We all know that one of the most iconic and grandiose films is the Star Wars saga. So why was it so exciting and interesting? First of all, the screens were attracted by the visual effects that were amazing for that time and the proximity to outer space. Let's reveal the secret behind the classic trilogy and find out how the legendary trilogy was created literally from simple cardboard and drawings.
Like any masterpiece, Star Wars began with an idea.
Great storyteller new era of cinema George Lucas conceived the epic when he was not yet 30 years old. In the mid-1970s, a preliminary script was ready, which, however, was almost completely rewritten more than once. What do you think, for example, of one of Lucas' ideas to make Luke Skywalker a 60-year-old general, and Han Solo an alien with green scales and gills?
The written story included the plot of all six episodes known today. There is a version that George Lucas decided to shoot the episodes from the middle because at that time there were supposedly not enough skills of visual effects specialists for the first three episodes. This is not so, the director could well have realized his idea starting from the very first episodes. He initially decided to take on the film adaptation of the fourth episode. Firstly, this was done in order to intrigue the audience. Secondly, George Lucas didn’t even know if he would be able to film more than one episode of Star Wars, so he took on the most “driving” moment of the script.
It only got worse from there. For a long time, no studio wanted to take on the film adaptation of a fairy tale with, to put it mildly, a strange plot. The influence of the hippie movement was still felt in the yard, venerable directors were making serious films about the Vietnam War, and mediocrities were making trash films about evil aliens from outer space. The work of George Lucas was immediately ranked among the latter, but in this case the budget required was rather large - $8 million. Fortunately, a producer was found who believed in the genius of the young director and allocated the required amount.
And still, only a few believed in the success of Star Wars. Lucas himself sometimes doubted that anything worthwhile would come of his idea. Later, the actors recalled filming as the most ridiculous episode in their lives. A tall guy in a monkey suit, dwarfs, simple pretentious dialogues... The film was perceived as a children's fairy tale or trash, but not an adventure fantasy that aspires to cult status.
“The scene in the bar resembled the delirium of a stoned person: some frogs, pigs, a cricket - a nightmare!” - the performers of the main roles said with a smile. Apparently, the same point of view was shared by Hollywood bosses, who for some reason considered one of the main issues of the film whether a Wookie should wear underpants. At some point, they wanted to cancel Star Wars altogether, then they decided to throw out all the special effects from the film and turn it into a television series. Only George Lucas' persistence and stubbornness saved the film.
The lion's share of filming took place in the Tunisian desert. In the same country, they found a suitable name for the planet on which the first third of the film takes place. The name of the city Tataouine quietly transformed into Tatooine. Here, in North Africa, suitable scenery was found: the house of Luke Skywalker's guardians was not built specifically for the film, it was an ordinary hut in one of the villages of Tunisia. Suitable interiors were found at a local hotel.
But the city of Mos Eisley, from whose spaceport Luke finally went to space trip on the Millennium Falcon, had to be built from scratch. Tons of scenery had to be transported from Hollywood by plane. It took about two months to build a settlement from the received material that would fit perfectly into the desert surroundings.
Han Solo's spaceship was created in life size in one of the largest film pavilions in England. The length of the colossus reached 50 meters, and the weight was several tens of tons. The giant model of the Millennium Falcon sometimes flashes in the frame, but what was most useful to the film crew was its “innards,” because the main characters spend a lot of time in the ship. True, the cabin still had to be made separately.
George Lucas wanted to literally put the viewer in the place of the characters. The Millennium Falcon is flying at the speed of light, the ship is being fired upon, and is being tossed from side to side. All this should be accompanied by shaking inside. It is difficult to make a 40-ton model vibrate, so it was decided to build a small cabin and place it on a spring platform. In scripted scenes, she was shaken manually.
Another giant model had to be made to recreate the crawler described in the script, in which the Jawas drove around Tatooine in search of robots. For some episodes, a huge metal “box” was built with tracks from a mining excavator. To shoot general scenes, a compact crawler model was used.
Like most science fiction films of the pre-computer era, Star Wars had a lot of “toys”. All the spaceships we see in the film (from the Millennium Falcon to fighter jets) were made in the form of miniature plastic or even cardboard models. The Death Star was actually drawn, and to film the final large-scale attack scene, the film crew built a 15x15 meter model. Each of the hundreds of turrets and guns that bristled with the Death Star was carefully reproduced on it. The tunnel through which toy rebel fighters flew became the dominant feature of the layout.
Who knows whether “Star Wars” would have received cult status if the film had only space shootouts, without all that “zoo” that nevertheless settled in the film. Hundreds of dolls and masks, a huge amount of makeup and, of course, a park of dozens of robots. All this fit organically into the new universe and even now looks good.
A variety of robots have been invented
Today it is difficult to imagine Star Wars without the robots C-3PO and R2-D2. It was too expensive to make real mechanisms, so George Lucas agreed to have actors play the astromech droid and robot secretary. Anthony Daniels fit into C-3PO's plastic "armor". According to him, the plates were so fragile that they broke on the first day, injuring the actor’s leg.
Anthony Daniels was completely blind in his suit
Inside R2-D2 sat dwarf Kenny Baker, who played the nimble robot on wheels in all six films in the franchise. The actor recalls that he could not get out of the metallic depths of R2-D2 on his own and sometimes he had to spend several hours inside because people simply forgot about him. In total, more than 30 robots are present in the film in one form or another, most of which were controlled remotely.
Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels had a tense relationship on set
Sometimes the assistants had to roll R2-D2
The true face of Chewbacca
But it was Chewbacca who had the hardest time, that is, excuse me, Peter Mayhew, who played the Wookiee. Before coming to cinema, the man worked as an orderly in a hospital, but thanks to his height of 221 centimeters, he made his way to the big screen. Every day during the filming of Star Wars, he had to put on a wool suit, put on the “head” and put on the “feet” of a Kashyyyk native. In Tunisia, the actor was plagued by unbearable heat, and the pavilions were sometimes hampered by openings that were too low for him.
