What made Star Wars such a popular hit?

Answer 1

This is a huge topic on which, in fact, whole books have been written. Four of the key factors that led to the popularity of Star Wars were these, however:

* In 1977 when Star Wars came out, Hollywood movies had been in a financial and creative slump, and audiences were ready for something different. Movies of the 1970s tended to be downbeat, as well, taking on serious topics (e.g. everything from child prostitution to the Vietnam War). There was little in the way of "fun" at the movies at the time. Star Wars was the first "blockbuster": the first movie that audiences willing paid to see multiple times.

* Star Wars really invented modern special effects; audiences had been exposed to special effects of Star Wars caliber in 2001: A Space Odyssey, for instance, and many precursor movies, but, again, 2001 was a very downbeat, serious movie. Because of the innovative technologies that were developed specifically for Star Wars by John Dykstra and his crew (among others), Star Wars was visually unlike anything that audiences had previously seen on screen, and much of its appeal had to do with the sheer "eye candy" aspect of the film.

* Star Wars is an intentional pastiche of nostalgiac references to 1940s and 1950s pop culture (especially old movie serials) and especially Flash Gordon, as well as an homage to the cinema of American westerns, and the films of Kurosawa, John Ford, etc. , among others. This self-conscious nostalgic pastiche in Star Wars (story lines, themes, etc.) is perhaps misunderstood by the minority who saw Star Wars as not citational but plagiaristic. Clearly, however, its nostalgic elements resonated with older audiences who recognized the themes and formulas that George Lucas was playing with, even as younger audiences were exposed to these often for the first time. Star Wars in many ways started the trend toward "retro" in movies--not merely remaking old movies, but mixing and matching retro elements into something new and different.

* George Lucas intentionally left exposition bare-bones in Star Wars. Rather than explain what a "droid" is, for instance, he showed droids on screen and let the viewer work out for him- or herself what droids are. Similarly, he mentions the "Senate" at length but didn't spend any exposition going into what and where the Senate was. Indeed, the movie itself begins with the words "Episode IV," implying that things are in medias res. This kind of "unresolved" approach to storytelling immediately invited a huge body of work outside the movie itself, where fans or novelists or comic book writers create the back-stories. Called "the Expanded Universe," this body of stories quickly became a never-ending font of inspiration for fans and writers of all types. Because of the self-feeding cycle of Expanded Universe and fans and the original movies, Star Wars quickly created a whole subculture of fandom that extends to games, novels, short stories, Children's Books, comics, graphic novels, radio dramas, fan fiction, and more. The popularity of these things reinforced the popularity of the movies, and vice versa.