User:Wildroot/A New Hope

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released simply as Star Wars, is a 1977 space opera film written and directed by George Lucas. It was the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films continue the story, while a prequel trilogy contributes backstory, primarily for the troubled character of Darth Vader. Ground-breaking in its use of special effects, A New Hope is one of the most successful films of all time and is generally considered one of the most influential as well.

Set far in the past in a distant galaxy, Star Wars tells the story of a group of freedom fighters known as the Rebel Alliance to destroy the Death Star space station of the oppressive Galactic Empire. The plot follows the tale of farm boy Luke Skywalker who is suddenly thrust into the role of hero when he inadvertently acquires the droids carrying the schematic plans of the station. He must accompany Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi on a mission to rescue the owner of the droids, rebel leader Princess Leia Organa, deliver the plans to the rebels' secret base, and help destroy the station before it reaches and destroys the rebel base.

Inspired by films such as Flash Gordon and the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa, as well as such critical works as Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Lucas began work on Star Wars in 1970. Produced with a budget of $11,000,000 and released on May 25, 1977, the film went on to earn $460 million in the United States and $337 million overseas, and received several awards, including 10 Academy Award nominations, among them Best Supporting Actor for Alec Guinness and Best Picture. It was re-released several times, sometimes with significant changes; the most notable versions are the 1997 Special Edition and the 2004 DVD release, which were modified with computer-generated effects and recreated scenes.

Plot
The galaxy is in a state of civil war. Spies for the Rebel Alliance have stolen plans to the Galactic Empire's Death Star: a space station capable of annihilating a planet. Rebel leader Princess Leia is in possession of the plans, but her ship is captured by Imperial forces under the command of Darth Vader. Before she is captured, Leia hides the plans in a droid named R2-D2, along with a holographic recording. The small droid escapes to the surface of the desert planet Tatooine with fellow droid C-3PO. The two droids are quickly captured by Jawa traders, who sell the pair to moisture farmer Owen Lars and his nephew, Luke Skywalker. While Luke is cleaning R2-D2, he accidentally triggers part of Leia's holographic message, in which she requests help from Obi-Wan Kenobi. The only "Kenobi" Luke knows of is an old hermit named Ben Kenobi who lives in the nearby hills; Owen, however, dismisses any connection, suggesting that Obi-Wan is dead.

During dinner, R2-D2 escapes to seek Obi-Wan. Luke and C-3PO go out after him and are met by Ben Kenobi, who reveals himself to be Obi-Wan and takes Luke and the droids back to his hut. He tells Luke of his days as a Jedi Knight and explains to Luke about a mysterious energy field called the Force. He also tells Luke about his association with Luke's father, also a Jedi, whom he claims to have been betrayed and murdered by Darth Vader, Obi-Wan's former pupil who turned to evil. Obi-Wan then views Leia's message, in which she begs him to take R2-D2 and the Death Star plans to her home planet of Alderaan, where her father will be able to retrieve and analyze them. Obi-Wan asks Luke to accompany him to Alderaan and to learn the ways of the Force. After initially refusing, Luke discovers that his home has been destroyed and his aunt and uncle killed by Imperial stormtroopers in search of the droids. Luke agrees to go with Obi-Wan to Alderaan, and the two hire smuggler Han Solo and his Wookiee co-pilot Chewbacca to transport them on their ship, the Millennium Falcon.

Meanwhile, Leia has been imprisoned on the Death Star and has resisted giving the location of the secret Rebel base. Grand Moff Tarkin, the Death Star's commanding officer and Vader's superior, tries to coax information out of her by threatening to destroy Alderaan and proceeds to do so even after she appears to cooperate as a means of demonstrating the power of the Empire's new weapon. When the Falcon arrives at Alderaan's coordinates, they find themselves in a field of rubble. They follow a TIE fighter towards the Death Star and are captured by the station's tractor beam and brought into its hangar bay. The group takes refuge in a command room on the station while Obi-Wan goes off by himself to disable the tractor beam. While they are waiting, they discover that Princess Leia is onboard and is scheduled to be executed. Han, Luke, and Chewbacca stage a rescue and free the princess. Making their way back to the Millennium Falcon, their path is cleared by the spectacle of a lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. Obi-Wan allows himself to be struck down as the others race onto the ship and escape.

The Falcon journeys to the Rebel base at Yavin IV where the Death Star plans are analyzed by the Rebels and a potential weakness is found. The weakness will require the use of one-man fighters to slip past the Death Star's formidable defenses and attack a vulnerable exhaust port. Luke joins the assault team while Han collects his reward for the rescue and leaves, despite Luke's request for him to stay. The attack proceeds when the Death Star arrives in the system, with Darth Vader having placed a homing device on the Falcon. The Rebel fighters suffer heavy losses and, after several failed attack runs, Luke remains as one of the few surviving pilots. Darth Vader appears with his own group of fighters and begins attacking the Rebel ships. Luke begins his attack run with Vader in pursuit as the Death Star approaches firing range of Yavin IV. As Vader is about to fire at Luke's ship, Han arrives in the Millennium Falcon and attacks Vader and his wingmen, sending Vader's ship careening off into space. Guided by Obi-Wan's voice telling him to use the Force, Luke fires a successful shot which destroys the Death Star seconds before it fires on the Rebel base. Later, at a grand ceremony, Princess Leia awards medals to Luke and Han for their heroism in the battle.

