Filming began on the first Star Wars movie, dubbed Episode IV: A New Hope, in 1976. The movie featured so many special effects and sets that Lucas was close to going over budget several times. The movie was released on May 25, 1977.
The second movie in the original Star Wars trilogy was titled The Empire Strikes Back, released on May 21, 1980. Three years later, the final film--Return of the Jedi--was released on May 25, 1983.
The first three Star Wars movies were labeled as episodes IV, V, and VI, so in 1999, Lucas decided to create the prequel trilogy. Episode I: The Phantom Menace was released on May 19, 1999, Episode II: Attack of the Clones was released on May 16, 2002 and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was released on May 19, 2005.
The Star Wars universe follows the story of the Jedi, the Empire and the battles between them. The original trilogy follows Luke Skywalker, a Jedi in training that gets caught up in a plot to destroy the deadly Death Star battleship. Along with him are Obi-Wan Kenobi, an old Jedi who helps train him, Han Solo and Chewbacca, pilots and smugglers who travel in their Millennium Falcon spaceship, and two robots--C-3P0 and R2D2. Along the way, they rescue Princess Leia from Darth Vader, the main villain in the trilogy. Throughout the trilogy, Obi-Wan dies in a battle with Darth Vader, Darth Vader is revealed to be Luke's father, Han Solo and Princess Leia fall in love and Princess Leia is reveled to be Luke's sister. At the end of Return of the Jedi, order is restored to the galaxy with help from Yoda, the Ewoks, Lando Calrissian and other characters.
The prequel trilogy goes back 19 years and follows the formation of the Darth Vader character, when he was known as Anakin Skywalker. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda are also central characters in these prequels, which show the formation of the Dark Side and ultimately end with the creation of Darth Vader and the birth of Luke and Leia.
The movie saw instant box-office success and Lucas became a household name. His Industrial Light and Magic company became the leader in visual effects with their work on the remaining Star Wars films and other hits such as Jurassic Park.
Star Wars features epic space-battle scenes that were taped with scale models. The creators also employed green-screen technology. For his new trilogy, Lucas converted to mostly computer-generated effects and created detailed worlds and detailed characters that could not have existed in his previous films. Characters like Yoda and Jabba the Hutt were puppets in earlier films but were converted into detailed CG characters. Lucas started each movie with a text scroll that gave a back story on the plot; this famous Star Wars text has been parodied many times.
John Williams composed the score for all of the movies, and the original Star Wars theme is one of the most recognizable movie scores in cinema history.
Star Wars is such a phenomena worldwide that fans dedicated to the series crave as much content as they can. Star Wars fan conventions feature massive groups of fans dressing up as characters and watching the movies. The franchise has also expanded into the world of toys and collectibles, featuring one of the largest assortment of toys, games and statues available. There are even Star Wars slot machines.
Star Wars is often mentioned in pop culture with programs like The Simpsons, Family Guy, Robot Chicken, Friends and movie spoofs like Spaceballs and Thumb Wars.
Along with the two sets of trilogies, the Star Wars franchise has continued in other formats. The animated cartoon series The Clone Wars takes place in between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. The cartoon was adapted into a full-length CG movie and continuing episodes have been made for the Cartoon Network. Dark Horse has released comic books following different characters from all six movies and many novel adaptations have been made.
The original Star Wars trilogy also went through some changes when George Lucas updated them for a 1997 re-release featuring new CG effects and added scenes. For the DVD release in 2004, even more scenes were added to the trilogy, and eventually both the original and updated movies were packed together for DVD releases.