By Joshua A. Johnston When Star Wars first hit theaters in 1977, audiences were captivated by the exotic species of George Lucas’s galaxy far, far away. To the more casual filmgoer, the differences between the aliens of Star Wars and Gene Roddenberry’s then-decade-old Star Trek might have seemed little more than a difference in makeup budgets. The differences, though, went well beyond that. While Gene Roddenberry had political and cultural ideas in mind with his extraterrestrials, George Lucas had more entrepreneurial motives. Star Wars was about creatures that appealed to a broad age group … and, by the time of …
