Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens wide at midnight tonight and I don’t want to get out over my skis here, but it’s pretty much the most important movie in the history of cinema.
There are plenty of reasons for this. Along with Jaws, the original Star Wars changed the economics of film, ushering in the era of mass-release, tent-pole films. Even more so than Jaws, the original Star Wars created an enormous legacy: It inaugurated a hugely popular genre. It pioneered industrial-grade movie-merchandizing. It became so thoroughly embedded in the culture that characters (Darth Vader), images (the Death Star), and phrases (“May the Force be with you.”) are still part of our societal consciousness forty years later. Add to that the fact that Star Wars is now poised to be the first “forever franchise” -that is, a cinematic property so durable that it can continue in perpetuity.
