Fed up with the simple-minded commentary he read about Star Wars in 1977, Denis wrote a piece for the Journal of Popular Film, then at Bowling Green University in Ohio. It came out in early 1978, one of the first serious pieces in what was soon to become a growth industry. Denis thought the film was great. Disturbed by the adulation that then greeted The Empire Strikes Back, Denis wrote a comparison of the two films, lamenting the sense of betrayal that Empire filled him with. Proposing a book on the topic to Oxford, Denis wrote a third piece, “The Times of the Stars,” that was never published (in the end Oxford declined to publish a book on so trivial a subject).

“The Star in Our Hearts,“ Journal of Popular Film, 1978.

“The Time of the Stars,” unpublished, 1978.

“The Empire’s New Clothes,” Film Quarterly, 1981.