Today, May the 4th, is the date that fans traditionally celebrate the Star Wars saga of movie.
Star Wars was released in 1977 into a cinema environment so different from the current one, COVID-19 issues excluded, that fans today could have a distinctly difficult time envisioning it. When the first film appeared, it was not the standard practice to open in thousands of theaters across the country and now the world on the same date. Rather movies opened in perhaps a few hundred locations and then the printed moved from city to city making people wait for highly anticipated films. So, it was weeks and weeks after the movie’s premier before I saw Star Wars. I was already a science-fiction fan and thoroughly enjoyed the movie despite it being more akin to fantasy than any sort of SF. Few could have foreseen that this adventure film was going to radically change motion pictures.
1980 brought The Empire Strikes Back and proved that the audience reaction to Star Wars was not a fluke. Despite a darker theme a different director, and lacking a proper ending, the sequel proved as successful of the original and planted the seeds for a fan community with both good and bad actors and rampant plot speculations that we live with today.
Return of the Jedi arrived in 1983 and concluded the central plot of the three films. Though the weakest of the original trilogy with many of the characters reduced to simplistic versions and its climatic final battle a thinly disguised commentary on the Vietnam war, one that misunderstand how that war was finally resolved, Jedi produced an emotionally satisfying resolution to Luke’s character arc leaving him in a place of emotional maturity and moral soundness.
16 years after the trilogy’s conclusion Lucas returned to theaters with more films set in the Star Wars universe, a set of prequel movies dealing with the backstory of Darth Vader and the disintegration of the Republic into the Galactic Empire with the movies The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith. These films proved to be a disappointment. Abandoning the earlier, ‘lived in’ art direction from the original trilogy for a polished, metallic, façade that had no life of its own and with characterization reduced to nothing for the sake of plot propulsion. Still a younger generation of fans embraced the new movies and the franchise proved to be economically a powerhouse in two different centuries.
2015, ten years after the conclusion of the prequel trilogy and the sale of the property to Disney Studios, a new slate of Star Wars movies began with The Force Awakens. Set a generation after the original films the movie returned to the space opera roots of the franchise and repeated core plot elements of Star Wars while introducing a new cast. This was followed by the divisive but brilliant The Last Jedi a film that divided the fan base inciting heated, passionate commentary from admirers and critics of the new thematic ground it broke. 2019 saw the end of the Skywalker Saga with the release of The Rise of Skywalker a movie that was more chase and escape that character and theme. Along with the release of two standalone feature films, Rouge One a film that in mood had more to do with the 1970s that the original Star Wars and Solo another backstory and backfill installment the franchise took in more than 10 billion dollars in box office revenue no counting television, specials, shows, and a flood of merchandising but the long last effects of this amazing profitable franchise will not be found in the growing bank accounts or the endless derivative cinematic followers but in the changing technology of film production. Non-linear editing enhanced theatrical sound systems, photorealistic digital effects, and digital projection are just some of the breakthroughs pioneered by Lucas and his companies. No matter the varying quality of the films as cinema Star Wars and all of its spin-off and sequels have created a new and limitless world for all of us.
