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When George Lucas first conceived the idea for Star Wars, it was just a movie. Over the course of 22 years, it has grown into a full-blown phenomenon - an event that gives promoters orgasmic shivers and makes theater employees wish they could take...

Middle episodes in trilogies have the potential to be fundamentally dissatisfying. Thankfully, George Lucas has managed to avoid that pitfall for Episode II of the Star Wars saga, Attack of the Clones. Admittedly, the primary purpose of this film...

The saga is complete. What George Lucas began in 1977 as a little movie that took the box office by storm, he has completed in 2005 with the most heralded motion picture of the year. With the arrival of Revenge of the Sith, Lucas places the missi...

Indulge me for a moment as I time travel back to 1980. Historically, it was a signficant year -- the Iran hostage crisis raged, Ronald Reagan won the Presidential election, and the United States boycotted the Moscow Summer Olympics in response...

There's an old saying that states something about leaving the best for last. George Lucas certainly didn't follow that adage when crafting the original Star Wars trilogy. Return of the Jedi, the final installment of the series, is easily the ...

November 17, 1978: A day that will live in infamy, at least for Star Wars fans. The Star Wars Holiday Special, a 2-hour TV show that aired on CBS, was intended to give fans something to bridge the gap between the summer 1977 release of A New Hope ...

When one examines the roster of the tens of thousands of motion pictures produced since the late 1800s, not many stand out as trailblazers. One of the few inarguable members of that select cadre is George Lucas' soaring 1977 space opera, Star ...

The movie referred to since 1981 as A New Hope has two separate identities. As Star Wars, it’s a stand-alone coming-of-age tale of a farmer who follows his destiny to rescue a princess and defeat an evil empire. As Episode IV, it’s the fo...

Attack of the Clones suffers from "middle episode syndrome" - the tendency of the second volume in a trilogy to feel incomplete and, as a result of that incompleteness, to fail to satisfy. (A problem George Lucas was able to avoid with The ...

For many years (16 in particular), Return of the Jedi was considered the weakest of the Star Wars films. Then, in 1999, along came The Phantom Menace to displace it in the minds of many. Left unrealized as the prequels began their theatrical tour is ...