Literature (illustrated in the center) has a significant parallel to Luke Skywalker as a young orphaned hero embarking on a journey to restore peace and justice to his society. Arthur's use of his sword
Excalibur as a tool of achieving objectives is reflected by Luke's use of his
lightsaber in the same manner. •
Joseph Campbell's
comparative mythology book
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, directly influenced Lucas, and is what drove him to create the "modern myth" of
Star Wars. •
E.E. 'Doc' Smith's writings contain elements central to the
Star Wars universe. These elements include: • Spherical, moon-sized spaceships. • Smaller, spherical, jet-less fighters with accumulators for beamed power. •
Spacehounds of IPC includes light swords of slicing "blade of flame" and "planes of force" wielded by spherical ships, also attested in melee combat. • Smith's
Lensmen have the telepathic powers of the Jedi derived from crystalline lenses mirroring
Kyber crystals in
Star Wars. • In
Triplanetary, a "tractor beam" from an artificial planetoid captures another vessel and a damsel in distress adventure ensues. • Space armor with a general focus on melee combat using space axes. • Norlaminian worship of "the all-controlling Force" along with general use of "force" powers throughout. • A
Golden Meteor is the emblem and insignia of the galactic protectors. • A galactic trade in drugs which are used as currency: Thionite in Smith, Spice in
Star Wars. • A galactic corps of heroes with telepathic powers. (Note:
Lensman was written 10 years before the Silver Age edition of
Green Lantern) • Benevolent guardians seeking to fight evil. (Called
Arisians in
Lensman;
Aquillian in the second draft script for
Star Wars.) • A dark, unseen enemy seeking galactic domination. (Called
Boskone in
Lensman;
Bogan in the second draft script for
Star Wars.) • Special powers running down through family lines, with twins playing a significant role. • Epic space battles involving fleets of ships. • Large-scale weapons including a free-roaming planet-sized fortress and the
sunbeam (capable of focusing the sun's rays, similar to Starkiller Base in
The Force Awakens). • Jettisoning a space lifeboat with a data spool containing secrets of the enemy's ultimate weapon, the 'Grand Base'. • Training with a helmet with a blast shield, yet able to 'see' due to special powers. • The science fiction writer
Isaac Asimov stated on several occasions that George Lucas's galaxy-wide
Empire bore a close resemblance to the galaxy depicted in Asimov's
Foundation Series. The greatest differences are that Asimov's Galaxy contains almost no robots and no non-human aliens. Asimov addressed both issues directly in the saga's later volumes, most notably ''
Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth''. Since Asimov's death in 1992, the
Star Wars cinematic universe has gained new Asimovesque elements:
The Phantom Menace introduced the planet
Coruscant, which bears a close resemblance to Asimov's
Trantor. • The early
Journal of the Whills draft of
Star Wars from 1973 is based on the first chapter of the 1931
John Carter novel
A Fighting Man of Mars by
Edgar Rice Burroughs. •
Star Wars borrows significantly from
Arthurian mythology; especially with respect to plot and main character development. The life and character development of
Luke Skywalker resembles that of the legendary
King Arthur. Both are orphans who later become heroes in their early adulthood. Both also have mentors who are much older and provide them with guidance and/or training. Arthur was mentored by
Merlin; whereas Luke was mentored and trained by
Obi-Wan Kenobi prior to continuing his training and mentorship with
Yoda. The role of
Anakin Skywalker as the father of the hero, Luke Skywalker, mirrors that of
Uther Pendragon who is King Arthur's father.
