“May the 4th Be With You”: How World War II impacted ‘Star Wars’

Incidentally, [J.R.R. “Much of [Tolkien’s book series] The Lord of the Rings can be read topically,” Major Warren Lewis, C.S. Lewis’s brother, wrote in possibly the first review of the novel in 1949. “The Shire stands for England, Rohan for France, Gondor for future Germany, Sauron for Stalin.

” And while Tolkien later explicitly rejected the idea that his “story was an allegory for any historical event, most likely the recent war against Nazism … for all such protestations, Lewis was clearly onto something back in 1949,” wrote historian Alan Allport in his 2020 book, “Britain at Bay,” about the U.K.’s social and military history during World War II.

Allport argued that rather than weaving a mythical fantasy world, Tolkien’s future audience “was going to see connections between events in Middle Earth and events in their own world.” However, Tolkien was not the first or only one to draw inspiration from the devastating bloodshed of World War II. Lucas wasn’t the last one. Today, as fans celebrate May the Fourth (with you), one doesn’t have to look very far to learn that the galaxy of “Star Wars” is filled with WWII-based metaphors — and that its fans may equal or even surpass Tolkien.

“Star Wars” creator George Lucas studied more than 25 hours of footage of World War II aerial battles and jarring newsreel imagery while researching for the films — even using the footage as a placeholder in the movie before special effects were added.

“So one second you’re in the spaceship with the Wookiees and the next you’re in ‘The Bridges at Toko-Ri.’ It was like, ‘George, what’s going on?’” Lucas screenwriter and personal friend Willard Huyck said in a 1997 interview. Though the B-roll was eventually edited out, the aerial tactics set in World War II are still visible.

One such shot, according to National WWII Museum and Memorial curator Corey Graf, “shows the aircraft breaking away from the formation and disappearing from sight. This clip was used as a model for the memorable shot of the Rebel craft diving to attack the Death Star. At one point, the fictional spacecraft gracefully perform ‘aileron rolls’ on screen, almost exactly mimicking the movements of the 1940s aircraft.”