The cultural influence of Star Wars knows no bounds. George Lucas’ groundbreaking 1977 blockbuster marked a watershed moment in film history. An entire generation of filmmakers was inspired to pick up a camera and tell stories by the sense of wonder they felt watching Star Wars as a kid. One specific way that Star Wars influenced filmmaking – and science fiction in general – was the “used future” aesthetic of its unique production design.
Although Star Wars takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the rusty, lived-in aesthetic of Tatooine influenced the depictions of a “used future” in Alien, Blade Runner, Terminator, The Matrix, and a bunch of other sci-fi classics. By the late ‘70s, there was a generally accepted vision of the future in which everything was very clean and pristine. Everybody wore the same jumpsuits and the spaceships and buildings were all in tip-top, good-as-new condition. In a lot of these stories, everything was made of chrome (later parodied in a great existential SpongeBob episode).
In visualizing the Lars’ dusty moisture farm and the seedy criminal underbelly of Mos Eisley Spaceport and the iconic bucket-o’-bolts that is the Millennium Falcon, Lucas wanted to offer an alternative to the usual futuristic aesthetic by adding a layer of grime and wear-and-tear over everything in sight. Lucas described this visual style as “documentary fantasy,” or “fantasy combined with the feel of a documentary.” All the ships are covered in scratches and dents from years of use – the Falcon being a prime example – and the Rebel Alliance’s tech is as primitive as one would expect from a bare-bones militia. Jawas prowl the dunes of Tatooine in a dirty, banged-up Sandcrawler, picking up junked droids and selling them to farmers working on a barren wasteland.
This concept didn’t originate with Star Wars. It could previously be seen in 1969’s Moon Zero Two, 1972’s Silent Running (a big influence on WALL-E), and 1974’s Dark Star. However, a lot of these movies cut costs by shooting in real locations like quarries and power plants; they didn’t build entire worlds from scratch like Star Wars’ phenomenally talented production designers. And if Star Wars can’t be credited with creating the “used future” aesthetic, its historic box office run can sure be credited with popularizing it.
A couple of key filmmakers were inspired by this aspect of Star Wars – namely, Sir Ridley Scott. When the success of Star Wars led to a bunch of space movies and Scott was hired to direct a haunted house movie in space, he applied these influences beautifully. Alien follows the crew of the Nostromo, who are essentially futuristic truckers transporting cargo across space in a big, ugly rig. The Nostromo has the same grimy, well-worn, industrial feel of Star Wars’ non-Imperial ships.
Scott took this influence a step further with his next sci-fi movie, Blade Runner, which takes place in Los Angeles in the near future (although it’s now the past). Blade Runner’s futuristic L.A. has a thick cloud of pollution filling its skyline, trash piling up on the streets, flying cars stuck in traffic on congested airways, graffiti all over the towering skyscrapers – it’s a hauntingly beautiful portrait of urban decay. Scott took the prestigious Bradbury Building – one of the most overused shooting locations in film noir – and presented it in an entirely new way by dressing it up as a dilapidated dump. He added a canopy to the exterior, gave it twisting columns made out of Styrofoam, filled the interior with garbage, and blasted revolving spotlights and smoke machines. Incidentally, Blade Runner ended up returning the favor to Star Wars, as Scott’s depiction of a neon-drenched metropolis heavily inspired Lucas’ portrayal of the city-planet Coruscant in the prequels.
Another high-profile Star Wars fan, James Cameron, applied Lucas’ “used future” visuals to his own work. The flash-forwards in the Terminator movies depict a post-Judgment Day world in which the machines have risen up and the human race is on the brink of extinction. Civilization has been reduced to rubble by a nuclear holocaust, the skies are filled with Skynet warships dropping bombs and decimating whatever remains, and the battlefields are filled with killer cyborgs looking to wipe out all human life on Earth. John Connor’s resistance fighters have been driven into a ramshackle existence hidden away from the Terminators, warming by dumpster fires.
It’s appropriate that Guillermo del Toro opened his epic-scale monsters-versus-robots smash-‘em-up Pacific Rim with a Star Wars reference – “Don’t get cocky” – because the influence of Star Wars can be seen all over the movie’s aesthetic. The Jaeger suits are all a little worse for wear after countless kaiju beatdowns. Humanity is living in the ruins of civilized society and surviving on food rations. The computers need giant tapes to display information. Star Wars’ influence can also be seen in The Matrix’s portrayal of the real world. Morpheus and his crew have unfathomable technologies, but since humanity has lost the war against its cybernetic overlords, they’re forced to live in a filthy, claustrophobic underground city.
Thanks to the success of Star Wars, the “used future” has become a well-known trope, and it’s arguably become the go-to approach for depicting the future. Ironically, the classic portrayal of a monochromatic futuristic society has become a thing of the past. Star Wars’ “used future” style is even parodied in Spaceballs when Dark Helmet quips, “Even in the future, nothing works!”
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