Bayit's Addiction

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….

A new franchise was born.

 

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            Star Wars is debatably America’s most beloved franchise. According to The Numbers, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the fifth fastest film to generate $500 million and is the seventh highest domestic grossing movie of all time, with The Force Awakens being number one. The Phantom Menace and A New Hope come in at numbers nine and ten, respectively. That makes four Star Wars movies in the top ten highest domestic grossing movies of all time. What is it about the Star Wars franchise that makes it so popular? It can be attributed not only to the success of the films alone, but also to their skilled merchandise marketing and musical choices.

While the Star Wars trend is majorly backed up by subgenres such as Star Wars music and merchandise, the films (excluding The Clone Wars and the infamous Holiday Episode) have and always will be the main attraction. These narrative films tell stories full of emotion in a seemingly impossible world. We show up to the theatres and think that it would only be logical for the Death Star to have a massive weapon in the middle of it. This is because the makers of Star Wars have done a great deal with rhetorical appeal. They use well-crafted ethos to keep us from questioning the universe and plot. Their incorporation of advanced science makes us believe that these starships and lightsabers are possible. Pathos keeps us engaged in the stories. The intense relationship dynamics of the Skywalker family ensures the audience’s emotional attachment to the characters and their interactions. George Lucas also throws in a bit of logos with characters that are considered wise throughout the series. These characters, such as Yoda, use a lot of logical appeals to make the characters and the audience think that everything in the series is logical.

The most recent movie of the main series, The Force Awakens, was presented in most theaters throughout America in 2015. After a ten year hiatus in the series, most of the population was beginning to accept that the series was dying off. More and more people were growing up without ever have watched any of the series. While ten years is not as big of a gap as the sixteen year difference between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace, the release of the episode seven was still massively anticipated by old and new fans alike. In order to reel in those new fans, the franchise had to make sure The Force Awakens would be a new-fan-friendly movie. These new fans encompassed an age range from teenage to mid-twenties, roughly middle school age through college age. The Star Wars franchise took that into account when they created the tone and new characters for the film, but the creators also knew they had to bring the old fans back as well. The new signature astromech, BB-8, made the film more light-hearted for the new fans, while the inclusion of Han Solo and the similar structure in relation to the original trilogy hooked the old-time fans back in. Two other very important groups that were pleased with the new addition to the series were women and people of colored skin. During the time of the original six films, the importance of women and blacks were both being downplayed by American society. However, in recent years with the rights of said two groups being enforced more strongly, The Force Awakens incorporates Finn and Rey, a black man and a woman respectively, as two of the new main characters. This concept worked out well for the seventh episode of the Star Wars series, but Rogue One is a different story, as it was placed in the timeline between episodes three and four.

            Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a film that features the events leading up to A New Hope, became the first major non-main series Star Wars film in late 2016, spilling over into early 2017. It, too, was released in movie theaters across the country, but had a different goal than The Force Awakens. Opposed to the seventh episode, Rogue One was geared more towards long-time fans of the series. The media of Rogue One is a movie, which works because of the animation technology. The mode of the movie is audio and visual. This small yet crucial difference changed the entire tone and theme of the film. The target audience, whose demographics were significantly older than the demographics for The Force Awakens, allowed the film to have a more serious war story type tone and still be massively successful. While this film was geared towards the original fans of the series, Rogue One also needed to keep the new fans generated from The Force Awakens. The almost two years between the two newest releases allowed time for the new fans to go back and watch the first six movies that they missed. Taking this into account, the creators could have known that it would be safe to go back in the timeline to the events leading up to the original film, A New Hope. Setting Rogue One between the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy also allowed for the franchise to create a new cast of main characters, making the film still welcoming to new fans that have not gotten around to see the old movies yet, while also encouraging them to go watch said films by setting the movie within the timelines of the older six.

