A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2015 Marvel Comics and Lucasfilm Ltd.  On April 12, 1977, a then-struggling Marvel Comics published Star Wars 1 , the first issue of a six-part adaptation of George Lucas's Star Wars (aka Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope ). Released more than a month before the movie was in theaters, Star Wars 1 gave many sci-fi and comics fans their first glimpse at Lucas's space fantasy set "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away." Adapted by Roy Thomas, who was Marvel's editor-in-chief at the time, and with art by Howard Chaykin, Marvel's Star Wars comic series closely follows the basic plot of Lucas's 1977 blockbuster. However, since Thomas used Lucas's fourth revised draft of the screenplay and had access to a handful of publicity photos provided by Lucasfilm, his version includes several scenes that were deleted from the film before its May 25, 1977 release. Star Wars' comic book adaptation was a major success. It saved Marvel Com

One of the toughest problems that faces filmmakers involved in creating and selling any "franchise" movie series (whether it's  Indiana Jones, Star Trek, Star Wars, Batman  or  Superman ) is "How do you keep an audience's interest (and repeat business) in your characters and situations without getting stale or silly?" Now, there are lots of possible good answers, but two of the most obvious are "Be consistent and follow the rules of the universe you create, and above all, don't be constantly remaking the first movie over and over again." Unfortunately, not every screenwriter, director or creative team keeps these rules of the road in mind.  The Superman  movies which starred the late Christopher Reeve started out with a classic (Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie ) then qualitatively slid downhill when the producers decided to give the next two movies to Richard Lester. So when Sam Raimi's first two  Spider-Man  movies proved that the