Discover the story of George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars

The Star Wars universe has nine films and two spin-offs in the original franchise, as well as derivative series and animations, games and much more. But, do you know who was responsible for creating the great Star Wars Universe? Discover the story below George Lucas.

Who was George Lucas?

George Walton Lucas Junior He is the director, screenwriter and executive producer of several films in the saga. He was born on May 14, 1944 in Modesto, California. During the 1960s, Lucas studied cinema at the University of Southern California, one of the first to have a chair dedicated to this subject, where he met Francis Ford Coppola. There, he made a series of small films, including the first version of “THX-1138”, which would later become his first feature film.

After graduating, George Lucas founded the American Zootrope studio alongside Coppola, a company whose goal was to help filmmakers create films more freely, outside the oppressive Hollywood circuit. Unfortunately, Zoetrope was not successful, but with the money derived from the film “American Graffiti” (1973) — “Summer Madness”, in Portuguese — Lucas managed to set up his own company, Lucasfilm.

The subdivisions of this company, “Skywalker Sound” and “Industrial Light and Magic”, have become some of the most respected in the fields of sound and special effects, respectively. The company also has “Lucasfilm Games”, later renamed “LucasArts”, which has established itself in the computer games industry.

The beginning of Star Wars

Initially, George Lucas wrote the script for “Star Wars” containing six hours of film, but he decided to divide the production into six episodes and record only the last three, as he considered them more interesting and recognized aspects in them that would captivate the public at the time. It is for this reason that the franchise’s productions were released out of order.

The first films were released in 1977 (“Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope”), 1980 (“Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back”) and 1983 (“Star Wars: Episode VI: The Return of Jedi”), becoming an absolute success at the time. At the beginning of the 90s, the trilogy was re-released in a special remastered edition with new sequences.

At the end of 1990, fans received the — finally — news that the first three episodes would also be recorded, being released in 1999 (“Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace”), 2002 (“Star Wars: Episode II : Attack of the Clones”) and 2005 (“Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith”). Later, the story of the saga concluded with the release of another trilogy: “Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens” (2015), “Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi” (2017) and “Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker” (2019).

The studio behind the first Star Wars productions was Fox Studios, which — because it disbelieved in the space theme — allowed George Lucas had all the rights to the films, which guaranteed him enough money to set up his own film companies. Among them is ILM, a company that revolutionized the film industry with guaranteed high-quality special effects, developing its own technology.