George Lucas in the audio commentary of the 2008 DVD version of Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope:
"The film was kind of shot from the robots point of view. I was sort of amused by that...at the time it was a very bold idea to have the first half hour to be mainly about robots. The only real human character in the first 20 minutes of the movie is Princess Leia.
My introduction to Kurosawa films were very powerful because it happened in film school and I knew very little about Japanese history at that point. And when I would get thrown into something like Seven Samurai or Yojimbo or any of those movies, it was like I had no idea what was going on.
I mean, I could follow the human story, but the culture was completely complex and oblique...and I liked that feeling of being thrown into an environment, you know...trying to get my bearings and still be able to tell a story that made sense. That you weren't so confused that you couldn't follow it.
I can't stand it when in a fantasy film you just sit around and try to explain how a teleporter works or why. You know...it's just not what the movie needs to be about."
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"I was very keen on making a movie that was like watching a
foreign film where you just didn’t know the world you were in. You just didn’t know what was going on. You didn’t know the politics. You didn’t know anything and nothing was
explained to you.
So, you were simply thrown into this world and there’s an adventure going on and you have to, you know, get with it, as opposed to a traditional fantasy film where they spend a lot of time sort of explaining everything.
Unfortunately, now I’m in the position of having to explain
everything."
