It is a period of
civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won
their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.During
the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the
Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station
with enough power to destroy an entire planet.Pursued
by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her
starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and
restore freedom to the galaxy . . . .
STAR WARS EPISODE IV
- A
NEW HOPE
Star
Wars (later retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) is a 1977
American science fiction film written and directed by George Lucas.
The first release in the Star Wars saga, it stars Mark Hamill,
Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Alec Guinness. David Prowse,
Anthony Daniels, Peter Cushing, Kenny Baker and Peter Mayhew co-star
in supporting roles.
The plot focuses on the Rebel Alliance,
led by Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), and its attempt to destroy the
Galactic Empire's space station, the Death Star. This conflict
disrupts the isolated life of farmhand Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill)
who inadvertently acquires a pair of droids that possess stolen
architectural plans for the Death Star. When the Empire begins a
destructive search for the missing droids, Skywalker agrees to
accompany Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) on a mission to
return the Death Star plans to the Rebel Alliance and save the galaxy
from the tyranny of the Galactic Empire.
Star Wars was released theatrically in the
United States on May 25th, 1977 and received 10 Academy Award
nominations (including Best Picture), winning seven. It was selected
to become part of the US National Film Registry by the Library of
Congress in its first year of opening as being "culturally,
historically, or aesthetically significant"; at the time, it was
the newest film to be selected, and it was the only film from the
1970s to be chosen. The film's soundtrack was added to the US
National Recording Registry 15 years later. Today, it is often
regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, and is also,
alongside The Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane, considered by many
to be one of the most important films in the history of motion pictures.
This was the movie that
spawned a multi-billion dollar business empire and made Lucas
arguably the most successful movie maker in history. But its chances
of success seemed slim indeed when it was initially released. After
production problems and budget over-runs, Fox had considerable
trouble booking the movie with distributors, and opened it in 43
theaters only after threatening to pull The Other Side of Midnight
from many of those venues. What happened next has passed into box
office legend. Lines around the block on opening weekend soon became
lines around the block across the nation as the movie stayed at the
top of the charts for most of the Summer. Re-releases over the next 5
years generated more business, and the 20th anniversary release in
1997 set new boxoffice benchmarks.
Elements of the history of Star Wars are
commonly disputed, as George Lucas's statements about it have changed
over time. Lucas has said that it was early as 1971, after he
completed directing his first full-length feature, THX 1138, that he
first had an idea for a space fantasy film, though he has also
claimed to have had the idea long before then. Originally, Lucas
wanted to adapt the Flash Gordon space adventure comics and serials
into his own films, having been fascinated by them since he was
young. In 1979, he said, "I especially loved the Flash Gordon
serials... Of course I realize now how crude and badly done they
were... loving them that much when they were so awful, I began to
wonder what would happen if they were done really well."
At the Cannes Film Festival in May
following the completion of THX 1138, Lucas was granted a two-film
development deal with United Artists; the two films were American
Graffiti, and an untitled Flash Gordon-esque space fantasy film. He
pushed towards buying the Flash Gordon rights. He said:
"I wanted to make a Flash Gordon
movie, with all the trimmings, but I couldn't obtain the rights to
the characters. So I began researching and went right back and found
where Alex Raymond (who had done the original Flash Gordon comic
strips in newspapers) had got his idea from. I discovered that he'd
got his inspiration from the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (author of
Tarzan) and especially from his John Carter of Mars series books. I
read through that series, then found that what had sparked Burroughs
off was a science-fantasy called Gulliver on Mars, written by Edwin
Arnold and published in 1905. That was the first story in this genre
that I have been able to trace. Jules Verne had got pretty close, I
suppose, but he never had a hero battling against space creatures or
having adventures on another planet. A whole new genre developed from
that idea."
Director Francis Ford Coppola, (who
accompanied Lucas in buying the Flash Gordon rights), recounted in
1999, "[George] was very depressed because he had just come back
and they wouldn't sell him Flash Gordon. And he says, 'Well, I'll
just invent my own.'" Lucas envisioned his own space opera and
called it The Star Wars. During this period, Lucas went to United
Artists and showed them script for American Graffiti, but they passed
on the film, which was then picked up by Universal Pictures. United
Artists also passed on Lucas's The Star Wars concept, which he
shelved for the time being. After spending the next two years
completing American Graffiti, Lucas turned his attention to The Star Wars.
Lucas
began writing in January 1973, "eight hours a day, five days a
week", by taking small notes, inventing odd names and assigning
them possible characterizations. Lucas would discard many of these by
the time the final script was written, but he included several names
and places in the final script or its sequels. He revived others
decades later when he wrote his prequel trilogy. He used these
initial names and ideas to compile a two-page synopsis titled Journal
of the Whills, which told the tale of the training of apprentice CJ
Thorpe as a "Jedi-Bendu" space commando by the legendary
Mace Windu. Frustrated that his story was too difficult to
understand, Lucas then began writing a 13-page treatment called The
Star Wars on April 17th, 1973, which had thematic parallels with
Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film The Hidden Fortress.
After
United Artists declined to budget the film, Lucas and producer Gary
Kurtz presented the a 14-page story treatment
to Universal Pictures, the studio that financed American Graffiti;
however, it rejected its options for the film because the concept was
"a little strange", and it said that Lucas should follow
American Graffiti with more consequential themes.
The Star Wars concept was
not well received. Because of the film's space setting, it was viewed
as a science fiction film, which drew relatively low numbers at the
box office. Science fiction films of the 60s and 70s were generally
stories of apocalyptic views of death and destruction, rather than
uplifting coming of age stories.
Lucas said, "I've always been an
outsider to Hollywood types. They think I do weirdo films."
According to Kurtz, Lew Wasserman, the studio's head, "just
didn't think much of science fiction at that time, didn't think it
had much of a future then, with that particular audience. Science
fiction wasn't popular in the mid-'70s... what seems to be the case
generally is that the studio executives are looking for what was
popular last year, rather than trying to look forward to what might
be popular next year... Although Star Wars wasn't like that at all,
it was just sort of lumped into that same kind of [science fiction] category."
Lucas explained in 1977 that the film is
not "about the future" and that it "is a fantasy much
closer to the Brothers Grimm than it is to 2001". He added:
"My main reason for making it was to give young people an
honest, wholesome fantasy life, the kind my generation had. We had
westerns, pirate movies, all kinds of great things. Now they have The
Six Million Dollar Man and Kojak. Where are the romance, the
adventure, and the fun that used to be in practically every movie made?"
