Lucasfilm

Paramount Pictures released the film (and its opening logo made for a keen visual match for Steven Spielberg to play with), but the production company was Lucasfilm, created in 1971 to deliver unto the world All Things George Lucas. That's been something of a mixed blessing sometimes (*cough* Howard the Duck *cough*), but at least it keeps the company's focus clear. It's all George, all the time…which you may have suspected given the company's name.

But what does that mean, exactly? It means we can pick up a few common threads in the company's products. Lucas grew up a car nut and he had a fixation on what automobiles represented: freedom, individuality, and the opportunity to drive unspeakably fast. Lucasfilm movies tend to reflect that both literally (with car-based movies like American Graffiti and Tucker: The Man and His Dream) and figuratively (what are all those Star Wars spaceships if not revved-up intergalactic hot rods?). The speed involved with fast vehicles shows up in a lot of Lucasfilm movies, even those that don't really have any cars.

In addition, Lucas was a baby boomer, which means he loved the culture of the '40s and '50s. The Star Wars movies look a lot like the Saturday afternoon children's matinees Lucas grew up with, and movies like Tucker and American Graffiti (to say nothing of the little-seen Radioland Murders) are mainlined right into the nostalgia portion of our brains. 

Raiders of the Lost Ark perfectly tapped into both of those Lucasfilmian tendencies: pulp adventure and nostalgia for the past delivered with the modern pacing of your average NASCAR race. You may like some results more than others (seriously, Howard the Duck?!), but at least they all come from one guy's ideas, not some committee working for a giant corporation whose job it is to suck all joy out of our cinematic experience.

Nailing the equation involved keeping a lot of different balls in the air. Star Wars, for example, had special effects from Industrial Light & Magic and sound effects from Skywalker Sound. Lucasfilm eventually encompassed all of those divisions (including a video game branch calls LucasArts and THX, which developed the spine-shattering hum you hear at the beginning of movies that market loud noises as a selling point).

And while most of them remained safety under the Lucas umbrella, a few of these entities slipped out to make plenty of noise of their own. One of them was a computer animation firm called Pixar, which Lucas sold to Apple's Steve Jobs in 1986 and which changed the world of animation nine years later with a little movie called Toy Story.

Big George liked keeping his empire close to his bearded bosom, but time catches up with everyone. And when he decided to retire at age 68, he had to find somewhere to put his baby. Enter The Mouse, AKA the Walt Disney Company, which snapped it all up for the princely sum of $4 billion and began making even more money with Lucasfilm properties than he did. Luckily, the general vibe hasn't much changed, with the final three chapters in the Star Wars saga and potential future Indiana Jones films firmly on its docket.