It’s difficult to imagine now, but there was a time when the original Star Wars wasn’t a guaranteed box office draw. As George Lucas shopped his space opera around Hollywood, studios weren’t entirely sure what to make of the film, doubtful the project would be worth the investment. Like many studio executives, 20th Century Fox’s […]
Sci-fi has become one of the biggest genres in entertainment, and it’s thanks to some of the biggest landmark moments in film belonging to the genre. However, fans today may not understand that the theatrical model of yesteryear meant that movies had a much longer run in theaters, with a much longer runway to earn […]
At best, bootleg and knock-off action figures can usually be classified as a novelty item, lacking real value. But there are a select few bootleg figures that have attained the status of coveted collectors’ items, with their scattershot distribution, poor quality, and lack of manufacturing information making them seriously rare. In some cases, these bootlegs […]
George Lucas has never treated Star Wars as a finished product. He tweaked dialogue and sound mixes on the original trilogy throughout its theatrical run in the late 1970s and early 1980s, long before home video gave fans a fixed version to compare against. The habit became impossible to ignore in 1997, when Lucas brought […]
Since his big-screen debut in 1977, Darth Vader has been considered one of the greatest villains in pop culture history. The more he got fleshed out over the years, and his eventual redemption made him one of the best characters ever, even beyond his villain status. One of the reasons he’s viewed as such a […]
When Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was first released, it wasn’t universally praised by fans. As excited as everyone was for the new chapter in Star Wars to finally happen, many weren’t thrilled at the new additions to the lore and the tone of the film. It was readily apparent that when George Lucas wrote […]
One of the things that helped set Star Wars apart from its big screen sci-fi peers was the almost overwhelming assortment of droids, aliens, and creatures that filled nearly every frame of the movie. Star Wars helped popularize the concept of cinematic science fiction universes where the human race was just one of many spacefaring […]