There were also concerns regarding the
project's potentially high budget. Lucas and Kurtz, in pitching the
film, said that it would be "low-budget, Roger Corman style, and
the budget was never going to be more than, well, originally we had
proposed about 8 million, it ended up being about 10. Both of those
figures are very low budget by Hollywood standards at the time."
Lucas disliked the studio
system, as his previous two films American Graffiti and THX 1138 were
both reedited without his consent. Still, aware that there was no way
around it and after Walt Disney Productions rejected the project,
he pursued Alan Ladd, Jr., the new head
of 20th Century Fox, and in June 1973 completed a deal to write and
direct the film. Although Ladd did not grasp the technical side of
the project, he believed that Lucas was talented. Lucas later stated
that Ladd "invested in me, he did not invest in the movie."
The deal gave Lucas $150,000 to write and direct the film.
Since commencing his writing process in
January 1973, Lucas had done "various rewrites in the evenings
after the day's work." He would write four different screenplays
for Star Wars, "searching for just the right ingredients,
characters and storyline. It's always been what you might call a good
idea in search of a story." By May 1974, he had expanded the
film treatment into a rough draft screenplay, adding elements such as
the Sith, the Death Star, and a general by the name of Annikin
Starkiller. He changed Starkiller to an adolescent boy, and he
shifted the general into a supporting role as a member of a family of
dwarfs. Lucas envisioned the Corellian smuggler, Han Solo, as a
large, green-skinned monster with gills. He based Chewbacca on his
Alaskan Malamute dog, Indiana (whom he would later use as namesake
for his character Indiana Jones), who often acted as the director's "co-pilot"
by sitting in the passenger seat of his car.
Lucas began researching the science
fiction genre by watching films and reading books and comics. His
first script incorporated ideas from many new sources. The script
would also introduce the concept of a Jedi Master father and his son,
who trains to be a Jedi under his father's friend; this would
ultimately form the basis for the film and, later, the trilogy.
However, in this draft, the father is a hero who is still alive at
the start of the film.
Lucas completed a second draft of The Star
Wars in January 1975, making heavy simplifications and introducing
the young hero on a farm as Luke Starkiller. Annikin became Luke's
father, a wise Jedi knight. "The Force" was also introduced
as a mystical energy field. This second draft still had some
differences from the final version in the characters and
relationships. For example, Luke had several brothers, as well as his
father, who appears in a minor role at the end of the film. The
script became more of a fairy tale quest as opposed to the
action-adventure of the previous versions. This version ended with
another text crawl, previewing the next story in the series. This
draft was also the first to introduce the concept of a Jedi turning
to the dark side: the draft included a historical Jedi who became the
first to ever fall to the dark side, and then trained the Sith to use
it. Impressed with his works, Lucas hired conceptual artist Ralph
McQuarrie to create paintings of certain scenes around this time.
When Lucas delivered his screenplay to the studio, he included
several of McQuarrie's paintings.
A
third draft, dated August 1st, 1975, was titled The Star Wars: From
the Adventures of Luke Starkiller. This third draft had most of the
elements of the final plot, with only some differences in the
characters and settings. The draft characterized Luke as an only
child, with his father already dead, replacing him with a substitute
named Ben Kenobi. This script would be re-written for the fourth and
final draft, dated January 1st, 1976, as The Adventures of Luke
Starkiller as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star
Wars. Lucas worked with his friends Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck to
revise the fourth draft into the final pre-production script. 20th
Century Fox approved a budget of $8.25 million and the positive
reception of American Graffiti afforded Lucas the leverage necessary
to renegotiate his deal with Alan Ladd, Jr. and request the sequel
rights to the film. For Lucas, this deal protected Star Wars'
unwritten segments and most of the merchandising profits.
Lucas finished writing his script in March
1976, when the crew started filming. He said, "What finally
emerged through the many drafts of the script has obviously been
influenced by science-fiction and action-adventure I've read and
seen. And I've seen a lot of it. I'm trying to make a classic sort of
genre picture, a classic space fantasy in which all the influences
are working together. There are certain traditional aspects of the
genre I wanted to keep and help perpetuate in Star Wars." During
production, he changed Luke's name from Starkiller to Skywalker and
altered the title to The Star Wars and later Star Wars. He would also
continue to tweak the script during filming, including adding the
death of Obi-Wan after realizing he served no purpose in the ending
of the film.
For the film's opening crawl, Lucas
originally wrote a composition consisting of six paragraphs with four
sentences each. He said, "The crawl is such a hard thing because
you have to be careful that you're not using too many words that
people don't understand. It's like a poem." Lucas showed his
draft to his friends. Director Brian De Palma, who was there,
described it: "The crawl at the beginning looks like it was
written on a driveway. It goes on forever. It's gibberish."
Lucas recounted what De Palma said the first time he saw it:
"George, you're out of your mind! Let me sit down and write this
for you." De Palma helped to edit the text into the form used in
the film.
Chewbacca, R2-D2, and C-3PO didn’t
emerge fully formed in 1977, George Lucas had help from storyboard
artists like Alex Tavoularis, Joe Johnston, and Ivan Beddoes.
Tavoularis says about this original Darth Vader drawing, "The
snout was different than in the movie. I think my drawings of Darth
Vader were scarier than the final designs."
George Lucas recruited many conceptual
designers, including: Colin Cantwell, who worked on 2001: A Space
Odyssey (1968), to conceptualize the initial spacecraft models; Alex
Tavoularis to create the preliminary conceptual storyboard sketches
of early scripts; and Ralph McQuarrie to visualize the characters,
costumes, props and scenery. McQuarrie's pre-production paintings of
certain scenes from Lucas's early screenplay drafts helped 20th
Century Fox visualize the film, which positively influenced their
decision to fund the project.
The film was ambitious as Lucas wanted to
create fresh prop prototypes and sets (based on McQuarrie's
paintings) that had never been realized before in science fiction
films. He commissioned production designers John Barry and Roger
Christian to work on the production sets. Christian said that Lucas
"didn't want anything [in Star Wars] to stand out, he wanted it
[to look] all real and used. And I said, 'Finally somebody's doing it
the right way.'"
Lucas
described a "used future" concept to the production
designers in which all devices, ships, and buildings looked aged and
dirty. Instead of following the traditional sleekness and futuristic
architecture of science fiction films that came before, the Star Wars
sets were designed to look inhabited and used. Barry said that the
director "wants to make it look like its shot on location on
your average everyday Death Star or Mos Eisly Spaceport or local
cantina." Lucas believed that "what is required for true
credibility is a used future", opposing the interpretation of
"future in most futurist movies" that "always looks
new and clean and shiny." Christian supported Lucas's vision,
saying "All science fiction before was very plastic and stupid
uniforms and Flash Gordon stuff. Nothing was new. George was going
right against that."
