The World According To Star Wars

The World According To Star Wars Summary examines not only the unrivaled popularity of this epic franchise, but also what we can learn from it about the real world about politics, law, economics and even ourselves.

The very first Star Wars movie, A New Hope, came out in 1977 and was met with instant success and popularity, becoming the highest-grossing film of all time back then. Given that, you’d think creator George Lucas had it all figured out – but he didn’t.

In fact, Star Wars had started out very blurry in his head. When first thinking about it, he only knew he wanted to make a movie where the aliens were the heroes and the humans were the villains. He went on to write four different drafts of the entire film, until he had one that he was content with – just for the first movie!

No talk about a trilogy, let alone two. Many of the major plot twists that made the story so great were also added much later, such as (spoiler alert) Darth Vader being Luke’s father or Luke and Leia being twins. In a later interview, George Lucas confessed that “he didn’t know where things were headed while making the first movie.”

But that’s just how creativity works. It’s not this straightforward process where an artist thinks up something in their head start-to-finish and then just has to make it. It’s messy and there’s no such thing as creative foresight – which is both scary and encouraging!

The fact that almost everyone in the world knows Star Wars, Coca-Cola, Facebook and a few other names is of course the result of long years of hard work – but to some degree, it’s coincidence. There are two factors that have played a major role in the mega-success of Star Wars, none of which can be influenced by the creator: Timing. Luck. You might think they’re the same, but they actually differ. When Star Wars came out in 1977, the timing was perfect. The US population was in a grim mood after the assassinations of two Kennedys, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Nixon had resigned after the Watergate scandal, terrorism was on the rise, the economy was in a recession and the Cold War made everyone very uneasy and tense. Star Wars gave people an alternate reality they could flee to, something bigger than themselves they could be a part of, and with its big spaceships, two large, opposing parties, fun jokes and futuristic technology just the right mix of fun, escapism and clarity about what’s right and what’s wrong. The luck part kicked in in form of the tipping point. Because Star Wars appealed to…