Wednesday, May 19, 1999 was an unofficial holiday.  Leaving work, home, and school, millions of people throughout the country, some even travelling from locations around the world, gravitated towards each other as if propelled by an unseen force.  It was a day of camaraderie and joy, spontaneous hugs and perpetual smiles; of perfect strangers coming together, sharing their food and stories as the hours passed by.  Participants in this mass celebration could be found breaking into song at random intervals, comparing costumes and trivia knowledge, and engaging in lightsaber duels wherever they could find space.  Lightsabers?  Yes, May 19 was the opening day of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, and like Luke Skywalker on his quest to save the princess, fans set out to face the lines with heroic determination, and not a little excitement.  I myself was not immune to the call, willing to weather two hours in commute traffic, (in my agitation I forgot my pre-purchased ticket at home and had to double back), and three more in line.  We were no longer individuals, but had become connected by that mystical energy force called fan-dom, and the collective anticipation emanating from the crowd was palpable.  As a fan said in a similar line exactly nineteen years ago at the premier of The Empire Strikes Back, we were “waiting for our high” (Jenkins 225).

    From the moment George Lucas announced in 1995 that production was to begin on the prequels to his immensely popular Star Wars Trilogy, the hype surrounding the new film grew swiftly to gargantuan proportions.  Magazines and websites were flooded with rumors and speculations, building up a frenzy of anticipation long before official trailers and advertisements were made available to the general public.  Buoyed by a rapidly growing collection of spin-off novels and the successful re-release of the Star Wars: Special Edition to theaters in 1997, Star Wars mania reached new heights in the months preceding the Episode I release.  Even before getting in line for the movie, eager fans waited for hours outside FAO Shwartz in order to be the first to snatch up the new line of Phantom Menace toys and action figures.  Faced with the sprawling empire that the Star Wars franchise has become, it is hard to believe that it all began with one movie, and one man.

    That man, George Lucas, would be the first to agree.  As creator, writer, and director of the original Star Wars¹ film, Lucas was certain that his over-budget, behind-schedule, and much-maligned movie would be a failure.  When he and his wife Marcia² first saw the lines in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles at the 1977 premiere, Lucas confessed “we just fell on the floor” in tearful amazement (Jenkins x).  It did not take long for people to start asking themselves what exactly it was that drew them to see the movie again and again, and over twenty years later the jury is still out.  That is not to say that numerous hypotheses have not been postulated and debated among scholars and fans alike, but that the Star Wars phenomenon continues to defy definition.  As the bewildered producer Irwin Allen wondered after emerging from a typically boisterous early screening of the film, “There’s no stars, there’s no love story, what are they clapping at?” (Jenkins 167).  Research in this area has, however, uncovered at least one undeniable fact, that the heart of even the most far-reaching argument eventually returns to the man behind the magic, George Lucas.  Emerging as something of an iconoclast in the Hollywood community, Lucas was adamant from the start that his films be what he wanted, not what some studio felt that they should be.  For better or for worse Star Wars is his movie, his vision.  Not unexpectedly, much of Lucas himself, his beliefs and ideals, find expression in the movie’s story and themes.  When asked in 1981 what personal quality he brings to his films, Lucas replied hesitantly, “a kind of effervescent giddiness” (O’Quinn 13).  It would seem, therefore, that the best way to understand Star Wars is to understand its creator, his history and his goals, and the nature of this “effervescent giddiness.”

  1. The full title is Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.  For expediency, I will most often refer to the film as simply Star Wars, though this is not to be confused with the Star Wars Trilogy, which includes Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi.
  2. Lucas and Marcia have since divorced (1983).