Cast

 * Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker: A young man who lives with his aunt and uncle on the remote world Tatooine. He dreams of something greater than his current position in life.
 * Harrison Ford as Han Solo: A self-absorbed smuggler whom Obi-Wan and Luke meet in a cantina and with whom they later travel. Solo, who owns the ship Millennium Falcon, is good friends with Chewbacca, the ship's co-pilot.
 * Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia Organa: A member of the Imperial Senate and a leader of the Rebel Alliance. She plans to use the stolen Death Star plans to find the station's weakness.
 * Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi: An aging man who served as a Jedi Master during the Clone Wars. Kenobi introduces Luke to the Force.
 * Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin: Commander of the Death Star and a Regional Governor. He leads the search for the Rebel Base, hoping to destroy it.
 * David Prowse as Darth Vader: A Dark Lord of the Sith and prominent figure in the Galactic Empire who hopes to destroy the Rebel Alliance. He was voiced by James Earl Jones.
 * Anthony Daniels as C-3PO: A protocol and interpreter droid who falls into the hands of Luke Skywalker. He is rarely without his counterpart droid, R2-D2.
 * Kenny Baker as R2-D2: A mechanic that carryies a secret message for Obi-Wan.
 * Peter Mayhewas Chewbacca: The Wookiee co-pilot of the Millennium Falcon and a close friend of Han Solo.
 * Denis Lawson as Wedge Antilles: A starfighter pilot who fights alongside Luke in the Battle of Yavin.

Before deciding that the three lead roles would be unknowns actors, Lucas briefly considered Richard Dreyfuss for Han Solo, and went as far as offering the part to Paul Le Mat, who regretted the decision and cited it as the worst mistake of his career. Al Pacino was also offered the role but he did not understand the script. Auditions for Luke Skywlaker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia began in November 1975. Supervised by Diana Crittenden, with consultation by Lucas's friend Fred Roos, the screen tests were held at American Zoetrope's office building in Culver City, California. Lucas shared the joint casting with long-time friend Brian De Palma, who was searching for actors and actresses of the same age group for his own film Carrie. As a result, Carrie Fisher and Sissy Spacek auditioned for both films in each other's respective roles. Mark Hamill, who previously auditioned for Lucas's American Graffiti, was also in competition for John Travolta's part in Carrie. Other actors who auditioned for Luke included William Katt, Will Seltzer, and Bruce Boxleitner. Sound designer Ben Burtt, who was videotaping the screen tests for Lucas, was also allowed the opportunity. Crittenden, meanwhile, lobbied for Dennis Dugan. “To me,” she explained, “he felt like a quintessential farmboy.” Lucas decided on Hamill over Seltzer out of being impressed by the actor's comfortable reading of the extremely odd universe-embedded dialogue for his character, then called Luke Starkiller.

Sylvester Stallone, Nick Nolte, John Travolta, and Christopher Walken auditioned for Han Solo. "Anybody who was up-and-coming at that point was certainly brought in," Crittenden reflected. Robert De Niro also was approached. Lucas also considered using black actor Glynn Turman opposite a Eurasian Leia, but thought that that audiences would take Solo's early scorn of Leia due to racial prejudice. Crittenden pressed for Travolta, but Harrison Ford, who had given up his acting career to focus on carpentry, was installing a door for Francis Ford Coppola's new office at the casting studio. Lucas, who worked with Ford on American Graffiti, approached Ford to help with the readings as Han for the Leia auditions. The actor impressed Lucas with his on-screen chemistry between Carrie Fisher, and was cast over Walken, Lucas's second choice.

Cindy Williams, who also starred in Lucas's American Graffiti, auditioned for Leia before Lucas decided she was too old. In addition to Sissy Spacek, Karen Allen, who would later star in Lucas's Raiders of the Lost Ark, was also considered. Amy Irving, Terri Garr, and Jodie Foster also screen tested, and Foster, at thirteen-years-old, was eventually considered too young by Lucas. Fred Roos proposed Carrie Fisher, and Lucas was impressed with her arrogance and abrasiveness, which he believed the other actresses lacked in their auditions. Terri Nunn was Lucas's second choice. Hamill, Ford, and Fisher signed their contracts in February 1976, which included the possibility for two sequels, with the exception of Ford, who only signed on for the one.

Lucas originally considered Japanese actor Toshirō Mifune for Obi-Wan Kenobi, which would have further confirmed The Hidden Fortress's influence on the film. However, 20th Century Fox executives and producer Alan Ladd, Jr. were nervous about Lucas's decision to use unknown actors in the three main roles, and urged him to cast someone better known as Obi-Wan. Lucas chose Alec Guinness for the part, known for his Academy Award-winning performance in The Bridge on the River Kwai. The actor's contractual obligations included a percentage of the box office gross and further profit participation on two sequels, which would later make him one of Britain's richest actors. For influence on his character, Guinness described Obi-Wan as a cross between Gandalf and the samurai swordsmen often played by Mifune in Akira Kurosawa's films, especially the lead general in The Hidden Fortress.

Lucas offered bodybuilder David Prowse his choosing of either Darth Vader or Chewbacca. Balking at the idea of wearing a furry body suit, Prowse choose Vader. Lucas briefly considered Orson Welles for Vader's voice, before finding it too recognizable. James Earl Jones was hired, however, Welles supplied the voiceover in the teaser trailer. Peter Mayhew, a hospital porter at Croydon University Hospital in London, was hired to wear the Chewbacca suit. Lucas cast Anthony Daniels as C-3PO on the strength of the actor's experience in mime. Over 30 actors, including Richard Dreyfuss did voice auditions before Stan Freberg was cast. In the end, it was decided to use Daniels's voice, which would add a British butler tone for the protocol droid. Cabaret artist and occasional stand-up comedian Kenny Baker originally turned down R2-D2 role over his claustrophobia.