George Lucas said after filming that in many ways he borrowed the image of Chewbacca from his dog Indiana. As for the name, they say that it is a derivative of the Russian word for “dog” - the young director really liked it.
During filming, the Wookiee did not utter a word or growl, he only opened his mouth, as required by the script. Later, sound engineers had to experiment with hundreds of different sounds to find the right ones for Chewbacca's speech. For example, when you hear an angry and indignant Wookiee, these are mainly the sounds that a bear makes, but a satisfied Chewie gets a tiger “purr”. The famous hoarse breathing of Darth Vader was achieved thanks to a scuba mask, R2-D2 “talks” with a mixture of various synthesizer beeps and even infant muttering, and the sound of the fighters had to be combined from the roar of an elephant and the sound of a car rushing along a wet highway.
Layout of the Death Star site
The camera floats over the model, filming the final battle
And yet, first of all, Star Wars is remembered for its amazing special effects. When I first saw the fourth episode in the late 1980s and left the cinema with my jaw dropped in surprise, I could not believe that this could have been filmed more than ten years ago. According to George Lucas, when he saw the first versions of the editing of his film, he gave up. The film turned out to be so weak and miserable that even the director could not believe in the bright future of the film. However, the impression changed dramatically when special effects were added to Star Wars.
And here is the famous tunnel - one of the main features of the film
For all the beauty, the Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) studio, which Lucas created specifically for his space epic, had to take the rap. In total, the film included almost four hundred special effects - an incredible figure for that time. The creation of flying ships, shots from blasters, and glowing swords took a third of the film's budget and most of the man-hours spent on the production of the film.
George Lucas's fantastic Star Wars saga about the struggle between light forces and dark forces is without a doubt one of the most iconic and epoch-making in cinema. Simultaneously simple and complex, mysterious and uncomplicated, fascinating story about galactic wars has gained millions of fans around the world and still excites the minds of film fans. The recognition of the heroes of this saga is simply off the charts, and after the release of the first film in 1977, all boys dreamed of becoming Jedi, and girls dreamed of becoming princesses.
Today we’ll find out how the saga was created and what difficulties we had to face during filming.
It's hard to say for sure what captivates people so much about George Lucas's work. Last but not least, the screens were attracted by the visual effects that were amazing for that time. There was also a scale and a certain cosmic romanticism that made you take at least a fleeting glance at the deep starry sky after the next movie show. What if, really, somewhere out there, in a distant galaxy, Jedi-imperial passions raged a long time ago, affecting the unimaginable depths of space and thousands of alien races?
Let's lift the mystical veil over the classic Star Wars trilogy and see how, literally on your knees, step by step, you can create a legendary saga from cardboard and drawings.
Like any masterpiece, Star Wars began with an idea. The great storyteller of the new era of cinema, George Lucas, conceived the epic when he was not yet 30 years old. In the mid-1970s, a preliminary script was ready, which, however, was almost completely rewritten more than once. What do you think, for example, of one of Lucas' ideas to make Luke Skywalker a 60-year-old general, and Han Solo an alien with green scales and gills?
The written story included the plot of all six episodes known today. There is a version that George Lucas decided to shoot the episodes from the middle because at that time there were supposedly not enough skills of visual effects specialists for the first three episodes. This is not so, the director could well have realized his idea starting from the very first episodes. He initially decided to take on the film adaptation of the fourth episode. Firstly, this was done in order to intrigue the audience. Secondly, George Lucas didn’t even know if he would be able to film more than one episode of Star Wars, so he took on the most “driving” moment of the script, besides, it was in this part that the Death Star appeared, which influenced the choice director.
It only got worse from there. For a long time, no studio wanted to take on the film adaptation of a fairy tale with, to put it mildly, a strange plot. The influence of the hippie movement was still felt in the yard, venerable directors were making serious films about the Vietnam War, and mediocrities were making trash films about evil aliens from outer space. The work of George Lucas was immediately ranked among the latter, but in this case the budget required was rather large - $8 million. Fortunately, a producer was found who believed in the genius of the young director and allocated the necessary amount.
And still, only a few believed in the success of Star Wars. Lucas himself sometimes doubted that anything worthwhile would come of his idea. Later, the actors recalled filming as the most ridiculous episode in their lives. A tall guy in a monkey suit, dwarfs, simple pretentious dialogues... The film was perceived as a children's fairy tale or trash, but not an adventure fantasy that aspires to cult status.
“The scene in the bar resembled the delirium of a stoned person: some frogs, pigs, a cricket - a nightmare!” - the performers of the main roles said with a smile. Apparently, the same point of view was shared by Hollywood bosses, who for some reason considered one of the main issues of the film whether a Wookie should wear underpants. At some point, they wanted to cancel Star Wars altogether, then they decided to throw out all the special effects from the film and turn it into a television series. Only George Lucas' persistence and stubbornness saved the film.
The lion's share of filming took place in the Tunisian desert. In the same country, they found a suitable name for the planet on which the first third of the film takes place. The name of the city Tataouine quietly transformed into Tatooine. Here, in North Africa, suitable scenery was found: the house of Luke Skywalker's guardians was not built specifically for the film, it was an ordinary hut in one of the villages of Tunisia. Suitable interiors were found at a local hotel.
But the city of Mos Eisley, from whose spaceport Luke finally set off on his space journey on the Millennium Falcon, had to be built from scratch. Tons of scenery had to be transported from Hollywood by plane. It took about two months to build a settlement from the received material that would fit perfectly into the desert surroundings.
The entire film crew was on a starvation diet - even the director himself and the main actors flew only in economy class and ate in the common dining room. Later, everyone recalled how enthusiastic the young director instilled in the team - no one had any doubts about success, so energetically did George pursue his cherished goal.
Han Solo's spaceship was created life-size in one of the largest film studios in England. The length of the colossus reached 50 meters, and the weight was several tens of tons. The giant model of the Millennium Falcon sometimes flashes in the frame, but what was most useful to the film crew was its “innards,” because the main characters spend a lot of time in the ship. True, the cabin still had to be made separately.
