5/3/2015 How 'Star Wars' Changed the World

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How 'Star Wars' Changed the Worldby Charles Q. Choi, SPACE.com Contributor | August 10, 2010 08:34am ET

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After discussing his future plans with his Uncle Owen, Luke Skywalkerleaves the Lars Homestead and heads towards the vista to watch the twinsuns of Tatooine set while he reflects upon his destiny. © Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. AllRights Reserved.

It's been more than 30 years since "Star Wars" first exploded into theaters, but theswashbuckling scifi films from writerdirector George Lucas have left a legacy no otherblockbuster has surpassed.

Increasingly, the impact of "Star Wars" is not limited to pop culture or even world politics. Asscience and technology advance, the world is little by little growing more and more like thatgalaxy far, far away.

A taste of the science fiction franchise's impact is landing in Orlando, Fla., this week, wheredevotees from around the world are expected to congregate for the Star Wars CelebrationVconvention. The fourday convention runs Thursday through Sunday at the Orange CountyConvention Center.

The cultural influence of the six "Star Wars" films, plus the novels, comics, televisionshows, games, toys, spoofs and documentaries linked with "Star Wars," is such that, in the2001 United Kingdom census, some 390,000 people stated their religion as Jedi, making itthe fourth largest religion surveyed. Just last month, members of the performance art groupImprov Everywhere filmed themselves reenacting Princess Leia's capture by Darth Vaderon the New York subway, and the automotive navigation systems companyTomTomrecently made "Star Wars" voices an option for its GPS devices.

"Star Wars" also has had moresubtle influences on Hollywood. It pioneered the modernspecial effects blockbuster as well as the modern movie trilogy, leading the way for "Lord ofthe Rings" and "The Matrix," among others. It also showed that merchandising can make

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even more money than the movies do ? the deal that "Star Wars" creator George Lucasmade with Pepsico over merchandising rights for the prequel films was estimated to beworth roughly $2 billion.

New Age thinking

In the year "Return of the Jedi" first came out, "Star Wars" unexpectedly became draftedinto a hightech controversy in a real and different kind of war ? the Cold War.

The Strategic Defense Initiative, created by Ronald Reagan in 1983, aimed to use groundand spacebased lasers, missiles and other weapons to help protect the United States fromattack by nuclear missiles. Critics derisively referred to it as "Star Wars." Reagan himselfmay have drawn upon "Star Wars" for inspiration when he dubbed the Soviet Union "the EvilEmpire," echoing the use of "evil Galactic Empire" in the opening crawl for the first film sixyears earlier.

A stranger link to "Star Wars" lay in the New Age ideas that U.S. Army Lt. Col. JimChannon had for a "First Earth Battalion." As detailed in the book "The Men Who Stare atGoats" and fictionalized in the film of the same name, the U.S. military researched the ideaof supersoldiers they called "Jedi warriors," who could, among other abilities, adopt cloaksof invisibility, pass through walls, precognitively sense knowledge of the future and, yes, killgoats and others just by staring at them.

As outlandish as those notions were, the advance of science and technology areincreasingly producing inventions that, intentionally or not, recall the films.

During election night in 2008, CNN famously ? or infamously ? presented correspondentsand musician will.i.am as "holograms" much like in scenes from "Star Wars," complete withpartial translucence and a glowing blue haze around them. CNN political correspondentJessica Yellin even noted, "It's like I follow in the tradition of Princess Leia." (In reality,these were "tomograms," made by capturing images of a person from all sides,reconstructing them with computers and displaying them on screen.)

On a more serious note, bionic hands like the ones sported by heroes and villains in "StarWars" are now finding use by amputees. Indeed, during an NPR interview earlier this monthconcerning a man with a bionic hand, his daughter noted: "Darth Vader just pops into myhead. And so does Luke Skywalker, 'cause they both have robotic hands."

Weapons and robots from "Star Wars" are making their way into real life, as well. A HongKong company recently made an ultrapowerful handheld laser that looks like a lightsaber. ?Walking robots resembling the giant ATATs that Imperial forces used to attack rebels arebeing developed for the military to carry equipment where conventional vehicles can't go.The U.S. Army's Future Soldier Initiative went as far as to draft plans for armor that lookedmuch like what Imperial stormtroopers wore, although in light of the probable cost, they facean uncertain future.

Even the Death Star is beginning to appear, albeit in far miniaturized form. ?At this year's

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Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in February, Nathan Myhrvold, formerchief technology officer for Microsoft, demonstrated a "Death Star" bugzapper designed touse lasers to shoot down mosquitoes in flight. The hope there is not to crush microscopicrebels, but to help prevent malaria. This means if all goes well, a future influenced by "StarWars" could go on to save millions of lives. May the Force be with it.