WE ♥ STAR WARS

From James Cameron to Guillermo del Toro, the Star Wars saga has inspired a generation of filmmakers. Here, they share their memories of the franchise that changed the face of sci-fi cinema…

Guillermo del Toro

“I first saw Star Wars in a small multiplex in Guadalajara, Mexico, at a matinee. I went around the block and lined up again to see it in every single show that day, until midnight. I then bought a Super 8 print of film selects that included the stop-motion chessboard and some saber training. I had never seen world-building at that scale and with that much detail. Lucas poured all of himself in there. And he made everything feel lived in and real. You come out of movies transformed once in a blue moon.

Star Wars changed the entire landscape of what was possible and what was not.”

Ridley Scott

“I never saw or felt audience participation like that, in my life. The theatre was shaking… By the time the movie was finished, it was so stunning that it made me miserable. That’s the highest compliment I can give it; I was miserable for a week. I hadn’t met George at that point, but I thought, ‘Fuck George.’ Then, somebody sent me this script called Alien. I said, ‘Wow. I’ll do it.’ Star Wars is absolutely seminal for me, that first one George Lucas directed. So creatively brilliant that he decided to make it the flip side of the coin to 2001, and it certainly became the flip side of Alien, which I would do two years later. George made a fairy tale story, with a princess, the young prince, and the cynical Harrison Ford playing Han Solo. To me, it was an absolutely perfect rendition of a great comic serial.”

James Cameron

“My reaction to it was not, ‘Oh, wow, that’s cool. I want to see more.’ It was, ‘Oh wow, I better get off my butt because somebody is doing this st uff, you know, and they’re beating me to it.’”

Peter Jackson

“Three of four school friends and I had bought tickets in advance for the first day, but we still had to queue up outside the Cinerama theatre in Wellington. Star Wars delivered. I remember standing and cheering and waving my arms around when Luke was flying towards the Death Star. I remember being incredibly overwrought at the excitement of it all. It was probably the first time in my life I’d ever become that heavily engaged in a movie, to the point of wanting to jump up and down and yell at the hero.”