Development
In May 1973, Lucas completed a 13-page treatment titled The Star Wars, which deleted Mace Windu as the protagonist of the storyline. He would later appear in a supporting role for the prequel trilogy, portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson. The opening spaceboarding sequence took place in the 33rd century, in the orbit of a blue-green planet named Aquilae. The eleven-year-old rebel princess of Aquilae is pursued by the evil Galactic Empire while she is en route to the planet Ophuchi, to take refuge with the Alliance of Independent Systems. The nameless princess is guarded by General Luke Skywalker, a samurai-like, battle-scared superhuman warrior. The princess, Skywalker, and two menial Imperial Bureaucrats captured by Skywalker, crash-land on the planet, where they travel to the spaceport of Gordon (Mos Eisley in later versions). They recruit a band of teenage rebels, and Skywalker uses his "laser sword" during a fight at the cantina. After nearly falling into a trap set up by an evil space captain, the group steals his ship and escape. Pursued by Imperial patrols, they attempt to hide behind an asteroid. However, their ship hit, they plummet towards the planet Yavin, inhabited by Wookies, who ride birdlike creatures. The Wookies serve the Empire and capture the princess and the two bureaucrats. A platoon of Imperial guards take them to the planet Alderaan, heart of the Empire. Skywalker and the teenagers follow in a squadron of one-man "devil fighters" and rescue the princess, who honors them in a huge ceremony at which she reveals her "true goddess-like self." Afterwords, the drunken bureaucrats stagger down an empty street arm in arm, "realizing that they have been adventuring with demigods." Both Han Solo and the Wookiees (and even the Tauntauns of The Empire Strikes Back) are present. The young teenage rebels' innocence would later be incorporated into the character of Luke Skywalker. Familiar names, such as Alderaan and Yavin are already in place, but will be subject to much shuffling. Lucas and Kurtz, finding the storyline and characters to be too similar to Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, briefly considered buying the remake rights.

Rejected by United Artists and Universal, Lucas was able to find favor in May 1973 with 20th Century Fox executive Alan Ladd, Jr., who shared the same interest in serial films of the 1930s and '40s. After the financial and critical success of Lucas's American Graffiti in August 1973, Lucas was able to convince Fox to renegotiate his contract, but not for more money. Lucas turned down a $500 thousand salary as writer and director in favor of a $150,000 contract. He was, however, granted exclusive rights to sequels, television, merchandising, and music, a licensing deal that would make him a billionaire. Licensing in the 1970s was not the huge profit center for Hollywood studios as it is today, and Fox was willing to offer these incentives, not realizing their financial impact. The box office profit return of American Graffiti, produced on a low-budget, also gave Lucas opportunities to establish more elaborate development for Lucasfilm, including the creation of Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound. The projected budget of The Star Wars was at $8 million, but it eventually rose to $10 million, both considered by Fox as low-budget in Hollywood standards at the time.

Lucas completed the first screenplay of The Star Wars in May 1974, which had the Jedi Bendu, formed one hundred thousand years earlier as the Imperial Space Force, against the evil Knights of the Sith, a sinister warrior sect. The protagonist is impetuous eighteen-year-old Anakin Starkiller, sought by his older brother Biggs to help rescue their father, Kane, a Jedi progressively mechanized over centuries of battle, down to only the head and one arm of his human body. The reunited family opposes the fascist regime of the Emperor, and Kane's daughter Leia is sent to a distant galaxy for safekeeping. Kane Starkiller and Luke Skywalker, a gray-bearded general in his early sixties, are the only surviving Jedi - the rest were hunted down and exterminated by the Sith knights. Starkiller and Skywalker share a belief in "the Force of Other," a mystical bond that gives them miraculous powers. The idea that initially in the early scripts of Lucas's THX 1138. The Jedi also deliver a samurai-warrior yell as they dispatch their enemies with "laser swords." The antagonist in Prince Valarium, the Black Knight of the Sith, aided by the tall, grim-looking Sith warrior Darth Vader, who's face is obscured by a mask. There are also two battered construction robots, Artwo Detwo and SeeThreepio, that work for the Utapau royal court. and eight-foot-tall rebel pilots with gray fur called Wookies, who live on a jungle planet. Han Solo makes a brief appearance as a huge, green-skinned monster with gills and no nose. The ending is similar to A New Hope, featuring the destruction of the Death Star. The Emperor is a portrayed as an elected official who is corrupted by power and subverts the democratic process, which Lucas intended to be an obvious comparison to Richard Nixon. Owen Lars, later to become Luke's uncle, was an anthropologist studying Wookie customs. The screenplay also introduced speeder bikes, which would appear in Return of the Jedi.

Lucas was told by Fox executives and personal friends that his ideas were too difficult and bizarre to understand. Ralph McQuarrie was therefore commissioned to start on conceptual artwork. It was not until Lucas's second draft in January 1975 that the story began to closely resemble the final film, titled the Adventures of the Starkiller Episode I: The Star Wars. The Force is powered by the Kyber Crystal, a sort of galactic Holy Grail. It also provides a more detailed background on the history of the Star Wars universe. The opening titles reveal that the Republic Galactica was founded in the distant past by a holy man called the Skywalker. He discovered the "Force of 0thers", defined as an energy field influencing the destiny of all living creatures. The Force is composed of two halves, the good one called "Ashla", and the evil one, or paraforce, called the "Bogan". The Ashla communicated with the Skywalker and made him powerful, but he realized that weaker beings could be seduced by the Bogan. He therefore passed on his knowledge only to his twelve children. They, in turn, taught their children, who became known as the "Jedi Bendu of the Ashla", a term meaning "Servants of the Ashla". For 100,000 years, the legendary Jedi Bendu Knights were the protectors of the Republic. However, as the Republic grew, its governing body, the Great Senate, fell under the influence of the Power and Transport Guilds. The now corrupt Senate hunted the Jedi Knights, who fled to the Outland systems of the galaxy. By boosting civil disorder, hindering justice and helping terrorists, the Senate manipulated the people into welcoming a police state. Thus the Empire was born.

