Last week we brought to your atten­tion a short video detail­ing the ways George Lucas’ clas­sic Star Wars draws from the samu­rai films of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, bor­row­ing cos­tum­ing and direc­to­r­i­al nods. But like any great artist, Lucas stole from more than one source. His ground­break­ing space epic incor­po­rates influ­ences as diverse as John Ford’s clas­sic west­ern The Searchers and the com­par­a­tive mythol­o­gy of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thou­sand Faces, among many, many oth­ers. How on earth did Lucas syn­the­size such a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent gen­res into the uni­fied whole that is Star Wars? To begin to answer that ques­tion, Michael Heile­mann has put togeth­er the anno­tat­ed Star Wars you see above, “a work-in-progress mashup of Star Wars with many of its sources of inspi­ra­tion, play­ing as a fea­ture-length pre­sen­ta­tion.” As The Onion’s A.V. Club describes it, “the video illu­mi­nates the astound­ing breadth of mate­r­i­al that was bang­ing around in Lucas’ head as he assem­bled Star Wars. It’s the kind of thing that ought to be on a spe­cial-edi­tion Blu-Ray release but nev­er will be because of copy­right issues.”

Heile­mann, Inter­face Direc­tor at Square­space, edit­ed the film as part of his research process for an ebook called Kit­bashed, an exhaus­tive study of “how George Lucas and his artists per­fect­ed the process of trans­form­ing exist­ing books, comics, movies and ideas into the fan­ta­sy spec­tac­u­lar that is Star Wars.” The title of Heilemann’s project comes from a word that means “using exist­ing mod­el-kits to detail space­ship mod­els for films,” with some con­no­ta­tions of both the “mashup” and the “hack.” Lucas’ achieve­ment, how­ev­er, is much more than either of those words sug­gest, accord­ing to Heile­mann, whose jour­ney into the films revealed to him their “under­ly­ing com­plex­i­ty and seem­ing­ly infi­nite depth.” Far from attempt­ing to “reveal how Star Wars is in real­i­ty com­plete­ly uno­rig­i­nal,” Heile­mann hopes to show read­ers, and view­ers, that “the cre­ative process that brought forth Star Wars is noth­ing short of amaz­ing.”

Read more about Kit­bashed at its offi­cial site.

Via AV Club

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Star Wars is a Remix

Watch the Very First Trail­ers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Ask film­go­ers to name their favorite Stan­ley Kubrick pic­tures, and you’ll hear many of the same titles over and over again: Spar­ta­cus, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clock­work Orange. These and the five oth­er fea­ture films Kubrick direct­ed between 1960 and his death in 1999 hold per­ma­nent pride of place as some of the most endur­ing and influ­en­tial works in the his­to­ry of the form. His fourth pic­ture, 1957’s Kirk Dou­glas-star­ring, World War I‑set Paths of Glo­ry, has drawn a good share of crit­i­cal acclaim, but noth­ing before it in his body of work has yet com­mand­ed the lev­el of respect asso­ci­at­ed with Kubrick and his cin­e­mat­ic lega­cy.

In 1956, he’d made the noir The Killing on the cheap; the pre­vi­ous year, he’d made the noir Killer’s Kiss on the cheap­er. But before even those came Fear and Desire, Kubrick­’s very first fea­ture, an exis­ten­tial war movie pro­duced in 1953 with mon­ey raised from his wealthy drug­store-own­ing uncle and pro­ceeds from a job shoot­ing sec­ond-unit on a doc­u­men­tary about the life of Abra­ham Lin­coln. You can watch the whole film, which has fall­en into the pub­lic domain, at the top of the post, or in a restored ver­sion, pre­ced­ed by a brief 1966 inter­view with Kubrick, right here.

By the time of Fear and Desire, Kubrick had already logged a cer­tain amount of film­mak­ing prac­tice direct­ing shorts. Still, he could nev­er quite get over his own per­cep­tion of the movie, which he made at age 24 fresh from his job as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er at Look mag­a­zine. He con­sid­ered the film “a bum­bling ama­teur film exer­cise” and “com­plete­ly inept odd­i­ty.” He lat­er, hav­ing burned the neg­a­tive, sought to pre­vent its screen­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion when­ev­er pos­si­ble. Yet it had its high-pro­file appre­ci­a­tors even at the time of release: “Its over­all effect is entire­ly wor­thy of the sin­cere effort put into it,” said the New York Times; “Worth watch­ing for those who want to dis­cov­er high tal­ent at the moment it appears,” said crit­ic-schol­ar Mark Van Doren. Though far rougher than every film Kubrick would go on to make, Fear and Desire offers sev­er­al moments that reveal him as the direc­tor we now know he would go on to become. Grant­land’s Steven Hyden, in an arti­cle on the movie, quotes an attendee at one of its par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­as­trous pre­view screen­ings who remem­bers that “there were gig­gles in the wrong places, and it all seemed over­done and over­wrought.” He also quotes Kubrick­’s full reflec­tion on the expe­ri­ence in a New York Times Mag­a­zine pro­file: “Pain is a good teacher.”

