Planet Wars (1978): The Brazilian Star Wars Knockoff Fox Sued — and Still Couldn't Stop

There are Star Wars imitations, and then there is Planet Wars. Made in Brazil in 1978, released there as Os Trapalhões na Guerra dos Planetas, and directed by Adriano Stuart for Renato Aragão Productions, this is the rare knockoff that was sued before it was even released, bragged about its inspiration in its own credits, and became a hit anyway. It is cheerfully derivative, hurried, and completely unembarrassed — which is exactly why collectors still hunt for it.

The Film

The title tells the first half of the story. Os Trapalhões — the Tramps, or the Bunglers — were one of Brazil's most popular screen comedy teams, built around Renato Aragão, and their films were broad, family-friendly comedies that reliably drew huge domestic audiences. For this outing, the formula was dropped, wholesale, into outer space. The story follows a kung-fu fighting prince, a princess, and their allies against a Darth Vader-like villain and his forces, with a Chewbacca-like creature among the other borrowings from the series, and intergalactic disco dancing worked in because, in 1978, why would you not?

Nothing about the production pretended to be leisurely or lavish. The catalog history for this title is blunt: the whole film took a month to prepare, shoot, and edit. It was originally shot on video and then converted to 35mm for theatrical exhibition, a shortcut that gives it a look unlike any of the other space operas crowding theaters at the time — part television special, part carnival float, all nerve. Stuart keeps it moving at a trot, leaning on the Trapalhões' comic timing and on the audience's fresh delight in anything with laser swords, caped villains, and hairy co-pilots.

Why It's Rare

Start with the lawsuit. According to our catalog notes, in 1978 20th Century Fox sued Renato Aragão Productions to keep the film from being released at all. Fox did not get that. What it got was a title change: the film could not open as Guerra nas Estrelas — literally Star Wars — so it opened as Guerra dos Planetas, War of the Planets. And then, in the detail that tells you everything about the spirit of this production, the credits still announced, in Portuguese, that it was “based on the motion picture Star Wars.”

The gamble paid off at home. Rushed into Brazilian theaters five months before Star Wars itself was released there, Planet Wars turned into a surprise South American smash — audiences who had not yet seen the real thing happily took the local, comic version first. Abroad, it had almost the opposite life. A Portuguese-language comedy built on a troupe American audiences had never heard of, shot on video and made as a quick local answer to a Hollywood phenomenon, was never an easy export. It circulated in English mainly as a subtitled curiosity, filed under its shortened English title and easily confused in listings with the other low-budget space pictures of the period. Films made this fast, for one market, in a legal shadow tend not to get careful international reissues, and this one largely didn't.

Our Edition

Our listing is the Brazilian production in Portuguese with English subtitles, and the visual quality of this print is rated A in our catalog — a strong rating, especially given the film's shot-on-video origins. Like every title at Gotta See DVDs, it is a DVD-R copy produced from the master print in our library, clearly labeled as a copy, and not presented as a factory-pressed studio original. If you collect Star Wars knockoffs, Brazilian cinema, or movies that exist because a studio lawyer lost, this is an essential shelf piece.

Get Planet Wars on DVD — $19.99, and remember: every third movie in your cart is free.