10 facts about Star Wars and its creator

Star Wars is a fantasy saga conceived by American director George Lucas in the early 1970s and later expanded upon. The film had a huge impact on international pop culture and was repeatedly voted the best sci-fi film.

1. Let's start with the fact that Star Wars owes its creation to a car accident that George Lucas had in high school. In fact, he wanted to be a race car driver, so he sold all his childhood toys and bought a used Fiat, which he drove around the neighborhood, hardly following the rules of the road. Of course, this ended in an accident - Lucas' Fiat almost collided head-on with a small truck, and just lying in a hospital bed, he suddenly had the idea of \u200b\u200b"power" - a certain religion that space knights profess and thanks to which good is able to resist evil on a global scale. After that, Lucas stopped thinking about car racing and decided to become a director.

2. It's hard to believe now, but no one wanted to shoot Star Wars: absolutely all Hollywood studios considered Lucas's idea a failure, and XX century Fox agreed to start shooting only after Lucas refused the fee.

3. Lucas made his first film, THX 11 38, only because Francis Ford Coppola asked for it: he convinced Warner Bros. that Lucas had talent. And when Lucas started filming, Coppola - fortunately - gave 777,777 dollars. The film failed.

4. As for the name - THX 11 38, another interesting fact is connected with this. It's a Lucas thing. These letters and numbers appear in all of his films. Specifically, in Episode One, 11 38 is written on the back of the battle droid that captures Jar Jar Binks, and this is clearly visible in the frame. And one of Lucas's companies called THX to improve the way movies are shown in theaters.

5. Special effects. Their number is increasing almost exponentially. In the 4th (i.e. 1st) episode there were 545 of them, in the 5th (i.e. 2nd) - 763, in the 6th - 942, and in The Phantom Menace, special effects were present in one thousand nine hundred scenes out of two thousand double shots. As for "Attack of the Clones", this is generally one continuous special effect: only 250 frames were done without computer processing.

6. "Attack of the Clones" - the first film in the history of cinema, filmed entirely on a digital video camera, there is not a single centimeter of real film. Because of this, it costs less: only 100 million dollars instead of 115, which was spent on The Phantom Menace.

7. Lucas has his own digital studio and having Lucas special effects is very trendy in Hollywood. Lucas' studio worked on effects for Jurassic Park, Terminator 2, The Mask and Avatar, for example.

8. And speaking of money, in 2000 LucasFilm made $2 billion in revenue. This is more than the revenue part of the Estonian budget.

9. How much can you earn only on Star Wars. At the moment, there are about 15,000 types of different Star Wars toys on sale in the world. About 250 million plastic figurines of characters were sold alone, and only those that were sold under license were counted. Star Wars playing cards can be purchased for $6, Darth Vader helmet for $129.95 and Jedi lightsabers for $349. To buy all the Star Wars toys, you will need at least $10,000.

10. The most coveted place for all venerable directors in America is the George Lucas ranch in Northern California. He bought it in the mid-80s and set up a real studio there. It was there that Spielberg, Dante, Zemeckis and Cameron filmed their films. Before the premiere of Attack of the Clones, journalists and just fans were allowed to enter this ranch for the first time. The ranch is called Skywalker.