In 1976, a group of then-unknown actors and film producers gathered in the Tunisian desert to begin principle photography on a film that would change the world. A year later, Star Wars hit theaters, making its stars—Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher—film icons and its director George Lucas a legend. Four decades later, the art created by a group of Hollywood outsiders remains one of the biggest film franchises in the world.

Star Wars is cultural empire, and those fans blown away by that title scroll in 1977 remain its loyal subjects. Here, you can see some incredible behind-the-scenes photos from the set of those original films pulled from The Star Wars Archives, a beautiful new book of photography in which George Lucas "guides us through the original trilogy like never before, recounting the inspirations, experiences, and stories that created a modern monomyth. Complete with script pages, concept art, storyboards, on-set photography, and more." The book is due out from Taschen on Dec. 15.