Find Fear and Desire list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Killer’s Kiss: Where Stan­ley Kubrick’s Film­mak­ing Career Real­ly Begins

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Rare 1965 Inter­view with The New York­er

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hol­ly­wood has a long his­to­ry poach­ing from abroad. Ask Orson Welles, who along with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Gregg Toland, incor­po­rat­ed the look of Ger­man Expres­sion­ist cin­e­ma into Cit­i­zen Kane. Ask Quentin Taran­ti­no who cribbed much of Ringo Lam’s City on Fire for his break­out debut Reser­voir Dogs. And ask George Lucas who was so great­ly influ­enced by Japan­ese mas­ter Aki­ra Kuro­sawa that he lift­ed large chunks of his Hid­den Fortress for Star Wars.

Above is a video that (if you can get past the bro-tas­tic nar­ra­tion and man­gled Japan­ese pro­nun­ci­a­tion) neat­ly unpacks how Lucas’s sem­i­nal space opera owes a lot to Kuro­sawa. It doesn’t take too much imag­i­na­tion to con­nect a light saber with a samurai’s katana. Obi-Wan Kenobi’s robes look like some­thing that Toshio Mifu­ne might wear in one of Kurosawa’s epics. Lucas even uses Kurosawa’s trade­mark screen wipe. Below is an inter­view with Lucas where he describes how Kurosawa’s visu­al style influ­enced him.

Hol­ly­wood gen­er­al­ly has a bet­ter track record with bor­row­ing from for­eign film­mak­ing genius­es than actu­al­ly work­ing with them. Fritz Lang and John Woo were seduced into com­ing to Amer­i­ca only to be forced by over­bear­ing stu­dios into mak­ing ano­dyne ver­sions of their pre­vi­ous works. Kuro­sawa him­self had a deeply trou­bling expe­ri­ence in Hol­ly­wood; cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences, stu­dio pol­i­tics and Kurosawa’s auto­crat­ic direct­ing style – he wasn’t nick­named ‘The Emper­or’ for noth­ing – got him axed after three weeks from the 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox movie Tora! Tora! Tora!. Kuro­sawa took the blow very per­son­al­ly and, fol­low­ing the box office flop of his next movie Dodesukaden, attempt­ed sui­cide.

Yet the spec­tac­u­lar suc­cess of Star Wars proved to be an unex­pect­ed boon to Kuro­sawa. With his new­found influ­ence in Hol­ly­wood, Lucas man­aged to strong arm 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox, the same stu­dio that axed Kuro­sawa a decade before, into fund­ing Kage­musha. The movie proved to be a com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal hit, win­ning the Palme d’Or at Cannes. The film also gave Kuro­sawa the clout to raise the mon­ey for his last mas­ter­piece Ran.

Of course, Lucas wasn’t the only film­mak­er influ­enced by Kuro­sawa. Check out Kuro­sawa: The Last Emper­or — a doc­u­men­tary about the direc­tor fea­tur­ing a host of film­mak­ers who have been influ­enced by him, includ­ing Bernar­do Bertoluc­ci, John Woo and Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

Watch Kurosawa’s Rashomon Free Online, the Film That Intro­duced Japan­ese Cin­e­ma to the West

The Kuro­sawa Dig­i­tal Archive

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Star in Japan­ese Whisky Com­mer­cials (1980)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Guiller­mo Del Toro is one of those lucky film­mak­ers, like Steven Spiel­berg and Tim Bur­ton, whose per­son­al obses­sions nat­u­ral­ly seem to align with main­stream movie-going audi­ences. From Chronos to Hell­boy to his Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed 2006 movie Pan’s Labyrinth, Del Toro’s movies are often macabre and fright­en­ing but they are leav­ened by his goofy sense of humor and his incred­i­ble visu­al imag­i­na­tion.

Pri­or to mak­ing his break­out debut fea­ture Cronos, Del Toro direct­ed a string of short films includ­ing his 1987 hor­ror com­e­dy Geome­tria, which dis­plays both his sense of humor and some seri­ous direct­ing chops. Check out the short above and, as you watch, remem­ber that the flick was report­ed­ly made for about $1000.

Geome­tria opens with a recent wid­ow harangu­ing her teenaged son about how he is flunk­ing out of geom­e­try. At the end of the fight, the son vows that he will nev­er fail at the sub­ject again. Instead of hit­ting the books or even hir­ing a tutor, though, the lad turns to black mag­ic. Spoil­er: this proves to be a bad idea.

After draw­ing a bloody pen­ta­gon on the floor, he sum­mons a demon and requests it ful­fill two wish­es: to res­ur­rect his recent­ly deceased father and to help him not flunk geom­e­try again. The crea­ture, who looks a bit like Lin­da Blair from The Exor­cist, grants the teen his first wish. Dear old dad does come back but in the form of a rot­ting zom­bie who imme­di­ate­ly starts to feast on his mother’s neck. From there, as you might expect, things get much worse for the lad.

You can see the director’s cut of Geome­tria below.  Sad­ly this clip does­n’t have sub­ti­tles though the image qual­i­ty is much bet­ter.

Find many oth­er great films in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films: King and Octo­pus & Stalk of the Cel­ery Mon­ster

Sketch­es by Guiller­mo del Toro Take You Inside the Director’s Wild­ly Cre­ative Imag­i­na­tion

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.