When a movie achieves the status of being a “classic,” and merchandise for said film floods stores, it becomes an icon. Normalized by “appearing” in the everyday lives of the populace, the classic can eventually feel as if it always existed, with the producer’s intentions and influences behind the film forgotten. George Lucas’s Star Wars movie series has become a worldwide franchise after the earliest film’s debut in 1977, and yet few besides the most adamant fans recall the director’s process in creating or the intentionality behind how it would impact the viewer.
In an interview, Lucas explains one of his driving motives for screenwriting, describing his desire to “‘give young people some sort of faraway exotic environment for their imaginations to run around in (…) I have a strong feeling about interesting kids in space exploration. I want them to want it. I want them to get beyond the basic stupidities of the moment and think about colonizing Venus and Mars’” (Myint). As clearly articulated through the producer’s articulation, his intent for the films revolves mainly around delivering a visceral, imagination-invoking experience for children, likely wanting to bestow the same teleportation from reality he experienced from fantastical narratives. Lucas harnesses a variety of methods in attempting to achieve his goal, drawing from a diverse sampling of literature, movies, and world events while also paying close attention to minute detail in the visuals.
Among some of the stolen elements from books, Lucas references author J.R.R Tolkien in an assortment of the visual make up, but most strikingly indicates Tolkien’s influence over his work when in an early draft of the movie he “had identical dialogue, where Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker perfectly mirrored Gandalf and Bilbo in The Hobbit” (Plessis). Likewise, Edgar Rice Burroughs, renowned as the creator of the “Tarzan” adventures, wrote a Sci-Fi series Barsoom about a Civil War Veteran transported to Mars, and Lucas heavily alludes to the novels in his initial pitch for Star Wars, maintaining various references to the book series even as he developed and critiqued his idea (Mumford).
One of Star Wars’ most blatantly adopted aspects from a neighboring film appears in its iconic intro. While Lucas’s method of having the introduction text scroll diagonally back to a vanishing point seems to be the first of its kind, the producer copied it from an older TV series, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, with a similar prologue at the beginning of each episode (Plessis).
Photos of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe and Star Wars: A New Hope intro
As one of the visual choices to enhance the saga, Lucas uses color or the absence thereof to heighten the contrast between forces of good and evil, increasing the meaning behind simple hues. While he obviously has the general theme of blue versus red in his Jedi versus Sith trope, Lucas describes in another interview how he intentionally attributes certain colors to the different settings, such as having the Empire predominantly surrounded by greys, blacks, and whites with a splash of red to emphasize aggression or coloring the planet “Tatooine” mainly with browns to accentuate its barrenness (“The Mythology of ‘Star Wars’”).
By referencing a wide range of other fantastical stories and prioritizing visual tools, Lucas grasps for his “faraway exotic environment for their imaginations to run around in,” striving to deliver sensations experienced in other literary and cinematic narratives. When reusing a generally unknown form of introduction through an inspired scrawl of angularly floating words, he demonstrates a desire to obtain the same creative spin seen in films that inspired his Star Wars series. Lucas subtly prods the minds of viewers by adding an underlying meaning behind the color and set design, whether by merely heightening the contrast of good versus evil or enticing the mind to find the allusions behind each hue.
With the emphasis on these few examples of Lucas’s methods of achieving a film that primarily impacts the imagination of the younger audience, the question of whether the latest installments to the Star Wars legacy run in tandem with this intent arises. Since the sale of the rights to Star Wars in 2012, Disney has released a wide range of content for the fandom, and much of the new material seems to have an alternative intent than that of an enhancer for a child’s love of fanciful adventures. The latest movies and even the Star Wars shows meant for younger ages contain an overbearing amount of influential intent that is significantly less innocent than a mere desire to heightened imagination, illustrating the importance of remembering the producers’ initial intent to obtain a similar underlying narratorial flavor.
Works Cited
Mumford, Tracy. “The books that inspired ‘Star Wars.’” MPRNews, December 29, 2015, www.mprnews.org/story/2015/12/29/books-star-wars-literary-influences
Myint, B. “George Lucas and the Origin Story Behind ‘Star Wars.’” Biography, www.biography.com/movies-tv/george-lucas-star-wars-facts.
Plessis, Lauren du. “Star Wars: 16 Art and Myth Influences That Inspired the Movies.” Domestika, www.domestika.org/en/blog/10483-star-wars-16-art-and-myth-influences-that-inspired-the-movies.
“The Mythology of ‘Star Wars’ with George Lucas.” billmoyers.com/content/mythology-of-star-wars-george-lucas.
Photo Credit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_sources_and_analogues
https://theconversation.com/how-famous-star-wars-title-sequence-survived-imperial-assaults-5254
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