What Lucas' film also shares with Annakin's film is the fascination with the mechanics of flying. The aircraft in TMMItFM are all reconstructions of actual aircraft that existed in 1910. A variety of airplanes of differing shapes and sizes in from the early Twentieth Century are contrasted with the different pilots. Similar to that are the different space craft and aliens in Star Wars, or the variety of cars and drivers in American Graffiti. Much as it was emphasised that the Millenium Falcon was an old and vulnerable spacecraft, Annakin presents airplanes that were rickety when they were new.

The young woman played by Sarah Miles shares some similarities to Princess Leia. There may have been more in common had Lucas made his heroic character a woman as in earlier screenplays of Star Wars. Miles' feminism is announced with her entrance riding a motorcycle. In a shot of Miles putting the motorcyle away, one sees that the inner door of a shed has a suffragette poster, a written declaration for female equality. Through much of the film, Miles tries to find a way to fly, originally with fiance James Fox, and successfully with Stuart Whitman. As a pilot from Arizona, Whitman’s character could be viewed as the prototype for the "space cowboy", and a distant cousin to Han Solo. As the daughter of wealthy publisher Robert Morley, Miles portrays a sort of princess who tries to prove herself as capable as any man. And like in Star Wars, the princess finds herself happily in the arms of a rough outsider whose sense of the greater good outweighs his personal needs.

Ken Annakin has declared that his primary purpose in making films was to entertain. His directorial career was long, spanning over forty years. Published in England, Annakin wrote a book about his filmmaking career titled So You Wanna be a Director?. The book's introductions are by Richard Attenborough AND Mike Leigh. As their are only a few of Annakin's films available to review on DVD or video, re-examining his career in full is more difficult. While the comparison is admittedly superficial, Annakin's films share Raoul Walsh's spirit of fun and adventure for its own sake. One moment that might be considered defining of Annakin is at the end of Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines when the air race is over, and Sarah Miles and Stuart Whitman appear ready to walk off into the sunset. The quiet of the end of the day is interrupted by the sound of jet planes, and the film cuts first to an overhead of jets flying in formation, followed by a pilot's point of view shot. Annakin's audio anachronism brings the audience back to the present day, but also anticipates the kind of adventures in flying that would be manifested most successfully in Star Wars.

Third Man on the Mountain, while less a personal film for Ken Annakin, has some narrative elements that are repeated in Star Wars. The protagonist is a young man with the goal of living up to the legacy of his father. James MacArthur, at the time Disney's serious teen actor, portrays the son of a legendary mountain guide. Working as a dish washer, his goal is to climb the mountain where his father lost his life. Janet Munro, the girl who believes in him, has a brief moment where she goes mountain climbing with MacArthur. Again, as with Sarah Miles in TMMitFM and Lucas' original Princess Leia, the female character is, to a limited extent, able to take on the same physical adventure as the men. Michael Rennie, as the world famous mountain climber and mentor to MacArthur prefigures Alec Guinness, with both not coincidentally being tall and British. Much like Star Wars, Third Man on the Mountain is about a young man who takes life-threatening risks to prove to others as well as himself that he is indeed a capable man and not a boy. Additionally, there is a scene somewhat similar to Star Wars' cantina, and TMMitFM' restaurant where an international group of climbers speak of national pride before deciding that being part of a brotherhood of mountain climbers is more important. In Annakin's films as in those of Lucas, language barriers are transcended by unity of purpose.

For other entries in the Star Wars blog-a-thon, Edward Copeland has the force.