Old School Lane celebrates the 35th anniversary of Star Wars

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, an ambitious young filmmaker named George Lucas had created one of the greatest film franchises of all time. Inspired by many genres of movies, George Lucas created a richly detailed universe filled with many alien creatures, fantastic and lovable characters, a force that a certain group can control for good or evil, groundbreaking effects, and an amazing and memorable storyline that were filled with many twists and turns. That franchise began from a little sci-fi movie that was released in theaters on May 25, 1977. The movie was called Star Wars.



I would be boring you to death by talking about the storylines of the Star Wars movies, since many people already know it. So, I won't be covering it in full detail like I most likely will. But for the 10 people who don't know about it, it's about a Jedi named Luke Skywalker and his companions Obi-Wan Kenobi, his Jedi mentor, Han Solo, a smuggler, Chewbacca, a Wookie and Han's partner, Leia, a princess from the planet Aldaaran, C3PO and R2D2, two androids. They work together to take down the evil Sith, Darth Vader and his empire.



After the release of Star Wars, it became a huge pop culture phenomenon being one of the highest grossing movie series of all time. There are so many adapations of Star Wars from the newer prequel trilogies that were released in theaters beginning in 1999 to the animated TV shows. My absolute favorite is Star Wars: Clone Wars created by Genndy Tartovsky, who also created Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack.



Not to be confused with Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I've seen a few episodes and I find it to be okay. Nothing spectacular, but that's just me.


Not to mention the stupidly amount of merchandise from toys, action figures, Lego models, graphic novels, and so much more. It's beyond amazing that it continues to be loved by millions of people to this very day! I even saw a 10-year-old boy and his younger brother having a light saber dual with their toy light sabers wearing Star Wars t-shirts last week. My favorite merchandise of Star Wars merchandise are the video games. I love the Star Wars trilogy games from the SNES, the Star Wars Trilogy arcade game, Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire for the Nintendo 64, the Star Wars: Battlefront series, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Lego Star Wars.



If someone were to tell me what my absolute favorite Star Wars movie, it would be The Empire Strikes Back. I love it because it continues the story from where it last left off from A New Hope, it introduced us to fantastic characters like Boba Fett, the bounty hunter hired by Darth Vader to go after Luke Skywalker and the group, and the Jedi master Yoda. It also had one of the biggest twist in cinema history when Darth Vader revealed to Luke that he didn't kill his father, he was his father. That shocked me when I first heard that and it was something that I did not expect to happen for a million years. It's incredible!



The music is also something to behold. Composed by John Williams and his incredible orchestra, the songs are memorable and iconic, especially the Star Wars Theme Song.



Here are some of my favorite videos about Star Wars:

A hilarious performance by Tara Strong, Maurice LaMarche, Rob Paulsen, John DiMaggio, Billy West, Jess Harnell, and Kevin Conroy reading the Star Wars film script at Emerald City Comic Con at March 31, 2012.

Some of my favorite Star Wars skits from Robot Chicken

The Emperor's Phone Call
Death Star Yo Mamma
George Lucas at the Convention

The AVGN review of the Star Wars games

Overall, even after all the flack that George Lucas has gotten over the years with milking the Star Wars franchise, why do we still love it after all these years? Is it the story, the characters, the music, the effects, the universe with its amazing diversity? In my opinion, it's all the above. During the 1970's, it was a profound decade of introducing media for a younger audience. Genres like westerns were dead and new ones like sci-fi and crime drama grew. When it came out, it blew our imaginations to warp speed that still fascinate us today. Here's to hoping that the new Star Wars TV series would capture the same magic that made us fall in love with it when we first saw it those many years ago.

Happy anniversary Star Wars! May the force continue to be with you!



That's all for today. Hope to see you around Old School Lane real soon. Thanks for reading.

-Patricia