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Star Wars currently ranks 5th on the all-time top movie franchises by revenue in box office takings. In anticipation of the biggest release this year with Star Wars: The Force Awakens we thought it necessary to explore the galactic realm for some insight into the Star Wars Franchise and in particular the Force.  

Our analytics product team couldn't let an opportunity pass to feed some of the movie data into Salesforce Wave Analytics. Using Salesforce Wave we uploaded some data to see what insights we could derive out of the forces and also find out who has the strongest force based on air time.

The struggle between the Dark and the Light forces is at the kernel of the Wars franchise.  The simple chart below shows us clearly the shift in the power struggle from episode-to-episode.  The report aggregates the screen time given to each light or dark character to help us communicate the message. And yes, perhaps these levels of analysis don’t do this justice, but we still had a lot of fun pulling the stats and having a look at applying analytics to these awesome movies.

Clearly over the series you can see the early deterioration of the Light forces as Dark forces grow stronger, peaking in Episode III as Darth Sidious takes on his new apprentice Lord Vader.  In Episodes IV to VI the force strength mimics the same pattern of Darkness growing stronger as we watch Darth Vader build up his forces. Will episode VII return the Light forces to dominance again? (don't worry no spoilers here. )

We also dug depper into which characters dominate the force airtime discussion. Surprisingly Yoda stands head and shoulders above Darth Vader and Luke definitely dominates above everyone else. Clearly “the Force is strong with this one”.  Though I must mention that to truly tell the story you would need to combine Anakin Skywalker’s time. And with Anakin’s high Midichloriens score he did deserve more airtime.

"Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force. When you learn to quiet your mind, you'll hear them speaking to you."

―Qui-Gon Jinn, to Anakin Skywalker

Without converting to the Dark Side, my two boys and I are keen to see who prevails as we usher a whole new generation to the Force. We hope to have sparked some curiosity about the dark and light forces as you're heading to the cinemas this week to watch the long awaited Star Wars no.7. Enjoy!

 

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