The real celebration started yesterday. On March 22, 1976, exactly 50 years ago, principal photography began on a film then simply titled The Star Wars. While the production was famously plagued by sandstorms, malfunctioning droids, and a skeptical British crew, that first day in the Tunisian desert marked the birth of a cultural phenomenon that has spanned generations.
As we look back at this golden anniversary, here is everything you need to know about the day the Force was first captured on film.
The First Shot: Scene 26
Contrary to what some might think, the first thing filmed wasn’t the iconic opening crawl or a space battle. It was Scene 26: the droid sale. Filmed on a salt flat near Tozeur, Tunisia, the very first shot involved the Jawas presenting their batch of droids to Uncle Owen (Phil Brown) and a young, frustrated farm boy named Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill).
The First Line of Dialogue
The first words ever spoken on a Star Wars set weren’t about the Force or rebellion. They were spoken by the late Phil Brown as Uncle Owen. Responding to the eager Jawa merchant, he uttered the decidedly un-epic but now-legendary line: “Alright, fine, let’s go.” With those four words, the machinery of the Skywalker saga officially hummed to life.
The “Binary Sunset” That Almost Wasn’t
The crew also attempted to film the legendary “Binary Sunset” (Scene 29) on that first day. However, Mother Nature didn’t get the memo. Uncooperative weather and flat lighting meant the takes captured on March 22 were ultimately unusable. It actually took another week of waiting for the perfect conditions to capture the version we see in the final cut—proving that even in 1976, Tatooine wasn’t built in a day.
The First Visual Effects Plate for ILM
March 22 also marked a milestone for the then-fledgling Industrial Light & Magic. The continuity reports for the sunset scene included a note: “There is a matte shot to go into this sequence—from behind Luke—to matte in the twin suns.” This annotation represents the very first visual effects plate ever captured for a Star Wars production, signaling the start of a pipeline that would eventually revolutionize the entire film industry.
A Troubled Start to a Masterpiece
The 50th-anniversary retrospectives being shared today by Lucasfilm historian Lucas Seastrom highlight just how difficult that first day was. Anthony Daniels spent the entire day inside the C-3PO costume—a feat he reportedly never repeated for a full shooting day again due to the sheer physical toll. Between the heat, the breaking robots, and the crew’s belief that they were making a “mediocre children’s film,” the fact that A New Hope exists at all is a testament to George Lucas’s singular vision.