The designers started working with the
director before Star Wars was approved by 20th Century Fox. For four
to five months, in a studio in Kensal Rise, England, they attempted
to plan the creation of the props and sets with "no money".
Although Lucas initially provided funds using his earnings from
American Graffiti, it was inadequate. As they could not afford to
dress the sets, Christian was forced to use unconventional methods
and materials to achieve the desired look. He suggested that Lucas
use scrap in making the dressings, and the director agreed. Christian
said, "I've always had this idea. I used to do it with models
when I was a kid. I'd stick things on them and we'd make things look old."
According to Christian, the Millennium
Falcon set was the most difficult to build. Christian wanted the
interior of the Falcon to look like that of a submarine. He found
scrap airplane metal "that no one wanted in those days and
bought them". He began his creation process by breaking down jet
engines into scrap pieces, giving him the chance to "stick it in
the sets in specific ways". It took him several weeks to finish
the chess set (which he described as "the most encrusted
set") in the hold of the Falcon. The garbage compactor set
"was also pretty hard, because I knew I had actors in there and
the walls had to come in, and they had to be in dirty water and I had
to get stuff that would be light enough so it wouldn't hurt them but
also not bobbing around". A total of 30 sets consisting of
planets, starships, caves, control rooms, cantinas, and the Death
Star corridors were created; all of the nine sound stages at Elstree
were used to accommodate them. The massive rebel hangar set was
housed at a second sound stage at Shepperton Studios; the stage is
the largest in Europe.
In 1975, Lucas formed his own visual
effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) after discovering
that 20th Century Fox's visual effects department had been disbanded.
ILM began its work on Star Wars in a warehouse in Van Nuys,
California. Most of the visual effects used pioneering digital motion
control photography developed by John Dykstra and his team, which
created the illusion of size by employing small models and slowly
moving cameras.
George Lucas tried "to get a cohesive
reality" for his feature. However, since the film is a fairy
tale, as he had described, "I still wanted it to have an
ethereal quality, yet be well composed and, also, have an alien
look." He designed the film to have an "extremely bizarre,
Gregg Toland-like surreal look with strange over-exposed colors, a
lot of shadows, a lot of hot areas." Lucas wanted Star Wars to
embrace the combination of "strange graphics of fantasy"
and "the feel of a documentary" to impress a distinct look.
To achieve this, he hired the British cinematographer Gilbert Taylor.
Originally, Lucas's first choice for the position was Geoffrey
Unsworth, who also provided the cinematography for Stanley Kubrick's
2001: A Space Odyssey. Unsworth was interested in working with the
director, and initially accepted the job when it was offered to him
by Lucas and Kurtz. However, he eventually withdrew to work on the
Vincente Minnelli-directed A Matter of Time (1976) instead. Lucas
called up for other cinematographers, and eventually chose Taylor,
basing his choice on Taylor's cinematography for Dr. Strangelove and
A Hard Day's Night (1964). On his decision, Lucas said: "I
thought they were good, eccentrically photographed pictures with a
strong documentary flavor."
Taylor said that Lucas, who was consumed
by the details of the complicated production, "avoided all
meetings and contact with me from day one, so I read the extra-long
script many times and made my own decisions as to how I would shoot
the picture." He also "took it upon myself to experiment
with photographing the lightsabers and other things onstage before we
moved on to our two weeks of location work in Tunisia." During
production, Lucas and Taylor (whom Kurtz called "old-school"
and "crotchety") had disputes over filming. With a
background in independent filmmaking, Lucas was accustomed to
creating most of the elements of the film himself. His lighting
suggestions were rejected by an offended Taylor, who felt that Lucas
was overstepping his boundaries by giving specific instructions,
sometimes even moving lights and cameras himself and Taylor refused
to use the soft-focus lenses and gauze Lucas wanted after Fox
executives complained about the look.
Originally, Lucas envisioned the planet of
Tatooine, where much of the film would take place, as a jungle
planet. Gary Kurtz traveled to the Philippines to scout locations;
however, because of the idea of spending months filming in the jungle
would make Lucas "itchy", the director refined his vision
and made Tatooine a desert planet instead. Kurtz then researched all
American, North African, and Middle Eastern deserts, and found
Tunisia, near the Sahara desert, as the ideal location.
When principal photography began on March
22nd, 1976 in the Tunisian desert for the scenes on Tatooine, the
project faced several problems. Lucas fell behind schedule in the
first week of shooting due to malfunctioning props and electronic
breakdowns. Moreover, a rare Tunisian rainstorm struck the country,
which further disrupted filming. Taylor said, "you couldn't
really see where the land ended and the sky began. It was all a gray
mess, and the robots were just a blur." Given this situation,
Lucas requested for heavy filtration, which confused Taylor, who
said: "I thought the look of the film should be absolutely
clean... But George saw it differently, so we tried using nets and
other diffusion. He asked to set up one shot on the robots with a
300mm, and the sand and sky just mushed together. I told him it
wouldn't work, but he said that was the way he wanted to do the
entire film, all diffused." This difference was later settled by
20th Century Fox executives, who backed Taylor's suggestion.
Filming began in Chott el Djerid, while a
construction crew in Tozeur took eight weeks to transform the desert
into the desired setting. Other locations included the sand dunes of
the Tunisian desert near Nafta, where a scene featuring a giant
skeleton of a creature lying in the background as R2-D2 and C-3PO
make their way across the sands was filmed. When actor Anthony
Daniels wore the C-3PO outfit for the first time in Tunisia, the left
leg piece shattered down through the plastic covering his left foot,
stabbing him. He also could not see through his costume's eyes, which
was covered with gold to prevent corrosion. Abnormal radio signals
caused by the Tunisian sands made the radio-controlled R2-D2 models
run out of control. Kenny Baker, who portrayed R2-D2, said: "I
was incredibly grateful each time an [R2] would actually work
right." After several scenes were filmed against the volcanic
canyons outside Tozeur, production moved to Matmata to film Luke's
home on Tatooine. Lucas chose Hotel Sidi Driss, which is larger than
the typical underground dwellings, to shoot the interior of Luke's
homestead. Additional scenes for Tatooine were filmed at Death Valley
in North America.
