May the Fourth Be With You – Star Wars Day

In my house, we are major Star Wars fans. What better way to celebrate than to embrace May the Fourth, Star Wars Day. We are planning, as usual, on binge watching the Star Wars Marathon*.

Transport yourself to a galaxy far, far away on Tuesday, May 4th. However you celebrate, May the 4^th calls for an extra-special menu. For a full day, serve up Yoda pancakes for breakfast, a Princess Leia rice bowl for lunch, and Bantha Blue Butter sandwich cookies for dessert. Or choose your favorite healthy snack, like fruit TIE fighters, for a simple treat that your Padawans can help you prepare.

Bantha Blue Butter Cookie image courtesy of Star Wars Galactic Baking cookbook

Margaret Thatcher

Credit for “May the Fourth be with you” pun goes to England’s conservative party, the Tories, after Margaret Thatcher won the election to become the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom on May 4, 1979. The group took out a newspaper ad that stated, “May the Fourth be with you, Maggie. Congratulations,” according to Newsweek.

501st logo images courtesy of Southern California Garrison

The 501st Legion

It’s also fun because of the Star Wars costume group the 501st, which makes appearances at children’s hospitals. (The group’s name, by the way, refers to the 501st Legion, Darth Vader’s elite group of stormtroopers.) We have seen them parade in the LAX/Westchester Fourth of July Parade in Los Angeles every year.

Fun Facts… Did You Know?

Many of the buildings constructed to be used in shots Tatooine are still standing in Tunisia. In fact, some of them are used by locals.

Yoda’s species has never been named. A mystery, it is.

Commemorative Star Wars coins became legal tender on the Pacific island of Niue in 2011. They have to come from the New Zealand mint—and they all include a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on the flip side. Also, each coin is sold for around $20, but they only have a face value of 80 cents.

Coin Image courtesy of New Zealand Star Wars

It took as many as 10 puppeteers using both hands to operate Jabba the Hutt.

Adam Driver recorded his last lines as Kylo Ren in his own closet. According to Matthew Wood, sound editor on The Rise of Skywalker, changes to the script came in so late that he had to travel to the home of Adam Driver, who played villain Kylo Ren throughout the latest trilogy, to record him delivering a few new and necessary lines in a rather low-tech place. “I ended up opening up one of his closets where he had all of his suits, and I just pushed the suits out of the way and said, ‘hang your head in here,'” Wood said on the SoundWorks Collection podcast, per The Week.

The voice of Yoda is done by Frank Oz, who also happens to voice Miss Piggy from The Muppets. The alien race of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial makes an appearance in Episode 1: The Phantom Menace- officially connecting the worlds of Lucas and Spielberg sci-fi.

The Porgs only exist to cover up scene-stealing puffins. All of those adorable Porgs that annoy poor Chewbacca in The Last Jedi weren’t originally part of the script. They were a last-minute addition by director Rian Johnson when he learned that their shooting location, the Irish island of Skellig Michael, is filled with hundreds of very friendly (and not at all camera-shy) puffins. As creature concept designer Jake Lunt Davies explained in an interview, they decided to find a positive solution for what could’ve been a costly problem. “You can’t remove them,” Davies said of the puffins. “You physically can’t get rid of them. And digitally removing them is an issue and a lot of work, so let’s just roll with it, play with it. And so I think he thought, ‘Well, that’s great, let’s have our own indigenous species.'”

Once you’re done celebrating May the Fourth, don’t forget to jump to the Dark Side and celebrate tomorrow on Revenge of the Fifth (May 5th).

Movie Marathon

*Bonus… do you argue on which way to watch all the Star Wars films? Here’s a primer…

If you want to go by THEATRICAL release order, your marathon should look like this:

If you were to watch the Star Wars films in STORY chronological order, it would look like this:

Or you can try it by Skywalker Saga order:

Stormtrooper May the 4th image courtesy of GALLO IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES

One comment

Brizzy Mays Books and Bruschetta says:

May 4, 2021 at 3:46 am

Not a fan but your blog was fun 🙂

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