If Los Angeles is the center of the American film industry, then San Francisco is undoubtedly the hub of Silicon Valley, a high-tech powerhouse. www.biquge.info But in San Francisco, there's a company where the whole of Hollywood has to rely on sniffers.

"Industrial Light & Magic, it's finally back here. Sid snapped his fingers excitedly.

This is the crew of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Today, led by Sid, the special effects team, set team, photography team, props team and other important behind-the-scenes teams that have been established by the crew have come to ILM together, and even the special effects engineers of the French Macguff special effects company, who have recently joined the Fire Lion family, also came to learn from them.

The reception on the ILM side was also Sid's old friend, one of ILM's special effects managers, Levine Brightman.

"Hello, Sid, long time no see. It's ......!" Livin Brightman enthusiastically led several ILM staff members to greet the personnel on the Fire Lion side at the door of the company, although he was mentally prepared, he was still taken aback by the huge team of more than thirty people.

"Hehe, I hope you weren't intimidated by us. Sid quipped.

"No, no, no. Livin Brightman secretly wiped the sweat from his forehead and smiled, "Then please go this way, we have something ready in the studio." ”

The two parties then joined forces and were guided by Levine Brightman and others to weave through the spacious campus of ILM. At this time, during the hot screening of "Star Wars Prequel 1: Phantom Crisis", Industrial Light & Magic, as an important branch of Lucasfilm, also showed the imprint of Star Wars everywhere.

Whether it is the bronze statue of Master Yoda in front of the company or the life-size Skywalker doll in the hall, the atmosphere of Star Wars is everywhere.

But when the group walked through the office area and came to the studio area of Industrial Light & Magic, Sid and the others were surprised by the mural of the nearly 10-meter-high black warrior Darth Vader that appeared on the studio wall. Looking at the gorgeous murals painted by exquisite painters, everyone couldn't help but let out one exclamation after another.

Sid even said directly: "Holy Fu - !! Darth Vader is too handsome!"

"Haha, Sid, you're also a Star Wars fan?" Levine Brightman looked at Sid in surprise, he didn't expect Sid to be so out of shape.

"Nonsense! It's Star Wars!" Sid glanced at Levine Brightman with a rare and strange look, and the others around him burst into laughter.

Yes, it's Star Wars!

For the melon-eating people in North America, this sentence is enough to explain the infinite feelings of a Star Wars fan. Although Sid was a person on the other side of the ocean in his previous life, the life experience of this body in North America for more than ten years still had a lot of deep effects on him.

Among them, the feelings of "Star Wars" are one of the biggest influences.

In fact, to understand the influence of "Star Wars" in Europe and the United States, especially in North America, we must go back to the original origin and the highest height. It can even be said that if you can't understand the particularity of "Star Wars", you can't really understand the world of Hollywood.

Any word to describe Star Wars' place in film culture would be a bit inappropriate. Because this is a true North American national film, a watershed moment for modern fantasy films, and an undoubted milestone!

No matter how far Hollywood cinema has advanced by leaps and bounds in the decades since the new millennium, no film has reached a greater impact than the word "STAR-WARS" represents.

Not The Lord of the Rings, not Harry Potter, not Twilight and The Hunger Games, not the Avengers. Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformers are even more playful. Eh, what are you doing here, Star Trek, the TV show area is over there, go, go out and turn left!

Star Wars is a miracle because it appeared in the most appropriate way and at the most appropriate time.

It was 1977, and there were only a few TV channels in the whole of the United States, and they had to go off the air en masse after 12 o'clock, with no home computers, no cell phones, no game consoles, and no Internet. But more importantly, just two years after the end of the Vietnam War, the economic depression made people lose confidence in the country and the government, and science fiction movies are still full of despair and decadence about the future.

Until May 25, 1977, "Star Wars" was released, and the movie made all the audiences who walked into the cinema dumbfounded.

The battlefield is no longer limited to Earth, and civilization is not limited to humans, silly boys living on desolate planets, fighting against the empire that reigns across the galaxy for the sake of the princess. Good and evil clash fiercely in the universe, and countless interstellar fighters are fighting to the death in space!

No one ever thought that a movie could be made like this! No one ever thought that a hero could appear in the night sky above us!