After
completing two and a half weeks of filming in Tunisia, the cast and
crew moved into the more controlled environment of Elstree Studios,
near London. Difficulties encountered in Tunisia were assumed to
cease; however, due to strict British working conditions adhered to
on set, a new problem arose: filming had to finish by 5:30 pm, unless
Lucas was in the middle of a scene. The interiors were shot in London
due to its proximity to North Africa and because of the availability
of top technical crew at Elstree Studios. The film studio was the
only one of its kind in England or America that could cater nine
large stages at the same time and allow the company complete freedom
to use its own personnel. Despite Lucas' efforts, his crew had little
interest in the film and did not take the project seriously. Most of
the crew considered the project a "children's film", rarely
took their work seriously, and often found it unintentionally
humorous. Actor Baker later confessed that he thought the film would
be a failure. Harrison Ford found it strange that "there's a
princess with weird buns in her hair", and he called Chewbacca a
"giant in a monkey suit".
Filming
at Elstree Studios became another problem for Taylor; the sets John
Barry made "were like a coal mine", as the cinematographer
described. He said that "they were all black and gray, with
really no opportunities for lighting at all." To resolve the
problem, he worked the lighting into the sets by chopping in its
walls, ceiling and floors. This would result in "a 'cut-out'
system of panel lighting", with quartz lamps that could be
placed in the holes in the walls, ceiling and floors. His idea was
supported by the Fox studio, which agreed that "we couldn't have
this 'black hole of Calcutta'". The lighting approach Taylor
devised "allowed George to shoot in almost any direction without
extensive relighting, which gave him more freedom." In total,
filming the scenes in England took 14 and a half weeks.
The moon Yavin 4, which acted as the rebel
base in the film, was filmed in the Mayan temples at Tikal,
Guatemala. Lucas selected the location as a potential filming site
after seeing a poster of it hanging at a travel agency while he was
filming in England. This inspired him to send a film crew to
Guatemala in March 1977 to shoot scenes. While filming in Tikal, the
crew paid locals with a six pack of beer to watch over the camera
equipment for several days.
Lucas rarely spoke to the actors, who felt
that he expected too much of them while providing little direction.
His directions to the actors usually consisted of the words
"faster" and "more intense". Kurtz stated that
"it happened a lot where he would just say, 'Let's try it again
a little bit faster.' That was about the only instruction he'd give
anybody. A lot of actors don't mind, they don't care, they just get
on with it. But some actors really need a lot of pampering and a lot
of feedback, and if they don't get it, they get paranoid that they
might not be doing a good job." Kurtz has said that Lucas
"wasn't gregarious, he's very much a loner and very shy, so he
didn't like large groups of people, he didn't like working with a
large crew, he didn't like working with a lot of actors."
Ladd
offered Lucas some of the only support from the studio; he dealt
with scrutiny from board members over the rising budget and complex
screenplay drafts. Initially, Fox approved $8 million for the project
and after requests that the budget had to be more, the executives got
a bit scared. Lucas and his crew pulled together new budget figures
while the production fell behind schedule and Ladd told Lucas he had
to finish production within a week or he would be forced to shut
down. The budget was now at about 9.8 million and the crew split into
three units, with those units led by Lucas, Kurtz, and production
supervisor Robert Watts. Under the new system, the project met the
studio's deadline.
The cast attempted to make Lucas laugh or
smile, as he often appeared depressed. At one point, the project
became so demanding that Lucas was diagnosed with hypertension and
exhaustion and was warned to reduce his stress level. Post-production
was equally stressful due to increasing pressure from 20th Century
Fox. Moreover, Mark Hamill's car accident left his face visibly
scarred, which restricted re-shoots.
Star Wars was originally slated for
release on Christmas 1976; however, its production delays pushed the
film's release to summer 1977. Already anxious about meeting his
deadline, Lucas was shocked when editor John Jympson's first cut of
the film was a "complete disaster". According to an article
in Star Wars Insider No. 41 by David West Reynolds, this first edit
of Star Wars contained about 30–40% different footage from the
final version. After attempting to persuade Jympson to cut the film
his way, Lucas replaced him with Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew. He
also allowed his then-wife, Marcia Lucas, to aid the editing process
while she was cutting the film New York, New York (1977) with Lucas's
friend Martin Scorsese. Richard Chew found the film to have a
lethargic pace and to have been cut in a by-the-book manner: scenes
were played out in master shots that flowed into close-up coverage.
He found that the pace was dictated by the actors instead of the
cuts. Hirsch and Chew worked on two reels simultaneously.
Jympson's
original edit contained a large amount of footage which differed
from the final cut of the film, including several alternate takes and
a number of scenes which were subsequently deleted to improve the
narrative pace. The most significant material cut was a series of
scenes from the first part of the film which served to introduce the
character of Luke Skywalker. These early scenes, set in Anchorhead on
the planet Tatooine, presented the audience with Luke's everyday life
among his friends as it is affected by the space battle above the
planet; they also introduced the character of Biggs Darklighter,
Luke's closest friend who departs to join the Rebellion. Chew
explained the rationale behind removing these scenes as a narrative
decision: "In the first five minutes, we were hitting everybody
with more information than they could handle. There were too many
story lines to keep straight: the robots and the Princess, Vader,
Luke. So we simplified it by taking out Luke and Biggs". After
viewing a rough cut, Alan Ladd likened these Anchorhead scenes to
"American Graffiti in outer space". Lucas was looking for a
way of accelerating the storytelling, and removing Luke's early
scenes would distinguish Star Wars from his earlier teenage drama and
"get that American Graffiti feel out of it". Lucas also
stated that he wanted to move the narrative focus to C-3PO and R2-D2:
"At the time, to have the first half-hour of the film be mainly
about robots was a bold idea."
Meanwhile,
Industrial Light & Magic was struggling to achieve unprecedented
special effects. The company had spent half of its budget on four
shots that Lucas deemed unacceptable.
Moreover, theories surfaced that the
workers at ILM lacked discipline, forcing Lucas to intervene
frequently to ensure that they were on schedule. With hundreds of
uncompleted shots remaining, ILM was forced to finish a year's work
in six months. Lucas inspired ILM by editing together aerial
dogfights from old war films, which enhanced the pacing of the scenes.
During the chaos of production and
post-production, the team made decisions about character voicing and
sound effects. Sound designer Ben Burtt had created a library of
sounds that Lucas referred to as an "organic soundtrack".
Blaster sounds were a modified recording of a steel cable, under
tension, being struck. The lightsaber sound effect was developed by
Burtt as a combination of the hum of idling interlock motors in aged
movie projectors and interference caused by a television set on a
shieldless microphone. Burtt discovered the latter accidentally as he
was looking for a buzzing, sparking sound to add to the
projector-motor hum. For Chewbacca's growls, Burtt recorded and
combined sounds made by dogs, bears, lions, tigers, and walruses to
create phrases and sentences. Lucas and Burtt created the robotic
voice of R2-D2 by filtering their voices through an electronic
synthesizer. Darth Vader's breathing was achieved by Burtt breathing
through the mask of a scuba regulator implanted with a microphone.
