Star Wars
The very name evokes billion-dollar blockbusters and movie magic. For most casual audiences, Star Wars is the Star Wars films. Seeing a Star Destroyer envelop the silver screen as it chased a Rebel Blockade Runner was a formative cinematic experience for many kids and young adults in 1977. The original Star Wars trilogy inspired a generation of filmmakersâincluding James Cameron, Peter Jackson, J.J. Abrams, and Rian Johnsonâto make their own science fiction and fantasy films. The Prequel Trilogyâalthough critically less well receivedâused advances in special effects technology to create spectacular worlds and epic space battles then possible only on a movie budget. The hype surrounding The Force Awakens in 2015 seemed to indicate that audiences believed real Star Wars belonged in a movie theater.
Yet, the films are simply the tip of the iceberg of the Star Wars megatext. During the past 43 years, starting before anyone had even seen the original Star Wars in theaters, the Star Wars franchise branched out across every form of media imaginable. The galaxy far, far away expanded into hundreds of novels, thousands of comics, dozens of video and analog games, uncountable action figures, and, of course, television shows, specials, and commercials. The recent animated TV shows have increasingly become entry points into the franchise for newer fans, especially younglings. Lucasfilm reinforced the franchiseâs multimedia nature when it reset the Star Wars continuity in April 2014 and announced that the Original Trilogy, Prequel Trilogy, The Clone Wars TV show, and all tie-material going forward would be canon.
Aside from the theatrical films, the television shows have been the most high-profile story products attached to the Star Wars brand. During the late 1970s and 1980s, Lucasfilm experimented with different formats for adapting the Star Wars storyworld onto the small screen. The infamous Holiday Special (1978), which aired on broadcast television just a year after the original Star Wars film was released in theaters, combined depictions of the domestic life of Wookiees with musical skits and an animated segment produced by Nelvana. After Return of the Jedi was released in 1983 and George Lucas decided to stop making Star Wars theatrical films, Lucasfilm produced two live-action Ewok TV filmsâCaravan of Courage (1984) and Battle for Endor (1985)âas well as the Droids (1985â1986) and Ewoks (1985â1986) animated shows. Tellingly, despite the use of characters, alien species, and planets from the films, these television products differed drastically from the storytelling conventions of the Original Trilogy and failed to resonate with many fans. These stories were rarely referenced by other Star Wars texts, even before they were removed from the official canon.
The Clone Wars micro-series (2003â2005), produced by Genndy Tartakovsky, served as an intermediary step to the next era of Star Wars television. Unlike the earlier TV shows, Clone Wars had exciting action and epic battles. As a direct continuation of the story depicted in Attack of the Clones (2002), it was more integral to the megatext than previous Star Wars TV projects. The Clone Wars received critical acclaim and won multiple awards, although the relatively short duration and limited, cable network distribution reduced its exposure to the Star Wars fanbase. The show also led George Lucas to view animated television as a promising vehicle for future Star Wars stories.
Star Wars television reached a new phase with The Clone Wars (2008â2014, 2020) and the hiring of director and executive producer Dave Filoni. Unlike previous Star Wars television projects, Lucas himself was heavily involved in the art style, stories, and other aspects of this show. Lucasfilm treated it as canon and part of Lucasâs vision for the saga. TCW retroactively added depth to the characterizations and worldbuilding of the Prequel era, increasing fan investment in that portion of the Star Wars megatext. Filoni himself, widely seen as Lucasâs protĂ©gĂ©, became a fan favorite at conventions. After Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney, Filoni remained to oversee Star Wars animation, producing Rebels (2014â2018), which continued the story of many of the characters he had introduced in TCW. Both shows featured the epic battles and character drama fans had come to expect from the feature films, but also introduced new story elements, such as Godzilla-like monsters and mystical Force gods.