Qui Gon-Jinn, Master Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi's roles match that of Merlin during the era of Anakin Skywalker and Uther Pendragon respectively. •
Star Wars shares a number of similarities with
Frank Herbert's
Dune, including the
desert planet setting with a moisture-based economy, spice smugglers, obese interstellar antagonists, and a mystical
mind control-using sect with great influence over galactic politics — Herbert himself once enumerated 37 similarities. The influence was even more distinct in early
Star Wars versions, with Princess Leia guarding a shipment of "aura spice" instead of the Death Star plans. The script for ''
Jodorowsky's Dune'' was circulating in Hollywood at the time of Lucas' early work on
Star Wars. The director of the
2021 film adaptation of
Dune,
Denis Villeneuve, said the new film would attempt to be
Star Wars for adults. • The day after
The Phantom Menace came out in theaters, a number of fans and some journalists had already noticed that there were similarities between the city of Theed on Naboo and some settings in the fantasy book series
Dinotopia. Specifically, Waterfall City, the Dinosaur Parade, and some of the submarine sequences. The creator of
Dinotopia, James Gurney, stated on his website that he had no involvement and was in contact with George Lucas. Gurney stated in an interview that George Lucas was brought in by
Columbia Pictures to see if he'd be interested in working on a film based on Gurney's books during its developmental phase because Gurney believed Lucas's
Industrial Light & Magic could get the settings right. However, negotiations broke down and Lucas refused to do the movie. One storyboard artist who worked on Lucas's movie also did some work on the
Dinotopia project.
served as an inspiration for Star Wars''. •
Flash Gordon is the pulp hero whose original property George Lucas had sought to license before making the first
Star Wars film,
A New Hope; the film includes multiple elements derived from the 1936 Universal serial
Flash Gordon and its sequel,
Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. The basic plot involving the infiltration of a megalomaniacal outer-space Emperor's fortress by two heroes disguised in uniforms of soldiers of his army is drawn from
Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, with Luke Skywalker and Han Solo filling the roles of
Flash Gordon and
Prince Barin, respectively, and
Ming the Merciless the Emperor. The Emperor's deadly, hostile planet (the
Death Star/
Mongo), a sometimes scantily-clad brunette space Princess whom the hero defends (
Princess Leia/
Princess Aura), a big, strong, hairy, animal-like ally (
Chewbacca/
Prince Thun of the Lion Men), a fearsome monster found underground and/or fought in an arena by the hero (the Rancor/the Gocko or Orangopoid), a city in the sky ruled by someone who originally works with the villains but later joins the heroes (
Lando Calrissian of Cloud City), ray-guns, and dogfighting spaceships were all elements retained from the first Universal Flash Gordon serial. The opening text crawl of
Star Wars is in the same style as the text openings of each chapter of the
Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe serial. [From the 1940 series, not 1936, and the opening crawl is from the 1938 film ''
Boys' School'']. •
DC Comics and
Jack Kirby. There has been a long debate among fans about the influence that
comic book writer
Jack Kirby had on the original
Star Wars trilogy. Kirby's time at
DC Comics between
1971 and 1975 was defined by his creation of the
New Gods saga. This
intergalactic story involved
Orion of the planet
New Genesis being prophesied by the
Source as the warrior to defeat
Darkseid - the tyrannical ruler of the planet
Apokolips, and, by doing so, bring peace to the universe and end the conflict between the two planets. Parallels can thus be drawn between the nature of the relationships between Orion and Darkseid to Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, as well as between the mythical Source and
the Force. According to some accounts, Lucas met comic book writer and editor
Roy Thomas at a dinner in 1972, during which Lucas described the plot of
Star Wars, to which Thomas noticed the similarity between this and Kirby's New Gods, which was then already a published series. •
Marvel Comics: Lucas original trilogy co-writer
Lawrence Kasdan noted that the spin-offs were expanding the franchise into more of a
shared universe. Far beyond the previously linear saga, adding that one of the strengths of the franchise was how it all fell under the same continuity in comparison to other franchises. Kasdan also contrasted
Star Wars to the
Marvel Cinematic Universe, noting that
Star Wars features less