Meanwhile, a young Padawan-Jedi named Darklighter was seduced by the Bogan, and taught its ways to a clan of Sith pirates, who became the "Black Knights of the Sith". They helped the Emperor destroy the Jedi Knights until only a few were left. The most famous of the remaining Jedi, a leader of the rebellion against the Empire, is called The Starkiller. The script starts with the now familiar spaceboarding sequence, this time in orbit around Utapau. The purpose of the boarding is for Sith Lord Darth Vader to stop rebel captain Deak Starkiller from reaching the rebel base of Organa. Deak is sent by Starkiller, his father, to Utapau in search of another son, Luke, and the powerful Kyber Crystal, a stone which has the ability to amplify the power of either side of the Force Deak is captured by Vader, but not before he manages to program an R2 unit with the vital message to his brother. R2-D2 and his friend C-3PO crash-land on Utapau and, after an encounter with the scavenging Jawas, find Luke at the farm of Owen Lars. In addition to Luke, the Lars farm houses Owen's wife, Beru, Luke's two younger brothers, Biggs and Windy, and Lars' beautiful 16-year-old daughter, Leia. Lars has taught Luke some of the skills of the Jedi to prepare him for the call that he knew would come. As Luke prepares to leave, Lars presents him with the Kyber Crystal. Luke then goes to the spaceport of Mos Eisley with the two droids to seek passage to Organa. In the cantina, he fights with his light saber, and meets Han Solo and Chewbacca. He promises them a fortune for safe transportation to Organa. In fact, Solo is little more than a cabin boy on Captain Oxus' pirate ship. With the help of Chewbacca and science officer Montross, the greedy Solo outmaneuvers Oxus and steals his ship.

The group arrive at Organa, but the planet is mysteriously destroyed and the rebellion gone. Luke then convinces Solo to assist in the rescue of Deak, who is being held captive on the cloud city of Alderaan, capital of the Empire and residence of Prince Espaa Valorum, Master of the Bogan. After managing both rescue and escape, the group heads for the fourth moon of Yavin, the new home of the rebellion. However, they are followed by Darth Vader's Death Star, already responsible for the annihilation of Organa. On Yavin, the Starkiller, an aged, charismatic figure, uses the Kyber Crystal to fight the Bogan Force while his warriors attack the Death Star. A dogfight ensues, with Han rescuing Luke at the last minute. The script contains an alternate ending in which Luke duels and kills Vader near the famous exhaust port. He then destroys the Death Star with a time bomb. The end titles announce future adventures for the sons of the Starkiller, including the rescue of the Lars family, after they are kidnapped by the Empire. It even mentions the title of the next episode of the saga, "The Princess of Ondos".

The Kyber Crystal returned in a slightly different form in Alan Dean Foster's novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Several of the now familiar names belong to other characters or places. For example, Tatooine is called Utapau; Leia is Luke's cousin; the Tusken are Imperial soldiers; Jabba the Hutt is a crewmate of Solo on Oxus' ship, Alderaan the Cloud City (a concept later reused in The Empire Strikes Back) is the capital of the Empire; Organa is the doomed rebel base, while Grand Moff Tarkin is a Rebel general! In a May 1975 synopsis submitted to Fox, Lucas retitled the script The Adventures of Luke Starkiller: (Episode One) The Star Wars. In this version, Utapau has become Organa (but not yet Tatooine). Luke, a young, daydreaming farm boy, alerted by the two droids, runs away from home to rescue the princess from the cloud City of Alderaan. A third draft was written during 1975 to further reflect the new elements of the synopsis, and bring the script closer to its final form. A fourth draft, dated January 1, 1976, was eventually written (with a revised version dated March 15, and then normal revisions at various times during production). This draft is entitled The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, As Taken from "The Journal of the Whills" (Saga 1) Star Wars. The format includes the opening roll with, "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away". Luke is still referred to as Starkiller and not Skywalker, a change made shortly before filming. During the spaceboarding sequence, the story begins on the surface of Tatooine where Luke is talking with some of his friends, Biggs Darklighter, Deak and Windy (note the reuse of the names). Biggs has joined the rebellion and asks Luke to come with him. Luke refuses, reluctantly, because he must stay on his uncle Owen Lars' farm. He meets with Biggs again, however, just before the dogfight on the Death Star. Between the second and fourth drafts, the Starkiller has been transformed into Ben Kenobi (the 'Obi-Wan' was added in a later revision). The old Jedi is introduced on Tatooine, and carries the fight in the cantina. Solo is in his final form and is now the owner of his own ship. Several scenes, later deleted, show him having arguments in Mos Eisley, first with Montross, and then, in the March 15 revision, with Jabba the Hutt. In the January 1 draft, Kenobi escapes alive, and the script carries on to the known ending. By the March 15 revision, Kenobi, as in the film, mysteriously disappears when struck by Vader's light saber.

Lucas thought of making Tatooine, where much of the action takes place, a jungle planet, and Producer Gary Kurtz went to the Philippines to scout locations. But the bare thought of spending months shooting in the jungle made Lucas itchy, and presto, with the touch of an eraser, Tatooine became desert. Tatooine, for example, is much like the arid planet Arrakis in Frank Herbert's famed Dune trilogy; that resemblance carries even to the skeleton of one of Herbert's giant sand snakes in the background of a Tatooine scene.


 * Lucas constructed Solo's backstory for the final draft. Abandoned by space Gypsies, raised by Wookies from age 7 to 12, a cadet at the Imperial academy. Kicked out. Becomes a Spice smuggler. "In reality, he's just sort of a free-enterprise small businessman." Solo rescues Chewbacca after they are rounded up by slave traders to be sold throughout the empire. He becomes his lifelong bodyguard and companion.


