A Galaxy That Never Was: How a College Degree Might Have Erased Star Wars and Mutated American Culture

George Lucas has remarked that walking away from an anthropology degree redirected his entire life. Had he finished it, he suspects he still would have made films, though likely as a documentarian rather than a modern myth-maker.

Let’s entertain that premise and follow it to its logical conclusions. The first and most obvious is a world without Star Wars. But not only would that timeline be missing one mega-franchise, its pop culture would be missing a keystone.

In the early 1970s, Hollywood languished in an interregnum. The old studio system had lost its hold, yet there was no clear replacement. Young directors flirted with auteur freedom while executives chased mass relevance.

Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic; Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP; Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImagen

Into that moment stepped a scrappy space fantasy that married pulp adventure with mythic structure. The rest is history. But what if Lucas had not filled that vacuum?

Here’s some educated speculation …

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