Yeah, I’m not sure about the “Star Wars killed smart sf claim.” I think it’s more, "Hollywood saw the success of 2001, and thought, ‘We need more smart sf!’ and then spent ten years largely failing to produce any. Then they saw Star Wars, and thought, “We need more epic space opera,” and spent another ten years largely failing to produce any.
Right, like Battle Beyond the Stars. Even at the age of 12, I thought it sucked.
Hey! Don’t dis Battle! It had one of the Magnificent Seven, Hannibal Smith and a spaceship with boobs.
It’s not just boobs. If you look at it from the top, it’s a whole nude female torso, down to the butt. Without a head. I’m not sure what that says about male culture and misogyny, but it’s probably saying something!
Piloted by Sybil Danning, Queen of B-movie schlock! Plus John-Boy. And Roper.
Sounds like an All-Star cast! 
For the same reason Orson Welles was in the first Transformers movie and Laurence Olivier played Zeus in Clash of the Titans.
Shakespearean actors can make lines like “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy” sound plausible.
George, you can write this stuff, but you can’t say it!
It basically IS The Magnificent Seven / Seven Samauri in space.
Still better than Rebel Moon
Why is LIKING boobs “misogyny”?
Don’t me disingenuous.
Making a spaceship that looks like.a woman but has no head? It says the builder thinks women’s heads are meaningless compared to their boobs.
“Objectification” might be a more accurate term, but I get it.
There are two different versions of the film – really! In one Sybil Danning’s costume is FAR more abbreviated than in the other. She’s also given the immortal line “You’ve never seen a go down.”
That very article quotes one of those very Shakespearean actors saying of the script, “This isn’t exactly Shakespeare!”
To be fair, if you’re going to make a Star Wars rip-off, you’re also going to make a Kurosawa rip-off.
Have you ever watched Dark Star?
They’re not all great, but one of the “Star Wars Visions” animated shorts, done that time by a Japanese studio, started out mostly as a very loose retelling of “The Hidden Fortress”, and I had to sit there a moment and fully appreciate the self awareness that must have been involved in every step of the making of the short
No, but thanks for giving me the idea!
I suppose if it were directed by Quentin Tarantino all the ships would look like women’s feet.
It’s a good movie worth checking out. John Carpenter’s and Dan O’Bannon’s feature debut. I will caution you it’s a dark comedy.