 * http://starwarz.com/starkiller/category/star-wars-scripts/star-wars-star-wars-scripts/
 * http://starwarz.com/starkiller/2010/05/the-star-wars-genesis/

Third draft is completed on August 1, 1975. Fox balked at the projected $16 million budget. Got it down to $13 million. Fox instilled it at $10 million, which Lucas felt was impossible. "I was practically working for free and my only hope was that if the film paid off, my net points might be worth something." Fourth draft came on January 1, 1976 and Fox greenlighted the movie. The title was The Adventures of Luke Starkiller Saga 1: Star Wars. No location shooting for Alderaan anymore, moved to the Death Star. Removed the Kyber Crystal in this draft. Revised fourth draft came on March 15, 1996. Lucas asked Huyck and Katz to polish the script, specifically Han and Leia. In this draft, Lucas decided that Kenobi would allow himself to be killed by Darth Vader,; he would thereafter become one with the Force and offer Luke advice from the spirit world.


 * Fox decided to raise the $3 million budget to $7.8 million, then $8.7 million. Fox eventually gave them $10.5 million.


 * Fox disliked the title. Dropped "The". Greenlighted on January 1, 1976.


 * It was Kurtz's idea to shoot the film England. After looking at studios in Paris, Rome and London, he found Elstree. ILM is created as a subsidiary of Lucasfilm. Finally comes to a $10 million budget. Marcia suggested Ben should be dead. spirit world. Character was called Luke Starkiller until the first day of shooting.

Filming

 * Filming started on March 22, 1976 at Tozeur, Tunisia. Weather problems ensued. Mark Hamill had injured his left arm before filming began, a damage Panaflex lens cast doubt over the quality of some of the shots, and one of the unit's Land Rovers would be seized by a local court following a dispute over a canceled hotel reservation. The mechanisms powering R2-D2 proved temperamental on the uneven desert surface, and Anthony Daniels experienced significant discomfort inside the fiber glass and aluminum C-3P0 costume. At one point a storm destroyed the standing sets and pushed back the shooting schedule. Tunisia was done on April 4, 1976. Persia, Libya and Nigeria were scouted. The footage was handed to editor John Jympson. With the arrival of Harrison Ford and, a few days later, Carrie Fisher, for the first time the entire Star Wars cast was together. "That was almost like a whole separate movie," Hamill recalled. "It was like getting a fresh start." By the time filming began at Elstree, Fox executives had expressed dissatisfaction with the Tunisian dailies, as well as Gil Taylor's focus camera request adopted by Lucas. Shooting in England went over schedule once more. "The British crew saw it as a dopey film made by this American kid. It was a tough schedule and nobody didn't really sympathize with my situation," Lucas said. Stuart Freeborn also fell ill and was unable to complete work on the cantina alien costumes. Hamill's arm improved, but he then suffered from swollen lymph glands and an infection of his right foot made it difficult for him to walk. Toward the end of filming, he suffered a burst blood vessel that made the white of one of his yes so red that filming of certain close-ups had to be postponed. By July, Fox was threatening to shut the film down entirely. Desperate measures were taken to solve the problems. The united filming simultaneously on different stages at Elstree, while the interiors of the Rebel base on Yavin 4 were filming at Shepperton Studios. Certain exteriors of the based to be used in matte paintings were also filmed outside an aircraft hangar at the Royal Air Force base at Cardington in Bedfordshire in mid-July 1976. Filmed at nine sound stages at Elstree-deserted. Other footage took place at Shepperton.


 * Freeborn got pneumonia. The hotel food was unreliable in Tunisia. Burglars broke in the production offices and stole some of Lucas's video equipment. Filming: "We all thought it was rubbish," says Daniels. Lucas shot a scene in which Luke, starring moodily into the Tatooine sky with its twin suns, catches a glimpse of the Imperial cruiser pursuing Lea's blockade runner. He hurries to the nearby town of Anchorhead to tell his friend Biggs. Koo Stark appeared. Meanwhile, back in Hollywood.


 * Matama people live in holes. Towns of Nefta and Jerba.

Design
Lucas was impressed with production designer John Barry's work on A Clockwork Orange, The Little Prince and Lucky Lady Used future concept. Norman Reynolds They scouted locations in Spain for Tatooine.

Some canceled Millennium Falcon designs were used in Episode 1. Laser pistols WWI "broom handle". Mauser automatic pistols. Stormtroopers from Sterling 9mm sub machine guns. Used future on everything. Technicians nicked, scraped, scuffed and scarred R2-D2, as well as the white armor of the stormtroopers. Watched Fellini Satyricon - design staff. John Mollo-costume designer. Modeled the Imperial uniforms on those of the Japanese army of the 1920s. Darth Vader's helmet and robes were designed by Ralph McQuarrie. Before each take, actors rolled in the dust until their clothes looked as if they had slept in them.


 * McQuarrie designed Chewbacca, Vader, the stormtroopers, the two robots and Greedo. Daniels' costume was 30 pounds. Metropolis and 3P0.

Darth Vader's outfit constituted of a black motorcycle suit, a Nazi-style helmet, a gas mask, and a monk's cloak Mollo found in Elstree's storage.

John Stears designed the R2-D2 prop and 3PO.

somewhat like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. A plaster cast was made of British Actor Anthony Daniels, who was to be the man inside. From that cast Barry constructed a golden figure of plastic, rubber, fiber glass, steel and aluminum. Threepio fairly glistened and shone when he was unveiled on the Tunisian set—but that was part of the trouble. It was so hot inside the robot body that Daniels nearly expired, and the machine's plastic and rubber joints were in danger of melting.

Lucas wanted Geoffrey Unsworth but he was too busy on A Matter of Time for Vincente Minnelli. Gil Taylor replaced him.

