Star Wars (retroactively titled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) is a 1977 American epic space opera film written and directed by George Lucas, produced by Lucasfilm and distributed by 20th Century-Fox. It is the first film in the Star Wars film series and fourth chronological chapter of the "Skywalker Saga". Set "a long time ago" in a fictional universe where the galaxy is ruled by the tyrannical Galactic Empire, the story focuses on a group of freedom fighters known as the Rebel Alliance, who aim to destroy the Empire's newest weapon, the Death Star. Luke Skywalker becomes caught in the conflict while learning the ways of a metaphysical power known as "the Force" from Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. The cast includes Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, David Prowse, James Earl Jones, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, and Peter Mayhew.
Lucas had the idea for a science-fiction film in the vein of Flash Gordon around the time he completed his first film, THX 1138 (1971) and began working on a treatment after the release of American Graffiti (1973). After numerous rewrites, filming took place throughout 1975 and 1976 in locations including Tunisia and Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England. The film suffered production difficulties; cast and crew involved believed the film would be a failure. Lucas formed the visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic to help create the film's special effects. It also went $3 million over budget due to delays.
Star Wars was released in a limited number of theaters in the United States on May 25, 1977 and quickly became a blockbuster hit, leading to it being expanded to a much wider release. The film opened to critical acclaim for its acting, direction, story, musical score, action sequences, sound, editing, screenplay, costume design, and production values, but particularly for its groundbreaking visual effects. It grossed $410 million worldwide during its initial run, surpassing Jaws (1975) to become the highest-grossing film until the release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982); subsequent releases brought its total gross to $775 million. When adjusted for inflation, Star Wars is the second-highest-grossing film in North America (behind Gone with the Wind) and the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time. It received numerous awards at the Academy Awards, BAFTA Awards, and Saturn Awards, among others.
The film has been reissued many times with Lucas's support—most significantly with its 20th-anniversary theatrical "Special Edition"—incorporating many changes including modified computer-generated effects, altered dialogue, re-edited shots, remixed soundtracks and added scenes. Often regarded as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made, the film became a pop-cultural phenomenon, launching an industry of tie-in products, including novels, comics, video games, amusement park attractions and merchandise including toys, games, and clothing. It became one of the first 25 films selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1989, while its soundtrack was added to the U.S. National Recording Registry in 2004. The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) followed Star Wars, rounding out the original Star Wars trilogy. A prequel and a sequel trilogy have since been released, in addition to two anthology films and various television series.
Development
Lucas had the idea for a space-fantasy film in 1971, after he completed directing his first full-length feature, THX 1138. Originally, Lucas wanted to adapt the Flash Gordon space adventure comics and serials into his own films, having been fascinated by them since he was young.
He secured a two-film development deal with United Artists; the two films were American Graffiti and a space opera, tentatively titled "The Star Wars" and inspired by Flash Gordon. Lucas would later say that he had the idea for an original space opera long before 1971, and that he even tried to film it before American Graffiti.
After spending the next two years completing American Graffiti, Lucas turned his attention to his space opera. He drew inspiration from politics of the era, later saying, "It was really about the Vietnam War, and that was the period where Nixon was trying to run for a [second] term.
Lucas began writing in January 1973, "eight hours a day, five days a week", by taking small notes, inventing odd names and assigning them possible characterizations. Lucas would discard many of these by the time the final script was written, but he included several names and places in the final script or its sequels. He used these initial names and ideas to compile a two-page synopsis titled Journal of the Whills, which told the tale of the training of apprentice CJ Thorpe as a "Jedi-Bendu" space commando by the legendary Mace Windy. Frustrated that his story was too difficult to understand, Lucas then began writing a 13-page treatment called The Star Wars on April 17, 1973, which had narrative parallels with Kurosawa's 1958 film The Hidden Fortress.
Writing
Since commencing his writing process in January 1973, Lucas had done "various rewrites in the evenings after the day's work." He would write four different screenplays for Star Wars, "searching for just the right ingredients, characters and storyline. It's always been what you might call a good idea in search of a story." By May 1974, he had expanded the treatment for The Star Wars into a rough draft screenplay,: 14 adding elements such as the Sith, the Death Star, and a general by the name of Annikin Starkiller. He changed Starkiller to an adolescent boy, and he shifted the general into a supporting role as a member of a family of dwarfs. Lucas envisioned the Corellian smuggler, Han Solo, as a large, green-skinned monster with gills. He based Chewbacca on his Alaskan Malamute dog, Indiana (whom he would later use as eponym for his character Indiana Jones), who often acted as the director's "co-pilot" by sitting in the passenger seat of his car.
Lucas completed a second draft in January 1975 as Adventures of the Starkiller, Episode One: The Star Wars, making heavy simplifications and introducing the young hero on a farm as Luke Starkiller. Annikin became Luke's father, a wise Jedi knight. "The Force" was also introduced as a mystical energy field. This draft still had some differences from the final version in the characters and relationships. For example, Luke had several brothers, as well as his father, who appears in a minor role at the end of the film. The script became more of a fairy tale quest as opposed to the action/adventure of the previous versions. This version ended with another text crawl, previewing the next story in the series. This draft was also the first to introduce the concept of a Jedi turning to the dark side: the draft included a historical Jedi who was the first to ever fall to the dark side, and then trained the Sith to use it. The script would introduce the concept of a Jedi Master and his son, who trains to be a Jedi under his father's friend; this would ultimately form the basis for the film and, later, the trilogy. However, in this draft, the father is a hero who is still alive at the start of the film
The third draft, dated August 1, 1975, was titled The Star Wars From the Adventures of Luke Starkiller. This third draft had most of the elements of the final plot, with only some differences in the characters and settings. The draft characterized Luke as an only child, with his father already dead, replacing him with a substitute named Ben Kenobi.