George Lucas wanted to literally put the viewer in the place of the characters. The Millennium Falcon is flying at the speed of light, the ship is being fired upon, and is being tossed from side to side. All this should be accompanied by shaking inside. It is difficult to make a 40-ton model vibrate, so it was decided to build a small cabin and place it on a spring platform. In scripted scenes, she was shaken manually.
Another giant model had to be made to recreate the crawler described in the script, in which the Jawas drove around Tatooine in search of robots. For some episodes, a huge metal “box” was built with tracks from a mining excavator. To shoot general scenes, a compact crawler model was used.
Meter model of a Jawa crawler 
Like most science fiction films of the pre-computer era, Star Wars had a lot of “toys”. All the spaceships we see in the film (from the Millennium Falcon to fighter jets) were made in the form of miniature plastic or even cardboard models.
The Death Star was actually drawn, and to film the final large-scale attack scene, the film crew built a 15x15 meter model. Each of the hundreds of turrets and guns that bristled with the Death Star was carefully reproduced on it. The tunnel through which toy rebel fighters flew became the dominant feature of the layout.
Who knows whether “Star Wars” would have received cult status if the film had only space shootouts, without all that “zoo” that nevertheless settled in the film. Hundreds of dolls and masks, a huge amount of makeup and, of course, a park of dozens of robots. All this fit organically into the new universe and even now looks good.
Today it is difficult to imagine Star Wars without the robots C-3PO and R2-D2. They could have called A2 and C3, but then George Lucas decided to give the droids more complete names. According to the director, their names are just a pleasant set of letters and numbers that does not mean anything and cannot be deciphered in any way. It was too expensive to make real mechanisms, so George Lucas agreed to have actors play the astromech droid and robot secretary. Anthony Daniels fit into C-3PO's plastic "armor".
According to him, the plates were so fragile that they broke on the first day, injuring the actor’s leg. When creating C-3PO, the artist was inspired by the image of the robot from Fritz Lang's old dystopian film Metropolis (1927). In total, half a dozen design options were created (even with ears and antennas).
Anthony Daniels was completely blind in his suit 
Inside R2-D2 sat dwarf Kenny Baker, who played the nimble robot on wheels in all six films in the franchise. The actor recalls that he could not get out of the metallic depths of R2-D2 on his own and sometimes he had to spend several hours inside because people simply forgot about him. In total, more than 30 robots are present in the film in one form or another, most of which were controlled remotely.
Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels had a tense relationship on the court.
But it was Chewbacca who had the hardest time, or rather Peter Mayhew, who played the Wookiee. Before coming to cinema, the man worked as an orderly in a hospital, but thanks to his height of 221 centimeters, he made his way to the big screen. Every day during the filming of Star Wars, he had to put on a wool suit, put on the “head” and put on the “feet” of a Kashyyyk native. In Tunisia, the actor was plagued by unbearable heat, and the pavilions were sometimes hampered by openings that were too low for him.
George Lucas said after filming that in many ways he borrowed the image of Chewbacca from his dog Indiana. As for the name, they say that it is a derivative of the Russian word for “dog” - the young director really liked it. And the word “Jedi” comes from the Japanese “Jidai Geki”, which means “historical drama”: this is what television series about the times of samurai warriors were called in Japan. Lucas once mentioned in an interview that he watched “Jidai Geki” when he was in Japan, and he liked the word.
During filming, the Wookiee did not utter a word or growl, he only opened his mouth, as required by the script. Later, sound engineers had to experiment with hundreds of different sounds to find the right ones for Chewbacca's speech. For example, when you hear an angry and indignant Wookiee, these are mainly the sounds that a bear makes, but a satisfied Chewie gets a tiger “purr”. The famous hoarse breathing of Darth Vader was achieved thanks to a scuba mask, R2-D2 “talks” with a mixture of various synthesizer beeps and even infant muttering, and the sound of the fighters had to be combined from the roar of an elephant and the sound of a car rushing along a wet highway.
And yet, first of all, Star Wars is remembered for its amazing special effects. According to George Lucas, when he saw the first versions of the editing of his film, he gave up. The film turned out to be so weak and miserable that even the director could not believe in the bright future of the film. However, the impression changed dramatically when special effects were added to Star Wars.
For all the beauty, the Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) studio, which Lucas created specifically for his space epic, had to take the rap. In total, the film included almost four hundred special effects - an incredible figure for that time. The creation of flying ships, shots from blasters, and glowing swords took a third of the film's budget and most of the man-hours spent on the production of the film.
Except for Stanley Kubrick's A Space Odyssey, where the effects were just a pale addition to the artistic design, « New Hope"was the first film with this level of entertainment. Comparable to Star Wars, Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released at the same time, and was no longer perceived as so revolutionary.
And here is the famous tunnel - one of the main features of the film
The results exceeded all expectations. The actors, brandishing wooden swords coated with reflective material, couldn't believe that those constantly breaking sticks would turn into laser blades on screen. The ILM team drew all the flashes and glows by hand.
Since some of the sets were going to cost a fortune to build, George Lucas decided he could replace them with drawings. In some scenes, the role of scenery in the background is played by the highest quality images.
At the very beginning of A New Hope, when the credits roll across the screen, they are replaced by slowly and majestically sailing ships. If this episode was filmed using traditional 1970s methods, the ships would have had to be moved in front of the camera against a blue background, and then the necessary background would have been applied. At the same time, the picture turned out to be slightly “jerky”, objects shifted chaotically and “trembled”.
George Lucas came up with the idea of turning everything upside down and moving not the models of spaceships, but the camera that films them. The installation moved on rails and guaranteed absolute smoothness of the picture. The system remembered every camera position, making it easy to combine the image with any background without a hint of unreliability.
The most advanced episode demonstrating the merits of the new technique was the final scene of the Death Star attack. To give authenticity to the combat units, the director forced the film crew to watch documentary newsreels of air battles during World War II. The episode was filmed in several sound stages. In one, cameras revolved around “toy” ships, in the second, miniature optics flew around a model of the Death Star, at the same time recording the explosions of squibs.
