Star Wars (or La Guerra de las Galaxias, depending on the generation one addresses) completely changed the way Hollywood conceived filmmaking and producing its movies. It was an ambitious and revolutionary project, with a relatively low budget and few initial expectations of success. It was, in short, the stubbornness of a young idealist George Lucas, a lover of comic books (now comics) and double-feature genre films that were little valued. It must be remembered that back in 1977, the science fiction being made often suffered from intellectualism and an excessively pompous aesthetic.
The 70s was the true golden age of American cinema; of enviable creative freedom. With a generation of highly talented national and imported directors and unbeatable film profitability, it based its cinema on a mix of cultured and popular ideas inherited from a collective imagination with references to the masterpieces of the 40s and 50s. And with all that television, comics, adventure novels, cartoons, B-movies, and science fiction had permeated the childhood of what was called the University Generation, with Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola, Cimino, and many more at the forefront.
The exploitation of works had completely changed; the quality of the film was as important as the possibility of selling related merchandise. Thus, movies were made to sell toys.
It is known that George Lucas rejected part of the money he was entitled to as a director in exchange for a percentage of the profits from merchandising. A word that would end up meaning everything.Conceived by its creator as three trilogies, it was decided to start with the second. The foundations that support the current audiovisual industry were then laid. A world was created beyond the story we are told, alore, as thegeeksof today. A series of events, legends, myths, and places that we never see are, literally, off-screen and only in the characters' heads. A vast and ungraspable universe of its own, of which we are only told a piece at a time. And the viewer wants more and more each time, because we find it fascinating to get lost in worlds that are not our own and that seem to function with their own rules and laws.
George Lucas created his own mythology influenced by classic westerns and Space Operas, not to mention the influence of hippism and new age philosophy in the design of the Jedi, revolutionary rebels destined to travel the galaxy, extinct, marginalized, and possessors of an ancestral magic that gives them power based on good, balance, and the Force; in contrast to the Empire and its Emperor, champion of the dark side of the Force, colonizing, tyrannical, and promoter of war and the extermination of diversity in the galaxy.
The saga of sagas was also a pioneer in the current concept of cinematic universes, and it did so more than 40 years ago, long before being sold to Disney, a fact that its creator defined as necessary, but which in turn was "like having lost custody of his children."
The nine films and their spin-offs have grossed more than 10 billion dollars at the box office. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the first to premiere on May 25, 1977, grossed 786 million dollars. With data from 2020, merchandise linked to the franchise has reached an estimated figure of 42 billion dollars and generates around 4,000,000 dollars a day.
The idea of infantilizing characters and their conflicts follows in the wake of the highly successful entertainment sagas spawned in later years that would completely mark the Ronald Reagan era, with large doses of complacency, morality, and aesthetics. A cinema that fills theaters by expanding the age spectrum upwards and downwards; a family cinema that improves Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's idea of his ideal target audience: a viewer with the mentality of an 8-year-old child.
The monster created, then, sins of conformism and cages future productions within dictatorial canons of sagas and profitability that end up hindering creativity and risk.
But not everything is negative consequences, the expanded universe of fans, through novels, shorts, series, role-playing games, costumes, etc. are the true altruists and owners of the matter. Those who have substituted religious belief for something else, who idolize like acolytes, and who resemble and behave like followers of a cult, like supporters of a soccer team. The true fan phenomenon exists, also, thanks to Star Wars, and goes far beyond what Star Trek and predecessors achieved. Fans are the ones who have maintained an open and idealistic idea of the saga.
Los Angeles creates contemporary myths. Disney holds the cultural monopoly of the West and bases it on the formula of repetition, something that goes beyond the artistic intention of the author and where everything underlies the need to satisfy an intransigent public hostile to change. Nobody likes to have the course of their thought changed, nor their memories, nor references, nor sensations moved by nostalgia.
"Star Wars is a movie for 9-year-old children," its creator, George Lucas, once declaredThus, the exhibition Una Galàxia Molt Llunyana is a fan exhibition, outside the Lucas Arts and Disney circuit, and which aims to make peace and reconnect with the children and not-so-children who have truly enjoyed and been moved by the saga. It is a unique collection in Europe in which various entities and individuals have participated, treasuring unrepeatable pieces as if we were talking about the Shroud of Turin.
It includes life-size replicas, statues, busts, dioramas, figures, storyboards, sketches, designs, models, prototypes, autographs, costumes, and objects used in the filming of the movies.
In the enclave, set up as a thematic space, we find rebels, droids, imperial soldiers, and bounty hunters under dim light and with the colors of the interiors of the sets and ships, and where John Williams' main themes and the hits of Max Rebo and his band play, as if we were in Jabba the Hutt's very own palace.
Standing out, above others, are the life-size statues of Darth Vader, R2D2 with Yoda, a diorama with the encounter of an Ewok with a space soldier riding a flying bike through the thick forests of Endor, the Imperial Guard costumes in The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia's slave dress, and the figure of Han Solo encased in carbonite. Special mention goes to the different models of lightsabers used in each film and to curiosities such as the masks used to bring to life the furry Ewoks characters and the impressive Wookie, Chewbacca.
The exhibition, which will be open until June 5, is part of Poble Espanyol's commitment in the coming months to attractive activities that will energize a unique space in Barcelona through concerts, exhibitions, shows, and events.
In short, an enjoyment for which one must be prepared with a camera and intended for all fans of the saga. Also for the disillusioned, for those who feel, as Luke Skywalker feels in Episode VIII, that the decision to leave the colony where he grew up, called by adventure, contemplating the sunset of two suns as if he were John Wayne, would not have been worth it. And for those who are called to seclude themselves on a desert island and forget what they felt as children for decades, as if they had buried it deep in their hearts. For them, or for myself, I would tell them: to think of the hypnotic glow of a lightsaber as if it were a prodigious light, a renewed faith; to let themselves be carried away by the engine of nostalgia and get on the Millennium Falcon to enjoy a journey at hyperspace speed…
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