Star Wars: The Complete Canon Timeline (2023) :live-slug-reaction:
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one of the things i really like about a new hope is that it's a self contained story
it works perfectly fine as a completely standalone filmUnder socialism the audience is going to be mature enough to be left wanting more without demanding endless slop.
The 1993 Super Mario Bros has a great sequel hitch. Princess Daisy kicks their door down wearing a bunch of tactical gear over her princess dress and carrying a grenade launcher and says something like "you're not going to believe what happened" then it hard cuts to the credits.
That would be great, start the sequel with a “your Mario is another castle” and cut to Peach getting strapped up before busting in.
Yurp. They didn't expect it blow up. They had Alan Dean Foster write a sequel novel called Splinter of the Mind's Eye where Luke, Leia, and Vader all end up on some planet fighting over the Kaibur Crystal, which is a magical force macguffin. It was the cheap script they were going to film of the movie made enough money to merit a sequel. They weren't expecting it to be the biggest thing. Splinter is really interesting as a moment in Star Wars history. Basically nothing established in the Empire or later is there, so all the relationships are totally different.
Notably features Leia lightsaber fighting with Vader and holding her own for a while to protect an injured Luke.
huh, i've read splinter but had no idea it was planned to be the sequel film
:the-more-you-know:That's what I remember, but I might be wrong! It's been a long time, galaxy far far away, etc. : )
The Communists have the Music!
lol some website is saying "the song isn't political! It's just saying communism has good music!"
Lol okay cope harder buddy.
TMBG isn't political, I just want to listen to my favorite band play an apolitical Sandanista benefits show including my favorite bops: minimum wage, kiss me son ofGod, your racist friend, and black ops
What's funny is that leftists are great at this. We play small businesses against each other, embaress individual members of the bourgeoisie to their friends, organize "legitimate" landlords against slumlords, encourage people to shop at competitors of our targets.
How are we losing
I thought i heard a cat being tortured.
It legitimately was jazz being played.
My fucking life is a punchline
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I had a dream where I joined a org but everyone immediately thought I was a fed because i brought my entire desktop computer with me somehow
In my nursing home in 2063
Oh boy can’t wait to see what new games are coming to the ps28
It’s resident evil 4 again
I am almost done with the first draft of my very strongly star wars inspired book
That sounds awesome! Congrats on getting a draft close to the finish line.
Well, the vet said to consider my cat on hospice. I feel like I'm gonna have to put him down in the next month or so.
Afaik so many entry level direct sales jobs are like this. Pretty much borderline pyramid schemes.
I can't stand sales. i can't lie to peopl even a little bit.
Funny thing, I actually did okay renting cars just telling people exactly how everything worked and letting them make decisions. I quit when a district manager came in and instructed me to lie to customers to get numbers up. Can't do it, my brain doesn't work that way.
Yeah, 99% of sales is being dishonest and manipulative and I don't have the stomach for it. Might be justified in the case of B2B sales because you're not scamming working people
it's cool that there's already a victoria 3 dlc announced where it's announcing things that should be in the game at the start like diplomacy mattering
Yea but i bought the game because the fucking pirates were taking too long with the update that turned on autonomous investment and I knew this day would come
check out cs.rin.ru. they update very quick
https://cs.rin.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=113435
It wasn't even worth it but i figured okay i'll deal with it for this one game at least it'll have mod support without me having to do that separately, whatever. I didn't think they'd already start selling basic game features hahaha kill me
Pdx is like "whatever, we know you're good for the money fork it over" and map painting fans will until enough of them start pirating I guess.
I like that premise a lot, and it could easily highlight how societal treats come with a body count
Little bit of the industrial scale graverobbing of early anatomical science, little bit of the sudden reinterpretation of ethics that the profit motive forces people into, little bit of corpse-powered utopian postscarcity communism fantasy... Fruitful
Nooo you can't just reanimate every one of my extended grandparents to pull slabs of stone hundreds of miles
Haha dead labour go brrrr
Isn't that basically the plot of Fullmetal Alchemist? Souls of the dead from our world power the magical technology in another.
And the reanimated aren't actually mindless, thats just a myth born of necessity of the horror of working the thinking corpse of grandma to the literal bone
Pathfinder has a country like this. It's a weakly post-scarcity necrotopia where everyone is reanimated as a zombie when they die and the state uses the zombies to do all kinds of manual labor. Geb
Geb got in to a magic war with neighboring Nex which resulted in so much magic fallout that the DMZ between them is an uninhabitable mess where magic doesn't function and physics is taking a sick day. The people who inhabit there anyway invented guns to fill the magic missile niche so there are steampunk cowboys wedged in between the necromagic kingdom and the magicmagic kingdom (who are in a cold war but also each other's major trade partner)
There's also a country mentioned in passing in one of China Mieville's Bas Leg books where the dead rule over the living and vampires are viewed as pathetic addicts. living passersbye will sometimes take pity and cut a finger to drip a few drops of blood in to their beggar's bowls.
theres a fantasy mod for eu4 that has a country thats exactly this concept
dead labor, that, vampire-like, only lives sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
This (sort of annoying) girl I work with was sooooo happy about the fake ID she had just bought and was soooooo excited to start going to bars and so we went to a bar after work and her fake was denied and confiscated lmfaoooooooooooooo
I had a friend that used her older sister’s old ID as a fake, worked great
Maybe I’m just old fashioned but I think it’s weird for women to wear mens clothing like that