054 Star Wars: A New Hope (The Making Of)

Retro Grade Podcast

“FEAR IS THEIR GREATEST DEFENSE!“

On this episode of the podcast we take a look behind the scenes of Star Wars: A New Hope. We go back to before it was even called Star Wars. Before George Lucas was even interested in making films in the first place. On this journey through the creative process of not only one of the most profitable movies, but entertainment and merchandise franchises of all time, we see that it all started with a guy and his friends driven to make a movie outside of Hollywood and the studio system. The same movie that would later be owned by one of the biggest Hollwood studios of all time. Ironic isn’t it?

We go back to George Lucas’ time at USC and all of the people he met that would be instrumental in the creation of the first Star Wars movie. We go back to how he met Francis Ford Coppola (director of the Godfather,) the short film that he made that left an impression on Steven Spielberg (Jaws, Jurassic Park,) the help with the famous crawl text he got from Brian De Palma (Carrie, Scarface) and perhaps his most important collaborator, Marcia Lucas (his then-wife) in editing the long, wordy space epic into the movie we know today. We talk about how George Lucas positioned himself to be the owner of his own movie, and how important that fact was in the creation of the franchise, and perhaps how that may have caused the quality of the saga to waver.

Thanks to the Wookiepedia, we found several of the early drafts of Star Wars and how concepts like a floating city, a jungle planet, kyber crystals and the names like Mace Windy and Starkiller all existed in early drafts of The Star Wars, but were ultimately cut out and repurposed later on in the expansion of the universe. We talk about the lines that almost were, and also the people that were almost playing the iconic characters. What would famed samurai actor and frequent Akira Kurosawa collaborator, Toshiro Mifune bring to the film by playing Ben Kenobi? Or what about Kurt Russel playing space smuggler, Han Solo?

We talk about a lot of ‘what ifs’ and ‘could have beens’ on this episode, but by the end we discover that the film was never about making the most amount of money possible, it was about taking an audience to a place they hadn’t been to before in a film, and unlocking the imagination of the children going to see it. It just happened to make a lot of money on the way.

We hope you enjoy this episode! And stay tuned for our next episode on another 70’s film, one that may not have had as much money, but has just as long lasting pop culture staying power. A different set of ‘Jaws’ if you will..

Music is from Triune Digital and audio clips pulled from movies we will be reviewing in other episodes.

Artwork by @jannelle_o