comedy than the latter, and adding that he felt a more comedic approach like Marvel's
Guardians of the Galaxy would "not be
Star Wars" to him. •
Jon Favreau stated that he took what he learned from doing the Marvel adjacent
Iron Man films into doing
The Mandalorian and
The Book of Boba Fett in the
Star Wars franchise. All there characters rely on metallic, high-tech armors that can fly and fire weapons. ====
J. R. R. Tolkien's
The Hobbit and
The Lord of the Rings====
J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937
The Hobbit and 1954–55
The Lord of the Rings novels inspired George Lucas's creation of
Star Wars in 1977. An early draft for the 1977
Star Wars film is said to have included an exchange of dialogue between
Obi-Wan Kenobi and
Luke Skywalker taken directly from the conversation between Gandalf and Bilbo in Chapter 1 of
The Hobbit, where Bilbo/Luke says "Good morning!" and Gandalf/Kenobi replies asking whether he means he's having a good morning, or is wishing him one, or that all mornings are good. Bilbo/Luke answers "All of them at once". The plagiarised dialogue was dropped, but the monk-like Kenobi was modelled on Gandalf; the film author Chris Taylor identifies several further elements of
Star Wars that in his view could have been modelled on Middle-earth. George R. R. Martin acknowledged Tolkien influenced his
Game of Thrones TV series and novels about medieval fantasy, while speaking about a film about Tolkien's life. Jon Favreau mentioned
Game of Thrones as an influence on
The Mandalorians second season. Martin's
A Song of Ice and Fire /
Game of Thrones (1996 – present) has been compared to
Star Wars. This is most commonly through the characters of Luke Skywalker and Jaime Lannister, due to both being sword-fighters who lose their hands in duels, while being knights sworn to celibacy, and also due to their incestuous relationships to their respective sisters, Leia and Cersei (though Luke and Leia were unaware of being siblings, and the Lannisters have children). Both feature mothers who died at child-birth (
A Game of Thrones was written before the release of
Revenge of the Sith), and arguably evil fathers (though Luke and Leia weren't raised by him). Captain Phasma has also been compared as weaker than Brienne of Tharth, due to both sharing the same actress. A number of people were in both franchises. Both franchises feature important fights on throne rooms, with Emperor Palpatine's throne being compared to the Iron Throne, though Martin's works are far more violent.
Opera •
Star Wars is widely considered to resemble
Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen in themes, plot elements, and music.
Film and television • Lucas has specifically cited the fact that he became acquainted with the term
jidaigeki ("period drama", the Japanese genre of samurai films) while in Japan, and it is widely assumed that he took inspiration for the term
Jedi from this. • The costume for Darth Vader was visually inspired by the character "The Lightning" in the
Republic Pictures serial The Fighting Devil Dogs. The Lightning also had an army of white-armored stormtroopers and flew through the sky in a large triangular airship (the "flying wing"). • Darth Vader's need to wear his helmet to breathe recalls the oxygen helmets of the underground-dwelling Muranians in the 1935 Mascot serial
The Phantom Empire, which are required by the caped Thunder Riders to be able to breathe on the surface. •
The Phantom Menace features a pod racing action sequence. This entire sequence is inspired by the famous chariot race of
Ben Hur. The climactic moment when Sebulba's Pod attaches itself to Anakin's Pod mimics, almost shot for shot, the climactic moment of the scene in
Ben Hur when Messala accidentally locks wheels with Ben Hur. Lines, scenes and themes from Ben-Hur had already previously influenced the Star Wars films. The conflict between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire is comparable to the earlier film's depiction of the historical Roman-Jewish conflict of the time, with an ascendant Roman Empire, represented by Messala, threatening to wipe out the Jewish rebels and send them extinct. The same Chariot sequence also inspired parts of the Endor speeder chase in
Return of the Jedi, which also includes a sequence where two speeders accidentally interlock. The film's famous early line "The Emperor is displeased, he wishes Judea be made into a more obedient province!" significantly influenced dialogue in all Original Trilogy Star Wars films, with the first four words, in particular, is frequently directly quoted in relation to Star Wars Emperor Palpatine character. • Lucas has also cited
John Ford's
The Searchers and
David Lean's
