In October 2012, the Walt Disney Company paid more than $4 billion to acquire Lucasfilms, the film and production company responsible for Howard the Duck. But Disney, despite its history and success with duck characters, wasn't after Howard; in buying Lucasfilms, it also bought the rights to the Star Wars franchise. Soon after the purchase, Disney announced a new Star Wars film was in the works and would be released in 2015, nearly four decades after the first film hit big screens around the world and changed popular culture forever. The continued relevance of Star Wars owes much to the passion of its fans. For millions of people around the world, the films are more than diversions - they are a way of life. Through costumed role-playing, incessant quoting, Yoda-like grammatical inversions and scholarly debates about the Force, fans keep the films alive in a variety of ways, and in so doing add to the saga's cultural relevance.

Introduction - Mike Elovaara