Star wars 1
Star warsMay The Force Be With You!
Your sitting in a darkened theatre and the movie previews have already been played. It is now time for the main feature. All of a sudden big blue letters appear on a starscape background. The letters read “Along time ago in a galaxy far far away…” Just then the screen changes, loud, inspiring, energetic music plays while huge yellow letters rise from the bottom of the screen. The letters scroll towards the top, all the while shrinking and eventually disappearing into the background. What movie were you thinking of? With all probability you were thinking of a Star Wars movie.
Many people live for this movie. They spend every moment thinking of what it would be like to be a Jedi Knight, or fantasizing about Princess Leia in the golden bikini she wore as a slave for Jabba the Hutt. What causes such a fanatical following? A following of fanatics that creates conventions, over populated by over eager people dressed up as their favorite character or alien in the movie, just to come and see the actual R2-D2 robot used in Star Wars. A following of extremists that drives a person to find out every detail of the movies and memorizes it in hopes that someone will ask him a Star Wars trivia question that they know. Doesn’t these people have lives?
All of the other people that aren’t as crazy enough to visit conventions and study trivia questions must do something to show their love for the movie. That is when all the Star Wars merchandise comes in. Everything from the movie is represented in a toy of some sort, From Luke Skywalker action figures and Millennium Falcon starships, to T-shirts and lunch boxes. Why is there such a market for these items?
Many people feel that the success of the movie is do to the fact that it is the classic underdog theme. A story of a small town teenage farmer, who had his caretakers killed by the evil Empire, growing up to become the most powerful man in the universe. Along the way he took out his revenge (oops, not “revenge,” that leads to the dark side) and eventually defeated the empire.
A good reason for the success of the film might be the Jedi Knight way of life. A very religious point of view, in which a person must not act out of hate, fear, or “revenge” in order to resist the dark side and stay in the light. Or the Jedi just appeals to the fantasy side of human nature. A place were a person can still sword fight and block bullets, or blaster fire with their light saber, and on occasion move things...
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