Star Wars is an American space opera franchise conceived by George Lucas. The first film in the franchise was originally released on May 25, 1977, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year intervals. Sixteen years after the release of the trilogy's final film, the first in a new prequel trilogy of films was released, again released at three-year intervals, with the final film released on May 19, 2005.

As of 2008, the overall box office revenue generated by the six Star Wars films has totalled approximately $5.51 billion,^[1] making it the third-highest-grossing film series,^[2] behind only the James Bond and Harry Potter films.

The Star Wars film series has spawned other media including books, television series, video games, and comic books. These supplements to the film trilogies comprise the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and have resulted in significant development of the series' fictional universe. These media kept the franchise going in the interim between the film trilogies. In 2008, Star Wars: The Clone Wars was released to theaters as the first ever worldwide theatrical Star Wars film outside of the main trilogies. It was the franchise's first animated film, and was intended as an introduction to the Expanded Universe series of the same name, a 3D CGI animated series based on a previous 2D animated series of a similar name.

Lucas became fascinated with the idea of a space opera film while editing THX 1138 in 1970,^[4] initially proposing a big-budget feature film adaptation of Flash Gordon in homage to the Buster Crabbe serials he enjoyed as a child. King Features Syndicate denied him access to the Flash Gordon film rights, who wished to pursue a possible adaptation with Dino De Laurentiis and Federico Felleni.^[4] Lucas decided to write an original storyline, using elements of the Arthurian monomyth theorized by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces]],^[5] the heroic novels of Edger Rice Burroughs and Frank Herbert's Dune, and the films of Akira Kurosawa, especially Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress.^[6] Lucas reasoned that westerns were the last mythological genre America had, "but that died out in the late 1950s/early 1960s and nothing had replaced them."^[5]

Talk about the similarities with Dune and The Hidden Fortress.^[7] Star Wars is also a study of religion, which "takes all the issues that religion represents and tries to distill them in a more modern, more accessible constraint," Lucas added, "so that people can accept that fact that there is a greater mystery out there."^[4] The Force embraces both oriental philosophies and Judeo-Christian ethics of responsibility ("May God Be with You"), more significantly as a metaphor of Karma. Obi-Wan Kenobi's's philosophy is particularly Buddhism - he tells Luke that the Force requires him to be calm and at peace.^[8] Obi-Wan's role in the film has also been compared to that of a shaman, an element of Native American mythology. Lucas was further inspired with Obi-Wan by the lead character in Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), and the General in The Hidden Fortress. The word "Jedi" comes from the Japanese "Jidaigeki", the term for samurai period pieces.^[7]

At the May 1971 Cannes Film Festival, Lucas presented United Artists president David Picker the concept for his as-yet untitled space opera idea. United Artists dropped their development deal for Lucas's American Graffiti in July 1971,^[5] but kept their option on his other project.^[7] While editing American Graffiti in August 1972, Lucas began work on a handwritten document titled Journal of the Whills, devising a narrative vehicle with which to explore some thirty-five themes.^[6] The Journal of the Whills was related by "C.P. Thorpe, Padawan learner of the famed Jedi," describing the exploits of "Mace Windu, a revered Jedi Bendu of Ophuchi." A separate list of planets included the desert world Aquilae, the jungle world Yavin, a "cloud planet" called Ophuchi, and a "city planet" called Alderaan. To embody his themes, Lucas added a list of characters, among them General Luke Skywalker (written as an aging war veteran), General Vader, Han Solo, C-3PO, R2-D2 and Chewbacca.^[5] However, in February 1973 Picker dropped the $25,000 development deal for the project,^[7] finding Lucas's ideas too expensive and technically challenging.^[8] Three weeks later, Mel Sapper, Universal's head of business affairs, rejected The Star Wars.^[5] Universal president "Lew Wasserman just didn't think much of science fiction at that time," producer Gary Kurtz reflected, "It's very easy to look back on that now and see that as a terrible idea, but science fiction had proved to be inordinately unsuccessful."^[9] Star Wars differed from science fictions films of the 1970s, where were often apocalyptic and portrayed nihilistic messages of humanity.^[9]

American Graffiti: Ned Tanen said, "Well ... the critics will probably like it. It's a good, solid, critics' film." So, they came up with this plan to release it in one cinema in New York and one cinema in Los Angeles, and hope that the critical response was good enough so that they could help sell the rest of the exhibitors around the rest of the country. They had already pre-sold certain territories, almost playing it as a second half of a double bill – which still were floating around at that time – but to Lew Wasserman's credit, when the film opened in New York and Los Angeles and the critical responses were very good, he forced the sales department to cancel all those bookings and they rethought the whole thing, and it was released on a much more word of mouth kind of basis.^[9]

Prequels

• http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,985238,00.html

Franchise

• Star Wars Jesus: A Spiritual Commentary on the Reality of the Force
• Star Wars: The Magic of Myth
• The Dharma of Star Wars
• Star Wars and Philosophy
• The Gospel According to Star Wars: Faith, Hope, and the Force
• Finding God in a Galaxy Far, Far Away: A Spiritual Exploration of the Star Wars Saga
• The Tao of Star Wars
• Staff (2008-12-12). "Star Wars becomes stage spectacle". BBC Online.
• Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed
• Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination
• Lawsuit (Baxter, pp. 275-277 and Pollock, pp. 197-198)
• Lucas said it was Richard Nixon and Adolf Hitler.^[7]
• The depiction of an evil Empire is Lucas's critical portrait of the 1970s Hollywood studio system, in which his first two films, THX 1138 (Warner Bros.) and American Graffiti (Universal Pictures) were re-edited by their distributors.^[7]