Can you Make Money from Nostalgia in a Galaxy Far Far Away? The difficulty of effectively utilising nostalgia to bring Star Wars to both a new and existing audience.

This paper will examine the way in which nostalgia has influenced the direction of the Star Wars franchise, specifically, the years since George Lucas sold his company, Lucasfilm Ltd, and with-it ownership of Star Wars to the Walt Disney company. Disney created a sizable task for itself, but one it felt necessary to recoup its multi-billion-dollar purchase, seeking to bring Star Wars back into the public consciousness. Thereby not only appealing to a new younger audience but also re-engaging those that had been put off by Lucas’ prequel trilogy, which brought a very different look and feel to the fictional universe that they had experienced during their own childhood. In addition, Disney also wanted to make serious inroads in making the franchise appeal on a broader international basis, whilst still having to balance the inclusion of elements that are specific in defining Star Wars. How then, did Disney go about trying to achieve all this, when its first film – The Force Awakens – was simultaneously hailed and decried as a nostalgic film?