Had George Lucas directed Apocalypse Now as planned, that could have changed both the course of his career AND mainstream cinema itself. Contrasting Lucas’ first two movies with his work on the Star Wars franchise, they almost appear to come from two different filmmakers. THX 1138 is an austere, dystopian sci-fi movie based on Lucas’ student short. While it was a box-office disappointment upon release in 1971, it’s now considered a cult film. His coming-of-age comedy American Graffiti – starring Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford – was a big hit critically and commercially.
The success of the latter led to Star Wars being greenlit, and while the movie’s production was famously stressful, it became a generation-defining hit. Lucas may have worked on many other films in the years that followed – including the Indiana Jones franchise and Willow – but his name will forever be linked to Star Wars. Lucas is no longer attached to the property and has seemingly retired from filmmaking entirely. Early on in his career, he developed Apocalypse Now (which has young Laurence Fishburne) as a directing project for himself – which could have had major ripple effects on the movie landscape.
Apocalypse Now Could Have Set George Lucas On A Different Course
For much of Lucas’ early career, he worked closely with Francis Ford Coppola, and they co-founded the production company American Zoetrope together. They worked with screenwriter John Milius to develop a contemporary version of Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart Of Darkness set during the Vietnam War, which Lucas planned to helm. As covered in the 1991 documentary Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, Lucas wanted to shoot his Apocalypse Now in a documentary style on 16 mm cameras after finishing work on THX 1138. Producer Gary Kurtz also revealed to IGN that he spent months scouting locations for the shoot in the Philippines.
Lucas’ Apocalypse Now – which almost starred Harvey Keitel – also planned to use real soldiers to play the leads, with a Japanese crew being hired to go into Vietnam (while the war was still ongoing) to film second unit. This Apocalypse Now was budgeted at $2 million, but the studio got cold feet about Lucas’ cinéma vérité approach and the controversy a Vietnam movie might raise. Lucas instead focused on American Graffiti, which in turn led to Star Wars. He still planned to return to Apocalypse Now, but Coppola himself eventually decided to tackle it, self-funding what would become one of the greatest war movies ever produced.
Star Wars May Not Have Happened If Lucas Made Apocalypse Now
Had Lucas followed American Graffiti with Apocalypse Now, it’s interesting to ponder what effect that would have had on his career. Despite Lucas’ planned documentary approach, the story would have been largely the same as Francis Ford Coppola’s movie. Had it been a similar critical and financial success, it could have pushed Lucas away from Star Wars to focus more on the kind of avant-garde filmmaking that inspired him as a young director. Instead, his career may have resembled the more experimental risk-taking seen in Coppola’s filmography.
There’s no telling how cinema would have evolved had Lucas made Apocalypse Now instead of Star Wars either. The movie inspired countless young directors and writers, it saw studios push increasingly toward blockbusters and franchises and there are very few people on Earth who don’t know what Star Wars is. It’s such an ingrained part of pop culture that it’s hard to picture the world without it. Without the influence of Star Wars, there’s no Alien or Blade Runner, Star Trek wouldn’t have been revived on the big screen and the butterfly effect all those films had on cinema wouldn’t – for better or worse – have occurred.