How 'Star Wars' was Influenced by San Francisco - and Architecture

'Without San Francisco, Star Wars wouldn't exist,' says David Reat, the culture studies director of the architecture department at Glasgow's University of Strathclyde.

SFGate reports:

Lucas was born and raised in Modesto, where his father expected him to run the family stationery store once he turned 18, but Lucas instead left for Los Angeles, where he studied film production at the University of Southern California, before moving to San Francisco. Despite all that these cities had to offer, Lucas constantly found himself conflicted over his feelings toward them. 'The battle of living in the country versus living in the city is huge with Lucas,' says Reat, who notes that this theme runs throughout the likes of 'THX 1138,' 'American Graffiti' and the 'Star Wars' series. 'He sees cities as the givers and takers of things. He's fascinated by cities. He doesn't actually want to live in one. He now lives in a ranch near one. He wants to orbit them. He's a paradox.'

When Lucas moved to San Francisco in the late 1960s, there were a number of huge building projects taking place across the city that piqued the burgeoning filmmaker's interest, most notably the construction of BART and a new terminal at San Francisco airport. 'Infrastructure really fascinated Lucas. They were these big huge alienating spaces,' says Reat. 'I think Lucas was driving around San Francisco, looking at them, and seeing that they looked alien.' There's a reason why Lucas was particularly interested in the architecture in San Francisco: 'He's on record as saying he wanted to be an architect,' says Reat. 'He has referred to himself as a frustrated architect.' Lucas' interest provoked him and his creative team to put extra care and thought into each of the 'Star Wars' buildings, vehicles, houses, villages, cities, worlds and galaxies, especially when it came to what they symbolized and represented.
'The architecture in the films play a key role for younger viewers,' says Reat, explaining that it helps to indicate who is good and who is evil. When it comes to the Death Star there are 'no women, no plants, no signs of life, and it's basically the Nazis in space,' continues Reat. 'Lucas doesn't like modernism. He always uses it for bad things, a bit like every James Bond baddie.' Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker and the rest of the light side of the Force are seen living in 'exaggerated domesticity' as they sit around drinking blue milk, surrounded by creatures. 'There's a care and a weirdness to their architecture, plus it's loaded with color,' says Reat, who adds that these choices help to make those characters more appealing and relatable....

The San Francisco International Airport also played a key role in the making of 'Phantom Menace.' A tour of its maintenance bay gave the film's creative designers a jolt of inspiration when they were creating Anakin's podracer and other vehicles.

The article also adds that the inspiration for the Theed Royal Palace on Naboo in The Phantom Menace was 'the Marin County Civic Center, where Lucas once served jury duty.'

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