematic presence in the early 1970s after co-founding American Zoetrope with The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola and releasing his earlier pictures, THX 1138 and American Graffiti.
Like Coppola and his other New Hollywood associates, including Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese, Lucas was inspired by a wealth of filmmaking expertise. Star Wars would be informed by the filmmaker’s obsession with the sci-fi movies of Fritz Lang, Franklin J Schaffner and Irvin Yeaworth, but no luminary could quite size up to the immovable legend Stanley Kubrick.
While Lucas was most directly inspired by a childhood passion for Flash Gordon comics when devising Star Wars, Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey was a more technical blueprint.
Although Kubrick’s groundbreaking work in illusory zero gravity shots wasn’t repeated in Star Wars, Lucas heeded the director’s genius when depicting hyperspace and some of the other mind-bending scenes in outer space. As a subtle homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lucas based the Death Star’s docking bay where the Millennium Falcon lands in A New Hope on that seen on Kubrick’s Space Station V.
While 2001: A Space Odyssey cannot compare to the commercial impact and vast cultural legacy of Star Wars, it is widely regarded as the greatest sci-fi movie ever made. “Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science fiction movie, and it is going to be very hard for someone to come along and make a better movie, as far as I’m concerned,” Lucas once said of the film. “On a technical level, it can be compared [to Star Wars], but personally, I think that 2001 is far superior.”
Lucas isn’t alone in his appraisal, either. “The way the story is told is antithetical to the way we were accustomed to seeing stories,” Spielberg once said of the movie. “Kubrick would tell me, the last couple years of his life, when we were talking about the form, he kept saying, ‘I want to change the form. I want to make a movie that changes the form.’ And I said, ‘Well, didn’t you with 2001?'”
Interstellar director Christopher Nolan held similar sentiments in a 2013 conversation with IGN while discussing the movie’s cut from prehistory to a space-bound future. “You look at the cut in 2001, this vast jump forward — the confidence that it takes to do that is actually enormous,” Nolan commented. “Would I love to do things like that in my own work? Yes. But I don’t think I have the confidence to do that, which is why there is only one Stanley Kubrick. I do believe he is inimitable. But you can be inspired. You can be inspired to aspire to be that confident.”
But why is 2001: A Space Odyssey considered a masterpiece?
To many folk, 2001: A Space Odyssey isn’t just a film—it’s a landmark, a riddle, and an experience that refuses to age or explain itself. Released in 1968, Kubrick’s epic redefined what cinema could be, transforming the sci-fi genre from pulpy escapism into a canvas for existential grandeur. Of course, the big man can’t take all the credit. 2001 was famously co-written with Arthur C Clarke, who added his genius to take a plot that spans millennia, tackling evolution, artificial intelligence, and humanity’s place in the cosmos with breathtaking ambition.
Despite undoubtedly being ahead of its time, what makes 2001 such a masterpiece is its mind-boggling audacity. Kubrick leaves everything open to interpretation, trusting the audience to grapple with its mysteries rather than spoon-feeding them answers. Is the monolith an alien artefact? A metaphor for divine intervention? Or simply a stand-in for humanity’s capacity to transcend itself? Kubrick doesn’t say, and that silence is part of the film’s enduring power. Of course, nobody can really answer those questions, which partly contributes to its brilliance.
Over half a bloody century later, the mysteries surrounding 2001 remain as captivating as ever. It’s a movie that requires forbearance, reflection, and an open mind. Kubrick produced a monument to human inquiry and the limitless, not merely a film. Watching 2001 is like facing something enormous, humble, and incredibly lovely. It’s cinema at its most ambitious, pushing us to aim high and consider what we discover. Christ, it’s no wonder George Lucas knows his place.
