The budget of the original Star Wars is shocking: $11 million. That’s just an estimate, but it’s the one you see on most reputable sites, including IMDb. Fox originally budgeted just $8 million for Star Wars, but the film’s groundbreaking special effects required more resources than initially anticipated...

When the lights come up at the end of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, you’ll notice a couple of delightfully surprising names listed in the credits — if you stick around long enough to see them and aren’t distracted by the need to run to the bathroom to get “something” out of your eye. Bill Hader and former Parks and Recreation star Ben Schwartz lent their vocal talents to The Force Awakens to help create the film’s most adorable star. Yes, really.

When Lucasfilm initially announced the lineup for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it wasn’t long before the studio began populating the cast with exciting choices: Daisy Ridley and John Boyega in lead roles, Gwendoline Christie, Oscar Isaac and Lupita Nyong’o in supporting roles, the return of Carrie Fisher — all of which proved the limitless, inclusive potential of a galaxy far, far away. What we didn’t (and couldn’t) know was just how diverse the flagship film in the new era of Star Wars would actually turn out to be, and it’s all thanks to one very simple, very effective casting choice.

Pretty much everyone is looking forward to seeing Star Wars: The Force Awakens this holiday season, but J.J. Abrams’ upcoming movie has at least one person very upset: Quentin Tarantino. The director of The Hateful Eight went off on an expletive-laded rant against Disney, which he claims is using extortion to block screenings of his movie all in the name of keeping the next Star Wars movie in as many theaters as possible.

When you’re out promoting a movie, you’re often asked to do a lot of things, most of them pretty silly. With the amount of press the cast of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was being asked to do, there were asked to do a lot of silly things, none perhaps as silly as going on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and singing a medley of Star Wars music a cappella. But the entire cast — including Harrison Ford! — actually commits, and it actually turns out to pretty fun.

Three years ago, Disney bought Lucasfilm and a number of its properties for $4 billion. With that deal came the right to produce new movies, books, comics, games and toys based on the existing Star Wars universe. However, since Lucasfilm had let the universe of Star Wars expand so widely since the conclusion of the original trilogy in 1983, Disney decided it was best to wipe the slate mostly clean. The Mouse House greatly streamlined the Star Wars galaxy, introducing a new and improved canon for a new age. This new canon would still keep much of what made Star Wars so endearing to a large number of older fans, but it would also open the previously impregnable fortress of the expanded universe for new fans by practically dismissing all of it. In the past three years, Disney has been busy filling the void vacated by the expanded universe. To prepare for the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens we've carefully curated a catalog of Star Wars' new history. This is the new Star Wars canon timeline.

The original Star Wars was driven by nostalgia for pulp magazines, Saturday-morning serials, and a simpler era with clear-cut heroes and villains. The new Star Wars is driven by nostalgia for the original Star Wars, and a simpler era when that title evoked words like “adventure” and “excitement,” and not words like “the taxation of trade routes,” and “Jar Jar Binks.” The characters in Star Wars: The Force Awakens are all searching for something of great importance to the galaxy far, far away. I won’t reveal what this MacGuffin is, but I will tell you what it represents: that old Star Wars magic. Can director J.J. Abrams and the rest of the saga’s new creators find it?

Before he was Poe Dameron in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Oscar Isaac was Oscar Hernandez, a high school kid growing up in Delray Beach, Florida who, like many high school kids, played in a local band. Being the mid-90s, ska-punk was making a resurgence (anyone remember Reel Big Fish and Less Than Jake?) and Isaac, a singer, guitarist and bassist, was a big part of the local scene with his bands, The Worms and Blinking Underdogs. Whereas video of most of our crappy high school bands remains buried forever, Oscar Isaac is in the new Star Wars movie, so we did some digging and found video from 1996 of one of his sets at Ray’s Downtown Blues in West Palm Beac

A long time ago (last night: December 14) in a galaxy far, far away (Los Angeles), Hollywood’s biggest stars gathered for an event that could turn the universe on its axis, free moons from orbit: The premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

At long last, the screenings of Star Wars: the Force Awakens have begun to gradually trickle down through the populace. Last night in Los Angeles, the most beautiful and famous among us had the privilege of bearing witness to J.J. Abrams’ go at a seventh installment of the treasured sci-fi franchise...