Amid bursts of screams and applause, the Star Wars fever quickly heated up, and "Star Wars" went from being released in 30 theaters at the beginning to 200 in just one weekend. Even after a year, some movie theaters are still showing it. In the end, the film closed with $770 million at the global box office - that was $770 million in 1977!

In the media, some critics even chanted: "This is the most magnificent 120 minutes since Moses parted the Red Sea!"

But what really makes Star Wars a national brand is its enduring influence.

The "Star Wars" trilogy was released in 1983, and it was not until 1999, the year Sid and his family, that the prequel was released. Generally speaking, no matter what kind of movie series, after such a long time, its influence will inevitably decline, but "Star Wars" did not!

Prequel 1 "Phantom Crisis" made $900 million as soon as it came up, and it is still being released in cinemas around the world.

This is Star Wars, the most influential brand in modern cinema.

Maybe there are movies that are more wonderful than it, maybe there are films that are more popular than it, or there are movies that are more artistic than it, but to achieve its influence in the film world? I'm sorry, even from Sid's vision far ahead of its time, there is no hope for any film.

But unlike today's scenery, when "Star Wars" was released in 1977, it was not at all clear that it could become a legend. Throughout the filming process of the first movie, it can almost be said to be the classic routine of the most typical bloody inspirational films.

The story has to go back to 1975, due to the box office performance of "American Painting" two years ago, George Lucas was already a well-known new director. So he started planning to make a big one -- a space sci-fi film.

He'd wanted to do it for a long time, and he'd been writing the script for a few years, and it was a script that combined all of Lucas's passions, from J.R.L.'s "The Lord of the Rings" to Akira Kurosawa's "The Legend of the Samurai King."

So，Just_Do_It！

Lucas first took advantage of the reputation established by "American Painting" to fool an investment of $8 million from Fox Films, and then ...... He turned around and threw most of his money into his newly created Industrial Light & Magic special effects. Because the computer effects at that time did not achieve the effect he wanted, he decided to do it himself.

To be honest, this is pure play with fire. That is, Lucas has a good reputation, and he is also backed by the Jewish gang that was already emerging at that time (Spielberg, who had already filmed "Jaws" and Francis Coppola, who filmed "The Godfather"), otherwise it is really difficult to say whether Lucas would be suspected of corruption by Fox Films in the middle of filming O(∩_∩)O haha~

But that's not enough.

$8 million was not enough to complete the special effects shoot, and Lucas desperately saved costs, giving up the normal price of the director's remuneration (in contrast, he asked for dividends from the derivatives, which later became Fox's eternal pain O(∩_∩)O~). The crew went out to shoot all economy class and hired new people on a large scale - such as Harrison Ford (Han Solow) who made furniture for their offices, Mark Hamill (who played Skywalker) who made cameos everywhere, and Peter Meyer (who played Chewbacca), who worked as a hospital handyman.

But even so, Lucas finally pestered Fox Film to make an additional investment to complete the project.

But like most of the great works that are about to come out, the crew had no idea if what they were shooting would be a success. Because no one has ever done that before!

The computer special effects throughout the movie, the intense space sci-fi battles, and the mysterious Force, all of this is too unconventional!

In order to achieve the effect he wanted, Lucas directly postponed the release date for half a year, so that the crew had the question "What are we TM filming?"

At that time, most of the crew regarded the film as a children's film, and there was a lack of seriousness in their work, and they thought that many scenes were ridiculous. Kenny Baker, who plays R2-D2, later admitted that he thought the film was a failure.

During the shoot, photographer Gilbert Taylor clashed with Lucas several times, and his opinions were often rejected by the veteran photographer.

Among them, the most radical reaction was Alec Guinness, a veteran British actor who played Obi-Wan, who was completely unable to adapt to his experience of filming "Star Wars", and should even be said to hate it. Therefore, he strongly requested to revise the script halfway through, so that Obi-Wan would hang up in the first part of the movie, so that he would only need to come out as a soul to play soy sauce in the next two movies.

You must know that this old Mr. Alec Guinness was the biggest name in the entire crew at that time, and the big-name leading actor was still like this, and Lucas was even more bottomless in his heart. Fortunately, the Fox boss at that time was still a particular person, and in order to help this movie, Fox did not hesitate to threaten various movie theaters.