Star Wars: How it All Began...

This week, Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in theaters. I'm eager to see it and can still remember going to see the original with my parents way back when! 

So just how did the saga come to be? Here's a little trivia about its origins from Wikipedia:

Elements of the history of Star Wars are commonly disputed, as George Lucas's statements about it have changed over time. Lucas has said that it was early as 1971—after he completed directing his first full-length feature, THX 1138—that he first had an idea for a space fantasy film, though he has also claimed to have had the idea long before then. 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. In 1979, he said, "I especially loved the Flash Gordon serials... Of course I realize now how crude and badly done they were... loving them that much when they were so awful, I began to wonder what would happen if they were done really well."

At the Cannes Film Festival in May following the completion of THX 1138, Lucas was granted a two-film development deal with United Artists; the two films were American Graffiti, and an untitled Flash Gordon-esque space fantasy film. He pushed towards buying the Flash Gordon rights. He said:

I wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie, with all the trimmings, but I couldn't obtain the rights to the characters. So I began researching and went right back and found where Alex Raymond (who had done the original Flash Gordon comic strips in newspapers) had got his idea from. I discovered that he'd got his inspiration from the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (author of Tarzan) and especially from his John Carter of Mars series books. I read through that series, then found that what had sparked Burroughs off was a science-fantasy called Gulliver on Mars, written by Edwin Arnold and published in 1905. That was the first story in this genre that I have been able to trace. Jules Verne had got pretty close, I suppose, but he never had a hero battling against space creatures or having adventures on another planet. A whole new genre developed from that idea.

For the complete article click here. I'll actually go the theater to see this movie instead of waiting for it to come out on DVD, but I'll wait a week or so until after the crowds have died down. Are you planning to see it?

Thanks for visiting and have a great week!