This interview came out the same year as A New Hope, and it provides a fascinating look into how the director’s mind works. Everybody thought George Lucas wanted to follow in Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi footsteps, but he instead discussed how he wanted to bring Edgar Burroughs-style storytelling to the big screen.
In a final bit of irony, Star Wars became so popular and culturally pervasive that when Disney’s big-budget Burroughs adaptation of John Carter came out, it bombed in large part because audiences felt that Lucas had done this kind of story better a long, long time ago.