Targeting by intuition - Blish and Lucas

[C10]

(Posting this in Books rather than Film on the theory that more SFF fans may be familiar with Star Wars than with 1950s novels.)

One notable scene in the original Star Wars movie was the "trench run," in which Luke drops a couple of bombs down a shaft in the Death Star. Shutting down his targeting computer, he uses The Force to guide his aim.

Many here may have read the innovative and influential James Blish series Cities In Flight. In the third collected volume, Earthman Come Home, the former Okie city of Manhattan has converted an entire planet into a spacecraft with the "spindizzy" drive. When Mayor Amalfi discovers a dangerous Vegan orbital fort hiding amid a "Jungle" of flying cities, he contrives to destroy it by

Spoiler

smashing it onto his conveyance like a bug on a windshield.

At the critical moment, he goes into a kind of trance, letting his fingers do the steering.

"He could only guess, with the fullest impact of his intuition, that now was the time ... He moved the space stick out and back in a flat loop about three millimeters long. The City Fathers instantly snatched the stick out of his hand. ...

Spoiler

For that impact, transmitted to the belfry of City Hall thorough the rock of Hern VI, meant that Amalfi's instant of personal control had been fair and true. Somewhere on the leading hemisphere of Hern VI there was now an enormous white-hot crater.

That crater, and the traces of metal salts which were dissolved in its molten lining, held the grave of the oldest of all Okie legends: The Vegan orbital fort."
Wonder if Spielberg had read CiF and borrowed this trope, consciously or otherwise. Anyone care to offer similar examples?

 

[hitmouse]

You might be thinking of Lucas rather than Spielberg.
Quite possible that Lucas had read CIF though whether or not he channelled Blish is moot.
This sort of romantic conceit, where The Hero ultimately transcends their inner doubts, is quite common in coming of age stories and movies. Off the top of my head: Karate Kid, Harry Potter, The Matrix.

 

[C10]

Oops - where's the "edit" button? Just watched Spielberg's autobiographical The Fabelmans; please forgive the brain-glitch.
Yes, the martial-arts genre is full of examples like that, where people fight blind because they are, e.g. Zatoichi, or have been temporarily blinded by deceit or fog or something. I was thinking more of high-tech and large-scale, like space opera. The dramatic blind jump in Battlestar Galactica (rev.2) would exemplify that. As you suggest, though, it's not only a common feature of the fantastical bildungsroman, but also a continuum across genres.

Thanks!

 

[Dave]

I have changed Speilberg to Lucas in the thread title for you. There is little that is original in Star Wars: A New Hope and it's success is more about the wayin which they were combined and reused, but I agree with hitmouse that it is much more common than those two instances.

I think these are the Tropes you were looking for:
Gut Feeling
Don't Think, Feel!

 

[C10]

Many thanks to Dave and hitmouse. Love that TV Tropes site!

 

[Dave]

Actually, that Tropes website says that the "Trench Run" in Star Wars owes more to The Dam Busters and 633 Squadron than anything else. I remember now in The Dam Busters where they have two spotlights that cross to indicate the correct height, but eventually they dispense with then and just trust to luck.

The Dam Busters

The Dam Busters is a 1955 British film starring Richard Todd and Michael Redgrave. The story of the Dam Busters is one which brings out several features of the British — the sophistication of their engineering innovation, the bravery of …

tvtropes.org

Notable for its influence (along with 633 Squadron) on a little movie called Star Wars: the trench run was heavily inspired by the climax of the film. Several lines of dialogue are actually re-used, nearly verbatim.

I'm sure that James Blish must have watched both those films.

 

[C10]

I'm sure that James Blish must have watched both those films.

Gene Roddenberry, too - especially since he was an actual bomber pilot. I'm trying to recall if there are any "shooting blind" scenes in ST: TOS or TNG.

 

[soulsinging]

The attack on the cylon trillium refinery in BSG probably fits this trope in multiple ways.

 

[KiraAnn]

Actually, that Tropes website says that the "Trench Run" in Star Wars owes more to The Dam Busters and 633 Squadron than anything else. I remember now in The Dam Busters where they have two spotlights that cross to indicate the correct height, but eventually they dispense with then and just trust to luck.

The Dam Busters

The Dam Busters is a 1955 British film starring Richard Todd and Michael Redgrave. The story of the Dam Busters is one which brings out several features of the British — the sophistication of their engineering innovation, the bravery of …

tvtropes.org

I'm sure that James Blish must have watched both those films.

Whether Blish saw those movies is irrelevant:

1. 633 Squadron came out in 1964, and the last Cities in Flight book came out in 1962;
2. Dam Busters was released in 1955 and the referenced story "Okie" was published as a novelette in 1951.

 

[Dave]

Okay, Blish couldn't have seen 633 Squadron before writing Cities in Flight. I can't even remember a "targeting by intuition" in 633 Squadron anyhow, and I think the similarity to Star Wars comes more because of the repetitive 'Trench Runs' they make during practice. I'd very much doubt that Dam Busters or Okie was original in having "targeting by intuition" either, I'm just not well read enough to be able to quote earlier examples. I'm also not saying Blish plagerised anything, though the TV Tropes website obviously thinks that Lucas in Star Wars did, I'm just pointing out that no idea is really completely new. Wasn't David's catapult strike against the forehead of the giant of the Philistines, Goliath, just a lucky shot too?

 

[C10]

And out here IRL...

Part of my interest in this trope goes back to a story I heard years ago from someone whose father had been in Japan (as an Occupation doctor, I believe) many years earlier still, before Herrigel's "Zen in the Art of Archery" was well-known in the West. This fellow had been invited to watch an archery contest in the courtyard of a castle or temple. He was shocked to see the judges standing just a few inches from the target - not a big straw bull's-eye, but a hand's-width flat board. If the story was true, it would reflect both great skill and great trust! All eyes open, presumably.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Re: old ww2 footage and Star Wars, I'm pretty sure that George Lucas took a long time to get the special effects to the standard he wanted, so when he did a "first draft" to show the movie execs how the film was going, he was unable to supply these shots. So I think he spliced in WW2 footage and other clips from WW2 movies to give them the feel of what the space combat was aiming for.

So it seems clear what Lucas was studying for space battles.

And yeah dam busters is such an obvious inspiration!.

Regarding the connection between cities in flight and Star Wars, it's been a good 15 years since I've read the books, but Luke doesn't really use intuition, but rather digs into his nascent force abilities - which I feel is a whole other kettle of fish. (There's a lot in Wikipedia on where Lucas got the idea and its development, if you're interested)

 

[KiraAnn]

Lucas' cinematic genius - and it was genius - was to find the right people who could bring his special effects vision to astounding life.