Star Wars was George Lucas’ most successful franchise by far, so much so he became a billionaire after selling it to Disney. But the filmmaker asserted that he didn’t film the movie with a massive audience in mind. Instead, he had that thought process for another movie.
George Lucas reminded that no one thought ‘Star Wars’ would work
Lucas has always been very open about his initial shock at Star Wars’ success. Despite being passionate about the project, he had little faith that Star Wars would do well. But Lucas wasn’t the only one.
“I showed it to all of my friends early on, but it was mostly [filled with] stock footage of old war movies, and all kinds of stuff,” Lucas once said according to Yahoo. “They saw it and [said] ‘Poor George.’ ‘What were you thinking?’”
Lucas initially considered Star Wars an experiment of his to test the limits of cinematic technology back then.
“I had an idea doing this crazy 1930s serial action-adventure film, and the idea was it would be very fast-paced and very exciting,” Lucas once said according to Not My Star Wars. “I added in these mythological motifs and I made Star Wars. It was really kind of an experiment, in a way. I had to push the technology of the film medium in order to make this movie work. I couldn’t have just space-ships slowly moving through the frame. I wanted to be able to pan with them, move with them. The problem was there really were not special effects facilities at the time. I needed to invent new technologies.”
According to Lucas, he didn’t set up Star Wars for mainstream appeal or success. There was only one feature he did where he focused on the movie’s worldwide appeal.
“None of the films I’ve done was designed for a mass audience, except for Indiana Jones. Nobody in their right mind thought American Graffiti or Star Wars would work,” Lucas said in a 2005 interview with Wired.
George Lucas explained why the prequel trilogy wasn’t a ‘slam dunk
There was a lot of confidence in the Star Wars’ prequel trilogy. Lucas’ new series of films would be arriving on the back of the already successful original trilogy. The fact that fans waited decades for a new series of Star Wars films only boosted its momentum. But initially, the movies didn’t receive the same kind of critical praise that the original trilogy did. Lucas felt the movies’ reception was due to expectations set by the first three Star Wars films.
“Yeah, everyone says the second trilogy was a slam dunk. But there was a lot of controversy around here about the fact that I wasn’t doing the obvious — I wasn’t doing the commercial version of what people expected,” Lucas said. “People expected Episode III, which is where Anakin turns into Darth Vader, to be Episode I. And then they expected Episodes II and III to be Darth Vader going around cutting people’s heads off and terrorizing the universe.”
But Lucas was more interested in taking a careful approach to Darth Vader’s origin story. The prequel trilogy was meant to explore how Darth Vader’s journey intertwined with its universe’s politics, providing commentary for real-world governments.
“He eventually realizes he’s going down the dark path, but he thinks it’s justifiable. The idea is to see how a democracy becomes a dictatorship, and how a good person goes bad — and still, in the end, thinks he’s doing the right thing,” he said.
Steven Spielberg was the only person who believed ‘Star Wars’ would be a hit
Perhaps Lucas’ best friend Spielberg had the most faith in Star Wars. Spielberg was the only person who was impressed by the first film after seeing it.
“Steven had jumped up, and said, ‘This is going to be the biggest movie of all time,’” Lucas said. “Everybody in the room looked up at Steven and [said], ‘Poor Steven.’”
Even after Star Wars came out, it took some time before Lucas realized how big the movie’s universe became.
“I turned on the news, and they had this huge story on the sensation of Star Wars, and lines around the block. Everybody was going berserk about it,” Lucas said. “That was the first time I understood that it was a big hit.”
