I can see how some hypersensitive people might perceive Star Wars Minus Star Wars as an unethical remix. They might say it is undermining the Star Wars genre by showing how easy it is to get the plot across without using any audio or video from the movie itself. I think this remix is ethical because it does not wound anyone, nor is it made with any malicious intent. If something like Star Wars Minus Star Wars can even me made, it shows how often and how much the original Star Wars borrowed from various movies in various genres. That doesn’t make the original Star Wars unethical, however. Just like Kallgren’s remix, Star Wars borrows from many sources to form an original piece of work.
Kallgren acknowledges the sources he used by listing every single film or video game he pulled a clip from, as well as any music he used. This is definitely proper acknowledgement because there’s really no other legal way to use a bunch of clips and not credit them somehow. Star War’s acknowledgement is a bit more difficult to explain. While it’s clear they’ve gotten inspiration from many other movie genres, explicitly crediting them isn’t as important because they’re not pulling direct clips from sources, but rather making their own.
Kallgren’s Star Wars Minus Star Wars is not dependent on Star Wars because the whole point of the video was that the plot of SW could be shown without the use of any audio or visuals from SW. That is what is unique about that piece. In the case of the original SW, it’s hard to say how it would’ve turned out if there were not multiple movie genres to get inspiration from. It’s vague, but likely that SW wouldn’t be the same cultural phenomenon without remixing and combining various genres.
Will's INFO 303 Blog 