With today’s (May the 4th, the official/unofficial International Star Wars Day) announcement of a Star Wars Celebration, returning in 2017 to Orlando Florida, I think it is finally safe to say that we are truly living in what will be ultimately known as the Golden Age for Star Wars. Whether you have been a fan since 1977, or you are a seven-year-old fan just learning about all the wonderful things that encompass the Star Wars universe, whether you are a casual fan, or someone like me who has spent thousands of dollars on plastic spaceman armor and joined The 501st Legion, there truly has never been a better time to be a fan of George Lucas’s baby. Even though Uncle George departed from creative control in 2012, or maybe because of that departure, we have seen more Star Wars content come from the Disney owned Lucasfilm Limited (LFL) in the last four years then we had in the last 20. To be clear, by Golden age I don’t mean we’re at the high point with only a long decline to look forward to…No quite the contrary, we are heading into a period of beautiful and amazing Star Wars cultural saturation that has never been seen before and may very well last for decades to come…

It began with “Star Wars Rebels“, and led us to Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. With “The Force Awakens” being the highest grossing film in history, I would say that definitely gets us off to a great start, but for it to be the Golden Age there has to be more, Right? How about new Animation? The previously mentioned “Star Wars: Rebels”, “Lego Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures” (coming to Disney XD this summer) and several other Lego Star Wars animated specials (and possibly more in the near future), Check! New comics? Marvel comics Took over with a whole new slate of Star Wars comics, all in cannon… Check! New novelizations (Star Wars: Aftermath and many more), young readers books, and children’s books, and more, all in line with a whole new Canon? There have been enough new Star Wars books in the last year to fill a small library… Check! New video games, with more in the pipeline? “Star Wars Battlefront” is just the beginning… there’s an Lego Star Wars “Episode VII”  game coming out in June and more in the next couple years…Check! The possibility of live-action television shows and, most importantly, a whole bunch of new movies? With persistent rumors of a possible Netflix series (or three) as well as Trilogy and Standalone movies announced through at least 2020… Check, check, check! 

There are some who have not been happy with the “New Canon” where everything that had ever been put out except for the six films and the clone wars animated series, once called the “Star Wars Expanded Universe“, was no longer considered “Canon” and was relegated to the “Star Wars Legends” title, like an alternate universe. Incredible works like Steve Zahn’s “Thrawn Trilogy”, “Tales of the Jedi” by Anderson and Veitch, and “Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor” by Matthew Stover (just to name a few), were no longer considered to be a part of the greater Star Wars Galaxy Canon we all know and love, and this rubbed quite a number of fans the wrong way.  However, that does not mean that many elements of the incredible and rich tapestry of tales that have been told is gone forever. It has been indicated that we will see locations, characters, and story lines, cherry picked as needed from all over the former “Expanded Universe”, to create the best of all possible galaxies. This will span television, novels, comics, video games, and of course movies.

We’re not just talking new films in the ongoing Saga of our favorite Rebels and Imperials “A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far, Away”… no, a new trilogy wouldn’t be enough to ice it as The Golden Age. We’re finally getting spinoff/standalone films! You say you want to have a new Star Wars related film every year, possibly for the rest of your life and beyond? Sure, here you go… let’s start with 2016’s “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”, opening December 18, 2016. Follow that up with the as yet unnamed Episode VIII in December of 2017, a young Han Solo film in 2018, and another film each year (with a numbered film in the series continuing the saga every other year), and it is hard to argue that there has ever been a better time to love Star Wars. While they have not officially announced it, it is expected that we will see standalone films, telling more of the stories of fan favorites like the Bounty Hunter Boba Fett, reclusive surviving Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, and others, to start with. Some of these films, like Rogue One, and Young Han Solo, will act as prequels, others (perhaps the Boba Fett standalone) as sequels, to stories that we have been told already. For example, Rogue One takes place shortly before Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and will tell the story of how the Rebels acquired those Death Star plans that Princess Leah stuck into R2-D2. Each of the standalone films Will be a genre film in addition to telling a story in that Star Wars galaxy. For example, “Rogue One” has been described as possibly being like “Oceans Eleven” meets “Saving Pvt. Ryan”

