In the years since Star Wars has grown into a massive global phenomenon, it’s easy to forget that the franchise had (relatively) scrappy origins. While it’s not exactly correct to call the original Star Wars an “independent film” — it was distributed by a major studio, 20th Century Fox — Lucas himself self-financed much of the first 1977 Star Wars film (later given the subtitle A New Hope) and used matte paintings, miniatures, and props reused from other movies to stay within a relatively tight $11 million budget. How did he do this? Partly, by using what he learned on his first movie, THX 1138.
Although it’s also sci-fi, THX 1138 is a very different type of movie from Star Wars. Far from a rollicking space opera, this dialogue-driven film takes a more cerebral and philosophical approach to the genre. “The idea was that we would push the envelope in terms of what was understandable and say that this was a film from another culture that had somehow landed in 1970,” sound designer and co-screenwriter Walter Murch told Indiewire.
