A letter arrived in e-mail the other day:

The 3D edition of The Phantom Menace made $23 million over the weekend, proving that George Lucas will never be punished for his crimes. Will we ever be rid of Star Wars? Or in another 10 years will we have to endure the re-release of the Star Wars films in Smell-O-Vision?

Well, to address the first part, $23 million was only the studio estimate. The real amount was $22.4 million. See? That makes it all better.

To address the second part, no, in this lifetime you will never be rid of Star Wars, and you should just learn to accept that fact.

And no, it's not just about George Lucas. George Lucas, it should be noted, has almost gleefully declared himself done with Star Wars, and has no intention himself of returning to the universe. As he put it to the New York Times recently, "Why would I make any more when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?" It's really hard to argue with him about this; at this point no matter what Lucas himself does in the universe, there's going to be a negative reaction. He could put out an Episode VII that is gorgeous and brilliant (it is possible) and he'd still get tons of hate. Why? Because that's how it is. Lucas realizes at this point he can't win, so why play. That's fair enough, and you can't blame him for walking away from it.

But this doesn't mean Star Wars is going anywhere. Lucas might be turning his back on the universe in a creative sense, but the Star Wars universe is bigger than just George Lucas, and has been for decades now. Even if another Star Wars film is never made (with or without Lucas), there are still the books. And the video games. And the TV series. And the merchandising. Dear Lord, all the merchandising.

Beyond that there are the businesses that comprise Lucasfilm, which employ thousands, from special effects people to sound engineers to the people who write the Star Wars novels. Shutting down Star Wars wouldn't kill Lucasfilm -- Industrial Light & Magic, Skywalker Sound, and LucasArts (the video game arm) would still get work -- but it would downsize it, with a likely loss of hundreds of jobs. I understand nerd rage at Jar Jar returning to the big screen with a 3D tongue, really I do, but my own personal rage does not extend as far as wishing all those people out of good-paying jobs.

Now, you may ask: If there are the books and video games and TV series, and the merchandising, then why do you need the movies back in the theaters? Why trot out the films over and over? I'll give you two reasons for now. The first is simple and relates to Lucas himself: He's a child of the cinema; he sees the movie theater as the natural home for the films and is happy to have any excuse to bring them back to the big screen. Before it was "Special Editions" with the added special effects. This time around it's 3D. And while I don't suspect there will actually be a Smell-O-Vision edition, in 10 years time if there's a significant technological advance in movies (and there will be), they'll trot them out again with that process.

The second reason is more pragmatic: Star Wars has the books, games, merchandising, and so on, but at the end of the day the movies are at the heart of the universe, and Lucas is smart enough to know he has to engage each new generation with them. In that respect, the theatrical re-releases aren't aimed at the people who saw the films when they were originally in the theaters; they're aimed at the ones who have never seen them there -- or indeed possibly have not seen them at all. Lucas is explicitly taking a page from Disney, which before the age of home video would re-release its classic movies every seven years or so in order to bring in a new crop of fans to Snow White and Pinocchio and Dumbo (and which is also using 3D right now to do the same trick -- note the recent releases of The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast).

To be blunt about it, if you're an older Star Wars fan, your exasperation at the 3D release of The Phantom Menace -- and the future 3D versions of the other five films in the series -- is almost totally irrelevant, because you're not really the intended audience. Your kid is. And, speaking as the father of a 13-year-old girl, I can assure you that your child finds your exasperation quaint and adorable. The good news here is that in 10 to 12 years, when a new Star Wars release is out, you'll smile when your child has his or her own nerd rage about how the films have been changed. It's the nerd circle of life.