In February 1977, Lucas screened an early
cut of the film for Fox executives, several director friends, along
with Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin of Marvel Comics who were
preparing a Star Wars comic book. The cut had a different crawl from
the finished version and used Prowse's voice for Darth Vader. It also
lacked most special effects; hand-drawn arrows took the place of
blaster beams, and when the Millennium Falcon fought TIE fighters,
the film cut to footage of World War II dogfights. The reactions of
the directors present, such as Brian De Palma, John Milius, and
Steven Spielberg, disappointed Lucas. Spielberg, who claimed to have
been the only person in the audience to have enjoyed the film,
believed that the lack of enthusiasm was due to the absence of
finished special effects. Lucas later said that the group was honest
and seemed bemused by the film. In contrast, Ladd and the other
studio executives loved the film; Gareth Wigan told Lucas: "This
is the greatest film I've ever seen" and cried during the
screening. Lucas found the experience shocking and rewarding, having
never gained any approval from studio executives before. The delays
increased the final budget to $11 million.
With
the project $2 million over budget, Lucas was forced to make
numerous artistic compromises to complete Star Wars. Ladd reluctantly
agreed to release an extra $20,000 funding and in early 1977 second
unit filming completed a number of sequences including exterior
desert shots for Tatooine in Death Valley and China Lake Acres in
California, and exterior Yavin jungle shots in Guatemala, along with
additional studio footage to complete the Mos Eisley Cantina
sequence. Lucas had planned to rework a confrontation scene between
Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt in Mos Eisley Spaceport by compositing a
stop-motion animated model of Jabba to replace the actor Declan
Mulholland, but with time and money running out, Lucas reluctantly
decided to cut the scene entirely. The sequence was later re-instated
in the 1997 Special Edition with a computer-generated version of Jabba.
On the recommendation of his friend Steven
Spielberg, Lucas hired composer John Williams. Williams had worked
with Spielberg on the film Jaws, for which he won an Academy Award.
Lucas felt that the film would portray visually foreign worlds, but
that the musical score would give the audience an emotional
familiarity; he wanted a grand musical sound for Star Wars, with
leitmotifs to provide distinction. Therefore, he assembled his
favorite orchestral pieces for the soundtrack, until Williams
convinced him that an original score would be unique and more
unified. However, a few of Williams' pieces were influenced by the
tracks given to him by Lucas: the "Main Title Theme" was
inspired by the theme from the 1942 film Kings Row, scored by Erich
Wolfgang Korngold; and the track "Dune Sea of Tatooine"
drew from the soundtrack of Bicycle Thieves, scored by Alessandro Cicognini.
In March 1977, Williams conducted the
London Symphony Orchestra to record the Star Wars soundtrack in 12
days. The original soundtrack was released as a double LP in 1977 by
20th Century Records. 20th Century Fox released The Story of Star
Wars that same year, which adapted the film and presented it as a
narrated story with music, dialogue, and sound effects from the
original film. The American Film Institute's list of best film scores
ranks the Star Wars soundtrack at number one.
Lucasfilm hired Charles Lippincott as
marketing director for Star Wars. As 20th Century Fox gave little
support for marketing beyond licensing T-shirts and posters,
Lippincott was forced to look elsewhere. He secured deals with Marvel
Comics for a comic book adaptation, and with Del Rey Books for a
novelization. A fan of science fiction, he used his contacts to
promote the film at the San Diego Comic-Con and elsewhere within
science fiction fandom. Worried that Star Wars would be beaten out by
other summer films, such as Smokey and the Bandit, 20th Century Fox
moved the release date to May 25th, the Wednesday before Memorial
Day. However, fewer than 40 theaters ordered the film to be shown. In
response, the studio demanded that theaters order Star Wars if they
wanted the eagerly anticipated The Other Side of Midnight based on
the novel by the same name.
Star
Wars debuted on Wednesday, May 25th, 1977, in fewer than 32
theaters, and eight more on Thursday and Friday. Kurtz said in 2002,
"That would be laughable today." It immediately broke box
office records, effectively becoming one of the first blockbuster
films, and Fox accelerated plans to broaden its release. Lucas
himself was not able to predict how successful Star Wars would be.
After visiting the set of the Steven Spielberg directed Close
Encounters of the Third Kind, Lucas was sure Close Encounters would
outperform the yet-to-be-released Star Wars at the box office.
Spielberg disagreed, and felt Lucas's Star Wars would be the bigger
hit. Lucas proposed they trade 2.5% of the profit on each other's
films; Spielberg took the trade, and still receives 2.5% of the
profits from Star Wars.
Fox initially had doubts if Star Wars
would emerge successful. The Other Side of Midnight was supposed to
be the studio's big summer hit, while Lucas' movie was considered the
"B track" for theater owners nationwide. Fearing that the
film would fail, Lucas had made plans to be in Hawaii with his wife
Marcia. Having forgotten that the film would open that day, he spent
most of Wednesday in a sound studio in Los Angeles. When Lucas went
out for lunch with Marcia, they encountered a long line of people
along the sidewalks leading to Mann's Chinese Theatre, waiting to see
Star Wars. He was still skeptical of the film's success despite Ladd
and the studio's enthusiastic reports. While in Hawaii, it was not
until he watched Walter Cronkite discuss the gigantic crowds for Star
Wars on the CBS Evening News that Lucas realized he had become very
wealthy (Francis Ford Coppola, who needed money to finish Apocalypse
Now, sent a telegram to Lucas's hotel asking for funding). Even
technical crew members, such as model makers, were asked for
autographs, and cast members became instant household names; when
Ford visited a record store to buy an album, enthusiastic fans tore
half his shirt off.
The
film was a huge success for the studio, and was credited for
reinvigorating it. Within three weeks of its release, 20th Century
Fox's stock price had doubled to a record high. Prior to 1977, 20th
Century Fox's greatest annual profits were $37 million, while in
1977, the company broke that record by posting a profit of $79 million.
Although the cultural neutrality of the
film helped it to gain international success, Ladd became anxious
during the premiere in Japan. After screening the film, the audience
was silent, leading him to fear that the film would be unsuccessful.
Ladd was later told by his local contacts that, in Japan, silence was
the greatest honor to a film, and the subsequent strong box office
returns confirmed its popularity.
