"Roddenberry famously pitched the original Star Trek as “Wagon Train to the stars,” but it’s not. It’s Have Phasers – Will Travel. Paladin didn’t ride off into the sunset. He rode off into the stars."

Taken from a great write up by the A.V. Club on what they deem the peak adult western T.V. serial, none other than Have Gun Will Travel, of course.

http://www.avclub.com/article/adult-western-peaked-have-gun-will-travel-209684

Rian Johnson, Star Wars, and the Old West.

Image by Slate, stills of Once Upon a Time in the West via Paramount, and Star Wars via Lucasfilm

I was thrilled when I heard that Rian Johnson would be directing Episode VIII of Star Wars. 

Johnson's implementation of (old) western cinema into Looper was brilliant. The use of a modified BFR and a Mateba "auto revolver" were key aesthetic choices in bridging the ever present but often unacknowledged, neglected, or downright invisible link between modern pop culture and it's roots in the old west.

Bruce Willis with a modified BFR.
copyright Sony Pictures

While the Star Wars franchise is commonly known to be a "space opera" largely inspired by Flash Gordon, it also has many roots in the old west. The western film is characterized by it's setting. In "The Searchers", the desert environment is sometimes referred to as a character in itself. The scene in Episode IV of Luke returning home to find his desert home and family in smoking ruins are instantly recognizable to anyone who remembers "The Searchers". The shootout in a seedy Cantina between Han and Greedo is a blatant western trope. Han himself is a character plucked straight from the western mythos. Upon donning the armor of Boba Fett, actor Jeremy Bulloch said that the cloak instantly reminded him of Clint Eastwood's characters in the Dollars Trilogy, and that he took on the role of that character in his portrayal as Fett. The similarities weren't a coincidence.

Joseph Gordon Levitt with the Mateba Auto-revolver
copyright Sony Pictures

"Sound editor Ben Burtt added the sound of jangling spurs, created and performed by the Foley artist team of Robert Rutledge and Edward Steidele, to Fett's appearance in Cloud City, intending to make the character menacing and the scene reminiscent of similar gunfighter appearances in Western films."

Lee Van Cleef plays a bounty hunter
 with a buttstock on his pistol.

Fett's blaster with buttstock looks familiar to anyone who remembers Lee Van Cleef's character in "A Few Dollars More".

Boba Fett - a bounty hunter with his buttstock augmented blaster.
Disney/Lucasfilm Ltd., LLC

But the influences don't stop there. The story of Luke overcoming the empire using archaic weaponry is a common western theme. As the frontier began to vanish, the mythos of the "Western Hero" archetype often portrayed a gunslinger who was increasingly facing a changing society. The depiction of more advanced and automated weaponry left the western hero with less and less relevance. It was up to them to overcome adversity using increasingly outdated pistols which were considered an honorable weapon that required skill to use. The lightsaber was described by Obi Wan as "an elegant weapon for a more civilized age". It was up to Luke to overcome an increasingly technologically advanced enemy using a weapon from a dying past. This trope is also portrayed in Samurai film which was a major influence on western cinema and Star Wars itself. There are many similarities between the samurai and the western hero, and by extension the Jedi. Of course we see a variation of this theme in Han's attitude regarding blasters.

Animation via “Star Wars: Kitbashed”/Vimeo

Moreover, the duel was made famous by western & samurai cinema. The pistol duel was derived from older forms of melee duels. "The Western gunfight was in reality a variation of the honorable duel, which had been an acceptable form of dispute resolution even prior to the advent of gunpowder." The lightsaber duel is a clear extension of this, although the duel itself precedes the western era.

Animation via “Everything Is a Remix Part 2”/Vimeo

Of course, I could go on all day about parallels in Star Wars and westerns, the truth is that many themes from western film go back to medieval mythology and Star Wars isn't just a space western (as much as i'd like it to be). When I talk about Star Wars and its western influences, eventually I always hear "Firefly, now that's a space western!" which is certainly true as that's what it was designed to be. So, if you're curious as to where "Firefly" got it's inspiration we can surmise that surely it was from  western cinema itself, the idea to make a sci-fi western is a pretty obvious leap. Some are better than others. After all, isn't "Space, the final frontier"? According to Gene Roddenberry it was. He should know, he was born in El Paso.

But Star Trek is a progressive series bestowing liberal morality tales upon it's audience, and as we know the western has generally a more rugged, conservative narrative that doesn't have time for sissies and rewards those who pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Take "Have Gun Will Travel" for example, one of the greatest western series considered by some to be the peak of the adult western... Oh wait, that's a series about a rather progressive do-gooder punctuated with liberal valued morality tales. Hmm, it seems like something Gene Roddenberry would write if he wrote western stories. Interestingly, Sam Rolfe, the creator of "Have Gun Will Travel" wrote several Star Trek episodes and Gene wrote several "Have Gun" episodes.

As far as "Firefly" goes Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds, the main character and the "Serenity" ship itself are quite clearly inspired by Han Solo and the Millenium Falcon respectively. Although Joss Whedon hasn't said so explicitly, with Star Wars and Han Solo references in every episode, he may as well have.

Han in carbonite aboard the "Firefly".
Supposedly there is one hidden in every episode.

Having just seen "The Force Awakens" I was elated at the return to the spirit of "Star Wars", but I was quite disappointed to see very few homages to the old west roots of Star Wars. I attribute this to J.J. Abrams visual style. I hope that Johnson uses his superb eye for aesthetic wizardry and brings a bit of old west flair back into the galaxy that's far, far away despite being so close to our hearts.

The new stormtrooper blaster in "The Force Awakens".

But don't get me wrong, I don't want a "space western" in the manner of Firefly. I find that style to be a bit heavy handed although i'd probably change my mind if I had seen it done right. As pointed out in "The Psychology of the Western: How the American Psyche Plays Out on Screen"
by William Indick, "No other distinct American mythology has replaced the Western", and "The Western backdrop is behind every american issue, every dramatic structure, nearly every kind of story that could be told.". We owe it to our cinematic predecessors to rightfully acknowledge and pay tribute to our ancestral and cultural heritage. Although the "Western Hero" archetype seems to be dead, the truth is that it remains the primary mythos of the American psyche and with Finn and Rey, it is quite alive.

I'd love to see this Remington 1875 used
as a reference for a Star Wars blaster.

Rey's blaster, one of the better designs in "The Force Awakens".
Inspiration taken from Han's blaster with which the "broomstick"
handle is a clear depiction of a World War 2 era Mauser C96.
With this pistol we see mass added in front of the trigger,
giving it a center of gravity apparently inspired from a
19th century revolver.

One thing the original trilogy was known for is creating a visual style that was new and unique and yet felt old and familiar. Again, I love J.J. Abrams rendition of Star Wars but aside from maybe Rey's blaster and Kylo's saber, I felt that the weapon design in particular was mostly new and futuristic and not very old/familiar. I'm hoping that Johnson gets the artistic license to perhaps rework some of the visual elements or the creative space to add his own influence.

Another Western Hero archetype in action.
Here the reference to western film is blatant and glorious,
we see our hero using an archaic weapon of the past
to fight a new, mechanized enemy on multiple frontiers.

"You step into all this weirdness and you find that the scene that you’re doing is similar to scenes you’ve seen before in other movies that you can imagine very easily. There is a scene that’s based on a kind of Western concept. Shooting the guy under the table. There was no mystery to it. It was just a different face on something that was quite familiar." - Harrison Ford in 2004