May the 4th! (Be With You)

Happy May 4th to all our fellow Nerdds out there! We here absolutely love anything to do with Star Wars (if you hadn’t noticed all the posts talking about it), and now that it is indeed Star Wars Day, we want to celebrate all things that are happening in galaxies far, far away from this one.

Now that Disney+ has been launched for about 6 months, almost everything that you can consume on TV about the Star Wars universe will be there. If you can’t afford to get another streaming service, we would highly recommend looking around online to see if you can have a free trial- just to binge what you can.

Right when the streaming service launched, their big pull was The Mandalorian season one. If you decide to watch anything on this list (besides some of the movies) I would say watch this show. It was incredibly well made, written, and the cast did a phenomenal job. You’ve probably seen a slew of baby Yoda memes, and to be honest we could probably write a whole appreciation post just about the cute child, but there is even more to the show than that! Seeing another side to the wide expanse of the Star Wars franchise is refreshing, and the grittiness of the fallout after a war is complex and riveting one to watch. Season two was already being worked on and is supposed to be available in October of 2020, and season three already got the go-ahead. Pending the status of certain pandemics, we’re eager to see more of this. This is the Way.

Back to the movies, in December 2019, Episode IX, The Rise of Skywalker, came out in theaters to finish the trilogy of trilogies! It feels like years ago that it came out, but now the Skywalker Saga is *maybe* concluded. And good news for all of us, we’ll be able to watch Episode IX today, May 4th! (Thanks Disney for understanding this important holiday).

Though both Episodes VIII and IX received criticism for very different reasons, I think fans of Star Wars will grow to love the movies as time goes on, similar to what happened when the original trilogy was released. Then again when the prequels were released. *sigh* Honestly, it seems whenever content is released for consumption there is always something, isn’t there? Should we debate the measurement of parsecs or unnecessary Ewoks , talk about midichlorians or hatred of sand, and finally rage about Palpatine’s family lineage or essentially remaking Episode IV? No, today, I think we should celebrate how awesome the major plot twist of Empire Strikes Back is, how epic the battle between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Maul was in The Phantom Menace, and how well written Rey is to balance Kylo Ren and how the Force moves in shockingly new ways we haven’t seen before.

Speaking of epic movies, for a couple of years, the Star Wars universe had a couple of anthologies, and were labeled “A Star Wars Story”. This includes Rogue One and Solo. There were supposed to be more, namely one about Obi-Wan, but as Solo didn’t do as well as the studios wanted it seems that the side project is scrapped and will likely turn into TV shows hosted on the streaming site. That aside, both of these movies were great for very different reasons.

Rogue One is one of my personal all-time favorites in the franchise, and tugs at your heart strings every time with a tragic and beautiful story. Solo in my opinion is under-rated, I think because of the poor timing of release. Many people didn’t even get a chance to see it, and boy are they missing out on a fun adventure. It’s light, funny, and feels like a fun ’80s action flick. Who doesn’t want to see a young, handsome Chewbacca beating up Han Solo, or a suave Lando Calrissian gambling the Millenium Falcon?

Moving from live-action shenanigans, there is also a whole realm of Star Wars that is animated! Starting in 1985 there was The Ewoks and Droids Adventure Hour (has anyone actually seen this?), but moving to recent times we’ve had Star Wars Rebels, Star Wars Resistance, and one of my favorites Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The adventures here have been taking place intermittently since 2008, with a movie kicking it off, and season 7- the FINAL season- starting airing in February of 2020! The show’s finale is released today, thanks to May the 4th, and it has been an amazing show which many people love dearly.

If you haven’t seen the show, you get to see a plethora of the Clone Wars that take place between Episodes II and III. It features Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, his padawan Ahsoka Tano, and their fight against the Separatists. Though it is marketed as a kid’s TV show, the amount of real life-lessons, well developed character arcs, and tackling of tough subjects again and again is unprecedented. This is truly a show for all, and though the release order isn’t the chronological order, this beloved show is one you should check out and appreciate!

If you haven’t had enough saturation of all the Star Wars content that is available, don’t fret, there’s more! Not only are there a bunch of mini-series’ out there, there are comics, books (that we’ve been told aren’t canon, but are still worth checking out), video games, regular games branded with Star Wars, podcasts, the official website starwars.com, and the list goes on and on.

My personal favorites steer towards video games, which I absolutely love Star Wars: Battlefront and Star Wars: Battlefront II, specifically on the PS2. Classic, and some of their best-selling games, you can play that for hours. Lastly, we shouldn’t forget the amazing product that teamed up with the franchise and graced us all, Lego.

There are a bunch of Lego collaborations with Star Wars, and you can really take your pick and spend days on anything. Some of the coolest ships and scenes you can build with thousands of pieces of Lego are straight out of the movies. One of my personal favorites are the video games of the movies themselves. They are funny, made for anyone to play them, and have super creative game play with everything being made out of Lego. The complete saga (all 9 movies) is supposed to be coming out soon during 2020, but in the meantime, there are still tons of the games you can sink your teeth into.

There is so much Star Wars content to celebrate on this grand day, and all of us at The Nerdd will certainly be enjoying it to the fullest! May the 4th be with you all!

What’s your favorite way to enjoy Star Wars? Let us know in the comments below!