Star Wars is a science fantasy saga and fictional galaxy created by writer/producer/director George Lucas during the 1970s. This epic trilogy began with the film Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope), which was released on May 25, 1977, by 20th Century Fox. The film became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, spawning five more feature films developed by George Lucas and an Expanded Universe of his films, which includes three spin-off films, five television series and an extensive collection of licensed books, comics, video games, action figures, trading cards, card games, backpacks, Lego sets and other products, all of which are set within a fictional "galaxy far, far away."
An example of the space opera genre, the Star Wars story employs archetypal motifs common to both science fiction and mythology, as well as the romantic music motifs now often associated with those genres.
Hottest Star Wars character ever= Amidala, no ifs ands or buts about it.
I hear they are making a new game, is it true
The star wars universe is expanding adding 3 new book lines and 4 new video games i cant wait bring em on
Start Wars is good but it is old now. Stupid oldness
Darth vader cant touch luck skywalker not to mention yoda. Yoda is the most powerful jedi ever. He is amazing plus he is green like kermit the frog. Rock On
I love Darth Vader, he is the coolest in that outfit! And I like the way he breates it sounds cool.
 A collection of stories and multimedia features
celebrating the final installment
of the Star Wars saga.
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There are "Star Wars" fans and then there are people with arm-long "Star Wars" tattoos. (May 17, 2005)
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The father turned evil. The son didn't. Was Anakin Skywalker the proverbial bad seed, or did he just have a tougher upbringing than his boy Luke? (May 17, 2005)
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Where's Hollywood's most coveted real estate? It's not a Malibu beachfront compound or a ski-in, ski-out Telluride chalet. The hottest frontage this week is in the trailer bank preceding "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith," the film every studio is banking on to energize a listless box-office year. (May 17, 2005)
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 STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH (PG-13). The Skywalker chronicles come full circle at last. This installment is better than its two immediate predecessors -- which may not be saying a whole lot, but for the millions who cleave tightly to director-writer-producer-grand-poobah George Lucas' vision, it's more than enough. Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson, Ian McDiarmid, Anthony Daniels, Jimmy Smits and Frank Oz's voice of Yoda are all present and accounted for. 2:20 (violence, scary situations). At area theaters. (May 16, 2005)
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Fans may have been clamoring for plot details ahead of the Thursday release date of "Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith," but critics still were keeping it zipped. Then it screened at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, and news organizations around the globe (including this newspaper) decided it was time to let the Ewok out of the bag. The verdict? Well ... mixed. (May 17, 2005)
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"Star Wars" fans have divided loyalties, says George Lucas, with older audiences preferring the original trilogy and younger ones loving the current films. (May 16, 2005)
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Without Michael Moore and "Fahrenheit 9/11" at the Cannes Film Festival this time, it was left to George Lucas and "Star Wars" to pique European ire over the state of world relations and the United States' role in it. (May 15, 2005)
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He has spent half a life creating a blockbuster cinema franchise documenting love, war and extraterrestrial bad haircuts a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. (May 10, 2005)
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Some of the hottest toys in America for kids ages 4 and up are $20 "Star Wars" light sabers that have been upgraded to change colors or vibrate with "feel the Force" combat action. The plastic swords do more than make cash registers ring; each one is a reminder to youngsters that a brand-new "Star Wars" film hits theaters May 19. (May 10, 2005)
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George Lucas hasn't yet done what every "Star Wars" geek probably assumed he would've done the moment he completed "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith." (May 8, 2005)
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So it comes down to this - the final episode in the "Star Wars" saga, 28 years in the making. Though in director George Lucas' confused numerology, the upcoming "Revenge of the Sith" is actually the third chapter in the six-episode epic. And if you don't know that by now, then you've been stranded on the planet Tatooine for the past three decades. (May 15, 2005)
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Kids dressed like Luke Skywalker. Adults were decked out as stormtroopers. And "Star Wars" stars past and present soaked up the adulation. (May 13, 2005)
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It will only be the Force that gets some fans to see the final installment of the "Star Wars" series, "Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" in theaters next Thursday. (May 11, 2005)
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There are "Star Wars" people. And then there are those borderline-obsessive quasi-Treky "Star Wars" people. (May 11, 2005)
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Like the all-powerful tractor beam of the Death Star, "Star Wars" has exerted an inexorable force in popular culture. When "Star Wars" premiered to the public at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood on May 25, 1977, a great line of people formed -- despite mild expectations for the peculiar, Zen-themed sci-fi epic. (May 12, 2005)
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In a time not that long ago, in a galaxy sort of far away (the sleepy town of McComb, Miss.), Todd Bullock wasn't the most successful stormtrooper around. He dropped out of the University of Southern Mississippi. He was the lead singer of a local rock band named Mad as Helen. He lived at home with his parents and freelanced as a computer repairman. (Apr 19, 2005) |
Star Wars fans are bracing themselves for the end of the saga as the finale, Revenge of the Sith, opens around the world on Thursday.