Lawrence of Arabia as references for the style—if not the story—used in the films. A more direct homage to
Lawrence of Arabia occurs in
Attack of the Clones, as Padme and Anakin talk while walking around the Theed palace on
Naboo. It was filmed at the Plaza de España in
Seville, Spain, which in
Lawrence of Arabia was the site of the British Army headquarters in Cairo, and was shot in an exact manner as the scene in
Lawrence of Arabia where Allenby (
Jack Hawkins) and Dryden (
Claude Rains) discuss whether to give artillery to Lawrence's Arab troops. In the same film, Padme and Anakin also retreat to an estate called Varykino – the name of the Gromeko family estate in
Doctor Zhivago. (Some also have considered
Tom Courtenay's Pasha/Strelnikov character from
Zhivago as an inspiration for Anakin/Darth Vader, but the similarities are likely coincidental.) Similarly, the chase sequence with Zam Wesell on Coruscant likely references
Blade Runner; Lucas based a number of the Coruscant cityscapes on Los Angeles in 2019. A reference to
The Searchers occurs in
Star Wars, when Luke discovers the burning moisture farm, while the Tusken Raiders sequence in
Attack of the Clones recalls the climax of
The Searchers. Han's showdown with Greedo in
Star Wars resembles a scene in another John Ford film,
Cheyenne Autumn. • Lucas is also a fan of
Sergio Leone's film
Once Upon a Time in the West, and according to Leone's biographer,
Christopher Frayling, he listened to the score from Leone's film while editing
The Empire Strikes Back. Some have considered Vader's first appearance in
A New Hope as being an "homage" to the introduction of
Henry Fonda's villainous Frank in the Leone film. • The death scene of
Yoda in
Return of the Jedi is taken almost shot-for-shot from the death scene of the similarly mystical High Lama in
Frank Capra's
Lost Horizon (Yoda and the High Lama also both share a diminutive form and odd cadence of speech). • The attack on the
Death Star in the climax of the film
A New Hope is similar in multiple respects to the strategy of
Operation Chastise from the 1954 British film,
The Dam Busters. Rebel pilots have to fly through a trench while evading enemy fire and drop a single special weapon at a precise distance from the target to destroy the entire base with a single explosion; if one run fails another run must be made by a different pilot. Some scenes from the
A New Hope climax are similar to those in
The Dam Busters and some of the dialogue is nearly identical in the two films. These scenes are also heavily influenced by the action scenes from the fictional wartime film
633 Squadron. That film's finale shows the squadron's planes flying down a deep
fjord while being fired at along the way by anti-aircraft guns lining its sides. George Lucas has stated in interviews that this sequence inspired the 'trench run' sequence in
Star Wars. •
Francis Ford Coppola – Lucas based the friendship between Luke Skywalker and Han Solo on his own friendship with Francis Ford Coppola. In
Revenge of the Sith, during Anakin's massacre on Mustafar, the slaughter of the Separatist Council and the declaration of the Galactic Empire are reminiscent of the montage of massacres during the christening scene of
The Godfather, a film directed by Coppola. They are similar in that the christening of one (the baby and the Empire) with the death of a group of others (the other dons and the Separatists). Post-Lucas director Rian Johnson inspired one of the final shots of
The Last Jedi where the Millennium Falcon door closes, on the final scene of
The Godfather where a door closes on Michael Corleone. While, Lucas wanted the sequel trilogy Luke Skywalker inspired on the cynic Colonel Kurtz from Coppolla's "Apocalypse Now". • The
Maschinenmensch – the robot in
Fritz Lang's 1927 film
Metropolis – inspired the look of C-3PO, although the Maschinenmensch is a
gynoid whereas C-3PO has masculine programming. •
Ray Harryhausen used
stop motion animation to create a mechanical owl, Bubo, in
Clash of the Titans (1981). Despite Bubo's similarities (Bubo is metallic and expresses by whistling and rotating its head) to the
droid R2-D2 of the 1977 film
Star Wars, Harryhausen claimed Bubo was created before
Star Wars was released. • Lucas used the term
the Force to "echo" its use by cinematographer
Roman Kroitor in
21-87 (1963), in which Kroitor says, "Many people feel that in the contemplation of nature and in communication with other living things, they become aware of some kind of force, or something, behind this apparent mask which we see in front of us, and they call it God". Although Lucas had Kroitor's line in mind specifically, Lucas said the underlying sentiment is universal and that "similar phrases have been used extensively by many different people for the last 13,000 years".
