The Fan-Favorite Star Wars Ripoff New Audiences Can’t Discover

These days, the movie isn’t on any streaming service, and most people I talk to have never heard of it, let alone seen it. It would seem that the only mark the film made on society was its badness.

In fact, the only Krull reference I’ve ever seen in other media is a Family Guy clip where a convenience store clerk tells Chris not to watch the movie.

With all that in mind, I don’t have high hopes that I can convince anyone to go out and watch Krull after reading this.

I have to try anyway, though. Six-year-old me would want it that way, so here goes nothing.

Krull tells the tale of Prince Colwyn and Princess Lyssa, two kids madly in love and about to unify their two kingdoms through marriage. Slayers, Krull’s version of Stormtroopers, crash the wedding and abduct Lyssa.

The Slayers bring Lyssa to their master, the Beast, an entity of galactic evil who travels the cosmos in his home/spaceship, the Black Fortress.

A battered Colwyn seeks to rescue the princess, but there’s one problem: the Black Fortress moves to a new location every day.

Without knowing where it’s going to be at any given time, Colwyn is helpless to save his beloved. Luckily, he encounters several allies along the way to aid him in his noble quest.

If any of this sounds familiar, that is because Krull is 100 percent a Star Wars ripoff. However, in the sea of derivative sci-fi/fantasy movies that flooded Hollywood in the late ’70s/early ’80s, Krull is the only one worth a fig.

The world of Krull (the movie’s name comes from the planet where the story is set) is as detailed and fully realized as the settings in Star Wars.

Much like Star Wars, Krull just kind of tells you stuff and expects you to figure everything out from context clues. The movie never tells you exactly what the Beast’s deal is, and in the same way, A New Hope reveals jack squat about Darth Vader.

All we really need to know as viewers is that the Beast is evil. The rest is incidental.

Details like the weird slug things that leave the Slayer’s bodies when they’re killed and burrow underground are there for the atmosphere and world-building. I didn’t know what their deal was when I was a kid, and I still don’t. It’s just a cool visual.

Krull is full of cool visuals and recognizable characters. When an old man named Ynyr finds Colwyn and takes him on a quest to retrieve a sacred weapon, you know right away that he’s the Obi-Wan character.

Colwyn is Luke Skywalker. Only, instead of a lightsaber, he gets the Glaive. More on that later.

Comic relief Ergo the Magnificent, a bumbling sorcerer Colwyn and Ynyr pick up along the way, acts as Krull’s C-3PO. Rell, a hulking cyclops who joins the party, is super strong and tall like Chewbacca. Honestly, I could do this all day.

Krull isn’t a complete Star Wars parallel by any stretch. For one thing, the movie is more fantasy than sci-fi. The characters use regular blades and ride horses as opposed to laser swords and land speeders. Krull is also darker than Star Wars.

While the film received the same PG-rating there’s more disturbing imagery on display. One sequence with a giant crystalline spider still gives me the willies to this day.

A scene where a changeling dies, reverting halfway back to its original form, could easily disturb a small child.

Krull‘s most interesting element is also the one least like anything from Star Wars: the Glaive. The Glaive is one of the coolest movie weapons ever created. It’s an impractical bladed pinwheel of death that comes back after it’s thrown.

I made so many glaives when I was a kid, usually using clothespins and Frisbees. It’s one of those weapons, like the razor boomerang in The Road Warrior, that wouldn’t make much sense in real life but is perfect for a movie.

GFR SCORE

It goes without saying that Krull was a box office bomb when it was released. Despite an arcade game, a board game, an Atari 2600 cartridge, and various other merchandise, Columbia Pictures couldn’t generate any hype for the film.

Krull brought in $16.9 million against a budget of $30 million. Reviews were as dismal as ticket sales, resulting in a 35 percent critic score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Today, the movie has a small cult following, but it deserves more. Sadly, without streaming, that’s not likely to happen anytime soon. I implore anyone reading this to rent or purchase the movie digitally on sites like Amazon or Apple TV, or even hop on eBay and pick up a physical copy.

Krull is a fun sci-fi/fantasy romp that deserves its day in the sun and hopefully I’ve inspired at least one person to check it out.