Leia's still loved and some like it Hoth: What we learned this May the 4th
May the Fourth, for many fans, isn't the one true Star Wars Day. May 25, the franchise's birthday (and this year, the day Solo flies into theaters) is a better candidate for that.
Still, the pun-based holiday appears to have settled down into a fun routine of clever jokes in unusual locations (nice one, London Heathrow). In contrast to the situation a couple of years ago, it seems, brands have finally learned how to speak Star Wars.
And in the scramble to celebrate the day, there are plenty interesting nuggets of Star Wars wisdom being dropped. For example, Yahoo offered some interesting statistics on its most-searched Star Wars terms that quantify a truth universally acknowledged: we love Princess/General Leia Organa now more than ever.
The late Carrie Fisher accounted for a stunning 31% of all Star Wars-related searches on Yahoo in 2017. This year so far, her share has risen to 41%. Not for nothing has the company crowned her "the undisputed queen of the Star Wars universe."
The most searched for character, meanwhile, is Leia's wayward son Ben Solo, better known as Kylo Ren. The wannabe Sith kid actually dethroned his beloved Darth Vader -- a fact that may make even Emo Kylo Ren smile.
When it comes to the most-searched Star Wars planet, the Skywalker home world of Tatooine -- featured in 5 Star Wars films -- has also been supplanted in the past year. The ice planet of Hoth, seen only in Empire Strikes Back, now leads the pack.
We're not sure what it is about 2018 that makes people especially nostalgic for Hoth, but perhaps it has something to do with the rapid disappearance of truly cold weather on Earth. The next generation may marvel at the fact that Hoth scenes were filmed without special snow effects.
Meanwhile over at Amazon Prime Video, a survey confirms the primacy of Empire as viewers' favorite Star Wars movie. One anonymous Prime household streamed the Star Wars sequel 446 times last year, according to Amazon, or nearly one and a quarter times every single day.
However, The Force Awakens was the most-streamed Star Wars movie on Prime overall. Put that together with the Kylo Ren stat and you have more evidence that the Force is growing stronger with the sequel trilogy, a tiny minority of Last Jedi haters notwithstanding.
None of these stats are particularly good news for Solo, which just doesn't seem to be garnering the same level of fan enthusiasm as previous films. We'll find out just how big of an impact it makes on May 25.
In the meantime, Lucasfilm might want to think about greenlighting a young Leia movie, perhaps one based on this YA book -- because our enthusiasm for Alderaan's most wanted shows no signs of dimming.
Topics Star Wars
Chris is a veteran tech, entertainment and culture journalist, author of 'How Star Wars Conquered the Universe,' and co-host of the Doctor Who podcast 'Pull to Open.' Hailing from the U.K., Chris got his start as a sub editor on national newspapers. He moved to the U.S. in 1996, and became senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, and West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a long-time volunteer at 826 Valencia, the nationwide after-school program co-founded by author Dave Eggers. His book on the history of Star Wars is an international bestseller and has been translated into 11 languages.
