Star Wars: A Never-Ending Phenomenon

The Academy award winning movie Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 action packed, fanciful, thrilling space opera. Ably directed by George Lucas and distributed by Twentieth Century, Star Wars: A New Hope is among the most successful and influential films of all time. As well as, being selected to be preserved by the Library of Congress as part of its National Film Registry The first of 8 films in the Star Wars Saga is jam-packed with aliens, futuristic technology and supernatural abilities, such as the Millennium Falcon, Choobaka and of course, ‘The Force’.

"Star Wars" was arguably the first in a new breed of high concept, high budget sci-fi action films. It was directed by George Lucas and originally released in only a few cinemas in 1977. However, the buzz around the film grew, and it is now one of the highest grossing films of all time, and along with its sequels, prequels and re-mastered re-releases, has a large cult following. I feel this is because of Lucas` ability to engage the audience through careful use of sound and camera technique;

In 1949 Joseph Campbell published his book on myth and heroic archetypes known as “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. Most importantly, the book outlined the 17 stages of a mythological hero's journey. Star Wars: A New Hope is no exception to the many stories that contain a lot of the main principles presented in the 17 stages of a mythological hero's journey. While writing Star Wars, George Lucas became fascinated with Joseph Campbell’s book. Even though this wasn't necessarily the basis of his story, he was certainly influenced by his obsession with the monomyth.

The dramatic war-like classic of a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, it is Star Wars. It made a huge impact in the 70s for its THX digitally mastered sound, new visual effects, but most of all the marvelous theme, without which, Star Wars would not be half the film it is now. It took the science fiction genre to a whole new era. Therefore, Star Wars IV is the best science fiction movies of all times.

The saga’s brand consistently finds a place in the top five licensed toy brands each year, according to NPD Group (Ames).” This shows that the franchise has grown into one of the largest players in toy sales as well as revenue product. Other toy brands ranking high up include Lego, Nerf, Nintendo, Mattel, Hasbro, and Kenner. It is evident that when a single franchise, Star Wars, is available in every single one of these big name players in some form, that the franchise holds one of the largest impacts on society. The revenue coming from these sources is immense, usually averaging out to more than the original ticket sales for the films. These toys and games, intended for children, are even still relevant to those who are now adults because Star Wars is comparable to a legacy. It is passed down from generation to generation and the ones passing down the franchise are having revitalizing feelings from reminiscing upon the past. One of the main reasons many older fans are still following the later expansions of the film collections is because of the nostalgic experience. Star Wars can now be found anywhere today. The American Marketing Association elaborates upon this point in 2016 by stating that, “Today, companies like Campbell’s and CoverGirl are harnessing Star Wars’ marketing power, creating Star Wars-themed everything, from canned soup to

Stars Wars: The Force Awakens is one of my personally favorite books, not just because it was written by Alan Dean Foster but because it holds many qualities that most books do not possess. The book is set 30 years after the events of

Ben Burtt was born in Jamesville, New York, in 1948. He is best known for the unique sound effects created in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, like Darth Vader’s breathing, clashing of lightsabers, R2D2’s noises, and gun blaster effects. In the 1970’s, people pictured the future as very high tech, and futuristic movies were often asociated with electronic sound effects. These effects sounded cool, but weren’t very realistic. Ben Burtt wanted viewers to have an authentic experience while watching Star Wars unlike they’ve had before, and decided to break free of steriotypical futuristic sound effects. He decided to organically create, for example,

Star Wars one of the best classics ever made was an unexpected success.George Lucas the creator of star wars had expected his films to be a failure ; a simple film , unspoken of and not well known.He couldn’t have been more wrong , his films had stucken the hearts of thousands of people.Instantly he had fans ; talked about all the time his famous creation had hit shelves in VHS’s and soon too be made into DVD’s.Now 38 years later he is working on another film comeing out this christmas ; soon to be added to the great trilligy known as starwars...

Star Wars was a momentous movie for the time, thanks to the technology, just like Avatar, Star Wars film makers used green or blue screens, instead of using mirrors to project models and sets into live action, as previously done to. Both movies used special effects, but particularly in Star Wars this proved a benefit for the film. The special effect techniques advanced enough and look real enough for the time, for example the use of holographs for communication. Star Wars set the standard that it was beneficial to invest heavily in special effects to make the movie stand out, profitable, and have staying power. Another reason why Star Wars was thought to be ahead of the time was from having surround sound, making it more popular.

During the early 1980s, filmmakers were acknowledging the fact that Star War’s special effects created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), which was founded in 1975 by George Lucas, was a step in the right direction as sci-fi fantasy films increasingly moved toward using more CGI then ever before. Disney Pictures obviously wanted to incorporate the digital market into their films and the story of Tron seems to encapsulate that as an ambitious film project. Computers, however, were not very powerful in the 1980s, to create the special digital effects for Tron for instance, the “computer used had only 2 MB (megabyte) of memory, and no more than 330 MB of storage (primitive by today‘s computers). This put a limit on detail of background“ (Wikipedia);

Motion Pictures have always had a strong influence in today’s culture, but maybe none as prevalent as Star Wars. Originating with Episode 4 A New Hope, the series boomed from 1977 to 2005 with yet another addition coming in 2015. The strongest of the series was the original trilogy episodes 4, 5, and 6, all generally released in the 1980s. As one of the strongest film francaises still today, it’s impact within the 1980s was only the tip of the iceberg. Children and adults alike still anticipate the new edition of this seemingly endless journey. If any singular film series still holds prevalence in its future decades it is Star Wars: Original Trilogy.

Upon its release, Star Wars: A New Hope, had an immediate impact on society and aspects of this film are still embedded into popular culture today. This film is considered to be the pioneer of visual effects. These new-found visuals led the public to believe it was the inspiration for the United States Department of Defense to create a missile protection system during the Cold War.

Previously, editing used to be a challenge for most filmmakers. Often, they relied on manual methods when filming to add effects to the films. Incorporating visual effects to the film was a demanding task that

Audio and video has been used since 1850’s. Over the past years look at the first Star wars to now the last star wars and the difference between them of the quality, have we really came that far in technology? Has dated back to the first phonogram to mp3 players. First invention was from thomas edison by creating the very first phonogram. This paper is over the advancement of audio and video since the beginning to modern day.

Computer-generated imagery was being developed during the 1980s and it soon started being used in films for effects. Rickitt (2006) explains that effects during the 80s were not just there to solve problems and producing impossible shots like their initial purpose but used as a marketing tool for films to promote themselves based on the quality of the image and amount of visual effects involved. Star Wars was the first film to make use of this marketing tool and made people grow more interest on the film itself as well as the effects and of course, this brought more income to the studios. This trend of using effects to promote films was immediately picked up and abused, but it did not last long. Tron (1982) was the first film based almost entirely on computer-generated scenery and massively advertised for them. However it ended up failing at the box office even though it had superb computer generated effects at the time of its release. Rickitt described that the failure of Tron could have been what made visual effects take longer to develop and being incorporated in films. This was the first sign that a film heavily equipped with effects does not mean that it would make a hit. Narrative is an important element of a film and effects cannot compensate for a bad narrative (McClean, 2007).