‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’: A Look Back At The Record-Breaking Week
This was a big week for Star Wars fans with record breaking movie teasers, a Mark Hamill interview about evil Luke Skywalker, a social media world full of memes and record breaking first-day ticket sales.
The upcoming film Star Wars: The Force Awakens is expected to kick off another trilogy of films as well as launch a number of spin-offs and separate origin stories in the Marvel method of creating a cinematic universe. The film opens Dec. 18, but has already received an avalanche of support from passionate fans.
Lucasfilm even penned an open letter to fans thanking them for the huge outpouring of enthusiasm.
“Thank you all for making the Star Wars universe what it is, and for keeping it alive and growing and meaningful. Star Wars is back and beginning an exciting new journey, and it’s because of you.”
Trailers
Star Wars: The Force Awakens debuted this week during ESPN’s Monday Night Football to an audience of 16 million and 24 hours later had been seen globally 128 million times, according to Lucasfilm.
That sets a new record for the most views of a trailer in 24 hours. Of course the old record was also set by Star Wars fans, but who’s counting?
'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' flies to 128 million views in 24 hours https://t.co/pa75HZkhFw pic.twitter.com/Ei2NXb3khD
— WMUR TV (@WMUR9) October 24, 2015
Ticket Sales
Star Wars set new records at Fandango with massive amounts of first-day ticket sales with more than $6.5 million in sales. The film outsold the previous record holder The Hunger Games eight times over, according to Variety.
“This is an extraordinary time for the industry. The enthusiasm for this year’s most anticipated movie is out of this world and we expect it to continue all the way to its debut on Dec. 18.”
Some screenings have already sold out, especially IMAX showings, and movie theaters are continually adding additional show times to meet expected demand. Fans were so obsessed with buying first-day tickets they crashed servers at Fandango and MoviesTickets.com for some users.
Evil Luke
Mark Hamill has been noticeably absent from the recent Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailers and that has fans speculating he may have gone over to the Dark Side. In a resurfaced video from 2005 chat series, Dinner For Five, he’s seen chatting with J.J. Abrams about the possibility of Luke going over to the Dark Side in Return of the Jedi.
Luke never went over and the alternate theory about Kylo Ren proved false after we see him unmasked, but that hasn’t stopped fan’s wild speculation on the internet about Luke’s future.
Social Media
Since the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer premiered Monday, the internet has been ablaze with hilarious memes and GIFs made by fans; many of them joke that Star Wars broke the internet. Some memes feature a clash of science fiction and fantasy characters like the one featuring Games of Throne’s Ned Stark and a cross guard lightsaber while others feature the many characters of the upcoming movie.
Monument
The Ukrainians love Star Wars so much they converted a soviet era statue of Vladimir Lenin into one of Darth Vader, according to Yahoo! Movies. A new law against communist symbols in the country meant the decades old statue would have been destroyed had it not been for the creative thinking of some factory workers in Odessa. They even went so far as to install a Wi-Fi transmitter in Darth Vader’s head.
Streaming
As it turns out, Canadians will be the only ones lucky enough to be able to stream Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Netflix, in 2016. That’s because of a complicated relationship with Starz and previous contractual commitments from Disney.
Oh well. May the Force be with you, lucky Canadians.
[Photo by Clemens Bilan/Getty Images]