Layout of the Death Star site 
Then the frames were combined and the result was one of the most iconic scenes in the history of cinema. These were huge models (up to ten meters in length), containing thousands small parts. It took a lot of work to make them, and subsequently also to restore them after moving cameras repeatedly crashed into them during filming, hundreds of squibs were fired on their surface, depicting explosions
This is how they filmed it famous stage with captions
George Lucas controlled the entire filming process of his brainchild, begged the producers for money, asked not to close the project, and eventually ended up in the hospital with nervous exhaustion. At the cost of titanic efforts, in just a couple of months he laid the foundation for a cult universe, the influence of which has not diminished in the slightest. At the same time, the author of “Star Wars” earned money to film the continuation of the saga.
This year the legendary Star Wars, created by George Lucas, turned 40 years old! Since the release of the first film in 1977, the franchise has become the most profitable and iconic in film history. Today we take a look behind the scenes of the first film in the saga - episode 4, "A New Hope" - what secrets are hidden behind the scenes of the first "Star Wars"?
15. Movie studios didn't want to finance the film.
Director George Lucas had a hard time getting financing for Star Wars, and most studios didn't take him seriously. Lucas then had behind him the disastrous "Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138" and the successful " American graffiti".
Disney, which later acquired Lucas' film company Lucasfilm and the rights to Star Wars for $4 billion, refused, explaining that no one would watch this. Then, Lucas signed a contract with 20th Century Fox. Who knew it would bring him a fortune!
14. Alec Guinness refused to star in Star Wars
Sir Alec Guinness is one of the most famous and successful actors to appear in the saga. Although the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi brought him a huge fortune, Guinness disliked everything related to Star Wars. The actor agreed to the role only after persistent persuasion from Lucas. Despite all the difficulties, this did not affect his brilliant performance - Guinness was inimitable in the saga!
13. The Other Side of Midnight (1977)
20th Century Fox was so afraid of losing money on Star Wars that it actively marketed the film to all theaters. Many refused, and then Fox resorted to tricks: the studio said that if cinemas refused Star Wars, they would not be sold the expected film The Other Side of Midnight based on the best-selling book by Sidney Sheldon. Results: The Other Side of Midnight grossed $24 million, not bad, but Star Wars grossed $237 million.
12. George Lucas gave up
It seemed that all the negativity and uncertainty about the success of the film suddenly transferred to Lucas. He didn't even attend the film's premiere. Instead, he went on a trip with his notorious friend Steven Spielberg, who, by the way, sincerely believed in the success of Star Wars.
Lucas even refused the standard director's fee and agreed to $175 thousand plus 40% of the profits - a decision that later earned him millions. Additionally, the first Star Wars toys and merchandise sold out in record time.
11. Dragons of Tatooine
It is known that the scenes on Tatooine were filmed in Tunisia, where there is a place called Tataquin (Lucas liked the sound of the name). On the first day of filming, the team encountered difficulties: there was a terrible downpour that destroyed several sets. The photo shows a scene where the robot C3PO walks past the skeleton of a krayt dragon. After filming ended in Tunisia, this skeleton was left in the sand.
10. Political problems with Libya
During the filming of Star Wars, the then Libyan government led by Muammar Gaddafi threatened Tunisia with a military offensive if its authorities did not remove the suspicious “war machine” away from the border. That same "war machine", a sand crawler. Lucas had to obey!
9. Footage from World War II
As you know, to create the special effects of Star Wars, Lucas used footage of World War II, collected by him from various films. The influence of war can be seen throughout the franchise: in weapons, fighters, battles, etc. final scene the first film with the destruction of the Death Star.
8. Did you notice? Stormtroopers are left-handed
The blasters ordered for stormtroopers were developed on the basis of the Sterling L2A3 machine gun, a nine-millimeter submachine gun from World War II used by British troops. Due to the design features (when fired from the right hand, they had a strong recoil to the chest), the blaster could only be held with the left hand. In order to save money, the stormtroopers were made left-handed.
7. Luke Skywalker could have been... a woman!
Luke Skywalker went through many changes before the role was officially cast. At first, Luke could become Starkiller, then a 60-year-old general, a dwarf, and even a woman. George Lucas was concerned about the lack of female leads, but that all changed after he found Princess Leia.
6. How did Chewbacca come about?
Make-up artist Stuart Freeborn, who also worked on the image of Yoda, and George Lucas himself worked on creating the image of Chewbacca. At first it was thought that Chewbacca would look like a monkey. As a result, the character's image was modeled after Lucas' dog named Indiana. The role of Chewbacca was played by Peter Mayhew, whose height is 222 cm!
5. R2-D2 - Lucas just liked the sound of it
The name of the famous droid R2-D2 appeared by chance. While working on the Star Wars script, Lucas heard from a colleague the combination “Reel 2, Dialog Track 2,” abbreviated as “R-2-D-2”: he liked the sound and decided to name the droid that way.
It may surprise some to know that there was a person inside R2-D2! Yes, he was played by a real actor - Kenny Baker. Baker's height was 112 centimeters, which allowed him to easily fit into R2-D2.
4. Hostile Vader - David Prowse
In the original Star Wars trilogy, the physical embodiment of Darth Vader was played by David Prowse. However, later, due to his strong Bristol accent (it was jokingly called “farmer”), Prowse was removed - actor James Earl Jones spoke in the voice of Darth Vader.
Prowse was furious, and called the replacement an act of "reverse racism" (James Earl Jones is black). In addition, on film set Prowse had several unpleasant experiences.
3. The Mystery of the Metal Dice
In the cabin of the Millennium Falcon spaceship, you can see dice hanging from the ceiling. In fact, production designer Roger Christian put them there, and the bones are a kind of reference to the movie American Graffiti, where George Lucas and Harrison Ford began working together.
2. Secrets of the garbage compartment scene
During a scene in the Death Star's trash bay, actor Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) held his breath for so long fighting Dianoga while diving underwater that he burst a blood vessel. Next up: the garbage compactor number (3263827) that Han dictates to Luke is actually Mark Hamill's phone number!