The film opens in 3,661 theatres across the US and has sold a record number of advance tickets there and in several other countries, analysts have said.
It is expected to shatter box-office records on release.
Meanwhile DVD pirates are preparing to flood the market with illegal copies of the film, authorities said.
'Phenomenal' sales
And a US consulting film has calculated the film's release has cost $627m (£342m) in lost productivity.
Consulting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas said the buzz about the film would prompt many people to skip work for daytime screenings.
"Already, we were looking at huge opening weekend audiences who have long anticipated the grand finale in this 28-year journey," said John Challenger.
He predicted the loss to companies based on absenteeism caused by the other prequels, the proportion in full-time work, and their average pay.
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Fans may skip work for daytime screenings, a consultant says | "Of course, these estimates are probably on the conservative side in light of the great reviews the moving is receiving," he said.
Several overseas markets have already reported advance takings higher than the box office grosses of the previous prequels, The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.
The massive interest in the film, which was premiered in Cannes on the weekend, has prompted many midnight screenings.
"We are seeing phenomenal advance ticket sales in many territories," Paul Hanneman, Fox International's exec VP for sales and strategic planning, told US magazine Variety.
One theatre chain said its advance sales were 60% higher than for The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King, which took US$124m (£67.66m) in its first five days in North America.
"It is gigantic," said Fandango executive Art Levitt. "For those who are waiting for the opening bell to ring on summer, it's rung loud and clear."
Pirate sleeves found
Sleeves for pirate Revenge of the Sith DVDs and discs with director George Lucas' introduction have been seized in London - but the film itself has not yet been found.
"It's telling us that the bad guys are preparing for a mass influx of this product," said the Federation Against Copyright Theft's (Fact) Jim Angell.
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Star Natalie Portman and director Lucas at the film's Cannes premiere | Some 400 sleeves made in preparation for the discs were seized in a police raid in Woolwich, south London, on Friday.
And discs with a 10-minute long introduction by Lucas were found on Brick Lane, east London, on Sunday.
Mr Angell said Fact had been "on alert mode" and "keeping a sharp eye" out since premieres and press preview screenings began.
"Fortunately for Fox, the distributors of the film, we haven't received any counterfeit film as yet."
But pirates had "some sort of business acumen and they want to flood the market as soon as possible", he added.
The raids came as the DVD industry launched its latest anti-piracy campaign, against selling pirate DVDs in workplaces.
More than a quarter of people who buy pirate DVDs do so in their places of work, according to The Industry Trust for IP Awareness.
With "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" opening nationwide just after 12 a.m. Thursday, and around the world in the course of a few days, the data streaming in to 20th Century Fox executives were nearly off the charts.
The AMC Empire 25 movie theater on 42nd Street in Manhattan was already sold out of tickets for the 12:01, 12:30, 12:50, 1:10 and 1:45 a.m. shows.
Across New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, Seattle and San Francisco, multiplexes were adding middle-of-the-night screenings as fast as they were running out of seats.
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Bruce Snyder, the studio's president of distribution, sounded giddy as he rattled off a list of national theater chains and their percentages of seats sold out nationwide for the movie's midnight start times:
"As of Sunday, AMC theaters was at 75 percent," he said. "Century - 85 percent. Regal - 83 percent. Loews - 77 percent."
He went on, before adding: "I'm doing this a long time. I can never remember anything like this, four days out for a midnight show on a Wednesday night. It's not exactly summertime."
But summer, it seemed, was starting a few weeks early, and not a moment too soon.
The film industry has limped along through a blockbuster-free spring, with only "Hitch," a romantic comedy that opened a few days before Valentine's Day, breaking $40 million in its opening weekend.
Over all, box office receipts are down 8 percent for the year to date from the same period in 2004, and weekend grosses have been lower than last year's for 12 straight weeks. Even setting aside last year, when "The Passion of the Christ" opened in late February, nationwide attendance at movies this year is 7 percent lower than in 2003, according to Exhibitor Relations, which tracks box office results.
While LucasFilm stands to reap the vast majority of the rewards if "Revenge of the Sith" proves to be a blockbuster, and Fox will receive a relatively low fee for distributing it to theaters, competitors were cheering from the sidelines this week.
