It’s May 4th 2016, which means it’s Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you, you see)! I kind of wish I’d planned something to write for the occasion, as I might be able to turn this into something similar to my Christmas post in the future. But since I’m just kind of writing this as I go, I guess this first Star Wars Day celebration at the Dojo will be relatively small.
Star Wars is a big deal for a lot of people, and for good reason. It’s great! It’s provided the world with some of its most entertaining movies, has a timelessness about it, memorable characters, and a richness to its imaginative fictional universe. It’s probably the biggest franchise in all of popular culture, and one of the few that seems to transcend merely being a franchise and is more a part of people’s lives.
Star Wars, along with Jaws, marked a turning point for movies in the late 70s, one that saw them become bigger and, frankly, more entertaining. Most of the blockbusters of today owe a debt of gratitude to Star Wars in particular. And throughout the decades, Star Wars hasn’t lost a step (okay, so there was that whole prequel trilogy, and much of the expanded universe was basically trash, but we can leave that stuff behind us now). The Force Awakens, the most recent entry in the series, quickly became one of the most successful films of all time, few franchises (if any) could pull that off after going on for this long.
Simply put, Star Wars sits at the peak of popular culture, with its status seldom even approached (Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Frozen might be the closest contenders as far as movies and television are concerned). It’s just so cool!
So let’s all take a minute to sit back and reflect on the awesomeness that is Star Wars. And hopefully next year I’ll have something bigger in store for Star Wars Day.
May the Force be with you!
Wizard Dojo 