1. Jedi
Where did the "Jedi" come from? It’s not surprising, but Lucas accidentally fell in love with this word. "Jedi" comes from the Japanese "Jidai Geki", which translates as "historical drama": this is what television series about samurai were called in Japan. Lucas once heard this word on TV and decided to use it in the film.
Millions of fans around the world, hundreds of fan clubs, costumes for masquerade parties - all this is the world of Star Wars. The recognition of the characters in this film is simply off the charts. After the release of the first episode, all the boys dreamed of becoming Jedi, and the girls dreamed of becoming Princess Leia
90 unique shots from the set of the legendary film are waiting for you below...
Hollywood, California. August 1977. An epochal event in the history of cinema. There is a crowd in the world-famous Chinese cinema - thousands of people are trying to get closer to the entrance to get at least a glimpse of two robots - the barrel-shaped R2D2 and the golden C3PO greet their enthusiastic fans on the carpet. A historical moment: the robots' feet are imprinted in the cement in front of the entrance to forever leave a memory of their appearance here.
All this looks like some kind of madness. Suddenly, a science fiction film becomes something much more than just entertainment - it is already a real sociological phenomenon. The appearance of the first Star Wars series was like the birth of a new religious movement.
"A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." A romantic and large-scale story about the struggle between Good and Evil, about love, hatred, betrayal and heroism, captured the minds of millions. Now it’s difficult to say what exactly was so impressive - after all, such incredible popularity cannot be explained by innovative special effects alone, no matter how hard you try... Surprisingly, then, in the late seventies, when people had never even heard of the Star Wars phenomenon, the success Few people believed the films of the young director George Lucas.
George was only 32 years old at the time of filming. His creative portfolio already included two full-length films - “Galaxy THX-1138” (1971) - also science fiction, but of a completely different kind, and “American Graffiti” (1973) - a youth comedy about teenagers from a Californian town. The second film became a commercial success, but what happened with the third was a complete surprise to everyone. The effect was like a bomb exploding. Now, more than thirty years later, it was very difficult to imagine what kind of psychosis arose throughout the world because of this film - people lined up at the cinema box office in the evening and sat at the window all night to get to the best seats. Today this seems like sheer madness.
“What was the secret of success? I think it's that it's light and good movie, with heroes and villains, and most importantly - it is truly interesting, it was able to entertain the viewer better than anything before it. I tried to recreate the spirit of adventure romance that was in the old pirate movies, but I took this spirit into the vastness of space, and the result was an unprecedented fusion of fantasy and adventure."
Adventure films abounded on television in the sixties, and Lucas watched a lot of them. Old westerns, the entire series about Flash Gordon and pictures about the 19th century with fencing - all this merged in Star Wars.
Luke Skywalker, main character“Star Wars” is a direct “descendant” of Flash Gordon, the most popular comic book hero who first saw the light of day back in 1934. It was created by artist Alex Raymond. Flash was a brave young man who, thanks to an incredible coincidence of circumstances, ends up on other planets and experiences amazing adventures while fighting evil.
He was the epitome of the ideal adventure comic book hero, just as Luke became the embodiment of the adventurous spirit for any teenager with a dream of travel. For Lucas, Luke became something of an “alter ego”, a second “I”; the director projected his own ideas about ideal hero fantastic film.
25-year-old Mark Hamill played his character perfectly.
Luke's mentor was to be a wise Jedi, the last of the order, named Obi-Wan Ben Kenobi.
He was played by an outstanding British actor Alec Guinness.
Together with space smuggler Han Solo and his six-foot-tall Wookiee friend Chewbacca, Luke and Obi-Wan rescue Princess Leia...
...performed by Carrie Fisher.
And the main villain, as planned by Lucas, was to be Darth Vader, breathing asthmatically through an ominous black mask. The sound of breathing was obtained using a breathing apparatus for scuba divers - it was the final touch to the portrait, simple, like all ingenious things, and it became a kind of “ business card"villain.
Lucas spent more than a month on casting, during which he changed some of his priorities - for example, he abandoned the Asian image of Leia (as he had initially planned), and made it not Han Solo himself who was the alien monster (the director had for a long time had the idea of making him a green-skinned giant with gills) , and his friend Chewbacca.
As a result, he began to look like a giant upright walking monkey. By the way, according to the script, he is two hundred years old!
“Actually, I based Chewbacca on my dog named Indiana. She looks exactly like a Wookiee, only a little smaller."
The script for the colossal saga was created by George in the mid-70s, and it seemed like a lifetime's work. 200-page tome (Lucas worked on it more than a year) included all the entire events of the Star Wars universe (including the modern trilogy and a lot of other things), hundreds of detailed characters - with names, biographies, carefully written characters...
Lucas was inspired when writing the script adventure film Kurosawa entitled "Three Scoundrels in the Hidden Fortress" (1958). The famous term “Jedi” also comes from Japanese - this is a paraphrase of “jidai-geki” - the names of historical stories about samurai. The plan included a lot of components - including historical events realities, such as the confrontation between Napoleon and the Senate and the transformation of a reformer into a tyrant, numerous myths and legends - the structure became so cumbersome that no one except the author himself could understand it before the film adaptation. From the very beginning, Lucas planned to create two trilogies, and to present the events “from the end” - to film the second half of the script immediately, and leave the first “for later” for intrigue.
Lucas later admitted that he himself did not believe that he could bring the colossal project to life - his creation was so large-scale. So at first he was going to make only one film, and based on the results of the distribution, evaluate whether it was worth making a second and third. So it could all end with “episode four”!
Having collected preliminary material - the script and sketches with images of the main characters, Lucas began promoting his project, namely, he began negotiations to launch production. To do this, it was necessary to conclude an agreement with a film studio and find the necessary financing. For six months, Lucas knocked on the doors of the heads of companies, and for a very long time suffered failures - both Paramount and Warner Brothers, after some deliberation, refused to work with George, citing the “unpopularity of the topic.” Still - magical romantic fairy tale about space princesses and mysterious knights to the music symphony orchestra– who would be interested in this in the disco era? In addition, a fantastic setting will probably require a lot of money, and famous actors not expected in the film... A typical failed project!
