What exactly is contained in a can of Darth Vader Campbell’s soup? The label says it’s pasta with chicken in chicken broth but really – what evil concoction do you think is secretly hiding inside? Hint: It’s the same ingredient contained in the Yoda, C3PO and R2D2 Campbell’s soup – at least as advertised. Yes, they are ALL pasta with chicken in chicken broth! At least according to the label.

This is what you get when you go to your local market and buy STAR WARS CAMPBELL’S SOUP. And if you don’t believe there is such a thing – an authentic Star Wars version of Campbell’s Soup that you too can have for about a buck a can at your local food dispensary – check it out!!

There are Cover Girl make up tie-ins (Black Avril Lavigne eyeliner anyone?). Subway tie-ins (well, now that Jared’s not a viable pitch person…) and even Duracell battery Star Wars (at least that makes some sense when you think about it – sort of).

Experts say over the next 12 months there will be $3-5 billion generated in merchandise sales alone tied to The Force Awakens – the first Star Wars film in 10 years. And $11-$20 billion in five years, according to a recent LA Times story.

Even if that’s a bit overinflated, it’s still in the billions. Yes, that’s a B. And we’re only talking merchandising tie-ins.

I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to this sort of stuff. Watching the finale of one of my guiltiest TV pleasures in the world last week –The Voice – I see Missy Elliot and Pharrell do this bizarre and somewhat catchy song called WTF. (Note: They had me at the title). It’s a bit edgy and sexy and revels with a lyric about repeated TONGUE action. I thought, good for them – it’s primetime network TV and they got some tongue in. Then this weekend I hear it again – on a Verizon/Samsung Galaxy commercial. The same lyrics but somehow they’ve managed to de-sex it for a Saturday afternoon. Is nothing sacred?

I’ve been left behind. It used to be where I could sneak Playboy’s annual “Sex in the Cinema” issue and as a teenage gay guy manage to see naked pictures of men while pretending to look at naked women. I always felt so proud of myself for the forbidden, successful sneak.  But I mean, what’s really forbidden these days? Certainly not guns. I can buy enough firepower to shoot you in the head a Google times and still not one person could legally blame a corporate overlord.

It’s all about personal responsibility. Or is it?

Well I, for one, am responsible for my choices. Do you know that the night the new Star Wars opened I was at home watching a DVD screener of The Martian? Then, on that Friday night I actually went to the movie theatre to see the new Italian film Youth. Do you know there is a Star Wars: The Force Awakens screening at the WGA just about now with JJ Abrahams speaking afterwards that I was invited to and am NOT attending? (Note: Full admission – I tried to RSVP but it was a day after I received the email and it was sold out. So screw him/them). Still, there are three other screenings I can get into at 11, 2 and 8:30 today and I’m not going to any of them. Nor am I going to the theatre to wait on those damn lines. I’ll show them. I’m waiting until the next industry screening at the DGA on Dec 28^th that I did manage to respond to in time. Take that corporate overlords!!!

I can remember seeing Star Wars when it came out in 1977 at the theatre during its first week. It was fun and original. Then I went to a Fox screening room three years later to see Empire Strikes Back. I liked that too, though not quite as much. Then it was Return of the Jedi – I liked it a little less but it was fine. Which was followed years later by the first prequel, The Phantom Menace. Oh, dear, I fear Jar Jar Binks did me in. Though in fairness, it wasn’t entirely his fault.  There came a moment where even I finally stopped going to Cher’s Farewell concert tours.

Yeah, I know Force Awakens recaptures the verve, fun, spirit and storytelling of the original. And I’m going to see it. Just as I’m going to see Creed – which reinvents and captures a lot of the energy of the first Rocky – which I adored at the time and still really like much to the chagrin of so many of my intellectually snobby film friends who can’t let go of the fact that it beat All the President’s Men, Taxi Driver and Network for the best picture Oscar that year. Come to think of it…oh, never mind.

Still, there are limits to how excited I can get about revisiting the past. I do this enough with old friends. Which is wonderful. Though sometimes it makes me feel like a relic. An all-warm and fuzzy, much loved relic but old and pasteurized nevertheless.

The key to evolving as a person and a species is to keep active, not retire and, most importantly, NOT LIVE IN THE PAST. Nostalgia is good but even better is moving forward. When you stagnate in art you remain frozen in time or are perpetually looking back in time in real life. You become not only irrelevant but lazy. You’re not a leader but a follower. If you’re not out to pasture you might as well be. Certainly, you’re making room for some younger or more hard-working upstart to pass you by and take the reins of the evolutionary spiral.

There’s a lot of talk these days about America being the leader of the free world. How we are the best, the most exceptional, the top innovator, the #1 purveyors of moral authority and brilliance. But you can’t be brilliant or original or innovative – or really lead into new, uncharted territories – if you’re merely looking back and always nostalgic for the former, trying to recapture what you’ve already experienced.

The future is scary because it’s unknown. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. We used to know that.