Star Wars

It’s back again...this time in 3D...hold on to your wallets

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, film director George Lucas would have us believe there were all sorts of good versus evil hi-jinks.

Men in cloaks doing clever things with mind tricks, blokes with dodgy breathing throttling people during board meetings without their gloved hands going anywhere near their victim’s necks, dustbins on wheels without in-built hologram projection units and and an awful lot of lightsaber envy issues.

What is more we bought into this reality.

I need not remind anyone of the remarkable success of the original Star Wars trilogy which made many a million during the 1970s and 1980s, or indeed the three prequels which delivered ‘big box office’ some 20-plus years later.

You would have needed to have spent the last 30 years with your head in a particularly deep and dense box of sand, while walled-up in a rather remote monastery.

You may, however, need reminding that all the money George Lucas made did nothing to persuade him to change his frankly ludicrous beard and hairstyle combo, but as they often say, with money and success comes a certain self-awareness failure.

Yet having made so much money, the industry which has grown up around the Star Wars phenomenon has become thoroughly relentless.

Not content with the fact there are now several generations who have probably seriously considered calling their children Luke or Leia – if indeed they have actually managed to nab themselves a real life human as a partner and not simple spend their evenings humping a cardboard cut-out of Chewbacca while humming the Cantina Band music – but Lucas and all his money-hungry advisors want to ensure any spare cash they may have continues to flow into their bank accounts.

Which is, it has to be said, rather demanding for the committed fan. After all, there are original figures they probably still haven’t quite tracked down yet (probably the one of Han Solo where the left ear is fractionally larger than the other, or the one where Princess Leia has an outie belly-button) and there are enough spin-offs in terms of video games, pyjamas and books to keep everyone who gets a cut of the merchandising take happy and living in luxury for the rest of their lives.

But oh no. Because if there is one thing they do like best of all, it is selling the films themselves again, and again, and again and, you guessed it again.

So after the films we had the video releases. The box sets, the remastered film versions, the remastered video set, the DVDs, the remastered DVDs, the box sets in a variety of different boxes, all of which acted like snake charmers to hard cash from the hooked fans wallets. And after videos and DVDs in a host of packets and ‘for the last time ever’ sales lines, we now enter a new era.

Because every new platform brings with it a new sales opportunity. This Christmas the Blu-ray set was doing big business – either, naturally, in two three-disc sets or the pushing the boat out full six-film set complete with several days worth of anal extras.

And well timed, because in February the movies start returning to our cinemas...potentially at the rate of one a year. Which means we could be having Star Wars films, this time in 3D, doing that blessed ‘box office’ for another six years.

Whether 3D adds a great deal to the films remains to be seen. But it will add a few more million to George’s poor old bank account.

Granted, Star Wars is a six-film set deserving of repeated viewing, but there comes a time when the fleecing of the fans must surely come to an end.

After all, the irony is if the Star Wars fanatic who caught the film the first time around and have remained loyal since continues to buy all they can, there is only so much shelf space they can realistically expect to have left if they want to remain in a house which doesn’t resemble the size of Mr Lucas’ Skywalker ranch.