No wonder - in the seventies, science fiction was synonymous with the horror genre, and in such films (mostly very weak) the theme of alien monsters was increasingly exaggerated, and not at all the spirit of adventure. In vain Lucas tried to convince the bosses of film studios that his film was completely original - they called him several times in a row and reported that the project was rejected by their superiors. The irony of fate is that one of the most successful films of all time was considered potentially unprofitable!
But in the end, luck smiled on Lucas - the film company XX Century Fox agreed to give the project the green light - and only after the desperate director signed an agreement with a clause waiving the fee paid in advance... Moreover, the film company set a condition... release of a book about the events of the fourth episode! Perhaps in order to “test the waters”, to determine audience choice. By that time, George was ready to do anything to bring his plans to life. A brilliant writer, he co-authored this novel with Alan Foster, and the book was a success, so much so that Lucas later even received the prestigious Hugo Award for it. And so, having knocked out eight million dollars in funding (more than five million would be needed in the process), in the summer of 1976, Lucas began work on the film.
Tunisia, North Africa. It was here that George Lucas, at the head of a team of 130 people from England and the USA, shot the first frames of his new film, creating the world of the desert planet Tatooine (named after... a city in Tunisia!), where the robots who, in the story, escaped from the Empire, ended up. Time was running out - due to the months lost on the release of the book and negotiations with other companies, Lucas had less than six months for the entire process, including editing and voice-over. Several tons of scenery were hastily brought to Africa by plane to create the surroundings dreamed up by the director.
Decorators worked for 2 months, building the desert city of Mos Eisley, where Luke and Obi-Wan met space smuggler Han Solo. The entire film crew was on a starvation diet - even the director himself and the main actors flew only in economy class and ate in the common dining room. Later, everyone recalled how enthusiastic the young director instilled in the team - no one had any doubts about success, so energetically did George pursue his cherished goal.
Among other decorations, robots arrived in Africa - 25 different models (there are 33 in total in the film), made under the guidance of the famous master Carlo Rambaldi. Controlled by radio, on wheels or tracks, or even with a dwarf inside, these robots created the necessary surroundings. Filming in the desert was another challenge - the ubiquitous sand constantly jammed the mechanisms, so most of the time the robots were being repaired.
This robot, which looked like a walking refrigerator, was portrayed by a dwarf. Sometimes they forgot to take him out of the case, but he could not get out.
The vehicles worked great. The sand crawler of desert scavengers (played by a dozen dwarfs), who picked up robots in the desert, was created in the form of a small meter-long model, which was used for filming in motion, and in the unloading scene an expensive huge set with caterpillar tracks from a mining excavator was used.
For one of the scenes (a crawler after an attack by imperial soldiers), the set was “destroyed” by sawing the tracks with an autogen gun, adding holes in the casing and smoke from smoke bombs.
The hovering speeder Luke used to travel across the surface of Tatooine during filming general plans moved along the surface of the earth on wheels, which were then removed using combined surveys.
In several scenes he was mounted on what looked like a huge carousel - with a speeder hanging at one end and dicks at the other film crew that set it in motion.
After spending a total of three months in Tunisia, the film crew filmed all the material almost without incident. But still there were troubles: in the midst of filming, a sandstorm broke out, which literally scattered part of Mos Eisley across the desert, delaying the process of working on the film for a week. According to local residents, such storms are not uncommon here...
When the crew returned to England, the sets were already ready at Elstree Studios for filming the subsequent scenes, and the most impressive was, without a doubt, Han Solo's Millennium Falcon ship, almost fifty meters long. It was so big that it was built and filmed in the company's largest studio, a vast hangar outside the city. The decoration weighed forty tons.
Separately, and in a completely different studio, they made the Falcon’s cabin, mounted on a spring-loaded platform. At certain points during filming, assistants shook the booth with their hands, creating the illusion of vibration.
To save money, filming was carried out simultaneously in three pavilions, with Lucas moving between them on a bicycle. Working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, the team managed to complete the filming of the footage with the actors on set in just eight weeks. Most of the time was spent working on special effects, of which there were a colossal amount in the film.
A total of 365 special effects were used in the film - an absolute record at that time. Spaceships, various mechanisms, the famous laser swords, even the opening credits - all this was embodied in the most impressive and in an innovative way. Until now, viewers have never seen such special effects in films. They were created in California, at the studio Lucas founded specifically for Star Wars (the tiny company later grew into a giant called Industrial Light and Magic) and combined with footage shot in England.
Aside from Stanley Kubrick's A Space Odyssey, in which effects were merely a pale addition to the artistic vision, A New Hope was the first film to achieve this level of spectacle. Comparable to Star Wars, Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released at the same time, and was no longer perceived as revolutionary.
To film spaceships moving through space, Lucas used a revolutionary technology - instead of trying to move the ships relative to the camera, as had been done until now, he... moved the camera relative to the stationary ships! The result was impressive: the most natural and smooth movement created a complete illusion.
The ship model was photographed using a camera mounted on a special mechanism controlled by a computer. The camera position for each frame was stored in memory, and the creators were able to add any background at the editing stage in full accordance with the shooting angle. The clever use of lighting and moving shadows allowed us to achieve a simply amazing effect. No computer graphics there was no trace of it in the seventies!
The creation of thirty-three moving robots was also a technological achievement. And chief among them, of course, were the famous friends R2D2 and C3PO.
“From the very beginning, I decided to develop the narrative around two robots, make them the core of the whole story, and add a comic touch. I was fully aware that this would be difficult to do. But I didn’t suspect that it was so... There were many difficulties - they constantly broke down, did absolutely not what was needed in the frame, and generally wasted our time terribly. We dealt with a colossal amount of problems - sometimes it seemed to me that I couldn’t stand it. But it was still a hell of a lot of fun!”
The result was worth the effort - a funny pair of robots became an integral part of the whole story, and the characters played a vital and sometimes decisive role in the fate of the main characters.
