Star Wars: Episode Zero - Wings!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point! 

This week on EPISODE ZERO they explore the first film to win the Oscar for Best Picture (kinda), a World War I epic with unbelievable imagery and beautiful melodrama, WINGS! How did it inspire elements of STAR WARS, and large swaths of THE LAST JEDI in particular? We're about to find out! 

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - Metropolis!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!

This week on EPISODE ZERO they move into Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece METROPOLIS, which envisioned an unthinkable future full of class warfare, income disparity, unchecked industrialism, and corrupt capitalists running the government. In addition to its influential imagery of gigantic supercities, METROPOLIS also laid the foundation for every movie about robots - or, yes, even droids - that followed!

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - Jurassic Park!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!

This week on EPISODE ZERO they sneak into Steven Spielberg's JURASSIC PARK, a blockbuster monster movie about genetically-engineered dinosaurs that run amok at eat people! George Lucas cited JURASSIC PARK as the film whose effects proved that his visions for the future of STAR WARS were possible, and it's also a bona fide classic in its own right.

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - The Searchers!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!

This week on EPISODE ZERO they take a trek to Monument Valley for John Ford's THE SEARCHERS, starring John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter as cowboys searching for a lost girl in the American frontier. The film is considered one of the greatest westerns ever made, and it's easy to see why, but its legacy is conflicted and complicated, even though its influence on STAR WARS is clear.

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - Radar Men from the Moon!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!

This week on EPISODE ZERO they strap on jetpacks and fly around with COMMANDO CODY: SKY MARSHAL OF THE UNIVERSE in his very first cinematic adventure, RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON! It's a serialized action series with lots of fist fights, lots of cheapness, and several connections - direct and indirect - to the STAR WARS series! 

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - The Dirty Dozen!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!

This week on EPISODE ZERO they enlist Robert Aldrich's rowdy and violent World War II "men on a mission" classic THE DIRTY DOZEN, a film that helped inspire ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY's updated perspective on intergalactic conflicts, and its comparatively brutal approach to heroic sacrifice! 

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - The Navigator

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!  

This week on EPISODE ZERO they unearth Buster Keaton's silent comedy classic THE NAVIGATOR, starring the legendary filmmaker as a hapless bourgeois hero who winds up drifting at sea on a giant ship with the woman who doesn't love him! Keaton's unique physicality and distinctive gags were a clear influence on the creation of Jar Jar Binks and his wacky in the climactic battle in STAR WARS: EPISODE I - THE PHANTOM MENACE, but why are Keaton's comedic characters more well-received than George Lucas's CGI creation? 

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - Distant Drums!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!

This week on EPISODE ZERO they explore Raoul Walsh's quasi-western DISTANT DRUMS, the film that introduced the Wilhelm Scream! It's one of the most popular and recognizable sound effects in motion picture history, but the film that originated the Wilhelm Scream is disturbingly entrenched in deeply offensive colonialist fiction! 

And sadly, that's a literary tradition that films like STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES have, directly and indirectly, been inspired by.

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - Silent Running!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!

This week on EPISODE ZERO they explore Douglas Trumbull's SILENT RUNNING, a sci-fi epic starring Bruce Dern as an environmental activist who defies orders to destroy Earth's last remaining forests! 

With a screenplay by Michael Cimino (THE DEER HUNTER) and Stephen Bochco (NYPD BLUE), and early effects work by STAR WARS vfx pioneer John Dykstra, SILENT RUNNING inspired the creation of R2-D2 and even the tv series MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000!

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - Dersu Uzala!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!

This week on EPISODE ZERO they explore the gorgeous and contemplative story of DERSU UZALA, a Russian film directed by Japanese master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa! This true story about a cartographer who befriends a small, uneducated, but impossibly brave and wise man in the wilds of Siberia was the direct influence for the creation of Yoda, and some of the most iconic moments in STAR WARS. 

And it may also be the key to unlocking the deeper meaning behind the different planets we visit in the franchise!

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - King Kong!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!

