Star Wars

*"A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away"*

Star Wars is a mass media space opera/sci fi fantasy franchise owned by Lucasfilm (in turn by Disney) and one of the fronts, and one of the most important ones, in the battle of Pop Culture, as one of pop culture's most recognizable franchises.

## Basic History

Star Wars as a franchise was created in 1977 by George Lucas and his company Lucasfilm with the release of A New Hope. With the successful releases of its two sequels, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, the original trilogy was complete.

As and after the OT was released, Star Wars amassed a massive fanbase. Numerous, possibly even hundreds, of external media (books, comics, etc.) were created afterwards as part of a massive "Expanded Universe" of works all telling tales within this galaxy far far away. Fans were of every nature and every demographic- they were all united by their collective love of the franchise.

Later on, George Lucas released another trilogy, the Prequel Trilogy, although this one was not as successful as the original trilogy and the fanbase of Star Wars often derided and mocked it for many reasons. Lucas ceased working on the franchise thereafter.

In 2014, Lucasfilm was sold to Disney, and control of Lucasfilm was handed over by George Lucas to Kathleen Kennedy, unaware of the agenda that she possessed. She signed a contract with Disney and Lucasfilm got to work producing the Sequel Trilogy. In addition, the Lucasfilm Story Group was created to manage where the story of Star Wars was taken, and to the fandom's dismay, the Expanded Universe was fully decanonized into being called "Legends".

Then, the Sequel Trilogy was released, which you can learn more about under that article. Later on, there was a Lucasfilm Civil War between Kennedy and two others also working on Star Wars stories, Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni. While it looks like Jon won, there is still yet to be a conclusive end which would be represented by Kennedy's contract not being renewed. The next era of Star Wars media appears to be in the form of the Favreau-Verse. However, most fans quit the franchise after The Book of Boba Fett and Obi Wan.

## Central Ideas

The original trilogy focused on the excitement of adventure and of redemption. The first movie followed a protagonist, Luke Skywalker, on a typical Hero's Journey in space as he would leave the planet and everyman's life he had always yearned to leave behind for greater purpose, and to try to prove he could use the Force and destroy the Death Star. After this, the story took a shocking turn when it was revealed his enemy, Darth Vader, was in fact his father! From this point, Luke focused on the power of redemption and in the end was able to turn his corrupted father back to the Light Side, thwarting the evil emperor Palpatine's plans and resulting in his death.

The Prequel Trilogy, while not as good as the original, also had strong thematic elements. It followed Anakin and plotted his eventual turn to the dark side that we know will happen, since Anakin is Darth Vader from the original trilogy. The animated series The Clone Wars follows Anakin on more adventures before his turn to the Dark Side.