OK, STAR WARS was a RIPOFF of all the old 1930's Republic action serials

It reproduces the plot of Star Wars. A princess is kidnapped by scary super-villain (and his drone-like anonymous armored soldiers), so the young hero goes off to rescue her, after being instructed by an old sage and equipped with a cool-looking special weapon. En route, he links up with a livable rogue and some comic relief characters. They raid the villain's super-fortress and destroy it, having to rely on a special magic force at the last minute to do so.

It's just obvious that they consciously set out to copy the Formula, making enough changes so that it wasn't exact the same. Vader was mechanical-looking, so the Beast was organic (not a great idea). The Stormtroopers were white, so the slayers were black. The Death Star was an artificial planet, so the Beast had an artificial mountain (another dumb idea).