After Unsworth we had to look around for another cameraman, and it ended up being fine – although George and Gil Taylor didn't get along all that well, Gil did a very good job on the picture. He hadn't done very much in the way of visual effects, so he was a little nervous about some of effects shots, but most of the VistaVision stuff that involved process and matte work I shot myself.

For shots using miniatures, Lucas' crew cannibalized more than 300 model kits and collected parts from old tanks and World War II planes. When recasting their finds in plastic, they roughed them up as well. The result is a refreshingly lived-in, even beat-up, space world.

Early 1975. Lucas and Kurtz talked to Trumball as well as Jim Danforth and Bill Taylor for model animation and mask making. Korean war clips as well. They all thought was too technically challenging. Dykstra was working on a system which he hoped would solve the oldest problems of superimposing model shots onto backgrounds. ILM was on near Van Nuys airport.

Dykstra had issues with Fox over the VFX budget. Hippies-laid back style compared to Fox's demands. Ladd sent Linwood Dunn and John Love.


 * Lucas intended to have the VFX sequences in Star Wars to be innovative and revolutionary, notably the attack on the Death Star. "I'd never seen a space battle. I'd seen flying around in serial like Flash Gordon, but they were really dopey. And in 2001, it was low. Very, very brilliant, but not what I was interested in." In June 1975 he hired John Dykstra, who previously collaborated with 2001 pioneer Douglas Trumball on The Andromeda Strain and Silent Running. Lucas established in own VFX company in a warehouse in the Van Nuys airport. Put Dykstra in charge of what he made Industrial Light & Magic. To give Dykstra an idea of the dynamic qualities he wanted to attain for space combat, Lucas give him a 16 mm film copy of a sequence of dogfights he cut together from WWII documentary films. Dykstra assembled a team of VFX workers to help him. Joe Johnston. The motion control system developed for Star Wars was designed by July 1975, and named the "Dykstraflex". Dennis Muren.

Editing and reshoots
Lucas returned to California. ILM needed 350 effects shots. Only had one acceptable shot. Lucas was appalled. Lucas discovered that research and development had swallowed up most of the company's time and money. That night on July 17, 1976, Lucas received crippling chest pains and was rushed to Marin General Hospital. During an overnight stay, it was established that he had not suffered a heart attack, but that extreme stress and punishing schedules were placing his health at risk. Unwilling to accept that the effects shots could not be produced on time, Lucas appointed production supervisor George Mather to institute a strict new regime at ILM. Lucas fired Jympson at the end of the British shoot over creative differences. "I had no editor, I was running behind schedule, and I had to race to finished the movie."

Burtt and Muren began serving as third unit directors. Cray-1 Super Computer experiment with CGI, but this proved too expensive.

Wanted more aliens for the Cantina scene. Additional second unit filming was shot by Carroll Ballard in California's Death Valley (doubling for Tunisia). "I shot out in the desert for about two weeks," Ballard recalls. "And then we went back to a little, tiny stage right across from the Kodak in Hollywood where we shot the Cantina bar scene and added new creatures." Lucas had planned to replace Declan Mulholland's Jabba the Hut with a matted-in stop motion character, but by now it was clear that he would not have the time or money to make that happen. He reluctantly decided to cut the Jabba scene from the film. Meanwhile, ILM's Richard Edlund took a small crew to Tikal National Park in Guatemala to film the exteriors for the jungle planet Yavin 4. In mid-January 1977 a second unit photographed by another of Lucas's old friends, Robert Dalva - was due to shoot additional scenes of the landspeeder at China Lake Acres. IN the morning of filming, news arrived that Mark Hamill had been involved in a car accident. He had undergone plastic surgery to reconstruct his face - specifically his badly damaged nose - and would be unavailable for the filming. Lucas went ahead, using a body double and filming the landspeeder in long shots. He used a mirror to disguise the vehicle's wheels. "The reflection of the ground in the mirror made it look as if the car was floating," Dalva recalls.


 * Four hundred effects shots. $100,000 for reshoots specifically on the Cantina Scene. Rick Baker was hired for second unit. The created the Band. Stuff he had from the self.


 * Phil Tippett added stop motion game Chewy and 3P0. holographic chess. Opening crawl was rewritten by Brian de Palma and Jay Cocks. Fox would later suggest that a narrator introduce the words as they inched across the screen, for the benefit of those who couldn't read. Fox seriously considered selling it to West German investors.


 * ILM went 25% over budget. Total for VFX sequences came to $2.5 million. Also used footage from Battle of Britain, The Bridges of Toko-Ri and The Dam Busters. The star framed backdrop was done by punching holes in black Plexiglas. The light sabers were four sided blades coated with reflective aluminum attached to a small motor. When rotated, it created a flashing light later enhanced by animation. Special effects eventually cost close to $3 million, the went over budget than any other aspect of the film.

Richard Chew was hired to recut Jympon's footage from earlier in the film, while Lucas, with his editor and wife, Marcia, pieced together the attack on the Death Star. At on point, Fox argued that the attack on the Death Star should be dropped removed from the film altogether, but Lucas preserved. "One of the biggest contributions I made to the film was a suggestion to George to intercut Princess Leia and the Rebels in their station with Luke making the run to destroy the Death Star," remembers Chew. "It supplied more tension to the climax because originally, these were not simultaneous scenes; they were separate." Luke's Death Star attack was also intercut with footage of a seemingly anxious Governor Tarkin. Originally suppose to occur elsewhere in the film. Deleted scenes with Biggs and the gang.

Another editor, Paul Hirsch, had joined production in September 1976. Marcia moved on to Martin Scorsese's New York, New York in November and Chew left in December. Hirsch carried out alone, cutting in optical effects scenes from ILM and working toward the creation of a final cut.

