The Star Wars franchise has made, I'd assume, billions of dollars over the past 30 years off of merchandising, box office, DVD sales, re-releasing the original three films and then creating the three prequel episodes.There are probably a billion reasons for this success.
I'd contend the major reason is the story.
People (myself included, obviously) watched thousands of hours of film and TV throughout their whole lives. For any number of reasons, they love film and TV for the action, romance, special effects, acting, writing, comedy, our obsession with celebrity, because we're bored or because watching movies is just fun.
Over the past 110 years, there's been millions of films released. The reason Star Wars is so phenomenally more popular than the rest is the story.
Say what you will about the writing, acting, editing and direction of George Lucas, but he is one hell of a storyteller and that, above all, makes Star Wars utterly and undeniably compelling.
The six films capture so much we love about life: good, evil, rebellion, the thrill of victory, agony of defeat, friendships, love, family, father/son, brother/sister, heroism, ego, underdogs, favorites.
And most of all, mythology and history. When Lucas released Star Wars in 1977, he already knew (or so we're told) the story 30 years in the past of these characters. When Luke Skywalker is asking about his father and Obi-Wan Kenobi is referencing the Clone Wars, that all meant something. It wasn't just filler to provide the illusion of a past, but it was an actual past not put onto the big screen until the 1990s.
It's a good story. Bratty teenager living among the flatlands of farming country on a God-forsaken planet yearns to leave in order to fight in the rebellion. He by some twisted and crazy destiny meets up with the father-figure he never had (Kenobi), two robots that'd change his life, his sister and a hilarious pilot/swashbuckler/smuggler with borderline ethics, who'd become like a brother.
The reason he knows little about his father is because he's part-robot, part-human known as Darth Vader, the great evil lord of space, who is dead set on conquering any and all free galaxies for this Emperor fellow. Upon learning his father is everything he's not and everything he hates, our hero fully adopts this religion/genetic condition known as the Force because it's A) his destiny and B) he's more like his father than he realizes.
We explore a thousand different planets, meet millions of odd and unusual characters amid a seemingly never-ending barrage of back-and-forth banter and biting remarks between a set of characters with their backs continually against the wall with death always at their door. Throw in cyrogenics, Yoda, walking carpets, Bobba Fett, the Millenium Falcon, Billy Dee, Leia's bikini, Porkins and swamp rats, and you've got a billion things that 99 percent of all filmdom don't have.
In the end, it's about redemption. And that's only the final three installments. In the first three, we battle awful acting and writing to learn how all that aforementioned stuff happened.
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