Since my kids recently watched the Star Wars movies for the first time (in preparation for our family Halloween costumes this year), I’ve become acutely aware of its influence on our popular culture. I’ll see some reference to the Force or to Darth Vader, and think, “Audrey would get that now, but she wouldn’t have understood it a month ago.”
Just how popular and pervasive is George Lucas’ epic sci-fi series? I watched five TV shows just today that referred to it.
- Revolution: Aaron refers to a bunch of kids as “hairless Ewoks”.
- Awake: Michael says that an exhumed corpse looks “better than Han Solo coming out of carbonite.”
- Mythbusters: Adam Savage lists a bunch of phrases related to “hands” and slips in a “Han Solo” just for fun. (Audrey thought that was really funny.)
- The Simpsons: “While this sinkhole is larger than the Sarlacc pit which swallowed Boba Fett, it is smaller than the Geonosis battle arena where Jango Fett was beheaded by Mace Windu.” — Comic Book Guy
- The Big Bang Theory: Sheldon tries to convince Amy that they should dress as C-3PO and R2-D2 for Halloween (and ends up “compromising” by going as Raggedy C-3PO).
Granted, I did spend a fair amount of time in front of the boob-tube today, but in 5 hours of programming, counting 5 references to Star Wars still seems like quite a lot. No wonder Disney was willing to pay $4 billion for LucasFilm.