It has been twenty-five summers now since the Star Wars

Such mania for one man’s limited handiwork creates an imbalanced, demand-side-economics black hole, sucking everything into its vortex and necessitating a viable and economic system with which to satiate demand without leaving the brand bobbing amongst its own surfeit low-qual flotsam. If somebody hadn’t invented the Internet, Lucas would’ve had to do it himself. In a way, it almost seems that Star Wars somehow made the Internet necessary. Star Wars did flourish before the Internet and, like the lowly cockroach and the H-bomb, will probably exist after it.

The cleanliness of the opening page is quite an accomplishment when one considers that fabulously obscene amounts of Star Wars galaxy information exists and that just a simple amount of uncreative laziness would have resulted in too much too fast. The fact that the introductory page is not a space-battle nightmare is a small victory. Instead, surfers are presented with links to top stories, headlines, updates, collecting, data bank, community, facts, episode-specific facts, etc.; each of which have their own links, onward and onward into what becomes a yawning, never-ending cavern of Star Wars statistics, photos, soon-to-come and past features, outtakes and interviews. And, a good deal of this is truly interesting.

There is of course a very visible link to the Star Wars shop, a separate page at which everything is available. Also, aware that proselytization works best on the young, there is a link to a special starwarskids.com page, which, quite honestly and tellingly, varies only in a matter of degrees from the mother-page. One can join as an official member for free, the privileges of which include a complimentary e-mail newsletter, access to a the-making-of documentary about soon-to-be-loosed Episode II and the ability to vote in something called the Galactic Senate Polls. As there is too much to cover in detail, the highlights, in my humble opinion, include:

Classic Moments details some of the more trivial behind-the-scenes factoids, the sort that would be ostensibly worthless of a less cult-ish picture, such as the story behind those things Lobot wore on his bald dome in Cloud City.

Ask the Jedi Council is a sort of Star Wars meets Dear Abby, which may sound ridiculous but it’s rather noble when a multi-billion-dollar brand braves the perils of self-deprecation to chuckle at itself. The question of the day: “My wife is due with our first baby on the Episode II release date. What should I do?” Real? I doubt it. Funny? Hell yes.

However, my personal favorite, an addition that really reflects on Lucas as a populist in touch with the average fan and not just a badly-bearded billionaire narcissist, is the site’s “Fan Films” link to atomfilms.com’s archive of fan-made Star Wars films and shorts. Here, in oft awesome displays of spent life, the total hours of which I fear to even contemplate, the brand is both honored and parodied. The fact that the official Star Wars website would promote patronage of such “unofficial” material, largely out of its control, should not go unnoticed and is welcome symbol that there is hope against “The Empire” yet.

And then, an ad. An ad for an auto insurance company that is not named Jedi Knight Auto. Throughout the wholly-enjoyable course of surfing starwars.com, some ads had been apparent, hidden in corners, not at all unpleasant or intrusive, and all for harmless Star Wars related stuff. An immediate first reaction was to wonder if the auto insurance ad, sitting there in the upper corner, like an unsightly veggie chunk lodged in your date’s teeth, might have been an accident. It wasn’t. A page later there was another one. And then, unexpectedly, the scourge of all surfers everywhere, the brainchild of the online porn industry, the pop-up ad informing one of a major cable network’s new show. Et tu George?