The revelation that the Star Wars spin-off was mapped out using clips from existing movies is a reminder of the multiplex’s resistance to breaking new ground. We must cherish the films that do

It’s become a familiar experience to the 21st-century cinemagoer: that nagging feeling of deja vu in the multiplex, the sense that one is seeing the same movie over and over again, ad infinitum. This is hardly surprising given seven of last year’s 10 highest-grossing films were either remakes, sequels or set in a pre-existing “cinematic universe”. Hollywood has become – perhaps always has been – a cultural Möbius strip, doomed to eternally travel the same path, only ever shifting its trajectory slightly; an old scratched, warped record that never plays quite the same way twice.

But while cinephiles have long become used to shelling out their hard-earned wonga to watch the same movie several times over, a new interview with the editors of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hints that Hollywood’s habit of regurgitation goes further than we imagined. It reveals the film’s initial “cut”, designed to map out the movie before any shooting took place, was cobbled together by editor Colin Goudie using footage from hundreds of other existing films.



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For protagonist Jyn Erso’s early encounter with Mon Mothma and her comrades on the Rebel council, Goudie substituted in the interrogation scene from the beginning of Aliens; for the bit where Erso and her pals break into the Imperial data vault, the editor inserted a similar scene from 1983’s WarGames. Old Star Wars movies were also pilfered from. Using this celluloid patchwork quilt, director Gareth Edwards was able to devise a working template for Rogue One (albeit one that would later be ripped apart and stitched back together following extensive reshoots). How long does an Imperial shuttle take to land, a Death Star to blow up, a Mon Calamari commander to question whether the Rebel fleet might be heading into a trap? Hollywood, it seems, already had all the answers hidden in the studio vaults.



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Given, then, that Edwards’ film began life as a hotchpotch of old movies, the eventual parachuting in of Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin makes even more sense. For what exactly were those sublime yet utterly bizarre sequences of digital resurrection if not a CGI-assisted alternative to chopping in the best bits from Hollywood history? Who needs WarGames when Tarkin can be lifted from the original Star Wars and reanimated, pixel by pixel, using the green-screen ghost of some bloke off Holby City?



But Edwards is not alone in turning to the archives in search of inspiration. Matt Reeves, the director of forthcoming sci-fi sequel War For the Planet of the Apes, revealed recently that he and screenwriter Mark Bomback sat down and watched dozens of movies before even beginning to put pen to paper.

“We watched every Planet of the Apes movie, war movies, westerns, The Empire Strikes Back,” Reeves told About Movies. “We just thought, ‘We have to pretend we have all the time in the world,’ even though we had limited time. We got really inspired.”



Therein lies the rub, of course. Modern Hollywood requires such a blitzkrieg-paced turnover of product that studios inevitably look for shortcuts in an effort to keep the creative juices flowing. Even when they are not explicitly remaking a classic product, or putting together a sequel, a director’s first instinct is therefore to duplicate, to copy, to half-inch from the past.

Such insights into the strange gestation period of the 21st-century blockbuster paint a picture, both fascinating and terrifying, of film-makers as modern-day Victor Frankensteins, constantly splicing together old parts to create new forms. Is it any wonder that, rather than bothering to come up with original ideas, JJ Abrams and his team simply recycled countless elements of the original 1977 Star Wars when putting together The Force Awakens? Does this also explain why the new Ghost in the Shell movie looks nothing like the original anime, but does seem suspiciously reminiscent of Robocop with a bit of Jason Bourne thrown in for good measure (at least if an early trailer is to be trusted)? Even the highest-grossing film of all time, Avatar, can be broken down rather cruelly (at least on a thematic level) to Ferngully crossed with Dances with Wolves in space.

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The fact that many of the above movies are derivative does not make them bad films. Plagiarism, in many ways, is the oil that greases the cogs of the studio machine. Each film-maker takes something from the last, and hopefully passes something on to their successor. It has been ever so since the early days of silent film, and indeed even the era of Shakespeare.

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The only problem here is that if you spend all your time watching other movies before making your own, it’s inevitable that a process of assimilation will take place – a sort of cultural osmosis. Rogue One is a fine movie, a splendid rewind to the classic 1970s space operas injected with just enough Trump-era bleakness to make it a more than worthwhile trip to the multiplex. But its greatest achievement will always be to remind viewers of the brilliance of George Lucas’ game-changing original, rather than to break new ground.

This sense that Hollywood is slowly but surely eating itself should make us more grateful for the truly original genre movies – Ex Machina, for instance, or Arrival – when they push their heads above the celluloid parapet. Because if these rare sparks of inspiration were to fizzle out altogether, those of us who love the movies could be facing a cultural desert of Tatooine-like dreariness. Apart from anything else, there would then be no material for Hollywood’s next generation of directors to pilfer from.