8 Ways Star Wars Ruined Cinema

7. Merchandising Galore

There had been movie-based merchandise before Star Wars (who wouldn't want a Planet Of The Apes lunchbox?), but it had never been done with such far-reaching intensity until George Lucas struck a deal with 20th Century Fox to keep the merchandising rights of his crazy new space fantasy to himself. Cue on conveyor belt of licensed action figures, playsets, costumes, trading cards, lunchboxes and even more nonsensical items that's still chugging along at point five past lightspeed today. The scope of the film itself may have made Star Wars popular, but it was children being able to recreate it with more than just their imaginations in the years afterwards that turned it into a decade-spanning phenomenon. Naturally, other franchises got in on the act, with just about every movie getting turned into toys (although few would ever get quite as ridiculous as what Lucas presented), seeing raw box office gross becoming a less integral measure of a movie's success. Things reached their nadir in the late eighties, when TV shows and movies would be actively built around already designed toys (see Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and figures would be based on properties totally unsuitable for kids (RoboCop and Terminator 2 are the standouts). Eventually (and in the face of major criticism) this ethos began to subside, but not without major fallout; instead of simply not having merchandise for more adult movies, Hollywood stopped making the hard-R bloodbaths, turning those ideas into PG-13, family friendly entertainment.