Flash Gordon

So you know, guys, Ron's favorite action hero, superhero is-

...

Flash Gordon, you guys.

And not the newer, even though we had Sam Jones, and he was fabulous on our show, and he told us great stories, and I have all his action figures in my action figure collection.

Um, but Ron likes Buster Crabbe, um, as Flash Gordon.

It was, came out in the...

When did it come out, in the '40s? Late f- no, '50s.

Yeah

... like Flash Gordon and, and that kind of thing.

Those were-

That's a good point

Of course, we also saw the latest golf tournament or Miss America contest.

And those shorts... included episodes of serialized adventure movies, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, The Lone Ranger.

We also saw travelogues, short comedies, music, humor, and more.

We had a popular model for these movie subjects in the print world.

Okay.

So th- th- to, to make that sound like one of those old Flash Gordon movies from, like, the...

When was that? The '40s or-

Yeah.

Because those movies evolved into such a specific place where they were just drawing on each other and kind of the formula, uh, created by Marvel Studios that they just didn't resemble a lot of cinema that came before in tone, in structure, or intent.

And we had a hard time... [laughs] You know, maybe if we could've reached back to like Flash Gordon serials or whatever, um, that would've worked.

But it, it's not that I think that they're a new thing under the sun.

They're just kind of remixing cinema in a way that makes it very hard to connect to, to classic cinema really.

He loved fantasy.

He adored old serials like Flash Gordon, if you've ever seen those.

He had even tried to acquire the rights to Flash Gordon in the early 1970s, but couldn't do it.

So Lucas's first feature film was a science fiction film called THX 1138, which was a cerebral look at a dystopian future.

He had adapted it from a student film that he had done a few years earlier.