Happy Star Wars Day and May the 4th be with you. Few movie franchises can claim a whole day celebrating their existence, but then again few movie franchises have spawned as many films, spanned as many decades or amassed as many fans as Star Wars.
Coined as a pun on the popular Star Wars catchphrase “May the Force be with you,” May the 4th has long been synonymous with the sci-fi saga. In fact, the entire month of May holds special resonance with George Lucas’s multibillion-dollar-grossing series: It was way back on May 25, 1977, that the very first Star Wars film, Episode IV: A New Hope, was released. The subsequent films in the original trilogy—Episode V: Empire Strikes Back and Episode VI: Return of the Jedi—were released in May, too, and the tradition continued with the (better forgotten) prequel series released between 1999 and 2005.
