Star Wars has been pretty much everything. Movie, TV, comic, video game, Monopoly, LEGO, toothbrush. You name it, Star Wars has been it.
The mind boggling thing is that it has nearly always been successful.
So this is where my departure comes in; this month I won't be telling you how it was a film first, so the film must be better. This month I'll be telling you why Star Wars is so successful across many media.
Star Wars itself went through many changes and difficulties on it's journey to the silver screen. Greenlit as part of a two-picture deal (the first being American Graffiti) in 1971, what would become Star Wars was dropped in early pre-production. The treatment went through several drafts, each adding in aspects such as the 'force' and 'death star' as Lucas took influence from Kurosawa, Buddist shaolin monks, spaghetti westerns and Flash Gordon-style Pulp science fiction movie reels. The title going into principle photography reflected these disparate influences; Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star War. Through the production of the early movies one person guided George Lucas to many of the saga's defining moments; his wife Marcia. Most notably she helped George come to the decision to kill Ben Kenobi.
Whilst it appears, when one looks back at the ever-changing back story and troubled pre-production, that Star Wars was cobbled together as a series of compromises, it is actually these rewrites, compromises and on-set changes that make Star Wars work so well. The on set change of one line at the end of Empire Strikes Back made the film crackle that bit more. Instead of responding "I love you too", Han Solo's "I know." as he is lowered to his doom creates a much more powerful scene.
From the mysterious shaolin concept of chi, Lucas extrapolated a warrior religion that would become known as the Jedi. From spaghetti westerns we would get the heroic mercenary pair, Han Solo and Chewbacca, followed by Boba Fett and his ilk. The movie serials of Flash Gordon brought the epic space opera scale. War movies inspired the dog-fight Death Star run. Kurosawa brought the master-apprentice relationship, as well as many of the classic 'Star Wars' shots and transitions. Rather than make Star Wars feel disjointed, these influences act as an adhesive, gluing them into the sum of their parts; something distinctly 'Star Wars'. There is something for everyone in these movies, they appeal to children and adults alike. Some like the cocky and dangerous word of Han Solo, some like the mysticism of the Jedi Knights, some enjoy the classic battle between rebel and tyrant.
Read the rest of this article at Starburst Magazine.
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