Star Wars
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Film series, created by George Lucas. Also the original title of the first film in the series, which was thereafter expanded to fit in the format of the other titles.
Star Wars attracted both enormous commercial success and a sprawling, dedicated fandom over the years, marking popular culture on a global level and developing into a huge money-making franchise.
Movies
Original Trilogy
trilogy titles
- Star Wars (1977) aka Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
- Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
- Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
trilogy main characters
- Luke Skywalker - played by Mark Hamill
- Obi-Wan Kenobi - played by Alec Guinness
- Princess Leia - played by Carrie Fisher
- Han Solo - played by Harrison Ford
- Darth Vader - played by David Prowse and James Earl Jones (voice)
- Lando Calrissian - played by Billy Dee Williams
- Yoda - played by Frank Oz (voice)
- Emperor Palpatine - played by Ian McDiarmid
- C-3PO - played by Anthony Daniels
- R2-D2 - played by Kenny Baker
Prequels
prequel titles
- Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
- Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
- Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
prequel main characters
- Queen (then Senator) Padmé Amidala - played by Natalie Portman
- Qui-Gon Jinn - played by Liam Neeson
- Obi-Wan Kenobi - played by Ewan McGregor
- Schmi Skywalker - played by Pernilla August
- Anakin Skywalker - played by Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen
- Yoda - played by Frank Oz (voice)
- Mace Windu - played by Samuel L. Jackson
- Senator Palpatine - played by Ian McDiarmid
- Jar-Jar Binks - played by Ahmed Best
- Darth Maul - played by Ray Park
- C-3PO - played by Anthony Daniels
- R2-D2 - played by Kenny Baker
Spin-Offs
- The Ewok Adventure (1984) (TV)
- Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985) (TV)
- Other Star Wars spin-offs.
Criticisms
Joanna Russ, in "SF and Technology as Mystification" (1978), (To Write Like a Woman, p.31):
- Star Wars, I think, addresses itself to a dim but powerful desire for 'fun', ie, excitement and self-importance. These are human desires and not bad ones, but the film satisfies them by simplifying morality, politics, and human personality to the point where they can all safely be ignored in the interests of the 'fun'. However, morality, politics, and human personality are most of the world and the film cannot actually do without them without renouncing drama altogether. Thus we have a work in which the result of the oversimplification isn't to banish morality, politics and human personality (which is impossible) but to present them in their most reactionary -- and dullest -- form. Thus monarchies are better than republics, slavery is noble (the machines are conscious personalities endowed with emotions and free will but it is still unquestionably right to own them), everyone human in the film is white (with the possible exception of one extra in one scene), and after the hero's mother (disguised as his aunt to avoid the real parenticidal wishes no doubt present in teenagers in the audience) dies, there is only one woman left in the entire universe. This universe then goes into terrific plot convulsions to aid, nurture and glorify one very ordinary white, heterosexual, male, bucktoothed virgin. To judge by the film's last scene, which is modeled on Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (a Nazi propaganda film made of the Nazi Party Congress held in Nuremberg), the director intended Star Wars as a half-hearted comment on the whole genre. I believe that his recent allegation on television that the film is 'wholesome' is simply dishonest.