Star Wars, the popular science fantasy saga, and cultural touchstone, is acknowledged to have been inspired by many sources. These include Hinduism, Qigong, Greek philosophy, Greek mythology, Roman history, Roman mythology, parts of the Abrahamic religions, Confucianism, ShintÅ, and Taoism, not to mention countless cinematic precursors.
George Lucas has said that chivalry, knighthood, paladinism, and related institutions in feudal societies inspired some concepts in the Star Wars movies, most notably the Jedi Knights. The work of the mythologist Joseph Campbell, most notably his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, directly influenced Lucas, and was what drove him to create the 'modern myth' of Star Wars. The supernatural flow of energy known as The Force is believed to have originated from the concept of prana, or ki/qi/chi, "the all-pervading vital energy of the universe".
Amongst the celebratory 30th Anniversary of Star Wars, The History Channel premiered a 2-hour event covering the entire Star Wars saga entitled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed. Featuring interviews from the likes of Stephen Colbert, Newt Gingrich, Nancy Pelosi, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Peter Jackson, acclaimed scholars, and others, the program delved further into the Heroic Epic concept and the influences of mythology, and other motifs that were important in making Star Wars the standard of movies and other series for years to come, such as sins of the father and redeeming the father, coming of age, exiting the ordinary world, and others that all led to the defining "modern mythology" of our time.
Famous quotes containing the words star wars, star, wars, sources and/or analogues:
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“The great wars of the present age are the effects of the study of history.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“It seems to me that we do not know nearly enough about ourselves; that we do not often enough wonder if our lives, or some events and times in our lives, may not be analogues or metaphors or echoes of evolvements and happenings going on in other people?—or animals?—even forests or oceans or rocks?—in this world of ours or, even, in worlds or dimensions elsewhere.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)