“Star Wars” creator George Lucas famously studied over 25 hours of footage from World War II dogfights and jittery newsreel imagery while doing research for the films — even using the footage as placeholders in the film before the special effects were edition.
By now, it's no secret that the fantastical world of Star Wars owes a lot to real-world history. Many observations have been made that the original trilogy is basically “World War II In Space,” with more contemporary conflicts defining the imagery and themes of the next two trilogies.
Lucas even said in 2005 that Star Wars "was really about the Vietnam War, and that was the period where Richard Nixon was trying to run for a [second] term, which got me to thinking historically about how do democracies get turned into dictatorships.
Star Wars, its heroes, and its villains were born from the likeness of Nazi Germany, Ancient Rome, the Vietnam War, the Knights Templar, and even U.S. Presidents. Lucas's world reads as both commentary and cautionary tale, portraying what can happen when dark overpowers light.
If you'd like to see some of the films he used, I would recommend The Dam Busters (which was a huge inspiration for the trench-run attack on the Death Star) as well as The Bridges at Toko-Ri and 633 Squadron.
'History Beyond the Lens' - Star Wars & Nazi Germany
What Disney films were during WWII?
A few of the films he produced were Reason and Emotion (1943), Der Fuehrer's Face (1943), Education for Death - The Making of a Nazi (1943), Commando Duck (1944), and Donald Gets Drafted (1942).
There are many ways Kurosawa inspired Star Wars but his 1958 film The Hidden Fortress, had one of the biggest impacts. George Lucas intentionally used numerous story elements and character archetypes from The Hidden Fortress in Star Wars, most famously with C-3PO and R2-D2.
But, it was a real-life warrior who provided the basis of the character, and the similarities are pretty striking. Date Masamune was a regional ruler of Japan during the 16th and 17th centuries, and he was an incredibly successful feudal lord who came from a famous family.
In addition, stormtroopers would serve with the regular infantry to enforce oppressive rule over the galaxy. Taking their name from the "storm" of galactic history, clone troopers served as the first generation of stormtroopers, and were gradually replaced by Imperial recruits known as TK stormtroopers.
Most audiences don't know that “Raiders” was not the first movie of Lucas' to borrow from the Bible. A 1977 science fiction film directed by Lucas, titled “Star Wars,” borrowed more than the Ark of the Covenant for its story.
There is only one reference to Earth in the official Star Wars canon, and it's in the unlikeliest of places. It's not established as the home planet of Grogu. There are no Rebel or Imperial outposts confirmed to be on Earth.
The film was titled The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars. During production, Lucas changed Luke's name to Skywalker and shortened the title to The Star Wars, and finally just Star Wars.
The composition draws influence from Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score for the 1942 film Kings Row and Gustav Holst's Jupiter from his orchestral suite, The Planets. The B side featured the original movie score of Cantina Band. "Star Wars (Main Title)" was the lesser of two hits featuring music from Star Wars.
Shmi informs Qui-Gon that Anakin has no father, leading Qui-Gon to suggest that Anakin is a product of midi-chlorians (Force-imparting microorganisms). As the film progresses, Anakin leaves Tatooine to begin his Jedi training.
'Darth Wyrm' would fit with Sith tradition, and its original meaning - an archaic term for 'dragon' - would properly convey Luke's incredible power, and even has some poetic meaning as the inversion of the Jedi 'knight' he could otherwise have been.
The Sith Lord angrily shot Force lightning into Luke, intending to destroy him. Vader regrouped, and upon seeing the true evil that was Sidious, threw his Master down a deep shaft. At long last, the Emperor was dead, taking a nightmarish era of tyranny with him.
The Force and the Jedi religion, Lucas stated, were thus based on all religions in the real-world, as he constructed Star Wars mainly from Methodism—or Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—and Buddhism.
Star Wars almost started a major war in the real world while George Lucas was in the middle of filming the first movie, A New Hope. Star Wars is a science fiction tale about a war between an evil Empire and the rebel forces who want to overthrow the government.
Scientists are mostly skeptical about a "real world" explanation for the Force. Astrophysicist Jeanne Cavelos says in The Science of Star Wars that explaining the Force is particularly difficult because "it does so many different things". Force powers like precognition imply the time travel of information.
The Jedi have always drawn from the samurai (or at least the popular film versions of them), which is why even though the title bestowed on Kanan isn't "cowboy samurai," it also... essentially is. In a lot of ways, the Jedi are Space Samurai, and Kanan is far from an exception.
The Ronin was the alias used by a male human former Sith who wandered the far edge of the Outer Rim Territories in the aftermath of the Sith rebellion.
Oddly enough, the entry of the United States into World War II in 1941 helped rescue Disney's company from financial ruin. The day after Pearl Harbor, Walt Disney allowed the U.S. Army to “invade” his Burbank, California studios, making it the only Hollywood studio to ever be occupied by the military.
