The influences behind Flash Gordon

1980

Flash Gordon

Film by Mike Hodges

New Hollywood blockbuster era. United Kingdom / United States. In English.

Mike Hodges' Flash Gordon (1980), produced by Dino De Laurentiis and written by Lorenzo Semple Jr., is a camp, brightly coloured space opera adapted from Alex Raymond's 1934 comic strip. In it, football player Flash Gordon and his companions defy Ming the Merciless, tyrant of the planet Mongo. Its lineage runs through the 1930s Universal serials, Star Wars and 1960s camp cinema back to the earliest literary voyages to other worlds.

Where it came from

Where to watch

Rent Amazon $3.99, Google Play $2.99
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In the US, as of October 12. Prices and services change.

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1977

Star Wars

Film by George Lucas

New Hollywood. United States. In English.

A space fantasy in which a farm boy joins rebels, a princess and a smuggler against a galactic Empire. Its box-office success revived the space-opera genre.

What it handed down

To Flash Gordon (1980)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

George Lucas had tried to buy the Flash Gordon rights before writing Star Wars, but De Laurentiis held them. Star Wars' 1977 success persuaded De Laurentiis to fund a lavish version of his long-planned project. Hodges and Semple deliberately went for pantomime colour and camp rather than Lucas's earnest tone.

Where it came from

Where to watch

Stream Disney+
Rent Amazon $3.99, Google Play $2.99, Fandango at Home $3.99
Buy Amazon $9.99, Google Play $9.99, Apple TV $19.98, Fandango at Home $19.98

In the US, as of October 30. Prices and services change.

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1912

A Princess of Mars

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Pulp era. United States. Written in English.

Civil War veteran John Carter is transported to Mars (Barsoom). There he fights among multi-armed green men and red-skinned city-states and wins the princess Dejah Thoris.

What it handed down

To Star Wars (1977)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Lucas cited Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom novels among the adventure fiction behind Star Wars. Desert planets, a captive princess, alien warrior races and swordplay amid advanced technology carry Burroughs's planetary romance into the film.

To Flash Gordon (serial)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Through Raymond's strip, the serial inherits Burroughs's sword-and-planet formula. An Earthman cast onto an alien world wins a princess, allies with exotic warrior races and fights in a feudal patchwork of kingdoms with both swords and ray guns.

Where it came from

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1901

The First Men in the Moon

H. G. Wells

Edwardian. England. Written in English.

Two Englishmen reach the Moon in a sphere coated with anti-gravity Cavorite. They are captured by the insect-like Selenites, who live in a caste society ruled by the Grand Lunar.

What it handed down

To A Princess of Mars (1912)

Thematic kinship, conjectural.

Wells's novel popularised the scientific romance of an Earthman stranded among an alien civilisation with its own castes and ruler. Burroughs wrote A Princess of Mars in a pulp market shaped by Wells's success, though he turned the satire into swashbuckling adventure.

Where it came from

From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne 1865

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1865

From the Earth to the Moon

Jules Verne

Second French Empire. France. Written in French.

The members of Baltimore's Gun Club build a giant cannon to fire a manned projectile at the Moon.

What it handed down

To The First Men in the Moon (1901)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Wells wrote his lunar voyage as an answer to Verne, replacing the cannon with the invented anti-gravity metal Cavorite. Verne publicly objected to the difference in a 1903 interview, contrasting his own ballistics with Wells's invention.

Where it came from

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The Comical History of the States and Empires of the MoonCyrano de Bergerac

1657

The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon

Cyrano de Bergerac

French libertine age. France. Written in French.

A satirical philosophical voyage to the Moon. Its narrator tries several absurd means of flight and debates lunar inhabitants.

What it handed down

To From the Earth to the Moon (1865)

Thematic kinship, probable.

In his survey of earlier moon voyages in From the Earth to the Moon, Verne names Cyrano de Bergerac. He sets his engineering-minded projectile against Cyrano's fanciful devices, placing his novel at the end of that comic tradition.

Where it came from

The Man in the Moone, Francis Godwin 1638 follow this thread
A True Story (Vera Historia), Lucian of Samosata c. 170 CE

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A True StoryLucian of Samosata

c. 170 CE

A True Story (Vera Historia)

Lucian of Samosata

Second Sophistic. Roman Syria / Greek East. Written in Ancient Greek.

A satirical traveller's tale in which a ship is blown to the Moon and its crew is caught in a war between the kings of the Moon and the Sun.

What it handed down

To The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1657)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Cyrano's satirical voyage follows the Lucianic model, using a fantastic journey to the Moon as a vehicle for mocking human customs, philosophy and religion, with alien kings and courts. Lucian was widely read in seventeenth-century France.

To Somnium (The Dream)

Direct source, well documented.

Kepler records in the notes to the Somnium that he first read Lucian's True History in 1593, translating it to learn Greek. He credits its lunar voyage with first making him imagine a fiction set on the Moon.

Where it came from

The Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE

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c. 725 BCE

The Odyssey

Homer

Archaic Greece. Archaic Greece. Written in Ancient Greek.

The epic of Odysseus's ten-year voyage home from Troy through monsters, enchantresses and strange peoples.

What it handed down

To Paradise Lost

Structural model, probable.

Milton built his biblical poem on the frame of Homeric epic. It has an opening invocation of the Muse, a beginning in medias res, catalogues, extended similes and long retrospective narration, as when Raphael recounts past events to Adam much as Odysseus tells his wanderings to the Phaeacians.

To A True Story (Vera Historia) (c. 170 CE)

Direct source, well documented.

Lucian opens by naming Homer's Odysseus as the founder of lying travel tales and builds his parody on the Odyssey. His crew sail past the known world, meet monstrous peoples and visit the Isle of the Blessed, where Lucian interviews Homer himself.

To Satyricon

Structural model, well documented.

The Satyricon is widely read as a mock-Odyssey. Encolpius is hounded across the Mediterranean by the wrath of Priapus as Odysseus is by Poseidon, and the novel repeatedly parodies Homeric episodes and verse.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

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Where it came from

What it handed down

To Flash Gordon (1980)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Star Wars (1977)

To Flash Gordon (serial)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To A Princess of Mars (1912)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The First Men in the Moon (1901)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To From the Earth to the Moon (1865)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1657)

To Somnium (The Dream)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Paradise Lost

To A True Story (Vera Historia) (c. 170 CE)

To Satyricon

Where it came from

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