When Star Wars made an unprecedented
second opening at Mann's Chinese Theatre on August 3rd, 1977, after
William Friedkin's Sorcerer failed, thousands of people attended a
ceremony in which C-3PO, R2-D2 and Darth Vader placed their
footprints in the theater's forecourt. At that time Star Wars was
playing in 1,096 theaters in the United States. Approximately 60
theaters played the film continuously for over a year and in 1978
Lucasfilm distributed "Birthday Cake" posters to those
theaters for special events on May 25th, the one-year anniversary of
the film's release.
The film was originally released as Star
Wars, without "Episode IV" or the subtitle A New Hope. The
subtitles were added starting with the film's theatrical re-release
on April 10th, 1981. After ILM used computer-generated effects for
Steven Spielberg's 1993 film Jurassic Park, Lucas concluded that
digital technology had caught up to his original vision for Star
Wars. For the film's 20th anniversary in 1997, Star Wars was
digitally remastered and re-released to movie theaters, along with
The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, under the campaign
title Star Wars Trilogy: Special Edition.
The Special Edition contained visual shots
and scenes that were unachievable in the original release due to
financial, technological, and time constraints; one such scene
involved a meeting between Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt. The process
of creating the new visual effects for Star Wars was featured in the
Academy Award-nominated IMAX documentary film, Special Effects:
Anything Can Happen, directed by Star Wars sound designer, Ben Burtt.
Although most changes were minor or cosmetic in nature, some fans
believe that Lucas degraded the film with the additions. A
particularly controversial change in which a bounty hunter named
Greedo shoots first when confronting Han Solo has inspired T-shirts
brandishing the phrase "Han Shot First". The lego
recreation below of this controversial scene proves once and for all
that Han shot first.
Star Wars required extensive restoration
before Lucas's Special Edition modifications could be attempted. It
was discovered that in addition to the negative motion picture stocks
commonly used on feature films, Lucas had also used internegative
film, a reversal stock which deteriorated faster than negative stocks
did. This meant that the entire printing negative had to be
disassembled, and the CRI (color reversal internegative) portions
cleaned separately from the negative portions. Once the cleaning was
complete, the film was scanned into the computer for restoration. In
many cases, entire scenes had to be reconstructed from their
individual elements. Fortunately, digital compositing technology
allowed them to correct for problems such as alignment of mattes,
"blue-spill", and so forth.
Over the years George Lucas has
re-released Star Wars a number of times, incorporating many changes
including modified computer-generated effects, altered dialogue,
re-edited shots, remixed soundtracks, and added scenes.
Though the original Star Wars was selected
by the National Film Registry of the United States Library of
Congress in 1989, it is unclear whether a copy of the 1977 theatrical
sequence or the 1997 Special Edition has been archived by the NFR, or
indeed if any copy has been provided by Lucasfilm and accepted by the
Registry. While the agency has a mandate to register films for
preservation, it has no authority to secure its selections from
authors or copyright holders.
Star Wars remains one of the most
financially successful films of all time. The film earned $1,554,475
through its opening weekend, building up to $7 million weekends as it
entered wide release. It replaced Jaws as the highest-earning film in
North America just six months into release, eventually earning over
$220 million during its initial theatrical run. The film remained the
highest-grossing film of all time until E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
broke that record in 1983. Following the release of the Special
Edition in 1997, Star Wars briefly reclaimed the North American
record before losing it again the following year to Titanic.
The film was met with critical acclaim
upon its release. In his 1977 review, Roger Ebert of the Chicago
Sun-Times called the film "an out-of-body experience",
compared its special effects to those of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and
opined that the true strength of the film was its "pure
narrative". Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film
"the movie that's going to entertain a lot of contemporary folk
who have a soft spot for the virtually ritualized manners of
comic-book adventure" and "the most elaborate, most
expensive, most beautiful movie serial ever made." A.D. Murphy
of Variety described the film as "magnificent" and claimed
George Lucas had succeeded in his attempt to create the "biggest
possible adventure fantasy" based on the serials and older
action epics from his childhood. Writing for The Washington Post,
Gary Arnold gave the film a positive review, writing that the film
"is a new classic in a rousing movie tradition: a space
swashbuckler." However, the film was not without its detractors:
Pauline Kael of The New Yorker criticized Star Wars, stating that
"there's no breather in the picture, no lyricism", and that
it had no "emotional grip".
The original Star Wars trilogy is
considered one of the best film trilogies in history. Lucas has often
stated that the entire trilogy was intended to be considered one
film. However, he said that his story material for Star Wars was too
long for a single film, prompting Lucas to split the story into
multiple films. Lucas also stated that the story evolved over time
and that "There was never a script completed that had the entire
story as it exists now [in 1983] ... As the stories unfolded, I would
take certain ideas and save them ... I kept taking out all the good
parts, and I just kept telling myself I would make other movies
someday." In early interviews, it was suggested the series might
comprise nine or twelve films.
Star
Wars launched the careers of Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie
Fisher. Ford, who subsequently starred in the Indiana Jones series
(1981–2008), Blade Runner (1982), and Witness (1985) after
working on the film, told the Daily Mirror that Star Wars
"boosted my career", and said, "I think the great luck
of my career is that I've made these family movies which are
introduced to succeeding generations of kids by their families at the
time it seems appropriate."
The film has spawned a series of films
consisting of two trilogies (including the original film), and an
extensive media franchise called the Star Wars expanded universe
including books, television series, computer and video games, and
comic books.
The film also spawned the Star Wars
Holiday Special, which debuted on CBS on November 17th, 1978 and is
often considered a failure; Lucas himself disowned it.[ The special
has never been aired after its original broadcast, and it has never
been officially released on home video. However, many bootleg copies
exist, and the special has consequently become something of an
underground legend.
Star Wars and its ensuing film
installments have been explicitly referenced and satirized across a
wide range of media. Hardware Wars, released in 1978, was one of the
first fan films to parody Star Wars. It received positive critical
reaction, went to earn over $1 million, and is one of Lucas's
favorite Star Wars spoofs. Quark was a short-lived 1977 sitcom that
parodied the science fiction genre. Mel Brooks's Spaceballs, a
satirical comic science fiction parody, came out in 1987 to mixed
reviews. Lucas permitted Brooks to make a spoof of the film under one
restriction: no action figures. Contemporary animated comedy TV
series Family Guy, Robot Chicken, and The Simpsons have produced
episodes satirizing the film series.
Many
elements of the film have also endured presence in popular culture
such as the iconic weapon of choice of the Jedi, the lightsaber The
expressions "Evil empire" and "May the Force be with
you" have become part of the popular lexicon. A pun on the
latter phrase has led to May 4th being regarded by many fans of the
franchise as an unofficial Star Wars Day. To commemorate the film's
30th anniversary in May 2007, the United States Postal Service issued
a set of 15 stamps depicting the characters of the franchise.