There is an extraordinary abundance of Star Wars themed products circulating through the market at any given time. These products range from the famous lightsaber toys to the R2-D2 coffee mugs. Any older fan of the Star Wars franchise would recognize about the plastic lightsaber toys. Either they themselves had one as a kid or their friends did.These toys were meant for kids. In 1978 these iconic toys became the first toys of the Star Wars franchise to hit the market. Imagine trying to sell a toy. One of the main components of selling a product is getting it out there, making it known so that people will buy it. How should one go about doing that? The most common answer to that now is the internet. What were they lacking in 1978? The internet. They did not have Amazon to sell lightsabers on or have Google to advertise the lightsabers in advertised website links. They needed a toy that would get around and advertise for itself. What better than a toy that was more fun to play with if the buyer had a friend with one too? One friend would buy it (or get his or her parents to buy it for them) and would introduce it to their friends, who in turn also needed their own and continue the chain.

            Star Wars themed coffee mugs, however, are a different Star Wars story. Not many people cared to have a cartoon Darth Vader mask on a coffee mug as eight year olds. The coffee mugs have a very different target audience, purpose, and usage than many of the most popular products of the Star Wars franchise. While the toy lightsabers are still being created, the franchise expanded significantly in the market since 1978. Products geared towards adults have since become prevalent. Star Wars themed coffee mugs, an example of merchandise that is meant to have an everyday usage, are some of the products that are geared towards adults. These everyday products have sprouted up everywhere with many different purposes to match the many different changing preferences of the fans. Preferences like drinking coffee. The original fans outgrew their old toy lightsabers and went into the work force as they aged. They started drinking coffee. As the original trilogy grew older, so did the original fans. A smart franchise grows with its fans.

Theme songs are watermarks of almost any successful franchise, but the rare few have more than one of these tunes. Star Wars has countless musical scores that any fan would instantly recognize. However, this paper will only be focusing on the two most universally recognizable songs: “The Imperial March” and the main theme (which is actually named “The Arrival at Naboo”). Starting with the main theme just like all the major Star Wars films, “The Arrival at Naboo” was first introduced in episode four, A New Hope. The full version, which is not played in its entirety in the intro to the movies, follows the same overarching structure of the films. It starts off grandiose yet somewhat bland, and builds up over time to become a more subtly dark and serious sound. The song itself almost sounds like a struggle between two massive forces. After the release of the next movie, Empire Strikes Back, the main theme of Star Wars began to be associated with the lighter of the two forces, the rebels.

            If “The Arrival at Naboo” was the light side, “The Imperial March” was the dark side. Also known as “Darth Vader’s Theme,” the song became associated with this notoriously beloved character. The music here contrasts the main theme in several quite obvious ways. To start, it has a very dark, heavy sound. It matches the essence of the Empire very well. It feels powerful and unstoppable, each part strongly leading into the next with momentum. However, like Darth Vader, it has a very quiet light part in it. Said soft part eventually pulls the music into a still quiet, but much darker tune that starts to play louder and louder behind the melody of the song. There are a lot of loud percussion instruments in the background of the music, adding to intensely loud volume. “The Imperial March” has become quite the iconic theme over the years, having many do covers of the original John Williams work. These covers are done by bands such as Celldweller, Epica, and Vitamin String Quartet, and cover different genres such as electronic, hard rock, and classical, respectively. With so many unique covers, it is no wonder that there is such a large wingspan of fans.

The Star Wars franchise has, over the years, expanded itself and grown with its fanbase, cleverly keeping up with the social changes that came and went with the decades. Not only have they created movies that peaked and maintained the interest of a very diverse population of fans, but they have also designed their merchandise to target specific demographics, and used music that portrayed their themes and characters, created movies that peaked and maintained the interest of a very diverse population of fans. The two new films, The Force Awakens and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, incorporate characters (like Finn and Rey), tones (like humorous and welcoming), and themes (like war and strategy) to draw in their respective target audiences. The franchise also grew up along with its fans in order to keep up and make high-selling products for the market. On top of it all, the music behind the scenes of the franchise brings everything back around and lets fans enjoy the Star Wars universe in their own preferred taste in music through the use of cover songs. The massively effective rhetorical appeal drives the success of the franchise home. Because of the skilled efforts of Star Wars to allocate resources in many different productive fields, Star Wars will survive even after new films are discontinued from releasing; the Force will live on in R2-D2 coffee mugs, EDM covers of “The Imperial March,” and much more for decades to come.