Nobody expected it to work
When Star Wars was being made in 1976, many of the people involved thought it would flop. The studio had little faith in a space fantasy with robots and a walking carpet, several of the actors found the dialogue baffling, and the special effects fell badly behind schedule. George Lucas took a smaller fee for directing in exchange for keeping the rights to sequels and merchandise — a deal the studio thought gave little away.
It opened in May 1977 in a small number of cinemas and became the most successful film ever made up to that time. The toys alone went on to earn billions. The subtitle Episode IV: A New Hope was only added when the film was re-released in 1981.
A walrus, a bear and a projector
Many of the sounds of Star Wars were built from everyday recordings by the sound designer Ben Burtt. CHEWBACCA's voice mixes the noises of bears, a walrus, a lion and other animals. The hum of a LIGHTSABER came from the motor of an old film projector combined with the buzz of a television set picked up by a microphone passing near it. The screech of an Imperial fighter ship blends an elephant's call with the sound of a car on a wet road.
R2-D2's beeps and whistles were partly made by Burtt's own voice run through a synthesiser. The name R2-D2 is often said to come from film editors' shorthand for Reel 2, Dialogue 2, which Lucas heard while working on an earlier film.
Two people played Darth Vader
Darth VADER's body was played by the British bodybuilder and actor David Prowse, who was about two metres tall, but his voice was that of the American actor James Earl Jones, recorded afterwards. Prowse spoke the lines on set in his own West Country accent, and the cast and crew nicknamed him Darth Farmer. The famous breathing was recorded by Ben Burtt breathing through a scuba regulator.
YODA was a puppet operated and voiced by Frank Oz, who also performed Miss Piggy and other Muppets. For the Empire Strikes Back, the set was built on a raised platform so Oz and his team could work from underneath.
From one film to a galaxy
Star Wars grew into nine main films, spin-offs, cartoons, books, games and theme-park lands. In 2012 Disney bought Lucasfilm, the company that makes it, for around four billion dollars. The first Lego Star Wars game came out in 2005 — our Lego games page tells how it was made — and The Mandalorian took the story to television, covered on our Mandalorian page.
The original films were also restored and altered several times, which angered many fans: in one changed scene, whether HAN SOLO or the bounty hunter Greedo shoots first became one of the longest-running arguments in film fandom.
LUKE SKYWALKER, the farm boy from the desert planet TATOOINE, becomes a JEDI; LEIA leads the REBEL fighters; OBI-WAN Kenobi teaches Luke about the FORCE; and PADME is Luke and Leia's mother. On the other side stand the EMPIRE, the SITH, and its moon-sized battle station, the DEATH STAR.
The rest of the grid holds the Millennium FALCON, the furry EWOK and the WOOKIEE, every kind of DROID, and the gangster JABBA the Hutt.