Star Wars Saga: A Thematic Retrospective
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Recently I’ve introduced a friend to the epic wonder of the Star Wars story. What kind of friend of mine - Dominus Digg, Dark Lord of the Geek - would not be intimately familiar with the classic trilogy nor the … pretty prequels?
A chick! (mock surpise)
While re-watching the six-part story for the umpteenth time, I considered which have the best story. Which communicate themes that explain why the series has resonated so broadly over thirty plus years. “Awesomeness” is not a good criterion because its subjective and unclear. A few of the prequels had awesome CG effects but also equally awesomely stupid writing. Judging them on special effects and action has been done to death and is like judging a woman only on boob size.
Phantom Menace is clearly the worst since it’s hard to know what we should take away from it. Qui-Gon Jinn convinces a nine-year old to risk his life and undergo hard training he isn’t ready for because the Jedi can’t get the Republic to Western Union him some Hutt money to buy ship parts. Were that our world an Amber Alert would be issued. There was an actual line from the master that “greed can be a powerful ally”. No wonder the Council didn’t trust him. Are we supposed to manipulate those around us to achieve our goals, like the psychic midichlorian germs evidently manipulate us? George Lucas shouldn’t write and do mushrooms.
Don’t turn your back on family seems to be the message of Attack of the Clones. Shmi Skywalker is the Every Mom that suffers from the kids never calling home. Don’t give me some bullshit on avoiding attachment. They can’t set up the mother of the Chosen One in some cushy civil service job on a nice obscure world? No. She’s left as a slave on a crime infested world - spared sex slavery only because of her looks - and its a huge surprise that she falls victim to it. If only they had Mother’s Day … or vessel of a Force Vergence Day.
A New Hope has a simple and sappy motivational message of believe in yourself and you can achieve the impossible, or at least the very hard. Faith is a force that can transform our lives - thank you Deepak Chopra. Still, it has some universal Truth to it and is therefore a classic.
Be ready for the unexpected seems the theme of my favorite episode, the fifth Empire Strikes Back. Luke goes running off to try to take out the number two badass in the Galaxy, gets his ass kicked and gets a Maury Povich revelation that HE IS THE FATHER! Anorther lesson: be careful of old friends. They’re either guilting you into rushing in to bad situations or making deals to keep the Empire out of their mining operations . Actually, this latter one isn’t that good but we do get alot of Jedi philosphy from Yoda: Size matters not. You must unlearn what you have learned. A Jedi uses the force for knowledge and defense, never for attack. (that’s what the colorful blade of focused awesome is for)
Return of the Jedi teaches us to trust our feelings, our guts, our instincts. “Go kill my Daddy? I can’t. He’s not so bad.” Sure you should’nt go throwing away your lightsaber to illustrate a point when confronting a Sith Lord - always be ready for lightning - but Luke’s faith paid off in a very dramatically redeeming way that humanized Vader. Another Truth: primitive teddy bears can be a powerful ally … once they finally figure out how to take down a scout walker.
The best lesson can be found in Revenge of the Sith. Yeah, it’s a prequel but its message that fear can destroy everything you value is especially salient in these war of terror times. The need to hold on to everything in a constantly changing world leads to disaster (ask a GM exec). Plus these other gems: Dont choke pregnant women. Know when to call it quits (like Yoda did). Don’t attack from the low ground - or have your good looks and junk burned off. It’s all gold! Most importantly don’t put your faith in creepy old dudes making you wild promises.
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