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30 years ago, the world was a different place in many ways. Some of you younguns may not remember a time when we only had three network channels and a handful of local independents stations. Or remember a time when the only way to see a movie was in the theater, on a plane, several years later edited down on network t.v., or several years even later than that on a local indie station (especially if it was sci-fi, action, or horror). Multiplexes consisted of a handful of screens. There wasn't a lot of hoopla over new video games; the more advanced games were at the arcade, while scaled down versions were offered for the home systems. The internet? I remember when powerful computers could take up a whole room and it took you all day to make some square bounce across a screen on one of the home models.
Basically, back then you had a more concentrated audience with fewer distractions. A single hit movie or t.v. show had the power to broadly affect the popular culture.
Today, it just isn't enough to be a successful movie anymore. It isn't even enough to be a successful tentpole/franchise anymore. If you truly want to dominate the popular culture you have to be successful in a number of venues: movies, video games, merchandise, books, t.v., etc.. SW in 2007 has not only won big at that game, it practically wrote the rules for it.
Obviously, this is not a sudden realization on LFL's part. They've known this for several years. SW translates well to a variety of things and in the 1990s they discovered that not only is expanding the SW brand lucrative, it's helpful keeping the saga in the forefront of the popular imagination. This is why they're doing t.v. shows and why they're doing "event" games like The Force Unleashed.
Of course, you need a universe that people want to revisit again and again to back it all up. The GFFA is perhaps the most expansive ficitious "world" ever created; it makes Middle Earth look like Yoknapatawpha County. It's a flexible one too; as our own technology advances, so can that universe's. There can problems with making it too big and unwieldly or getting sloppy with quality, but the core of SW will always be the six movies. The core mythology spawns the stuff in different media and venues, while those projects in turn preserve the core mythology. It's quite clever if you think about it.
Basically, back then you had a more concentrated audience with fewer distractions. A single hit movie or t.v. show had the power to broadly affect the popular culture.
Today, it just isn't enough to be a successful movie anymore. It isn't even enough to be a successful tentpole/franchise anymore. If you truly want to dominate the popular culture you have to be successful in a number of venues: movies, video games, merchandise, books, t.v., etc.. SW in 2007 has not only won big at that game, it practically wrote the rules for it.
Obviously, this is not a sudden realization on LFL's part. They've known this for several years. SW translates well to a variety of things and in the 1990s they discovered that not only is expanding the SW brand lucrative, it's helpful keeping the saga in the forefront of the popular imagination. This is why they're doing t.v. shows and why they're doing "event" games like The Force Unleashed.
Of course, you need a universe that people want to revisit again and again to back it all up. The GFFA is perhaps the most expansive ficitious "world" ever created; it makes Middle Earth look like Yoknapatawpha County. It's a flexible one too; as our own technology advances, so can that universe's. There can problems with making it too big and unwieldly or getting sloppy with quality, but the core of SW will always be the six movies. The core mythology spawns the stuff in different media and venues, while those projects in turn preserve the core mythology. It's quite clever if you think about it.
