With Star Wars-inspired fashions gracing the pages of Vogue magazine and its light-side/dark-side aesthetic informing prop, costume, and set designs on shows from RuPaul’s Drag Race UK (season 3, 2021) to Ted Lasso (2020-2023), it’s not an exaggeration to say that Star Wars designs are iconic.[i] And they are ubiquitous, too; there are numerous toys that replicate characters and spaceships like the Millennium Falcon, and there are makeup, clothing, homeware, and other ranges of merchandise bearing Star Wars visuals on sale in shops and online. Analysts estimate that Star Wars retail accounts for around $2-3billion in revenue for Disney every year.[ii] But while its designs are pervasive in popular culture, it’s not the only example of a multimedia franchise producing recognisable props and costumes.
So what makes Star Wars worthy of attention from the EIF project?
1. Design consistency and technological change
Unlike many other franchises that are rebooted by filmmakers with different aesthetic visions over time, Star Wars is unusual in that its contemporary props and costumes (as well as characters, locations, and narratives) are fairly consistent with the Original Trilogy films (1977-1983). However, while many recent designs reference earlier examples – such as Kylo Ren’s mask in the 2015 The Force Awakens recalling Darth Vader’s in A New Hope – how practitioners fabricate their designs has changed a great deal. Over nearly fifty-years, Star Wars creative teams have transformed compositing processes (layering elements so that models, live action, and backgrounds appear in the same shot), and transitioned from analogue to digital production (i.e., using visual effects, or computer-generated imagery).
Thus, within the history of a single franchise, we can identity how and when one set of materials and techniques gave way to another. We can make comparisons between practical and digital builds, such as our case study on the 1976 aluminium and 2002 CGI Artoo Detoos, which will help filmmakers better understand the environmental impacts of virtual assets. And we can consider whether older fabrication techniques offer examples of sustainable practice that might be useful today.
2. UK-based practitioners
As a blockbuster franchise associated with four US-based film studios (Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic, Twentieth Century-Fox, and Disney), Star Wars is embedded in Hollywood filmmaking. But it also has longstanding relationships with English studios and hundreds of UK-based practitioners, which the Original Trilogy’s marketing team were keen to promote in the press. Writing in the Newcastle Journal in 1977, Peter Mortimer noted that A New Hope (originally titled Star Wars) had ‘a strong influence of English technicians’; Terry Grimley in the Birmingham Evening Post described ‘a long line of testimonials for British technicians’ and reported that over half of the $9million budget was spent in Britain.[iii]
The UK-based EIF project is thus in a good position to explore histories of below-the-line personnel (usually technical crew who can be replaced more easily than those with direct creative input) who contributed to the franchise on shoots in England, Scotland, and Wales. By creating an archive of practitioner interviews, we’re documenting histories of design and fabrication in an environmental context, and learning more about work in the UK’s screen industries, too.
3. Reuse and retail
In addition to thinking about how a prop or costume is made, the EIF project is also interested in how assets are disposed of, reused, recycled, or stored. As such, the longevity of Star Wars is significant because we can trace numerous examples of waste (for instance, debris left on locations in Tunisia that have since become tourist attractions), reuse (Stormtrooper costumes appearing in multiple films), and archiving (models appearing in museum exhibitions) that service the franchise and other industries.
Moreover, many Star Wars designs are licensed for retail, which means we can investigate the relationships between screen media, fandom, and people’s consumption of merchandise, which has its own – though not unrelated – impact on the environment. The connections between film and retail are the subject of our case study on lightsabers, which will compare a ‘hero prop’ (an asset made for a main named character) with a version available to buy in stores. It’s the franchise’s long history, then – of design and archiving practices, technological innovation, and licensing intellectual property – combined with its reliance on UK-based creative talent that makes it so compelling from a research perspective for the EIF project.
[i] See, for example, Carrie Fisher discussing a 1977 editorial in Carrie Fisher, “Nostalgia,” Vogue, December 1, 2001, p.62, and Natalie Portman’s costumes appearing in Eve McSweeney, “Planet Natalie,” Vogue,May 1, 2002, p.248. For more on Star Wars and Ted Lasso see Sabrina Mittermeier and Chris Kempshall, “A Long Time Ago, at a Football Club Far, Far Away…. Ted Lasso & Star Wars,” Spoilist, April 2, 2023. Available at: https://www.thespoilist.com/a-long-time-ago-at-a-football-club-far-far-away-ted-lasso-star-wars/.
[ii] The Entertainment Strategy Guy, “The 2019 Star Wars Business Report – Toys,” Entertainment Strategy, May 4, 2020. Available at: https://entertainmentstrategyguy.com/2020/05/04/the-2019-star-wars-business-report-toys/.
[iii] Peter Mortimer, “Cash Rolls in from Distant Galaxies,” Newcastle Journal, October 7, 1977, p.8; Terry Grimley, “Invading Aliens Shot in Britain,” Birmingham Daily Post, September 29, 1977, p.5.