"The movie business is contagious," said Tom Sherak, a partner at Revolution Studios. "Meaning, if you go see a movie you like, chances are you'll continue to go to the movies. It turns on the industry. When we fall into a slump, it's because the movies that are out don't have good word of mouth. And there haven't been that many movies that have great word of mouth in the last month or so."
In a business that loves touting its records, "Episode III, " the sixth in a 28-year cycle of "Star Wars" pictures, appears to have a serious shot at displacing Sony Pictures' "Spider-Man" as the best-opening film in history. "Spider-Man" took in $114.8 million in three days when it opened in May 2002, setting a widely discussed weekend record and eventually grossing $403.7 million at the domestic box office, short of the $601 million take of the top-grossing "Titanic" in 1997. The weekend record does not account for ticket-price inflation or the vagaries of data from eras that produced blockbusters like "Gone With the Wind" or "The Sound of Music."
Mr. Snyder, at Fox, was feeling the weight of history and expectations on Tuesday. "Everybody is kind of laying the ills of the industry on this movie," he lamented.
"I do think it's a big burden to put on the shoulders of one movie," he said. "But if there is such a movie that can handle it, this is it."
Indeed, the two major online ticket companies, Fandango and Movietickets.com, both said they were on pace to break their records for advance sales, set by "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," in 2003. That film took $72.6 million on its opening weekend and went on to top $377 million in ticket sales at the domestic box office.
"We're selling two tickets per second, and we expect that rate to quadruple by week's end," said Harry Medved, a spokesman for Fandango, which says it covers 70 percent of the nation's theaters with online sales. "We anticipate we'll sell three million tickets for 'Sith' " - compared with two million for the third "Rings" film, he said.
At Movietickets.com, meanwhile, a spokesman said the new "Star Wars" film accounted for 98 percent of all tickets sold on Monday.
"Revenge of the Sith" was on pace to sell more than five million tickets online, a box office head start of roughly $50 million.
The "Star Wars" finale has the field to itself this weekend, with no new releases until DreamWorks Animation's "Madagascar" and Paramount's "Longest Yard" open on May 27. And rival studios were estimating that it could score a four-day weekend box office total of $120 million to $150 million or more, although some doubters said that opening a day early might bite into weekend sales, possibly leaving the "Spider-Man" record intact.
"Everyone here thinks that if they didn't open Thursday, they probably could've beaten 'Spider-Man,' " said a Sony executive, who insisted on anonymity because of a company rule against commenting on competitors' films. "That may have let the air out of their tires a little bit."
About the only other things cutting against the "Star Wars" finale were its long running time, 142 minutes, and a bit of a backlash. That was mainly on conservative Web sites, which were reacting to the film's political jabs at President Bush and the war in Iraq, as when Anakin Skywalker, turning to the dark side, warns that "if you're not with me, you're my enemy."
But executives at LucasFilm and Fox said they were unconcerned.
"Nobody cares," Mr. Snyder said. "Is it pro-Republican? Is it pro-Democrat? Nobody cares. It's entertainment."
(CNN) -- The story is told in Peter Biskind's chronicle "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" of an early screening of "Star Wars."
In attendance that day in 1977, among others, were 20th Century Fox executives, directors Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma, and the film's 32-year-old maker, a Francis Ford Coppola protégé named George Lucas.
Lucas, whose only hit was the unlikely 1973 sleeper "American Graffiti," was nervous.
The special effects weren't done yet; in the place of battles between starships was World War II-era dogfight footage.
The dialogue seemed stilted, overwrought. (As star Harrison Ford told Lucas during filming, "You can write this s***, George, but you sure can't say it.")
For almost everybody in the room, the screening was a disaster.
Everybody, that is, except Spielberg. The director, just two years removed from making the blockbuster "Jaws" and preparing his own sci-fi extravaganza, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," thought it was going to be one of the biggest films of all time.
"George, it's great," he told Lucas, and later said to Fox executive Alan Ladd Jr., "You're going to be the happiest film studio executive in Hollywood."
Twenty-eight years later, he's been proved right beyond anybody's wildest dreams.
The original "Star Wars" was the highest-grossing film of all time for 20 years, until being overtaken by "Titanic"; the second and third films, and then the fourth and fifth releases, entered the pantheon and added new dimensions to a mythology devoured by fans.
And now, "Star Wars" fans must prepare for the end.
On Thursday, "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" will premiere in 3,661 theaters. The long odyssey of Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader, will reach its climax -- and its continuation, as the film leads into the 1977 "Star Wars" to bring the series full circle.