Approximately 400 mailboxes across the country were also designed to
look like R2-D2.
Film critic Roger Ebert wrote in his book
The Great Movies, "Like The Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane,
Star Wars was a technical watershed that influenced many of the
movies that came after." It began a new generation of special
effects and high-energy motion pictures. The film was one of the
first films to link genres together to invent a new, high-concept
genre for filmmakers to build upon. Finally, along with Steven
Spielberg's Jaws, it shifted the film industry's focus away from
personal filmmaking of the 1970s and towards fast-paced, big-budget
blockbusters for younger audiences.
Filmmakers who have said to have been
influenced by Star Wars include James Cameron, Dean Devlin, Gareth
Edwards, Roland Emmerich, John Lasseter, David Fincher, Peter
Jackson, Joss Whedon, Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott, John
Singleton, and Kevin Smith. Scott, Cameron, and Jackson were
influenced by Lucas's concept of the "used future" (where
vehicles and culture are obviously dated) and extended the concept
for their films, such as Scott's science fiction films Alien (1979)
and Blade Runner (1982), Cameron's acclaimed sequel Aliens (1986) and
his earlier breakthrough film The Terminator (1984). Jackson used the
concept for his production of The Lord of the Rings trilogy to add a
sense of realism and believability. Christopher Nolan cited Star Wars
as an influence when making the 2010 blockbuster film, Inception.
Some critics have blamed Star Wars, as
well as Jaws, for ruining Hollywood by shifting its focus from
"sophisticated" films such as The Godfather, Taxi Driver,
and Annie Hall to films about spectacle and juvenile fantasy. One
such critic, Peter Biskind, complained, "When all was said and
done, Lucas and Spielberg returned the 1970s audience, grown
sophisticated on a diet of European and New Hollywood films, to the
simplicities of the pre-1960s Golden Age of movies... They marched
backward through the looking-glass." In an opposing view, Tom
Shone wrote that through Star Wars and Jaws, Lucas and Spielberg
"didn't betray cinema at all: they plugged it back into the
grid, returning the medium to its roots as a carnival sideshow, a
magic act, one big special effect", which was "a kind of rebirth".
Little Star Wars merchandise was available
for several months after the film's debut, as only Kenner Products
had accepted marketing director Charles Lippincott's licensing
offers. Kenner responded to the sudden demand for toys by selling
boxed vouchers in its "empty box" Christmas campaign.
Television commercials told children and parents that vouchers within
a "Star Wars Early Bird Certificate Package" could be
redeemed for four action figures between February and June 1978. Jay
West of the Los Angeles Times said that the boxes in the campaign
"became the most coveted empty box[es] in the history of
retail." In 2012, the Star Wars action figures were inducted
into the National Toy Hall of Fame.
The novelization of the film was published
in December 1976, six months before the film was released. The
credited author was George Lucas, but the book was revealed to have
been ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster, who later wrote the first Star
Wars expanded universe novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye (1978). The
book was first published as Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke
Skywalker; later editions were titled simply Star Wars (1995) and,
later, Star Wars: A New Hope (1997), to reflect the retitling of the
film. Marketing director Charles Lippincott secured the deal with Del
Rey Books to publish the novelization in November 1976. By February
1977, a half-million copies had been sold.
Marvel Comics also adapted the film as the
first six issues of its licensed Star Wars comic book, with the first
issue dated May 1977. Roy Thomas was the writer and Howard Chaykin
was the artist of the adaptation. Like the novelization, it contained
certain elements, such as the scene with Luke and Biggs, that
appeared in the screenplay but not in the finished film. The series
was so successful that, according to Jim Shooter, it
"single-handedly saved Marvel". In 2013, Dark Horse Comics
published a comic adaption of the original screenplay's plot.
Lucasfilm adapted Star Wars for a 24-page
read-along children's book-and-record set released in 1979.
A radio drama adaptation of the film was
written by Brian Daley, directed by John Madden, and produced for and
broadcast on the American National Public Radio network in 1981. The
adaptation received cooperation from George Lucas, who donated the
rights to NPR. John Williams' music and Ben Burtt's sound design were
retained for the show; Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) and Anthony
Daniels (C-3PO) reprised their roles as well. The radio drama
featured scenes not seen in the final cut of the film, such as Luke
Skywalker's observation of the space battle above Tatooine through
binoculars, a skyhopper race, and Darth Vader's interrogation of
Princess Leia. In terms of Star Wars canon, the radio drama is given
the highest designation (like the screenplay and novelization), G-canon.
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Wars logo, all names and pictures of Star Wars characters, vehicles
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and copyright holders.
Lucas
began writing in January 1973, "eight hours a day, five days a
week", by taking small notes, inventing odd names and assigning
them possible characterizations. Lucas would discard many of these by
the time the final script was written, but he included several names
and places in the final script or its sequels. He revived others
decades later when he wrote his prequel trilogy. He used these
initial names and ideas to compile a two-page synopsis titled Journal
of the Whills, which told the tale of the training of apprentice CJ
Thorpe as a "Jedi-Bendu" space commando by the legendary
Mace Windu. Frustrated that his story was too difficult to
understand, Lucas then began writing a 13-page treatment called The
Star Wars on April 17th, 1973, which had thematic parallels with
Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film The Hidden Fortress.
A
third draft, dated August 1st, 1975, was titled The Star Wars: From
the Adventures of Luke Starkiller. This third draft had most of the
elements of the final plot, with only some differences in the
characters and settings. The draft characterized Luke as an only
child, with his father already dead, replacing him with a substitute
named Ben Kenobi. This script would be re-written for the fourth and
final draft, dated January 1st, 1976, as The Adventures of Luke
Starkiller as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star
Wars. Lucas worked with his friends Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck to
revise the fourth draft into the final pre-production script. 20th
Century Fox approved a budget of $8.25 million and the positive
reception of American Graffiti afforded Lucas the leverage necessary
to renegotiate his deal with Alan Ladd, Jr. and request the sequel
rights to the film. For Lucas, this deal protected Star Wars'
unwritten segments and most of the merchandising profits.
Lucas
described a "used future" concept to the production
designers in which all devices, ships, and buildings looked aged and
dirty. Instead of following the traditional sleekness and futuristic
architecture of science fiction films that came before, the Star Wars
sets were designed to look inhabited and used. Barry said that the
director "wants to make it look like its shot on location on
your average everyday Death Star or Mos Eisly Spaceport or local
cantina." Lucas believed that "what is required for true
credibility is a used future", opposing the interpretation of
"future in most futurist movies" that "always looks
new and clean and shiny." Christian supported Lucas's vision,
saying "All science fiction before was very plastic and stupid
uniforms and Flash Gordon stuff. Nothing was new. George was going
right against that."