Akira Kurosawa Akira Kurosawa films: •
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
A New Hope features the exploits of
C-3PO and
R2-D2, whereas the plot of
The Hidden Fortress is told from the point of view of two bickering peasants. The two peasants, Tahei and Matashichi, are first shown escaping a battle, while C-3PO and R2-D2 are first shown fleeing an attack in
A New Hope. Additionally, both films feature a battle-tested General – Rokurota Makabe in
The Hidden Fortress and
Obi-Wan Kenobi in
A New Hope – who assist a rebellion led by a princess and engage in a duel with a former rival whom they fought years earlier. Lucas also features multiple horizontal
wipe scene transitions in
Star Wars, a technique used thoroughly by Kurosawa in his films. Similarly, the Princess trades places with a slave girl in
The Hidden Fortress, with the slave girl acting as a decoy for the real Princess. In
The Phantom Menace,
Queen Amidala trades places with one of her handmaidens who acts as a decoy. •
Yojimbo (1961) inspired the brawl scene in the Cantina. Its sequel
Sanjuro (1962) inspired the hiding-under-the-floor trick. • "A Fistful of Dollars" which is Sergio Leone's first film in
Dollars trilogy, is an unofficial remake of the Kurosawa film "Yojimbo", that also inspired George Lucas. Clint Eastwood's cowboy character without a name, also inspired the post-Lucas created main character of
The Mandalorian, and also the Lucas created character
Cad Bane from
The Clone Wars animated series. (Though the episode "
Hostage Crisis" that introduced
Cad Bane, has the character also inspired on
Hans Gruber, the villain of
Die Hard, with its plot also being a loose remake of the Bruce Willis film). •
Django another unofficial western remake of
Yojimbo, inspired Lucas on the name of his character
Jango Fett. •
Dersu Uzala (1975), just two years before the first
Star Wars film, there are two scenes that bear a striking resemblance to scenes in
Star Wars. The first is the Captain and Dersu looking out over the horizon, seeing both the setting sun and the rising moon at the same time. This is much like when Luke Skywalker stares out on the sky with binary suns in
A New Hope. The other scene is when Dersu and the Captain are suddenly caught in a blizzard, and they have to quickly build a shelter to spend the night, to survive the cold. The Captain collapses from the cold and Dersu has to drag and stuff him into the shelter. This is similar to the scene in
The Empire Strikes Back where Han Solo cuts a tauntaun open with Luke's
lightsaber and stuffs the unconscious Luke into it, when they get caught in a blizzard on the snow planet
Hoth. A similar moment using a horse, happens in
The Revenant (2015), than won an Oscar to Leonardo DiCaprio for playing 1700s frontier man
Hugh Glass. •
Rashomon (1950): On
The Last Jedi (2017), from post-George Lucas director
Rian Johnson. The
Rashomon effect, is described on the part where Rey is told by Luke, a description of how he considered murdering his nephew Ben Solo in his sleep, due to feeling his inevitable fall to the dark side of The Force. Then Solo, who by that point had renamed himself as Kylo Ren, tells his perspective, which causes Luke to tell a third perspective of the event. All whom cause a reinterpretation of a similar event in
Return of the Jedi. •
Seven Samurai also inspired an episode of
The Clone Wars animated series, and the first
Star Wars comic with an original plot, that wasn't adapted from the film.
The Mandalorian released its "
Chapter 4: Sanctuary" has also been compared to
Seven Samurai.
Star Trek George Lucas claims he became a fan of
Star Trek when
the original series broadcast in the late 1960s which played an influence on the development of
Star Wars in 1977. Lucas claimed he also visited
Star Trek conventions. The filmmaker amazed
Clint Howard by, during an audition, immediately citing his role 15 years earlier as
Balok from "
The Corbomite Maneuver". Howard said that he wanted to yell "
Get a life" at the filmmaker.
The original films' influence on the franchise after Disney buys Lucasfilm Following the sale of Lucasfilm to
Disney, and the release of the 2015 film
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a Whatculture.com writer noticed the film bore multiple parallels and similar plot beats to
A New Hope.
McGill University computer science professor Derek Ruths ran an algorithm that found that, while it was not a one to one translation (for instance, Rey and Kylo Ren did not mirror Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader), the script mirrored
A New Hope a lot in the way that each film's characters were grouped. ==Real world history==