9 Movies That Were Improved By Having No Money

1. Star Wars

Producer Gary Kurtz really seems like the unsung hero of Star Wars. He was the one with the daunting task of pulling in the reins on George Lucas whenever his brain started to become too fantastical to focus on keeping things within their modest budget. If it weren't for Kurtz, it's very likely that the original Star Wars would have went way over budget, and 20th Century Fox may have pulled the plug on it altogether.

In listening to Kurtz recount some of his stories from the set of A New Hope, there's one thing that stands out: Lucas always wanted to do too much. It wasn't enough just to have a few different species of aliens...George wanted hundreds. They couldn't just focus on a couple of planets...George needed multitudes. But, being the "budget guy," Kurtz wasn't afraid to step in and advise him to scale it back. His "less must be more" ethos helped craft the Star Wars universe we know and love today.

That mentality not only gave us the design of the Millennium Falcon (constructed from old junk parts of cars and planes), but it also played a key role in the formation of arguably the most famous sidekick of all time: Chewbacca. Initially, Lucas' script was twice the size as the finished draft, and in that rough version, he wanted to feature an entire army of Wookies. But to cut down on the runtime (and budget), they scaled way back to just one. Which made a much greater, more personal impression. Perhaps no modest budget has ever been put to such effective use.

Which other movies actually benefited from being cheap? Share your picks below in the comments thread.