Richard Chew and Paul Hirsch come aboard. Cut the scenes. Budget was now hovering above $9 million.

Lucas wanted Walter Murch as sound designer - unavailable Assigned producer Gary Kurtz to visits USC and evaluate the merging talent. Ben Burtt was chosen. Burt graduated from USC in June 1975, but before reporting for duty at Lucasfilm in July, he had already created the lightsaber noise. The motor of a film projects became the basis of the "sharp hum" of the lightsaber. "In my initial conversations with George, he made it very clear that he didn't want to just draw upon stock sounds or previously thought-out science fiction sounds from other movies." Burt explained.


 * Ben Burtt offered Lucas a number of different options for the sound of R2-D2. "The breakthrough came when we were working on the sound of another droid. I was trying to make the sound of this binocular, baby robot."


 * Greedo's voice was the Quechua language played backwards. Jawas - Zulu sped-up. Chewbacca - combo of Bear, badger, walrus and seal. Laser guns - backpacking in the Poconos Mountains - back pack caught on a wire for a radio station - plucked the wire and made it vibrate.


 * Welles was too recognizable. Jones was paid $10,000. Respectful Broadway actor. Initially wanted to be uncredited. Further sound design facts from page 178 are pretty cool.

Musical score
Kubrick's 2001 presented a combination of classical music and futuristic imagery, which Lucas was keen to pursue in Star Wars. Spielberg suggested John Williams form Sugarland and Jaws. Lucas explained to Williams that he wanted "an old-fashioned, romantic-sounding score befitting the 1930s serial atmosphere that had inspired the mood of the film." Do a score like Wagner.

London Symphony Orchestra for recording at Anvil Studios in March 1977. Franz Waxman and Bernard Herrmann. Lucas produced the soundtrack himself.

The style of Max Steiner and Rich Wolfgang Korngold. Music was "the one part of the film that turned out better than I thought."

Williams began work on the music in March 1976. Charge of the Light Brigade. "When you saw the film without the music, you couldn't take it seriously. But the music gave it the style of an old-time serial, and it was great fun."-Lucas 16 million from Williams' album in 1978.

Release

 * Release date pushed back for five months.


 * Marketed at the 1976 Worldcon in Kansas City, Missouri.


 * August 1977: the novelization had sold 2 million copies after five other printings sold out.

Marekted at World Con in 76. Mark Hamill, Kurtz, and Lippincott. Some costumes and McQuarrie's artwork. between that September and the following March. And the comic book came out in February, I think. Yes, February or March. So, we convinced Fox that all of this was worth supporting. We even sold the film to a group of booksellers, because of the novelization from the book convention in April, I think, just before the film opened, really. But it was just another word of mouth screening – just to kind of generate some talk about it. All of those things seemed to work quite successfully for the film.

The film opens in 50 theaters across the country, but advance screenings and word-of-mouth have already given it an outsized reputation among film buffs and science fiction addicts—two groups united usually only by their enthusiasm. The first week in April, indeed, 6,000 color transparencies from the film were stolen from the production offices; they are now selling for more than $5 each to sci-fi freaks. Some of the spaceship models used for special effects were later stolen from a workshop, and they too are being advertised on the open market. "Star Wars is the costume epic of the future," says Ben Bova, editor of Analog, one of the leading science fiction magazines. "It's a galactic Gone With the Wind. It's perfect summer escapist fare."

Box office
In April the film score was mixed and added in Dolby Stereo soundtrack. Fox was mixed with the finished film. In the late 1970s, it was usual for a major studio release to open on six hundred to eight hundred screens across the United States. Star Wars would open on just thirty-two. "The big weekend to release movies was Christmas, which people have forgotten. The second time to release your movies is the fourth of July weekend. But I said I was my released in May for Memorial Day weekend. Positive word of mouth. Kids aren't out of school. Kids to see the movie, then talk about it. Sleeper hit reception. Lucas observed the line outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre. "It was like a mob scene. One block of traffic was blocked off. There were police there. There was lines, eight or nine people wide, going both ways around the block. I said, 'My God, what's going on here? It must be a premiere or something.' I looked at the marquee and it was Star Wars." Star Wars grossed $2.89 million in its first seven days, and by mid-June, was playing in 350 theaters. The value of shares in 20th Century Fox hit their highest level since 1970. By August, Star Wars had earned $78 million in US totals. November - already the highest grossing film of all time. The film still had yet to open in major foreign territories. By the end of 1978, Star Wars had earned approximately $400 million worldwide.

Fox "Take Star Wars or you won't get The Other Side of Midnight. Exhibitors protested and Fox was later fined $25,000 by the MPAA - for the offense, ironically, of trying to force exhibitors one of of the most profitable movies of all time.

"Then there's also this mania about big numbers in the first weekend or two. I think everyone forgets that Star Wars, or any of the films that came out in the '70s, tended to be platformed – where they came out in a few cinemas. Star Wars was released only in 37 cinemas. That would be laughable today. Then they expanded it. It did better than Fox thought – I have to say that – and so they expanded it earlier than they thought they would, but it never was in more than 700 cinemas at one time."


 * The stock rose almost 500%. Had to sell over $32 million to make a profit. Began to break box office reords. 1978 reissue was $46 million. 1979-$23 million. By 1983 - $534 million worldwide. Alan Dean Foster's ghostwritten novelization went on to the New York Times.

July 1978 re-release, Lucas added Part IV: A New Hope.


 * USA  	21 July 1978  	 (re-release)
 * USA 	15 August 1979 	(re-release)
 * USA  	10 April 1981  	 (re-release)
 * USA  	13 August 1982  	 (re-release)
 * USA  	31 January 1997  	 (special edition)


 * Highest All Time Rank (on January 1, 1982)
 * Highest All Time Rank (on January 1, 1982)

February 1997: With all the hoopla surrounding the current rerelease, it's easy to forget just how dicey a proposition Star Wars was in 1977 when it opened not on 2,104 screens around the country, as it did last week, but on only 35--which itself suggests an entirely different era of moviegoing. Became the highest-grossing film of all time (until it was knocked off the pedestal by E.T. five years later).

