![]() War movies and hot rod automobiles had shaped George Lucas’ young life in Modesto, California in the 1950s. The climactic bombing raid from 1955’s The Dam Busters was the primary inspiration for Star Wars’ memorable rebel attack on the Death Star, the Empire’s planet-destroying battle station. Do a board like that.’ ” The art became storyboard 168, shot 245, which was entitled, “PORKINS’ X WING COMES APART IN FLAMING PIECES.” As VFX artist Paul Huston described the shot in the book Star Wars Storyboards: The Original Trilogy, “ would show me a shot of a Japanese Zero flying left to right in front of a conning tower of an aircraft carrier and say, ‘The aircraft carrier is the Death Star, the Zero is an X-wing. The sailor captured the final moments of a Japanese Zero as it burnt up over the deck of an American aircraft carrier. Navy cameraman in the midst of a harrowing kamikaze attack in the Pacific more than 30 years earlier. The visual cues that inspired the starfighter’s demise came from a panning shot taken by a nervy U.S. Some 45 shots later-about 75 seconds of screen time-Jek Porkins’ X-wing fighter becomes the first casualty of the desperate raid. One at a time, the fictional spaceships elegantly “aileron roll” across the screen, mimicking the movements of the 1940s aircraft almost exactly. The clip was used as a model for the memorable shot of Rebel craft diving to attack the Death Star. fighters during Stateside training exercises, lifted from a jittery newsreel, showed aircraft peeling out of formation and dropping from sight. These clips of spinning Spitfires and coldly mechanical Messerschmitts were being used to communicate with the visual effects (VFX) crews working nonstop to finish the movie’s climax. The discombobulating war-film excerpts may have failed to beguile viewers at Lucas’ San Anselmo home, but that was not their primary purpose. And that sum leaves out the additional billions generated by sequels, spin-offs, and merchandise over the four decades following its initial release. To date the movie, now retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, has grossed more than $775 million worldwide. ![]() The climactic space battle, wherein dozens of screaming (yes, in space, but don’t worry about it) fighters shoot it out over a gigantic Imperial space station the Rebel Alliance is trying to destroy, had so many placeholder shots it was nearly impossible to follow. In fact, nearly all the special effects were unfinished. It didn’t help that the rough cut had incomplete sound effects, lacked the musical score that would eventually win an Academy Award for composer John Williams, and was slathered in grease pencil streaks to take the place of laser fire. While no one else was as acerbic as De Palma or as optimistic as Spielberg, there was a clear consensus that Star Wars needed a lot of work before its Memorial Day weekend 1977 release date. De Palma, who’d just had his first big hit with the 1975 Stephen King adaptation Carrie and would go on to make blockbusters like The Untouchables and the first Mission: Impossible, was particularly brutal, poking fun at Princess Leia’s hair and the frequent references to “The Force.” He also mocked the muffled voice of Darth Vader, whose dialogue had not yet been menacingly dubbed by James Earl Jones (to the chagrin of actor David Prowse, who played the towering villain on camera), and howled at the movie’s tedious six-paragraph opening crawl (later slimmed down, with De Palma’s help, to three). The movie was long, poorly acted, and staggeringly weird. When the lights came up, there was embarrassed silence.
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