After
completing two and a half weeks of filming in Tunisia, the cast and
crew moved into the more controlled environment of Elstree Studios,
near London. Difficulties encountered in Tunisia were assumed to
cease; however, due to strict British working conditions adhered to
on set, a new problem arose: filming had to finish by 5:30 pm, unless
Lucas was in the middle of a scene. The interiors were shot in London
due to its proximity to North Africa and because of the availability
of top technical crew at Elstree Studios. The film studio was the
only one of its kind in England or America that could cater nine
large stages at the same time and allow the company complete freedom
to use its own personnel. Despite Lucas' efforts, his crew had little
interest in the film and did not take the project seriously. Most of
the crew considered the project a "children's film", rarely
took their work seriously, and often found it unintentionally
humorous. Actor Baker later confessed that he thought the film would
be a failure. Harrison Ford found it strange that "there's a
princess with weird buns in her hair", and he called Chewbacca a
"giant in a monkey suit".
Filming
at Elstree Studios became another problem for Taylor; the sets John
Barry made "were like a coal mine", as the cinematographer
described. He said that "they were all black and gray, with
really no opportunities for lighting at all." To resolve the
problem, he worked the lighting into the sets by chopping in its
walls, ceiling and floors. This would result in "a 'cut-out'
system of panel lighting", with quartz lamps that could be
placed in the holes in the walls, ceiling and floors. His idea was
supported by the Fox studio, which agreed that "we couldn't have
this 'black hole of Calcutta'". The lighting approach Taylor
devised "allowed George to shoot in almost any direction without
extensive relighting, which gave him more freedom." In total,
filming the scenes in England took 14 and a half weeks.
Ladd
offered Lucas some of the only support from the studio; he dealt
with scrutiny from board members over the rising budget and complex
screenplay drafts. Initially, Fox approved $8 million for the project
and after requests that the budget had to be more, the executives got
a bit scared. Lucas and his crew pulled together new budget figures
while the production fell behind schedule and Ladd told Lucas he had
to finish production within a week or he would be forced to shut
down. The budget was now at about 9.8 million and the crew split into
three units, with those units led by Lucas, Kurtz, and production
supervisor Robert Watts. Under the new system, the project met the
studio's deadline.
Jympson's
original edit contained a large amount of footage which differed
from the final cut of the film, including several alternate takes and
a number of scenes which were subsequently deleted to improve the
narrative pace. The most significant material cut was a series of
scenes from the first part of the film which served to introduce the
character of Luke Skywalker. These early scenes, set in Anchorhead on
the planet Tatooine, presented the audience with Luke's everyday life
among his friends as it is affected by the space battle above the
planet; they also introduced the character of Biggs Darklighter,
Luke's closest friend who departs to join the Rebellion. Chew
explained the rationale behind removing these scenes as a narrative
decision: "In the first five minutes, we were hitting everybody
with more information than they could handle. There were too many
story lines to keep straight: the robots and the Princess, Vader,
Luke. So we simplified it by taking out Luke and Biggs". After
viewing a rough cut, Alan Ladd likened these Anchorhead scenes to
"American Graffiti in outer space". Lucas was looking for a
way of accelerating the storytelling, and removing Luke's early
scenes would distinguish Star Wars from his earlier teenage drama and
"get that American Graffiti feel out of it". Lucas also
stated that he wanted to move the narrative focus to C-3PO and R2-D2:
"At the time, to have the first half-hour of the film be mainly
about robots was a bold idea."
Meanwhile,
Industrial Light & Magic was struggling to achieve unprecedented
special effects. The company had spent half of its budget on four
shots that Lucas deemed unacceptable.
With
the project $2 million over budget, Lucas was forced to make
numerous artistic compromises to complete Star Wars. Ladd reluctantly
agreed to release an extra $20,000 funding and in early 1977 second
unit filming completed a number of sequences including exterior
desert shots for Tatooine in Death Valley and China Lake Acres in
California, and exterior Yavin jungle shots in Guatemala, along with
additional studio footage to complete the Mos Eisley Cantina
sequence. Lucas had planned to rework a confrontation scene between
Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt in Mos Eisley Spaceport by compositing a
stop-motion animated model of Jabba to replace the actor Declan
Mulholland, but with time and money running out, Lucas reluctantly
decided to cut the scene entirely. The sequence was later re-instated
in the 1997 Special Edition with a computer-generated version of Jabba.
Star
Wars debuted on Wednesday, May 25th, 1977, in fewer than 32
theaters, and eight more on Thursday and Friday. Kurtz said in 2002,
"That would be laughable today." It immediately broke box
office records, effectively becoming one of the first blockbuster
films, and Fox accelerated plans to broaden its release. Lucas
himself was not able to predict how successful Star Wars would be.
After visiting the set of the Steven Spielberg directed Close
Encounters of the Third Kind, Lucas was sure Close Encounters would
outperform the yet-to-be-released Star Wars at the box office.
Spielberg disagreed, and felt Lucas's Star Wars would be the bigger
hit. Lucas proposed they trade 2.5% of the profit on each other's
films; Spielberg took the trade, and still receives 2.5% of the
profits from Star Wars.
The
film was a huge success for the studio, and was credited for
reinvigorating it. Within three weeks of its release, 20th Century
Fox's stock price had doubled to a record high. Prior to 1977, 20th
Century Fox's greatest annual profits were $37 million, while in
1977, the company broke that record by posting a profit of $79 million.
Star
Wars launched the careers of Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie
Fisher. Ford, who subsequently starred in the Indiana Jones series
(1981–2008), Blade Runner (1982), and Witness (1985) after
working on the film, told the Daily Mirror that Star Wars
"boosted my career", and said, "I think the great luck
of my career is that I've made these family movies which are
introduced to succeeding generations of kids by their families at the
time it seems appropriate."
Many
elements of the film have also endured presence in popular culture
such as the iconic weapon of choice of the Jedi, the lightsaber The
expressions "Evil empire" and "May the Force be with
you" have become part of the popular lexicon. A pun on the
latter phrase has led to May 4th being regarded by many fans of the
franchise as an unofficial Star Wars Day. To commemorate the film's
30th anniversary in May 2007, the United States Postal Service issued
a set of 15 stamps depicting the characters of the franchise.
Approximately 400 mailboxes across the country were also designed to
look like R2-D2.