This week on EPISODE ZERO they explore the fantastical world of KING KONG, the original 1933 blockbuster action/horror epic that pioneered new visual effects, new techniques in sound design, and an innovative musical score that's still influential today! 

How did KING KONG break new ground, is it overdue for a reevaluation, and why is it - for better and worse - one of the key precursors to STAR WARS?

Give it a listen and find out!

Star Wars: Episode Zero - The Wizard of Oz!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!

This week on EPISODE ZERO they revisit THE WIZARD OF OZ, a towering, epic production which - like STAR WARS - pioneered new effects and technologies, and inspired a ceaseless wave of imitations and homages! Bibbs and Witney break down the genius of THE WIZARD OF OZ and the many ways it directly and indirectly inspired scenes, characters and ideas in STAR WARS.

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - 21-87!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!

This week on EPISODE ZERO they explore Arthur Lipsett's experimental short film 21-87, a montage of imagery and ideas about the interconnectivity of all things! How did this film inspire George Lucas to create "The Force," and how does it connect to and impact his whole filmography, including THX-1138? We're about to find out!  

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - The Dam Busters!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!

This week on EPISODE ZERO they explore Michael Anderson's blockbuster epic THE DAM BUSTERS (1955), about the real-life low-flying air attacks that destroyed German dams in World War II, which directly inspired George Lucas's unforgettably dogfighting finale in the original STAR WARS!

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - The Hidden Fortress!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!

This week on EPISODE ZERO they explore Akira Kurosawa's samurai epic THE HIDDEN FORTRESS (1958), which inspired George Lucas to tell the story of STAR WARS from the perspective of two droids, and which set the storytelling template for THE PHANTOM MENACE!

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - The Flash Gordon Serials!

One of the best ways to learn about film history is to take a popular movie and work backwards, to discover its many influences. And there is perhaps no movie that embodies the fascinations, obsessions and inspirations of its director more than STAR WARS!

Join film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold as they examine a film that directly inspired STAR WARS every single week, starting with the original FLASH GORDON serials, which inspired George Lucas so much that he tried to make a FLASH GORDON movie, couldn't get the rights, and had to make STAR WARS instead! 

It's our brand-new podcast, STAR WARS: EPISODE ZERO!

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Canceled Too Soon #184 | Star Wars: Droids (1985-1986)

Not every STAR WARS was a blockbuster smash. The Saturday morning cartoon show STAR WARS: DROIDS, starring Anthony Daniels as C-3PO and R2-D2 as himself, only lasted one season, despite featuring huge cameos from popular characters like Boba Fett and IG-88, and tons of ideas, vehicles, planets and even podraces which would eventually turn up in the prequel trilogy!

It was co-created by Oscar-winning sound designer Ben Burtt, and featured a theme song by Stewart Copeland from The Police! That's pretty cool, so maybe - just maybe - STAR WARS: DROIDS was... CANCELED TOO SOON!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold take a trip to a galaxy far, far away to unearth this overlooked chapter in STAR WARS history, just before the premiere of their new STAR WARS podcast: EPISODE ZERO!

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William Bibbiani Asks, "Did Solo: A Star Wars Story Make the Millennium Falcon Horrifying?"

In William Bibbiani's review of "Solo: A Star Wars Story", he critiqued the film's tendency to explain things that the audience already knew, to the point of almost comical redundancy. But there were some surprises as well!

The problem is, one of the biggest surprises in "Solo: A Star Wars Story" has consequences that might, depending on your point of view, make pre-existing elements of the "Star Wars" franchise seem creepy.

William Bibbiani discusses the most disturbing revelation, in SPOILER detail, in his latest article at IGN.

Read: "Did Solo: A Star Wars Story Make the Millennium Falcon Horrifying?"

Top Photo: Disney / Lucasfilm

William Bibbiani Reviews 'Solo: A Star Wars Story'

“Solo: A Star Wars Story” is the kind of prequel we think about when we think about unnecessary prequels. It's a fill-in-the-blank motion picture, which rigorously catalogues everything we already know about Han Solo from the previous “Star Wars” movies and then works backwards, explaining every little unnecessary detail, and in such a short amount of time that it plays like an extremely elaborate joke.