Some might look at the first slate of films and complain that LFL is playing it safe, sticking with places, events, and (in most cases) characters, that fans know or are at least aware of. Perhaps they are, to start with, but how else are they supposed to build an exciting, interesting, and cohesive, Galaxy of stories? Sure, they could just adapt a bunch of existing Star Wars novels, or just try to tell us more stories about the same old characters, that with new actors in some cases, and just slap the Star Wars name in front of it. That would work for one or two films before the fans started to rebel and they started to lose money. What they want to do is create a lasting legacy of annual films that might go on for generations. So they’re going to bring people in by starting with the characters, times, and places, that are familiar and comfortable to the wide fanbase and then expand the stories. Lucasfilm CEO Kathleen Kennedy said as much last December at a press event for The Force Awakens. As she told Peter Sciretta at Slashfilm:

…”the Saga films are primarily the soap opera centered around the Skywalker family. The standalone films can be a wide variety of genres inside the Star Wars universe, and they very definitely have a beginning, middle, and end. They are not being designed to necessarily build new franchises. They are really being designed as standalone movies which is fantastic for the filmmakers we bring in, and the actors we hire, because it’s a different sensibility. And the stories can fall pretty much anywhere on the timeline.”

This means that we anyone, anywhere, and any-when that you could imagine, from the Star Wars galaxy, at some point in the future of the films. That is a truly exciting prospect. Think about some of the very best Star Wars fan films that have been put out there, Like the recent Darth Maul: Apprentice, or Revan, and imagine if the makers of those films were given the backing, and budget, of Lucasfilm… That’s not necessarily out of the question with where LFL is going…

Then there’s the toys. Oh those beautiful toys…George Lucas quite literally created the movie tie-in concept for toys when he made a deal with, what was at the time a third rate toy company, Cincinnati Ohio’s Kenner prior to the release of Star Wars in 1977. They only went on to be some of the best-selling toys of all time, creating a market for movie and television tie-in toys with sales of Star Wars toys alone topping $20 billion. This also was the beginning of the 3.75″ figures which have become the standard. It was probably the only time in history that you could’ve gotten a kid to be excited about receiving a piece of cardboard with a picture of some toys on it for Christmas, in 1977. Today’s toys have only gotten bigger and better. Kenner was eventually swallowed up by Hasbro who has continued with the ever expanding catalog of increasingly detailed and poseable 3.75″ figures, vehicles, and playsets. Lego Star Wars has been equally popular if not more so, despite the largest sets costing more than $400. With the introduction of Hasbro’s The Black Series 6″ figures, and other items in The Black Series, geared towards collectors as well as kids, my nine-year-old son gets to play with some of the same figures that I have on the shelves in my man cave. Lucasfilm and Hasbro teamed up for”Force Friday” last September, A day on which they released whole new slate of toys, Most of which were tied into “The Force Awakens”. One of the hottest toys of Christmas last year was the Sphero BB-8, which you can remote control with your phone. Then you have Hot Toys and Sideshow Toys with their 1:6 scale lines of”Toys”. They are some of the most amazingly detailed, accurate, and poseable “Action Figures” ever created, and at an average price of about $400-$500, they better be, but to serious collectors there’s nothing better.  And all this is just a tip of the iceberg. Costumes for kids, as well as adults, from the typical Holloween fair put out by Rubies, to the near film accurate offerings of ANOVOS. There are T-shirts, bedding, towels, cookware, hats, shoes, car accessories, even entire airplanes! Whatever you can imagine, if you couldn’t wear it, ride it, touch it, play with it, or use it, somewhere you can find it branded with Star Wars.

So welcome to The Golden Age. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride and May The Force Be With You…Always.