The Star Wars franchise, created by George Lucas in the 1970s, is one of the most successful in the world. The success of the Star Wars franchise is due to three factors: great story, innovative marketing, and clever targeting of many demographics.
Before Star Wars, there weren't really special effects. At least, not as we know them today, Star Wars revolutionised the field of special effects through its groundbreaking use of models, miniatures, and CGI.
It was released in a small number of theaters in the United States on May 25, 1977, and quickly became a surprise blockbuster hit, leading to it being expanded to a much wider release. Star Wars opened to positive reviews, with praise for its special effects.
When did Star Wars come out and why was it important?
Star Wars was released on May 25, 1977, and first subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope in the 1979 book The Art of Star Wars. The film's success led Lucas to make it the basis of an elaborate film serial. With the backstory he created for the sequel, Lucas decided that the series would be a trilogy of trilogies.
The Star Wars Trilogy began with Star Wars: A New Hope (originally released as simply Star Wars) in 1977. The films included in the original Star Wars Trilogy are listed below.
Key Takeaways. The Star Wars franchise, created by George Lucas in the 1970s, is one of the most successful in the world. The success of the Star Wars franchise is due to three factors: great story, innovative marketing, and clever targeting of many demographics.
Summary. While the Star Wars franchise has many sources of inspiration, one of George Lucas' main influences on the films was the Vietnam War. The Empire in Star Wars was inspired by the Nazis during World War II, but Lucas also took inspiration from the United States' actions during the Nixon administration.
High adventure, breathtaking special effects, and an engrossing story all came together to amaze people. It was this same formula that drew people back to the theatres and made the “Star Wars” sequels also big hits.
First, in the late 1970s, Star Wars revived the marketplace for space science fiction as a genre. Space adventures had found wide audiences in the 1930s through characters such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon that began in short stories or comic strips and developed through movie serials and radio programs.
During that first release, the film took in more than $500 million worldwide, a great return for a project whose budget had been less than $10 million. Since that day in May 1977, the Star Wars franchise has grown immensely.
How much did Star Wars make when it first came out?
Released in 1977, "A New Hope" was the first film in the Star Wars franchise and had a production cost of 11 million U.S. dollars, achieving worldwide box office revenues of around 775 million U.S. dollars.
Lucas told Iger he was considering retirement and planned to sell the company, as well as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. On October 30, 2012, Disney announced a deal to acquire Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion, with approximately half in cash and half in shares of Disney stock.
From light speed to hyper drives to lightsabers and autonomous robots, Star Wars was certainly way ahead of its time despite occurring a long time ago. The technologies of tomorrow were on full display as Luke, Leia, Han and the Rebel Alliance fought Darth Vader's Galactic Empire beginning in 1977.
Abrams's underdeveloped plans for his first and third acts. The films' philosophies were so discordant that almost everyone profoundly disliked at least one of them, though which one(s) varied depending on the person's point of view.
What were the reasons at the time? When George Lucas sold his company, Lucasfilm, to Disney, he was 68 years old. He had been thinking about retirement for some time, and he wanted to pass on his company to a company he thought would continue the Star Wars legacy.
While Lucas' vision for Star Wars changed over time, he originally entertained a 12-movie plan and created a barebones outline. Episode I would have been a "Prelude" and Episodes II to IV would have been a "Clone Wars trilogy" similar to what the prequels eventually became.
Summary. Star Wars is still thriving despite recent struggles with the film side of the franchise. The success of Star Wars is now reliant on its live-action TV shows, which have found huge success. Star Wars remains the biggest entertainment brand despite not releasing any new movies, and toy sales are still strong.
The early Journal of the Whills draft of Star Wars from 1973 is based on the first chapter of the 1931 John Carter novel A Fighting Man of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Star Wars borrows significantly from Arthurian mythology; especially with respect to plot and main character development.
We all know the story of how Steven Spielberg's 1975 box office hit Jaws was the birth of the movie blockbuster, closely followed by George Lucas' Star Wars in 1977.
Thus, by 1976, Lucas clearly saw Star Wars as a children's film, yet he didn't say so in public. It was only in the spring of 1977, shortly before the film's release, that Lucas finally admitted publicly that his main target audience was in fact children, both young teenagers and sub-teens.
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.
The Big Picture. Darth Vader's character design in Star Wars was heavily influenced by Date Masamune, a legendary samurai from Japan known as the "One-Eyed Dragon."
