Star Wars

George Lucas, the master of special effects, started a worldwide phenomenon with the premiere of the first Star Wars movie in 1977. Lucas has stated that he tried to ignore science and concentrate more on fiction in creating Star Wars and, indeed, the result is a mythic fantasy that has been classed as ‘Space Opera’.

He is said to have drawn inspiration from many sources including myths, sagas and fairytales, Flash Gordon and Tarzan. The Star Wars universe bears many similarities to the universe in Frank Herbert’s classic Dune novels and borrows elements from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. The cityscapes and even C-3PO are clearly influenced by the 1927 film Metropolis.

The Jedi costumes, their light sabres and Darth Vadar’s helmet are reminiscent of Japanese Samurai films. The dusty and worn planetscapes – a sharp contrast to the shiny and new vision of space seen in most movies – are influenced by Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns. Much, however, is purely the work of the imaginations of designers at Lucas’ special effects firm, Industrial Light and Magic, who worked dilligently to create droids, aliens and space ships never before seen by audiences.

A young Harrison Ford shines in the role of Han Solo, together with Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia and Mark Hamill as the Jedi Luke Skywalker. The plot is a classic tale of good and evil as Skywalker discovers he is a Jedi and launches an assault on The Empire to save his sister, Princess Leia, and overcome Darth Vadar, a Jedi who turned to ‘the Dark side’ and turns out to be Skywalker’s father.

Lucas made two sequels in the early 1980s - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and The Return of the Jedi (1983) but, such was the clamour for more from fans and Lucas’ desire to make use of the very latest special effects, that he made three more films in the 1990s, explaining the events leading up to the original trilogy. Star Wars today is much bigger than the films. It is a multi-million dollar merchandising business, generating toys, books, video games and even lunch boxes. Estimates set the merchandising revenue of Star Wars at a staggering US $28 billion over its history.