As every May 4 the fans of the universe created by George Lucas commemorate this day dedicated entirely to the characters and the culture of the historical saga. Why on the 4th of May? The story goes back to the year 1979 and has its origin in a note published in the London Evening News. In it, the members of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom congratulated Margaret Thatcher for her recent appointment as prime minister of the country and did so with the following sentence: “May the 4th be with you, Maggie. Congratulations“. This occurrence would give rise to the play on words “may the force be with you“. An emblematic greeting from Star Wars.
From this moment, fans of the saga around the world took the date and taking advantage of the original phrase. We began to perform or attend all kinds of events around the Lucas franchise, organizing marathons of the movies, fancy dress contests, conventions, racing, trivia and merchandising sales with special items.
And being a Star Wars fan is a passion. For many, even, a way of life. A religion that started when the film premiered in 1977 changing forever the entertainment industry and illuminating the childhood of millions of children around the world, including mine.
More than four decades that have passed since the premiere of Star Wars as we knew it at the time is much more than an ephemera of the seventh art. The arrival of the film by George Lucas marks the beginning of the modern era of fantastic cinema, the most revolutionary stage in terms of special effects and the birth of by-products, merchandising and franchises around a film.
With Star Wars, many discovered what the cinema was all about. Not only that, it lived a kind of epiphany and knew almost immediately that this magical moment, those hours that the feature film lasted. To see such a story, that infinite space, the imperial ships, the Stormtroopers, the lightsabers, Leia, Luke, Han, Chewie, Obi-Wan, R2D2, the fantasies of the children’s games captured on the screen, real, with people from flesh and bone, it was a religious experience.
