7. The Final Dogfight Is Reproduced From World War II Footage Star Wars
Nowadays a blockbusters climax will be made entirely in a computer by what an animator thinks looks right (which can lead to some pretty major problems). But it wasnt always so simple. When creating the effects for the first Star Wars, George Lucas was pushing the present technology as far it would go, with the Death Star attack being particularly problematic. The illusion of travelling through space was created by having a camera pan round a still model to create the illusion of movement, but while thats simple with one ship going through space, its not for an all out assault. So rather than just making it up as would be done today, Lucas looked a real dogfight footage from World War II and used it as a direct model. Suddenly this complicated sequence had all the angles and camera speeds already set up for it. Theres a lot of parallels between the Star Wars universe and the second world war, particularly in the Empires iconography (and, from the expanded universe, ideology) borrowing from the Nazis, but heres a much bigger influence that directly affects the filmmaking process. Much of the sequence was altered for the special editions. Whether that was wise or not is up to the entire internet to debate about.