The first film about the incredible adventures of Luke Skywalker, entitled Star Wars, was released on the big screens almost 40 years ago. The success was simply deafening not only among the audience, but also among the critics, as evidenced by the 7 won Oscars. It’s hard to believe that the director of Star Wars, George Lucas, once showed the script to his friends and heard from them urgent recommendations not to engage in this “absurd” project. Fortunately, Lucas did not abandon his idea and, after the success of the first picture, shot 5 more episodes of the famous star saga. How did the filming of the very first film of the epic take place and what did its director do before meeting the "big" movie?
Life of George Lucas before the "big" movie
The director of "Star Wars" was born a year before the end of World War II - in May 1944. His family lived in sunny California, his father was a small businessman.
From childhood, Lucas was known as a kind of enthusiastic. His first passion was racing. Cars and garages - that was what he was interested in, he did not think about directing. But the addiction to racing turned out to be a car accident for George - at the age of 18 he almost died while driving his Autobianchi Bianchina.
After that, the future director of the movie "Star Wars" went to college. However, acquaintance with the films of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, as well as with cult director Francis Ford Coppola, gave the young man a new passion - cinema.
The first films of George Lucas
The director of the film "Star Wars" from the very beginning of his career gravitated to the genre of fiction, in particular to the theme of people's lives in the distant future.
For example, his first full-length film was the painting "THX 1138", which takes the viewer to the XXV century. With a budget of $ 777 thousand, the dystopia at the box office raised 2 million. This is an insignificant figure for Hollywood, but it is striking that the picture became cult only a couple of years later, and the plan (the story of people deprived of emotions fulfilling the orders of computers) began to be exploited in other films (Cyborg, Equilibrium, etc.). And some parts of the film (soundtracks, quotes, abbreviation) penetrated into popular culture.
The future director of "Star Wars" before the release of the famous star saga releases another film - "American Graffiti." Lucas youth comedy with a budget of 775 thousand dollars was able to break into the nomination for an Oscar, and in 5 categories.
The origin of the idea
It was during the filming of American Graffiti that George Lucas began work on the Star Wars script. He seriously “fell ill” with the idea of ​​creating his own world, where everything, from names to way of life, would have been invented only by him. Lucas almost never parted with a notebook in which he marks everything that only comes to mind about the plot. Unclear phrases from professional vocabulary or from other languages, unfamiliar sounds helped George Lucas to model unusual names for his characters: Yoda, Vader, Wookiee. The director of "Star Wars" wrote the script for the first part of the film for 6 years: the names of the characters, the relationship between them, the plot twists changed.
Before George Lucas began working with Twentieth Century Fox, he planned to select the entire cast for the film among Japanese actors. But the bosses of the film company insisted that Hollywood stars play the main roles. The budget of the film was small, so the screenings were carried out together with another project led by director Brian De Palma: the same actors tried at the same time for two pictures.
The role of an alien princess could play Jodie Foster, but was approved by Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill became Luke Skywalker. Harrison Ford was not thrilled with the script, so as an old friend of Lucas allowed himself to swear hard at the screenings - this made the director convinced that he did not even have to play the role of Han Solo, it was enough to be himself.
Filming the first movie of the star movie saga
“Star Wars-1" Lucas began shooting in March 1976 in the Tunisian desert. There were no excesses: on the very first day of shooting, a hurricane destroyed all the scenery, which were then restored in accelerated mode. Actors worked 10-15 hours a day. Then the shooting was transferred to the Elstri pavilions (London studio) and took place according to the usual 8-hour schedule.
The director of "Star Wars" continued to receive reproaches from Harrison Ford about the "terrible" text, in the end he allowed the actor to change his remarks at his discretion - the main thing was to make sense.
Post production
The director of the film "Star Wars" finished editing the preliminary version in early 1977. Only Steven Spielberg appreciated his work, while other colleagues advised putting the film "on the shelf" and forget about it. Lucas decides to remove one character from the film - Biggs Darklighter and shoot some scenes in the California desert. But Mark Hamill (starring) gets into a car accident, and the shooting breaks down. I had to release the original footage on the screens.
The reaction of the moviegoers
The first movie of the movie saga was simply called Star Wars: the director of Star Wars was not sure that the shooting would continue, so he did not add the sequence number of the episode to the name of the film.
In May 1977, at the “Chinese Theater”, the viewer finally first saw the fantastic world created by George Lucas. Actors who performed the main roles became objects of adoration; fees from showing the tape at the box office saved 20th Century Fox from the threat of ruin; George Lucas immediately received the “go-ahead” for the shooting of the second film, and funding increased from $ 11 million to $ 18 million. And so began a whole era of “star” fever, which continues to this day.