It is hard to wrap your head around how nobody knew what a Wookiee was in 1976. Honestly, looking back at the original Star Wars IV trailer, the whole thing feels like a fever dream from a different dimension. There is no John Williams score. No "Dual of the Fates" energy. Just a lot of flashing lights, a very confused-sounding narrator, and a title font that looks like it belongs on a box of cheap detergent.
Marketing a movie that doesn't exist yet is hard. Marketing a movie that defines a genre that hasn't been invented yet? That’s nearly impossible.
When 20th Century Fox dropped that first teaser, they weren't selling a "space opera." They were selling a weird, gritty, psychedelic western that happened to take place in a vacuum. If you watch that Star Wars IV trailer now, you'll notice it leans heavily on the "Coming to Your Galaxy This Summer" tagline. It’s clunky. It’s strange. But it’s the DNA of everything we love.
The Teaser That Almost Failed the Force
Most people think the first glimpse of A New Hope was that polished, epic experience we see in modern Blu-ray menus. It wasn't. The very first teaser trailer—the "Coming to Your Galaxy This Summer" one—is a bizarre artifact of 70s marketing.
You’ve got these quick, jagged cuts of Luke Skywalker looking sweaty and confused. There’s a shot of a C-3PO that looks more like a shiny mannequin than a beloved droid. And the music? It’s not the iconic theme. Because John Williams hadn't even finished the score yet, the editors had to use temp tracks that sounded more like a generic thriller than an epic space adventure. It creates this eerie, disconnected feeling.
Charles Lippincott, who was the marketing genius behind the early push, knew they were in trouble. The footage looked "cheap" to a public used to the high-gloss production of 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the 1976 teaser, the narrator calls it "a billion light years from Earth," which is scientifically annoying if you’re a nerd, but it shows how much they were just guessing at what would stick.
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They didn't even show Darth Vader prominently at first. Imagine that. The greatest villain in cinema history was basically an extra in his own first trailer.
Why the Sound Design in the Star Wars IV Trailer Matters
Ben Burtt is a legend for a reason. But in the early trailers, his soundscapes were still being tinkered with. If you listen closely to the Star Wars IV trailer iterations, specifically the one released later in 1977, the lightsaber hums aren't quite "right" yet. They lack that heavy, vibrating thrum that we now associate with Jedi combat.
Instead, it’s a lot of explosions. The marketing team wanted people to think they were seeing a war movie. The Bridge on the River Kwai but with lasers.
- The TIE Fighter screams were buried under the narration.
- The "pew-pew" of the blasters sounded thinner.
- Even R2-D2’s whistles felt more like random computer noise than a personality.
It’s a reminder that Star Wars wasn’t born "perfect." It was assembled. The trailer is a rough draft of a masterpiece. It shows the seams. You can see the matte paintings if you look too hard. You can see the wires on the landspeeder. And yet, there is a charm to it that modern, CGI-perfect trailers just can't replicate. It feels tactile. It feels like someone actually built this stuff in a garage in Van Nuys, which, to be fair, they basically did.
Comparing the 1976 Teaser to the 1977 Theatrical Trailer
There is a massive jump in quality between the first teaser and the final theatrical Star Wars IV trailer. By the time the full trailer rolled out, George Lucas had more of the "look" figured out.
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The narration became more dramatic. "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." was finally front and center. This is where we see the transition from "weird sci-fi experiment" to "mythic storytelling." The 1977 trailer finally utilizes the John Williams score, and suddenly, everything clicks. The hair on your arms stands up. The image of the Millennium Falcon jumping to lightspeed actually means something because the music tells you it’s important.
Without that music, the Star Wars IV trailer is just a bunch of people in plastic suits running around a desert. The score provided the emotional glue.
Interesting side note: The 1977 trailer features a few shots that didn't make the final cut or were slightly different. There’s a shot of Luke and Leia on the bridge that feels more "romance novel" than "siblings" (well, we know why that got awkward later).
The "Big Three" and the Marketing Gamble
Fox was terrified. They thought the movie would flop. They actually pushed the Star Wars IV trailer into theaters alongside The Other Side of Midnight because they thought that would be their big hit. They were so wrong it’s almost funny now.
The trailer had to sell three unknown actors: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher.
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- Mark Hamill was the "everyman." The trailer portrays him as a farm boy looking at the stars, a trope as old as time but effective.
- Carrie Fisher was the "distress" part of the "damsel in distress" who clearly wasn't actually in distress. She’s holding a blaster. That was a huge selling point in '77.
- Harrison Ford was the cool factor. Even in a 90-second trailer, Han Solo’s smirk is the most valuable asset they had.
The Star Wars IV trailer succeeded because, despite the weirdness, it promised a world that felt lived-in. It wasn't the sterile, white-room future of Star Trek. It was a world where things broke. Where robots were rusty. Where the "hero" lived in a hole in the ground.
The Legacy of "Coming to Your Galaxy"
We see the echoes of the Star Wars IV trailer in every Marvel teaser and every Dune trailer today. That slow build, the introduction of a vast world through snippets of dialogue, the reliance on a singular musical motif—Lucas and his team (unintentionally) wrote the playbook.
But they also made mistakes. They included scenes that were eventually deleted, like the Biggs Darklighter footage at Tosche Station. Fans for decades wondered why there was a guy with a mustache talking to Luke in the promotional stills who barely appeared in the movie. It added to the mystery. It made the world feel bigger than the 121-minute runtime.
If you ever feel like you're failing at a creative project, just go back and watch that first 1976 teaser. It’s messy. It’s poorly paced. The font is terrible. But the heart is there.
How to experience the history yourself:
If you want to truly understand the evolution of film marketing, you have to watch these trailers in order. Don't just watch the remastered versions; find the grainy, original 35mm scans available on archival sites.
- Step 1: Watch the 1976 "Teaser." Pay attention to the lack of music and the weird narration. It’s a lesson in how not to sell a vibe.
- Step 2: Watch the 1977 "Theatrical Trailer." Notice the moment the music kicks in. That is the moment Star Wars was actually born in the public consciousness.
- Step 3: Look for the "Making of Star Wars" television special from 1977. It’s essentially a long-form trailer that explains the special effects.
- Step 4: Compare these to the The Force Awakens teaser from 2014. You’ll see the exact same beats—the black screen, the heavy breathing, the nostalgia play.
The Star Wars IV trailer wasn't just a commercial. It was the first time the world was told that it was okay to dream about space again, even if the fonts were a little ugly at the start.