When creating C3PO, the artist was inspired by the image of a robot from Fritz Lang's old dystopian film Metropolis (1927). For this role, the thin actor Anthony Daniels was selected, who was dressed in a golden metallic suit. In total, half a dozen design options were created (even with ears and antennas).
When walking, C3PO loudly crunched the joints of the suit, and, by the way, he could not see anything at all in the helmet, moving around the set almost blindly, and constantly crashing into the scenery, which required many takes to create all the scenes with him.
As for R2D2, it was invented by Lucas himself. The robot's mechanisms constantly malfunctioned, so it was constantly repaired and debugged.
Combined shooting was also revolutionary - for example, the authors used backgrounds, hand-painted on glass, which were combined with real filming, resulting in a surprisingly realistic illusion of space.
In the scene where Obi-Wan turns off the power supply to the Death Star, according to Lucas' sketch, it was necessary to create a shaft of enormous depth. There was no question of building a set tens of meters high for the sake of a single plan.
Then they made the decoration of the central part, along with the walls of the mine surrounding it...
... and thousands of miles from England, in the USA, they hand-painted a backdrop on glass in the form of a deep shaft going down to dizzying depths, and then shot it on film.
Combining real shooting with a painted backdrop gave amazing results realistic effect. This technology was successfully used in many other scenes, including the following episodes.
The famous laser swords are another impeccably done special effect. During the filming, we used wooden sticks coated with a reflective compound, the same as on road signs.
Then a hand-drawn glow and flashes when the “blades” collided were superimposed on the real frames (by the way, the laser beams were also drawn manually, using a ruler), and sound effects completed the illusion.
The climax of the film - when the rebels use fighters to attack the Imperial Death Star - was the most expensive and technically advanced part of the film. The spectacle and impeccable staging made this attack one of the most impressive scenes in world cinema. But behind the inspirational shots were months of hard work by hundreds of professionals - the entire final battle was essentially one big special effect.
When staging battles between fighters, Lucas was inspired by Hollywood films about World War II with air battles between aircraft, as well as newsreels of those events - the turns of fighters and their maneuvers were copied from real maneuvers of combat aircraft.
Models of spaceships were filmed against a blue screen with a computer-controlled camera. These shots were then combined with a moving background shot in another studio using miniature cameras that moved over a huge mock-up of the surface of the Death Star.
All of the wide shots of the Death Star in the film are hand-drawn on huge surfaces. But when filming a fighter attack, drawings alone were not enough. Several “miniatures” (many meters in size) were built, depicting the surface of the Death Star and the corridor in which the fighters rushed.
These were huge models (up to ten meters in length) containing thousands of small parts. It took a lot of work to make them, and subsequently to restore them after moving cameras repeatedly crashed into them during filming, hundreds of squibs were fired on their surface, depicting explosions...
The creators of the film recall that this scene took the most time and effort - quite expected, given that for Lucas it was the ending that was especially important, and he spared no expense to realize his plan properly. The matter was complicated by the fact that many special effects were being done for the first time in the history of cinema, the creators were forced to act by trial and error, and this led to impressive expenses. The special effects for the first Star Wars cost almost four million dollars, which by the standards of the seventies was an unprecedented amount.
Yes, Star Wars was an incredibly ambitious and innovative project. It is all the more surprising that on the day of the premiere the film was released in only thirty cinemas across America - the producers simply did not have the funds for more, and besides, no one believed in the success of “Wars”. After the very first screenings of the magical spectacle, the fame of the “incredible film” spread like wildfire, after which the film studio hastily released hundreds of copies sent to all cinemas in the country. The next month made "Wars" a legend, Lucas a multimillionaire, and the whole story a cult.
Since then, it has been one of the greatest successes of cinema, and not only at the box office (by the way, the success of “Wars” saved XX Century Fox from bankruptcy). Seven Oscars (and a quarter of a hundred other awards) - for scenery, costumes, special effects, editing, sound, character voices and the brilliant soundtrack of John Williams - completed the picture of colossal triumph. The fate of the saga was decided - Lucas received every opportunity to bring his super-script to life in full. Which he did - to the sincere joy of Star Wars fans.
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"Star Wars" is a cult epic fantasy saga, including 6 films, as well as animated series, cartoons, television films, books, comics, video games - all imbued with a single storyline and created in a single fantastic Star Wars Universe, conceived and realized by American director George Lucas in the early 1970s and later expanded.
Today, May 25th, marks the 38th anniversary of the release of the very first film in this truly iconic science fiction film series. Let's remember together how it all began.
The first film was released on May 25, 1977, called Star Wars. The film was a huge box office success, which actually saved 20th Century Fox from the then-threatening bankruptcy. When doubts about the profitability of the project disappeared, the first film received the subtitle “A New Hope”, and soon two sequels appeared - in 1980 and 1983.
Genre: action, science fiction, adventure, family, fantasy
Nobody expected this film to be a success. The studio's management was so convinced of the film's failure that they gave Lucas the commercial rights to all subsequent Star Wars series for free. The bosses clearly underestimated the potential of the film, and did not expect that it would be followed by two sequels, three prequel stories and many spin-offs - cartoons, computer games, toys, books and even clothes and food products. The film's budget of 11 million dollars seemed very small, but it has already brought the director half a billion, and continues to do so.
The plot of the film boils down to how the strong-willed young man Luke Skywalker, after the death of his uncle and aunt, teams up with the old Jedi knight Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi, two creaky robots, ship commander Han Solo (Ford) and a furry alien to save the princess from the villain .
Starring in the film: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, Phil Brown, Sheelagh Fraser, Jack Purvis, Alex McCrindle, Eddie Byrne, Drew Henley
Director: George Lucas
Screenwriter: George Lucas
Operator: Gilbert Taylor
Composer: John Williams
Artists: John Barry, Leslie Dilley, Norman Reynolds, Leon Eriksen
Producers: Gary Kurtz, George Lucas
Awards, nominations, festivals
1978 - Academy Award
Best Art Direction
Best Costume Design
Best Visual Effects
Best Editing
The best music
Best Sound
BAFTA Award (1978):
Best Music (John Williams)
Best Sound (Sam Shaw)
As a standard for the battle scenes, Lucas took military chronicles from the 2nd World War...