Lucas, for one, is pleased.
"I feel very satisfied that I have accomplished what I set out to do with 'Star Wars,' " he told CNN. "I was able to complete the entire saga and say this is what the whole story is about."
And, he added, relieved.
"I mean, it's like an endurance race," Lucas said. "So, when you finish, when you cross the finish line, it's not a matter of being happy or sad. It is a matter of being relieved that you are finished."
Depravity and redemption
"What the whole story is about" is a mishmash of tales as old as tale-telling: A young boy, plucked from obscurity by elite beings who believe he is somehow blessed, who grows up under their wise tutelage, becomes corrupted by power and evil, and then must finally face his own son -- equally trained, equally tempted -- in a battle to the death.
There are elements from the Arthurian legends, from Greek mythology and the House of Thebes, from Shakespeare, from the Bible. The films borrow bits from war movies, Westerns, old adventure serials and 1950s Kurosawa works.
Whatever its provenance -- whether it's Lucas' love of "Flash Gordon" or his determined probing of Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" -- the work struck a deep chord with the moviegoing public.
Surrogate father and his "son": Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) prepare for battle in "Revenge of the Sith." |
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At its heart, Lucas sees it as a film about a family.
"It's a story of how one can fall to the depths of depravity and then be redeemed by your children," he said.
Hayden Christensen, who plays Anakin in "Sith," knew what happened to Darth in the end. After all, "Return of the Jedi," episode six in the series, came out in 1983 -- but he wasn't sure how his character was going to grow in "Episode III."
"I have sort of been holding my breath for the past two years waiting to see how this film is going to turn out," Christensen told CNN.
"I was looking forward to this film because this was the side of Anakin's character that I was really looking forward to playing ... that sort of transitional phase of his life where he goes to the dark side."
Ah, the dark side. Villainy, treachery. In "Sith," Anakin comes under the influence of the traitorous politician Palpatine, who appeals to Anakin's worst instincts.
"That is what this film is about. It is about Anakin becoming dark, and all that that entails," Christensen said. "It gets back to the basics that make 'Star Wars' great. Good versus evil, all that good stuff."
Redefining movies
For the movie industry, "Star Wars" has been good stuff indeed.
Before "Star Wars," the summer was a time of film doldrums. After "Star Wars," the summer became Hollywood's biggest profit center.
The series also changed the industry's marketing focus, for good or bad -- depending on how you feel about the dearth of "adult" films in summertime (or the dearth of "adult" films, period).
"Star Wars" attracted millions of teenagers as well as adults -- teenagers who would see the film again and again. That audience, and its willingness to give a film repeat business, became a chief driver of Hollywood profits.
"I think ['Star Wars'] definitely is the major force in the redefinition of movies for kids and teenagers -- the whole elaborate apparatus of tie-ins that it's attached to," film historian David Thomson, whose books include "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film," told The Associated Press.
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"Star Wars" has been a merchandising bonanza, making billions over the years. |
Lucas lucked out when it came to the merchandising and tie-ins. Because he wasn't being paid much up front by the studio, he negotiated the rights to the toys and marketing deals related to "Star Wars." Those rights ended up being worth $9 billion -- at this writing.
Lucas pumped some of the money into Industrial Light and Magic -- which created the special effects -- and moved it near his home north of San Francisco from its origins in suburban Los Angeles.
The special effects firm has become a leader in the industry, creating the effects for "Jurassic Park," "Terminator 2," "Men in Black," "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" ... and, of course, "Star Wars."
And if the "Star Wars" empire isn't as big as the galaxy, it certainly spans the globe: Web sites, conventions, action figures and catchphrases are among its many manifestations.
It has become part of the culture: " 'Star Wars' is one of those cultural presences that will be experienced by people who watch Fox News and people who watch ESPN and people who watch Nickelodeon," Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"It is very satisfying to have people that like the movies," Lucas said. "The fans in line [have] become a completely different little cultural artifact. It is mostly like Woodstock. It's mostly a chance for like-minded people to get together and have fun."
And Lucas? The movies have changed his life -- but have they changed him?
Now 61, the filmmaker says: Not really. It was always about the work.
"I am not sure that it changed me very much other than the fact that I got a lot older, and I didn't realize it," he said.
"Whenever you work on something really hard, you sort of forget that you are growing up. And you then look around and you see that you have gray hair, and you say, 'Oh my gosh, where, what happened?' "
I love Yoda he is so cute. I wish I was as cool as Yoda. He has nice features.
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