Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saved the World) is a 1982 Turkish adventure film more popularly known as Turkish Star Wars because of its notorious, unauthorized use of footage from mh:greatestmovies:Star Wars worked into the film, which was caused by censorship laws imposed by the Turkish military, who ruled over the country for 3 years following the 1980 coup d'état.

After the film was released, it was panned by film critics and has been deemed to be one of the worst films ever made.

Plot
The film follows the adventures of Murat (Arkın) and Ali (Akkaya), whose spaceships crash on a desert planet following a battle, shown by using footage from mh:greatestmovies:Star Wars as well as Soviet and American space program newsreel clips. While hiking across the desert, they speculate that the planet is inhabited only by women. Ali does his wolf whistle, which he uses on attractive women. However, he blows the wrong whistle and they are attacked by skeletons on horseback, which they defeat in hand-to-hand combat. The main villain soon shows up and captures the heroes, bringing them to his gladiatorial arena so they can fight. The villain tells them he is actually from Earth and is a 1,000-year-old wizard. He tried to defeat Earth, but was always repelled by a shield of concentrated human brain molecules, which looks like the Death Star from Star Wars. The only way he can bypass this impenetrable defense is to use a human brain against it. The heroes escape and hide in a cave full of refugees who already fled the villain's tyrannical rule. Murat develops a romantic connection with the only woman there (Uçar), who looks after the children (the romance is shown through many long eye-contacts and smiles from the girl, but nothing more). The wizard's zombie minions attack the cave and turn several of the children into zombies, their blood used to renew the evil wizard's immortality. The three then flee the cave and find a local bar, lifted directly from Star Wars (the Mos Eisley Cantina). The two men quickly get into a bar brawl, but the villain suddenly appears and captures them again.

The wizard separates the men and tries to convince them to join him. He sends his queen to seduce Ali, while he orders Murat to be brought before him. He offers Murat the chance to rule over the earth and stars if he joins him. He possesses the power of Earth's ancestry in the form of a golden brain, and all he needs to conquer Earth is a real human brain. After Murat declines, the wizard shows that he has the woman and child in captivity. Enraged, Murat fights the wizard's monsters and skeleton guardians. Meanwhile, monsters attack Ali when he is about to kiss the queen. He defeats the monsters and joins Murat's fight. They are both disabled by laser-armed guards and then unsuccessfully tortured by the wizard. Finally, the wizard pits Murat against a giant monster in the arena. Murat defeats the monster and flees, taking the woman and the child with him. Ali is left in captivity.

Murat finds out about a sword made by "the 13th clan", who melted a mountain thousands of "space years" ago. Murat later finds this sword, shaped like a lightning bolt, in a cave defended by two golden ninjas. He takes the sword after dispatching the guards in an uncharacteristically short fight. Renewed by the sword's power, Murat goes to free his friend from the sorcerer's dungeon. However, Ali becomes envious of the sword, knocks out Murat and takes both the sword and the golden brain. The wizard then uses trickery and deceit to make Ali hand over the artifacts. Having touched these items, the wizard now has increased powers and traps Murat, Ali, the woman and the child. Ali is killed in a foolish attempt to escape.

Grief-stricken, Murat decides to melt down the golden sword and the golden human brain and forge them into a pair of gauntlets and boots. Equipped with magical gloves and super-jumping boots, he searches for the sorcerer to avenge his friend's death. After fighting monsters and skeletons, he comes face-to-face with his nemesis and karate-chops him in half. He then leaves the planet for Earth in a ship that very much resembles the Millennium Falcon.

Production
Production began due to Turkish people being denied Western movies due to the 1980 coup d'etat. The spaceship models were built on a beach, but were lost after a storm. The studio refused to pay for the reconstruction of the models, so they bribed a night watchman at a film distributor to "borrow" inter-negatives of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. They are photocopied and returned the next day. The original cut of the movie was 2 hours and 30 minutes, but for marketability reasons, it was cut to 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Neden Dünyayı Kurtarmadı (Why It Didn't Save The World)

 * 1) Terrible acting from pretty much everyone.
 * 2) The fight scenes are all cheesy-looking and poorly choreographed.
 * 3) There are a lot of plot holes and continuity errors, mostly caused by the gratuitous use of stock footage and about 1/3 of the footage being cut.
 * 4) Poor video quality. This makes the movie rather hard to watch.
 * 5) Tons of awkward moments throughout the film.
 * 6) Steals tons of footage from other science fiction films, notably Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
 * 7) * Said footage is often rendered in the wrong aspect ratio; for instance, the Death Star is shaped like an egg.
 * 8) Due to the aforementioned usage of stock footage, none of the movie's settings and costumes go together well.
 * 9) It also steals music from other films like mh:greatestmovies:Raiders of the Lost Ark, Planet of the Apes and even Disney's The Black Hole.
 * 10) * There is also a clip from Flash Gordon, as mentioned by IHE.
 * 11) The plot is pretty much absolutely incoherent. It's basically a bunch of random things that just happen with little-to-no context, mainly because of the poorly, if not horribly, made action scenes.
 * 12) Awful editing. Scenes just abruptly cut into one another with no warning or transition.
 * 13) Poor special effects which can add salt to the wounds mentioned in Point 3. For instance, most of the space battle scenes have obviously rear-projected scenes from Star Wars.

The Only Redeeming Quality

 * 1) The film is so bad, it's hilariously good.

Reception
The film currently holds a 4.5/10 on IMDb, and has a 69% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Theatrical Trailer
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Full movie
Note: The 2016 restoration is not available on YouTube.

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Reviews
Note: I Hate Everything's review starts at 2:13.

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Trivia

 * The main antagonist bears an uncanny resemblance to Gerard Butler's portrayal of Leonidas from mh:greatestmovies:300.
 * According to TV Tropes, the scene where Murat kicks a rock so hard that it explodes was achieved by having Cüneyt Arkın kick a live hand grenade.
 * As mentioned above, this film is notorious for stealing footage from science-fiction TV shows and movies, most notably Star Wars.
 * In 2016, Ed Glaser of Neon Harbor purchased the only known surviving 35mm print of the film from a retired projectionist. As a result, the film received a 2K scan, the quality of which greatly surpassed any previously available copy (until then, the film had only been available in versions sourced from a poor-quality video tape). Glaser's restoration was screened in select cinemas in the United Kingdom in 2018, and received a limited edition Blu-ray release in October 2021.