George Lucas wanted to make a kind of modern myth, as opposed to the dark, pessimistic fantasy that characterized the cinema of the early 70s.
Some interesting facts:
1. In the funny comic robots C3PO and R2D2 there were people, and in the big robot there was a specially found very thin comedian, and in the small robot there was a dwarf who controlled the robot. When filming ended, they often forgot to remove the dwarf from the robot. He couldn't get out on his own.
2. Since there was little time for filming, different episodes were filmed simultaneously in 3 pavilions at once, while Lucas himself moved between pavilions on a bicycle.
3. Benchmarking in cinema: as a standard for battle scenes, Lucas took military chronicles from the 2nd World War, and in some scenes he simply copied scenes of air battles: the movement of aircraft, changes in close-ups and long shots, etc. reproduced very accurately.
4. The breath of a person wearing scuba gear was used to voice the sinister Darth Vader. To voice the speech of the alien Chubaku, samples of lion, bear and tiger roars were used, which alternated, lining up in certain “phrases”.
5. Wooden sticks coated with a reflective compound were used as “light sabers.” “Swords” constantly broke during fights.
6. Space station The Death Star was the size of a desk, and a miniature camera was carried along it on a cable. The camera was controlled by a homemade computer (there were no personal computers then).
7. In one scene, Luke is attacked by a “sandman.” After knocking Luke to the ground, he raises the stick high above his head. During editing, for greater expressiveness, this frame was “looped” and repeated several times: it looked like the sandman was belligerently shaking a stick.
8. The producers repeatedly tried to close the film. Because:
Who will watch a stupid fairy tale?
There are no famous actors in the film
The soundtrack is symphonic, but now everyone listens to disco
9. No one believed in the success of the film, and only one small company decided to release toys in the form of the film characters for the premiere of Star Wars.
After the premiere, there was a rush of demand for toys, and the capacities used for the production of toys were not enough. That's why the company ran out of stock by Christmas! Then the company began selling “certificates” for toys. As a Christmas present, the child received an empty box and a certificate on which it was written: “With this certificate you will receive toys in March.”
10. In the 2nd part of the film, the alien Yoda was played by a special doll, which was controlled by several people. All the scenery in Yoda's scenes (including trees, etc.) was raised above the ground to human height, and the puppeteers were hiding under the floor.
This created difficulties: Mark Hamill, who played Luke Stywalker, did not hear him in his dialogue with Yoda. Finally they decided to put an earphone in Mark’s ear. Now he could hear Yoda, but periodically, when he turned his head, the earpiece began to pick up the radio (the Rolling Stones were playing), and this was very distracting.
11. Scenes on the snowy planet were filmed in Iceland. We were very unlucky with the weather; it was 20 degrees below zero all the time. The moments when Luke wanders through the snowy desert were filmed through open door from the hotel lobby. At the same time, Mark Hammil was freezing outside, and the entire film crew was warming up in the hall.
12. During filming of a flight through an asteroid swarm, .... ordinary potatoes were used as asteroids. The passage of each “asteroid” was filmed separately, against a blue screen, and then all this was edited together with the flying starships. There was no computer graphics back then...
13. To make the acting more believable and to create an atmosphere of “mystery,” George Lucas hid until the last moment from the entire film crew that the sinister Darth Vader was actually Luke Starwalker’s father. Lucas told Mark Hammil about this a minute before filming the decisive duel with Vader. And the actor who played Vader, even during the filming of the episode where he tells Luke: “I am your father!”, did not know about his “paternity” - in this scene he utters completely different words: “Your father was killed by Obiwan Kenobi.” Then this scene was dubbed “as it should”: after all, Vader’s face is hidden under an iron mask.
14. In order to keep the audience in suspense from the very first frames of the film, Lucas moved all the credits to the end of the film, thereby breaking Hollywood traditions. For the first time he was forgiven for it. But when he repeated this number in the 2nd part of the film, the Directors Guild ordered him to pay a fine of 250 thousand dollars.
15. When preparations began for the shooting of the 3rd part of the film, then for all equipment suppliers, in all papers the film was called “Blue Harvest”. They specially came up with the most non-brand name possible - because when suppliers saw the name “Star Wars”, they immediately doubled the price.
16. The monstrous gangster Jabba was controlled by many people - some with his hands, some with his mouth, some with his tongue, some with his eyes (which were radio-controlled). And Jabba's tail was driven by 2 dwarfs. When Princess Leia, about to strangle Jabba, walked behind him, she accidentally stepped on the dwarf. To prevent this from happening again, a special platform was made.
17. One of the most exciting episodes of the 3rd part is racing on flying motorcycles at breakneck speed through the forest. In fact, the flight through the forest was filmed with a hand-held camera, which the operator slowly carried along the route. Filming was carried out at a speed of 1 frame per second. Then when normal speed playback at 24 frames per second and the effect of a dizzying race appeared.
In 1997, 20 years after the release of the first film, the original trilogy was remastered with computer-generated special effects and re-released. In re-release, the films grossed $256.5 million, $124.2 million, and $88.7 million, respectively.
In 1999, the film “Star Wars” was released. Episode I: Hidden threat”, which marked the beginning of a new trilogy - the prehistory of the original. Next in 2002 - Star Wars. Episode II: Attack of the Clones and in 2005 - Star Wars. Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.
According to George Lucas, the idea for the film arose under the influence of Joseph Campbell's research on comparative mythology (The Hero with a Thousand Faces, etc.).
The beginning of the history of “Star Wars” is considered to be 1976. It was then that the novelization book of the same name by A.D. Foster and George Lucas appeared, telling about the events of Episode IV: A New Hope. Producers at 20th Century Fox, fearing the film would fail at the box office, decided to release the book early to gauge its success. In 1977, at the Congress of the World Community science fiction George Lucas got special award"Hugo" for this novel.
At the end of 2012, the seventh film was announced. The release date is set for December 18, 2015. In March 2015, the eighth film was announced and the premiere date: May 26, 2017.
