Films that influenced Star Wars
Although it is unofficial, many films have inspired the Star Wars series that premiered in 1977. The Japanese movie director Akira Kurosawa who directed movies such as the Seven Samurai’s introduced the concept of a sword and samurai fantasy to Hollywood.
Spaghetti Western movies that were a series of movies that were produced from Italian background movie directors also became a great inspiration of the rebels, resistance and the space outlaw concept of Star Wars.
The superhuman powers and psychic abilities of the Bene Gesserit and the vast space technology and concepts of a sandy planet of Dune were also surely a great inspiration to Star Wars.
George Lucas admitted he was also inspired by “The Uses of Enchantment” by Bruno Bettelhelm, The Hobbit of J.R.R. Tolkien along with many other fantasies and comics as well.
Along with the popularity of Space Opera genre, George Lucas utilized the financial support he got from his movie American Graffiti while risking much more debt and created Star Wars.
Premiere of Star Wars (later becomes Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) produced by George Lucas in 1977
George Lucas faced many difficulties financially as he had trouble with the budgeting with studios. Eventually George Lucas had to take a great risk. However, Star Wars became a mega hit that hit the market huge and even became a global success.
Along with the inflation rate adjustment, the first release of Star Wars remains as one of the most successful movies that ever existed. Star Wars(Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) has been nominated and has won numerous awards.
Star Wars, the first movie to start off consecutive series and episodes.
After the success of Star Wars, George Lucas attempts to create a sequel, an after episode of Star Wars (later becomes Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope). No movies have ever attempted to create another episode, series or a consecutive part two and expand the storylines.
George Lucas decided to make his first Star Wars movie as a first episode that would later become the 4th episode as in the 2000’s,
George Lucas decided to make a prequel series, that were stories before his first Star Wars (later becomes Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) movie.
Despite the huge financial global success of the first Star Wars movies, many studios feared the failure and risk of the concept of a second episode and refused to invest in George Lucas.
Eventually George Lucas gave up on his wages, however requested a royalty and commission of the profit after the movie premiers.
The Empire Strikes Back (later becomes Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back) in 1980 and Return of the Jedi (later becomes Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi) in 1983 continued the legacy of Star Wars and were all sensational.
George Lucas immediately became one of the riches movie directors due to the success and his commitment.
Star Wars, the first movie to start Merchandising as a Brand
Star Wars is the first movie that attempted to secure its place as a brand. Even after the mega success in cinema, Star Wars only had few contracts with action figures of the main characters and wasn’t aggressive in merchandising.
However, as the popularity of Star Wars continued to grow, Marvel Comics would make a comic series of the side stories of Star Wars.
Star Wars started to establish itself as a brand by publishing children books and producing figures and toys from Star Wars.
Star Wars wasn’t a series of consecutive movie episodes yet. However George Lucas successfully launched and expanded the Star Wars universe by Star Wars:
The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi, Star Wars.
Star Wars was able to establish itself as a brand and started numerous merchandising campaigns with Lego, children’s books, toys, action figures, costume plays, games and became the first movie to establish itself as a franchise and a brand.
Acquisition of Lucas Films and Star Wars to Disney
George Lucas founded Lucas Film that created Star Wars and made visual effects for other movies.
George Lucas continued the Star Wars series by making the prequel trilogy in the early 2000’s that featured the stories before Star Wars (later becomes Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope).
However George Lucas believed that the Star Wars universe have expanded too much and it was difficult to maintain the brand power and the universe that it has created.
Eventually George Lucas believed that Walt Disney Studios was capable of expanding the Star Wars universe and with a 4.05-billion-dollar deal, Walt Disney Studios acquired the Star Wars brand and Lucas Films.
Founding of Industrial Light & Magic(ILM) by George Lucas
ILM(Industrial Light & Magic) along with Weta Digital is the most famous computer visuals and graphics producing company even as of the 2020’s.
George Lucas created ILM to support the computer graphic productions for Star Wars in 1975. Steven Spielberg would collaborate with George Lucas’s ILM company for numerous works as well.
ILM is notable for numerous works such as E.T., Jurassic Park and the Jurassic World franchise, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Titanic, Mission Impossible series, Pirates of the Caribbean series, Transformers series and of course the Star Wars franchise.
Creation of the OpenEXR format and George Lucas’s ILM
George Lucas eventually became a pioneer in the fields of computer graphics(CG) by founding ILM to support the creation of Star Wars.
George Lucas and ILM eventually needed a new computer file format to archive digital visual data. Eventually ILM developed the Open EXR format with a .exr file form that helped archive images and visual data for computer processing.
Instead of patenting the Open EXR format, George Lucas has provided the EXR format as an open source and the Open EXR format became a common file format that helped the filming and video editing industry.
George Lucas’s ILM and the creation of Adobe Photoshop
George Lucas also indirectly contributed to the creation of the Photoshop program created by Adobe. John Knoll who was a creative supervisor working at ILM that was founded by George Lucas created a digital image processing program with his brother Thomas Knoll.
John Knoll required a tool to make a water effects with computer visual graphics and eventually developed the prototype of Adobe Photoshop.
Adobe eventually purchased this program made by the Knoll brothers and named it the famous “Photoshop”.
George Lucas, starter of making ending credits
Until George Lucas, movies at theaters would constantly roll out the films all day long instead of starting the movie at a certain fixed time.
The list of staffs and credits thus used to appear at the start of the movie to give the audience some break time as the films would consecutively roll along. However George Lucas became the first person to move the ending credits to the end of the movie.
Instead, George Lucas started off the movie with the iconic Star Wars theme and music created by John Williams. Thus the ending credit of movies was first utilized by George Lucas.
George Lucas resigned from the Writers Guild and the Director’s Guild as he had conflict with crediting Lucas Films at the start of the film instead of the director’s name.
Rather than the staff list and credits being listed at the end of the movie, the Director’s Guild and the Writer’s Guild had a problem with George Lucas stating the brand Lucas Film and the Star Wars theme and summary at the beginning of the movie instead of stating the director’s name.
The guilds believed it was off guidelines and didn’t give credit to the movie director. George Lucas was fined heavily and he immediately quit the Director Guilds and Writer’s Guild that hindered the production of new Star Wars movies after 1980’s.
