some other little known facts:
both spielberg and lucas at one time considered shooting lord of the rings, george even wanted to do the hobbit hence willow. There is dialogue between luke and obi wan in the third draft script that was lifted from the hobbit.
according to kurtz at one point the film so clearly mirrored the film hidden fortress by kurosawa they were actually going to buy the rights to do the remake with all japanese actor's for star wars.
Lucas had to edit out dialogue and references to several franchises namely the works of one edgar rice burroughs because lucas liberally borrowed from both tarzan and john carter of mars, he was going to be sued by edgar rice burroughs inc. or at least owe them money for the copyrights use.
The dune references though shortened are still there and he was going to be sued by herbert or at least herbert considered it before his death.
Plus the E.E. "doc" smith lensman material and the asimov books had to be somehow less allluded to.
His first story treatment for the film was taken from his friend donald richie's synopsis of hidden fortress from the films of akira kurosawa by the same author.
Go to the site starwarsorigins and you'll see the sci fi books lucas stole the concept for lightsaber's from.
He stole the concept for the galactic empire from a whole slew of asimov novels namely the foundation trilogy, from which there is a planet korrel and it's inhabitant's are korrelians. he stole the capitol planet trantor from those novels and it emerged later as corusscant. he stole photon torpedoes and tractor beams from star trek all though in star wars he called them proton torpedoes .
The jedi knights are an amalgamation of the holy order of the knights templar, the lensman of the galactic patrol, feudal period samurai as well as ronin.
The biggest impact on Han Solo would be the films of John Ford namely the ones in which John Wayne starred.
The Kiber crystal was a very badly disguised numinous object, etc the one ring of power from lord of the rings.
"dictators tend to wipe out their opposition and take control of the armed forces -- but the memoirs of the Caesars this is not." it's supposed to be a refrence to machiavelli's the prince and Sun-tzu's the art of war.
The mystical poet always said keep your friends close and your enemies closer, as well as the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Michiaveli said something like the ends justify the means, a very lucas like philosophy as well as that of the sith lords.
Further more this is a reference to rome they killed caesar julius to have a democracy and then they god ahead and reconstitute the empire and set his adopted son really his nephew up as imperator Caesar Augustus was really Octavius or Octavian, and augustus is where we get the term august body and so on in politics.
Dare I say it, the emperor was based on Nixon when lucas first wrote star wars, as the liberals perceived a very orwellian type double speaker and such as well as being based on a wizard of Oz type concept always being the dude pulling the strings behind the curtain. No woner he was first called COS DASHIT and was also based on Hitler according to the screenplay he had a "wicked moustache".
several Lucas source books for star wars: the christian bible (he had like a cliffnotes version when he was writing the screenplays) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the republic by Plato , 1984 by orwell and brave new world by Aldous Huxley. The hero with a thousand faces and the 4 books masks of god series, the flight of the wild gander and the inner reaches of outer space by joseph Campbell. Sun-tzu , art of war in english translation.machiavelli's the prince
Being revised in the late 90's it's no wonder and after september 11th 2001 that lucas found his political footing for the new trilogy in the "new" bush adminatration. Lucas called Valorum as reference to Bill Clinton.
Is it an accident that Both Palpatine and George Bush used a situation of crisis to grab more power for the executive branch of a government?
In star wars it's the seperatists in real life it's bin ladin and al quiada.
for those of you who go in for that type of star wars vs. star trek thing think of this little known tidbit, lucas in college days at Usc (probalbly as a graduate student) was a fan of the original star trek his favorite episode was the corbomite maneuver. also consider that if not for the success of star trek tos star wars probalbly never would've gotten made. Yes star wars ironically lead to star trek being made into a popular film franchise whose effects were done by none other than ILM for most of the films, whose effects artists were huge fans of science fiction and star trek.