The 1977 sci-fi movie Quentin Tarantino called better than ‘Star Wars’: “It blew audiences away”
As far as impact, legacy, and transformative effects go, no movie of any genre released in 1977 was more important in any way, shape, or form than George Lucas’ Star Wars. Despite that, Quentin Tarantino doesn’t even think it was the best sci-fi flick of the year.
What had been written off as a folly waiting to happen instead became the highest-grossing release in cinema history, winning eight Academy Awards for its groundbreaking technical innovations, acquiring a further four nods, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, and turning Hollywood upside down.
In the years that followed, everyone wanted to sing from the Star Wars songbook. Space operas were suddenly back in vogue, and thanks to Lucas’ genius idea, merchandising the shit out of every high-profile picture became common practice, never mind the five-decade franchise that’s still going strong today.
Tarantino was 14 years old when audiences around the world were first transported to a galaxy far, far away, putting him right in the demographic sweet spot. He already fancied himself as something of a cinephile at that point, though, so he wasn’t as blown away as the rest of the teenage filmgoing population.
“Of course I liked Star Wars,” he explained. “What’s not to like? But I remember, and this is not a ‘but’ in a negative way, but in a good way. The movie completely carried me along, and I was just rocking and rolling with these characters. When the lights came on, I felt like a million dollars. And I looked around and had this moment of recognition, thinking, ‘Wow! What a time at the movies!'”
A standard reaction from anyone who caught it the first time around, but it wasn’t his favourite sci-fi of the year. This being Tarantino, you’d be well within your rights to think he’d favour something more obscure and off the beaten track, especially when 1977 also marked the arrival of The Incredible Melting Man, Demon Seed, The Crater Lake Monster, and The Mighty Peking Man, which sound right up his alley.
However, that wasn’t the case. Instead, he favoured the other big-budget intergalactic offering from one of the ‘Movie Brats’, which was massively successful in its own right, but was still overshadowed by Star Wars. “At the end of the day, I’m more of a Close Encounters guy,” the auteur elaborated. “Just the bigger idea, and Spielberg setting out to make an epic for regular people, not just cinephiles.”
Lucas was so confident that Steven Spielberg would win the battle of the interstellar epics that he bet 2.5% of his film’s box office takings that Close Encounters of the Third Kind would earn more than Star Wars. When it didn’t, he kept his word, and the wager ultimately earned Spielberg a reported $40 million.
Close Encounters made north of $300 million and won two Oscars from nine nods, so it was a huge hit at the end of the day, but it was no Star Wars. Why did Tarantino prefer it? “Few films had the kind of climax that Close Encounters had,” he opined. “It blew audiences away.” That it did, and it’s a classic, but it couldn’t hold a candle to Lucas’ movie in terms of shaking the film business to its very foundations.
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