Star Wars
Star Wars is a series of 3 sets of trilogies that surround the life of Luke Skywalker, that are based entirely in worlds "a long long time ago, far far away", with presumably humanoid characters (although they never describe themselves as human).
The original trilogy describes Luke Skywalker's rise as a Jedi, who ultimately fights against his father, Darth Vader. The mythos of the story is the concept of "The Force" which is a loose philosophical interpretation of a combination of various eastern religions, including buddhism and hinduism, especially with regards to their concept of karma. Karma and the force can be described as roughly equivalent.
The pre-trilogy describes Luke Skywalker's father, Anakin Skywalker, his rise to fame, and his turn to the dark side, ultimately becoming Darth Vader.
The post-trilogy describes Han Solo and Leia's children and their adventures in recreating the jedi world.
The original novels were all best sellers, which led to the creation of a movie, and ultimately of the original trilogy. Whilst the name of the first novel was "A New Hope", in the movie it was originally released as "Star Wars". Due to the somewhat unexpected success of the movie, a second and a third film were made.
After a gap of 20 years, the pre-trilogy was finally created, although they were nowhere near as popular as the original trilogy, as people were simply waiting to find out how Anakin became Darth Vader.
George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, currently has no plans to produce the post-trilogy as movies.
There have been various spin offs of Star Wars, as the complex universe has led to a wide variety of fan fiction novels, cartoons, and 2 complete movies - one based on the Ewoks from the Return of the Jedi (the third movie in the original trilogy) and one called The Clone Wars - which is based on a time between the 2nd and 3rd movies of the pre-trilogy, which describe the actual clone wars (as opposed to Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones). A long-running cartoon show called Ewoks was also released, in addition to cartoon shows about the clone wars and other aspects of Star Wars.
Star Wars competes overall with Star Trek as the most well loved science fiction series.
In Futurama, the popularity of the two shows was depicted by the idea that both Star Wars and Star Trek became religions. Ultimately, as the joke goes:
"The Star Wars fans began a trek to try to find out if the worlds envisaged in Star Wars really existed, while the Star Trek fans had a war over what was really true about Star Trek".
Unlike Star Trek, which is fabled for its consistency, Star Wars has numerous plot holes and impossibilities. One example, per the movies, is that in the original Star Wars (Star Wars IV: A New Hope), Jabba the Hutt is depicted as a small, human sized creature, yet in Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi he is this enormous beast that takes up an entire room. There are planets that have nothing but city, which is a logical impossibility, and there are many and various other scientific impossibilities.
The kinds of people who like to pick holes laugh at the impossibility of Star Wars and instead prefer Star Trek. Star Wars fans therefore are generally not people who like to pick holes in the idea, and instead focus on the big pictures.
Whilst many, many people like both Star Wars and Star Trek, there is also a distinct group of people who only like one and not the other. These people are in distinct opposition to one another. Generally speaking, Star Wars people come from a more religious perspective, while Star Trek people come from a more scientific perspective.
Red Leader fails, and Luke realizes technology will not get the job done and uses the force instead. Even R2D2 gets knocked out. Luke blows up the Death Star.