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Inspire Wars A look at how George Lucas found his inspirations
It could very well have been a perfect day back
in 1973 when George Lucas first sat down with his number 2 pencil
and yellow reporters notepad to begin writing the initial lines of what would
morph into Star Wars. Or perhaps it was
blowing a gale, rain lashing at the windows as he wrote. Whichever it was, Lucas was certainly
influenced by many things as he compiled notes and ideas for his grand space
opera, and it wasn’t just the weather. Like most writers, Lucas was influenced and
informed by his own life and the environment he’d grown up in. Characters and situations created by Lucas,
as fantastical as they first appeared, often had groundings in the more
mundane realms of real life, and Lucas took every opportunity to translate
his own experiences into the amazing stories of the Star Wars universe. For instance, Luke Skywalker - after going
through a glut of name, sex and characters changes – not only took his name
from his creators youthful nickname but also his passion for speed, a trait
inherited from Luke’s father Anakin, who shared the thrill of the high-octane
race with Lucas. In his younger days
back in Modesto, California, Lucas was a true petrol head, thinking only
about cars during his teen years. It was an obsession which culminated in a
near fatal car crash that likely could have ended his life or left him
paralysed. This element of his life is
a path that winds its way throughout the entire saga – “Faster, more intense”
indeed… Han Solo, who again went through many
incarnations including being a Lightsabre wielding man with a beard and a
green-gilled alien, was based on his good friend and fellow film-maker
Francis Ford Coppola. And as every
self-respecting Star Wars fan is well aware, the character of Chewbacca was
inspired by his ex-wife Marcia's dog, an Alaskan Malamute named Indiana. The image of the large dog sitting in the
passenger seat of his car next to his wife inspired Lucas to think of a
side-kick for Solo, and as he remembered the name ‘Wookie’ from a background
noise tape in THX-1138 he also gave Chewie his name. Lucas credits John Milius,
writer and director of Conan the Barbarian, with introducing him to the films
of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, whose works inspired the Star Wars saga.
The Hidden Fortress includes two humorous infantry soldiers who clearly
inspired R2-D2 and C-3PO. Obi-Wan
Kenobi’s origins can be found in the aging master samurai on a mission to
deliver a princess back to her people.
Indeed, the hidden fortress itself seems to have been the inspiration
for the rebel base on Yavin IV and Grand Moff Tarkin’s
determination to destroy it in the original Star Wars. As he sat there, writing away at those first
drafts he littered his tale not only with heroic archetypes, based on the
scholarship of Joseph Campbell, and his 1949 text The Hero with a Thousand
Faces which dealt with the idea of a common thread across hero mythologies in
many or all human cultures, but with more personal elements. An avid student of experimental film, Canadian
film maker Arthur Lipsett’s film 21-87 inspired
Lucas to formulate the classic intangible character of the saga, and this
line of dialogue from the film got Lucas thinking of the ultimate plot
device. "Many people feel that in the contemplation of nature and in
communication with other living things, they become aware of some kind of
force, or something, behind this apparent mask which we see in front of us,
and they call it God." Lucas
later confirmed that the Force of the films was "an echo of that phrase
in 21-87.", but the concept behind it was universal. "Similar phrases have been used
extensively by many different people for the last 13,000 years to describe
the 'life force.'" And with that,
a plot device that elevated the film from regular sci-fi into an altogether
different beast was born. Oh, and it also named Princess Leia’s prison cell
for good measure. But there is a point to all of this. While he zipped his souped-up Fiat through
the dusty Central Valley flatlands the inspiration for Tatooine coalesced in
his mind, and his first ventures as a young man into San Francisco jazz clubs
likely informed the Cantina and its resident band. All around him Lucas was soaking up not
only history, both cultural and natural, but the very genuine fabric of real
life. Star Wars engineered the concept
of a ‘used universe’. Where things were lived in and had been repaired and
patched up many times. As a young
racer, Lucas would have spent many an hour working on his cars, tuning and
improving them, just like Anakin did in The Phantom Menace. His contempories –
Steven Spielberg, John Milius, Francis Ford
Coppola, Martin Scorcese, collectively known as the
Movie Brats – told many differing stories, each influenced and inspired by
real-world events and situations. But
Lucas took those key points and transported them, and us, to another galaxy,
much like Star Trek had in the 1960’s, and told classic tales on a broad and
fantastical canvas. Now, not all of us can write something as
meaningful and deceptively deep as a Star Wars. Lucas took three years and many rewrites to
perfect his work, and even now continues to tinker with his original
vision. But what all of us can do is
be influenced by our surroundings, our family and our friends. What Lucas managed to do was harness the
power of myth, multiply it by the grittiness of reality to find the answer to
his and our dreams, in a galaxy far, far away. With a little help from the Force of course…
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