After reading so much in bios about Lucas himself - I do not think Uncle George designed the ships in his universe to sell toys. Lucas was totally unprepared for the success of Star Wars. In fact he inadvertently got his merchandizing kick off the ground by having Marvel do a comic book series before the film was released to gin up interest. Lucas clearly believed that the only way for the film not to flop, was to build interest for the movie in comics and toys for kids. The movie was already designed and shot before he began looking at avenues to merchandize it. It wasn't until AFTER Star Wars was released in June 1977 that Lucas sold licensing rights to Kenner to produce toys for a flat 100 grand because all the other toy manufacturers turned him down. It's why we had the cardboard Early Certificate package for Xmas that year - as there were no toys until 1978.
The billions made in toys was an unexpected boom due to the success of the films, but I do not think that influenced the designs at all. George always had a clear vision in his head of what he wanted to see on screen and often it was the designers and model builders that came up with all kinds of crazy concepts that piqued George's interest until he chose them. Just look at the legacy of how we got the Millennium Falcon - from what became the Blockade runner to a hamburger with a bite out of it as inspiration.
Yeah, I agree about the first movie. The designs there were largely based on 2001 and the like as a springboard, but with a more cobbled together dirty and used feel. At the time, that was groundbreaking
I was referring to designs in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and the prequels which continued with that style.
I could be wrong, but at that point I think having cool new ship designs to make toys from was definitely part of the process and may have been one of the reasons we saw so many different ship designs come out instead of sticking with the ones they already had done for Star Wars. Especially towards Return of the Jedi.
In fact, that seems to be one of the reasons Gary Kurtz clashed with Lucas
Gary Kurtz was George Lucas' partner in making the first two Star Wars films, but they had a huge falling-out after Empire Strikes Back. Now, for the
io9.gizmodo.com
I could see where things were headed. The toy business began to drive the [Lucasfilm] empire. It's a shame. They make three times as much on toys as they do on films. It's natural to make decisions that protect the toy business but that's not the best thing for making quality films.... The emphasis on the toys, it's like the cart driving the horse. If it wasn't for that the films would be done for their own merits. The creative team wouldn't be looking over their shoulder all the time.
Now of course there has to be some middle ground with that whole thing, but I think that is the biggest thing lacking from the new movies as far as many of the spaceship designs, at least for me, is they do not seem to inspire anyone to want a toy/replica of it apart from the things that are really just variants of the OT stuff.
While the prequels were not great movies, I really did love the spaceship and vehicle designs (and they still had some cool moments)
Now food for thought ... if I was a kid now, would those sequel designs actually look cool? Maybe based on the "gamer" generation they do work. After all, many of the designs feel like low res video game stuff where they didn't want lots of details to keep the rendering simple
