Mmmm, marketing

That George Lucas, he may not be able to write dialog worth crap but he knows how to take money from innocent geeks, you have to give him that. I know he's taken many of my dollars in the past whether for action figures, or licensed LEGO sets, or various other promotions.

Lucasfilm and Lucasarts are two pillars of a marketing empire that George has built from the ground up based solely upon three little movies (admittedly, three movies that I love). With the opening of the last two Star Wars films, The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones the buzz on the internet before each movie (especially around the first) was nearly deafening. Everyone wants to know about the movie before the movie comes out, anything: character's names, who fights who, or a million other things. This, oddly enough, is the exact opposite stance I take, I want to know as little as possible about a movie before going, that way everything is new.

One of the next big cogs in the Lucas Marketing Machine is the upcoming (next year) video game based on Star Wars Episode 3: The Revenge of the Sith. I read in a story today that the game "is scheduled to release on May 5, 2005 for PS2 and Xbox, a good two weeks before the film comes out, no-doubt when anticipation for the final film for this most recent Star Wars trilogy will be at a fever pitch." At a fever pitch! Yeah, ya think? Fan boys will be scooping that game up with as many hands as they have to find out as much as they can about the movie that will be released two weeks after. It makes me sick but laugh at the same time.