June 1977: The price of shares in 20th Century-Fox, the maker of Star Wars, has more than doubled since the film opened in 32 theaters four weeks ago, leading a boom in movie and entertainment stocks generally.

Home media


For the original trilogy, there was the THX remastered edition, followed by the re-released Special Edition.
 * $270.92 million in rentals by the beginning of 1998.

Petition from the fans to get the original versions on DVD.

Special editions

 * The Special Edition was edited by T.M. Christopher and produced by Rick McCallum.

Special Edition was released on January 31, 1997. Improved visual effects using computer-generated imagery. Supervised by John Knoll. The Star Wars special edition would be the most ambitious test of ILM's digital capabilities before Phantom Menace endured production. "We called it an experiment in learning new technology," says Lucas, "and hoped that the re-release would pay for the work we had done. It was basically a way to take this thorn out of my side and have the thing finished the way I originally wanted it to be finished."

Lucas visualized a crime boss named Jabba the Hutt, slug-like, but the size of a cow, Jabba would be a major villain, and the nemesis of Han Solo. Freeborn put off constructing the elaborate creature. For the scene where Jabba and his men waylay Han as he's about to leave Tatooine, Lucas shot a burly actor in furs playing Jabba intended to superimpose the monster later, but Freeborn never designed Jabba, let a lone tried to build him, and Lucas dropped the scene.


 * 1994 home video VHS box set sales were successful. Lucas began to think about a special edition. Rick McCallum as producer. John Knoll said it was a trial run for the prequel trilogy. The major addition was Han Solo's confrontation with Jabba the Hut in the Mos Eisley space port. It wasn't clear that Han shot Greedo only after being shot at himself. The revision shows Greedo's shot chipping by Han's head a beat before he shoots back. Fox released it on January 31, 1997. Took $36.2 million in its opening weekend. First film in history to break the $400 million mark in US domestic box office.


 * Restored and improved with some brief new sequences (the cantina scene in Star Wars now includes additional characters, and there is also a confrontation between Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt that didn't make it into the original). Lest anyone doubt the public's interest in the series, Fox re-released the trilogy as a boxed set on video last August and sold 22 million units domestically in six months.


 * List of changes in Star Wars re-releases



I don't like the Special Editions of Star Wars and all these other movies that have come out with a super-duper director's cut like the special edition of Close Encounters. You name it. Practically every movie now does it, because they can do it for DVD. this idea of adding things – the problem with the Special Edition of the Star Wars films is that fixing a few matte lines and adding a couple of spaceships into shots is fine. I don't think anybody would notice that. But actually adding scenes that don't make any difference – they actually don't have any effect whatsoever on the film... and all of those digitally enhanced shots of robots floating around and creatures walking through the frame... call attention to themselves. Are much worse, actually, I think. Primarily because CGI work – and that CGI work was done by ILM, which is the best there is – the CGI stuff does not fit in with the mechanical style of the original film. If the whole film would have been made today, then the CGI work would fit in much more, because that's the way all the visual effects would have been done.

June 2005: George Lucas is forging ahead with the painstaking process of adapting all six Star Wars films to a three-dimensional format. the work is being done by a company called In-Three, and not ILM, Muren has been looking in on the process.

$15 million worth of financing for the whole trilogy, mostly from Fox--to go in and touch up sloppy special-effects shots that had always bothered him. About 4.5 minutes of new footage. Besides helping to wring a few more dollars out of the old movies, the refurbishment has also served as pre-preproduction for a new Star Wars movie that is scheduled to start shooting this fall for a 1999 release, the first of the long-awaited trilogy of prequels to the extant films. The renaissance began in 1991 with the publication of Heir to the Empire, an original Star Wars novel continuing the adventures of Luke Skywalker and company; it spent a total of 29 weeks on various New York Times best-seller lists. Back in 1977, he used the clout he had gained from American Graffiti's unexpected success to renegotiate his contract with Fox for directing Star Wars--not for more money but for exclusive rights to sequels and licensing, evidence that he must have had some faith in the movie. And since licensing in the mid-'70s wasn't the huge profit center for studios it is today--Star Wars helped create that too--Lucas' deal was arguably even more farsighted than the resulting film.



Legacy
May 25, 1977 was put on Time magazine's "80 Days That Changed the World".

Since 1977, Merchandise sales are at more than $2.5 billion. Created the film-merchandising business. ILM was worth $350 million and the best VFX company.


 * Did it destroy the film industry? The rise of multiplexes. Art house films were being booked and becoming more mainstream, but that makes films more intelligent. 1997: Marcia Lucas "Right now, I'm just disgusted by the American film industry. There are so few good films, and part of me thinks Star Wars is partly responsible for the direction the industry has gone in, and I feel badly about that."

May 2007: Star Wars Celebration IV convention in Los Angeles, which honored the 30th anniversary of the debut of Star Wars. One of the convention panels was a special Family Guy presentation dedicated to this fall's hour-long Star Wars-themed season opener. Titled "Blue Harvest" (after the codename for the Star Wars productions), the episode retells the story of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope through the imagination of Family Guy protagonist Peter Griffin. The characters of Star Wars are played by the cast of Family Guy. The episode was made with the blessing of Star Wars creator George Lucas and Lucasfilm Ltd.

Star Wars also launched an armada of ancillary merchandise that has far outstripped the actual film and its sequels in revenues (roughly $4 billion, vs. a mere $1.3 billion).