These newer TV shows saw a much closer integration with other Star Wars storytelling and merchandising strategies. New characters from both shows, particularly Ahsoka Tano, gained a popularity that had eluded those from earlier Star Wars TV projects. Not only did Lucasfilm license merchandising based on story elements from the shows, it also incorporated story elements from TCW and Rebels into other Star Wars media.1 This integration peaked when Maulâwho was apparently killed in The Phantom Menace (1999)âappeared in Solo (2018), puzzling viewers who had not seen his return in TCW. Far from being treated as secondary to the Star Wars storyworld, some aspects of the TV shows became critical to fully understanding the films.
In late 2019, The Mandalorian (2019â) became the first live-action Star Wars episodic television show, and the first live-action Star Wars story told in a televisual medium since the Ewok films. The series was a flagship product for the Disney+ streaming service. As with the animated shows under Filoni, Lucasfilm has integrated The Mandalorian into its broader management of the Star Wars property. For example, the seventh episode, which aired a few days before the release of The Rise of Skywalker (2019), showed the Child use a Force healing ability that Rey would use in the film. The success of the showâand the underperformance of some the theatrical filmsâled Lucasfilm to pivot to television as a primary focus for new Star Wars content.
The Star Wars franchiseâs various TV iterations have intersected with and often reflected significant changes in televisual media. The Holiday Special reflected an attempt to fit Star Wars into the then-popular variety show format, akin to The Muppet Show. The Ewoks and Droids cartoons aired after the Reagan-era Federal Communications Commission loosened regulations on childrenâs entertainment programming, leading to closer integration between corporate merchandising and storytelling strategies. Both shows aired on broadcast channels, which required them to appeal to a relatively broad audience in order to stay on air. Clone Wars , The Clone Wars and Rebels aired on premium cable channels (Cartoon Network and Disney XD, respectively), which afforded storytellers greater creative freedom to depict more mature themes and violence. The rise of digital video recorders and audience familiarity with serialized storytelling during the 2000s also allowed these shows to tell stories set across multiple episodes and to provide characters with series-long arcs.
By the early 2010s, digital platforms and the increasing number of cord cutters disrupted traditional TV business models and led to a significant decline in TV advertising spending. These changes necessitated new strateges for Star Wars TV content. The availability and popularity of services like YouTube allowed content creators to create niche content for specific audiences. Lucasfilm took advantage of this to create the Forces of Destiny (2017â2018) web series, which could target young girls without having to worry about mass appeal. By the late 2010, several media conglomerates, including Disney, created their own streaming services in order to compete with Netflix. This allowed Disney and Lucasfilm to circumvent traditional TV distribution networks and to create an entire ecosystem of Star Wars contentâincluding the films and previously aired TV shows, as well as new shows such as The Mandalorian âexclusive to the service.
Scholars for Star Wars
Since May 1977, scholars have devoted considerable attention to Star Wars, treating it both as a story text and as a cultural phenomenon. For example, Douglas Brode and Leah Deynekaâs Myth, Media, and Culture in Star Wars and Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars contain a collection of essays about the films, including gender and racial representation and Campbellian heroâs journey, as well as the ways in which the films influenced political discourse and pop culture. While the bulk of this scholarship still focuses on the Original Trilogy, there have also been significant studies of the later live-action films, including Paul McDonaldâs reevaluation of the Prequel Trilogy in The Star Wars Heresies and Dan Goldingâs consideration of nostalgia during the Disney-era in Star Wars after Lucas.
Despite the increasing importance of non-film media to the Star Wars franchise, there is still relatively little scholarship about Star Wars beyond the films. This omission is especially noticeable for the Star Wars TV properties. Some works, such as Rich Handley and Joseph F. Berenatoâs A Long Time Ago: Exploring the Star Wars Cinematic Universe, mostly focus on the films but also include analyses of Star Wars television content. Sean Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forestâs Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling is one of the first major academic volumes to focus on the multimedia nature of the Star Wars franchise, but only dedicates a handful of chapters to the TV shows. A notable exception is Derek R. Sweetâs Star Wars in the Public Square, which examines the treatment of certain political issues in The Clone Wars .
As the first academi...