The Influence Star Wars Has Had On Movies And TV Shows

Star Wars is one of the most beloved and highest earning franchises in science fiction history, with fans who have grown up watching the series and a slew of new fans who are due to jump on board the Star Wars express when Episode VII comes out.

But a franchise is not judged by its fanbase alone, and Star Wars is not only garnering new fans nearly forty years after the first movie came out- it’s still influencing other sci-fi projects to this day.

Shutterstock created this delightfully minimalist chart to show some of the ways Star Wars has influenced the genre, from the droids and gadgets to the fact that without a Chewbacca we may not have ever met a Groot

See the full sized chart, along with a breakdown, at Shutterstock

-Via GeekTyrant

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Definitely agree that, where the dates actually work out (which thanks to macintosh above, we've proved that more than just the couple I found do not), there are "post hoc ergo propter hoc" issues as well.

So what we seem to be saying is this was created by a Star Wars fanboy/girl who wants to believe that Star Wars is the Alpha and Omega of all science fiction... yeah, sorry, I like Star Wars, too, but it wasn't quite that influential.

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native americans believed in bigfoot long before colombus got here actually.

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Here's a couple more - Harry (and the Hendersons) is Bigfoot, who's been around since the mid-60's. Lost in Space had a robot sidekick in 1965. The novel, 'Cyborg' was published in 1972 and was the basis for The Six Million Dollar Man (1973) which predates Luke's cybernetic hand by seven years.

To be fair, if you asked filmmakers who were kids when Star Wars came out (i.e. J.J. Abrams), of course they'll say it was influential, but some of the choices on the poster seem to suggest that Star Wars was completely original and unlike anything that came before it. Even George Lucas has said otherwise.

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I was foggy about some of the dates and looked them up too. It seems like everything I found at least checked out date-wise, although some were cutting it close (TV shows and movies released within a year or two of the first Stars probably had a lot of their ideas in mind before seeing the movie). Guardians of the Galaxy and Groot predate Star Wars, but as I understand it, Groot was a villian and not a laconic friend until about ten years ago. And while Blade Runner is based on Phillip K Dick's book, it does set out with a lot of its own style and themes.

I think the creator of the poster did do the straightforward research of looking up dates, but not the much harder of actually tracking down influences. I agree with Ted above, that it has some serious post hoc fallacy issues.