Lucas's breakout student effort, a dazzling display of guts and vision which took the student film festival scene by storm. A young Steven Spielberg saw this and felt horribly inadequate.
A photographer walks around a small town, and as he takes pictures of its inhabitants, they disappear. Shot in widescreen and color, a technically impressive short, albeit somewhat uninteresting.
A young man runs through the wilderness, when suddenly he's gunned down by an unseen border guard. An early precursor of sorts to THX 1138, and Lucas's first (kind of) narrative effort.
The Spiritual Disenchantment of the Super Machine Age
One of Lucas's earliest influences, Arthur Lipsett was an avant-garde Canadian at the National Film Board. His style had a tremendous impact on Lucas's early films, and The Force was rooted in his films.
The in-depth look at the creation of everyone's favorite walking carpet. From the earliest idea, and the word 'wookie' in THX 1138, up through his visual development, through an unexpected twist.
Lucas went to see Forbidden Planet for his 12th birthday, and never looked back. The equivalent to what Star Wars would become for later generations, it was indeed an Amazing! Never Before Seen! science fiction extravaganza, and it left its DNA all over Star Wars.
Christopher Frayling called him 'the first post-modern film maker' and as such Sergio Leone had an underrated and overlooked influence on Star Wars. How a samurai became a cowboy, who became a bounty hunter in a galaxy far, far away.
