It’s sometimes easy to forget that before it became a nine-film saga supported by three standalone films, two made-for-TV movies, three excellent TV series, a few terrible TV series, and a holiday special that is best forgotten, Star Wars was just a movie. An incredible movie, mind you, one that sparked the dreams of uncountable future filmmakers and other creative types. And one that practically created the concept of the modern blockbuster and changed the cinema industry forever (for better and for worse). It’s also easy to forget that Star Wars did not spring from George Lucas’s brain fully formed. In fact, the journey of its creation was difficult and often circuitous. But many famous (and not so famous) films and directors inspired Lucas along the way, providing tropes and influences that would become signature elements of the Star Wars universe.
The Films That Made Star Wars—Complete
A three-part look at the eclectic group of movies that helped provide the inspiration for Lucas’s space-opera saga
by Dennis Burger
May 2, 2022
PART 1
Both classic films of the ’30s and low-budget sci-fi serials of that time helped feed into the conception of Star Wars
“As unique as 1977’s Star Wars seemed at the time of its release, there was barely anything original about it. Sure, the way it was put together was fresh—mind-blowingly so—but dig down to the nuts-and-bolts level and it’s clear that this Galaxy Far, Far Away didn’t spring to George Lucas’s mind fully formed. The film was, in many ways, a reaction to the grim and gritty films that dominated cinemas in the early 1970s. But first and foremost, it was a homage to the serials and adventure movies that Lucas enjoyed seeing on the big screen in his youth.” read more
PART 2
Lucas leaned heavily on the work of a number of iconic directors to bring some weight to A New Hope
“Ask me to sum up the appeal of Star Wars as succinctly as possible and I would have to describe it as the cinematic child of Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone dressed in Flash Gordon Underoos. But dig beneath the surface, and the movie we ended up with shares almost no meaningful DNA with sci-fi serials. If you really want to understand what makes Star Wars tick, you have to ignore the ray-guns and robots and starships—or at least look past them. And when you do, what you’re left with is mostly the samurai and the cowboy.” read more
PART 3
A mélange of WWII movies, classic sci-fi, and hero mythology rounds out this survey of seminal influences
“If you wanted to, you could spend years watching the westerns and samurai flicks that influenced Star Wars in one way or another, but there are other essential elements of this pop-culture collage that we can’t overlook. Namely: World War II movies. In editing the film’s final space battle, Lucas famously cut footage from old war pictures to inspire the special effects team at Industrial Light & Magic, specifically to give them the sense of pacing and movement he was looking for in the dogfights.'”
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