First Star Wars Movie
On May 25, 1977, the first Star Wars film was released, marking the start of four decades of dedicated fandom.
In 1971, writer and director George Lucas sought to produce a film adaptation of the comic serial Flash Gordon, but he couldn’t get the rights. Lucas then decided he would invent his own. To find inspiration, he researched what had originally inspired Alex Raymond to write Flash Gordon. This led him to the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (John Carter of Mars) and Edwin Arnold (Gulliver on Mars).