George Lucas, Mythmaker: a retrospective

I am always stunned when I meet someone who has never seen Star Wars before. This film is so central to my childhood that it has become embedded into my psyche. It has become so inextricably linked to childhood fantasies that an objective view is difficult. However, I will try.

Star Wars, to this day, remains one of the highest grossing movies of all time (topped only by the abomination Titanic). Of the top eleven grossing films, the Star Wars franchise claims four of the top spots. Its stature is legendary. Its hold on the popular imagination even 16 years without a new movie is a testament partly to George Lucas’ amazing marketing ability, but also to the film series’ timeless appeal. The Smithsonian addressed this question, “What is the cause of this undying appeal?” in an exhibit just a few years ago. In this essay, I intend to offer my take on this question. I assume knowledge of the film in the rest of this essay. If you are one of those rare souls who has yet to see the original series (Episodes IV through VI), I hope what I have to say is comprehensible, but I encourage you whole-heartedly to remedy the situation as soon as possible.

(This review arises out of the discussion that grew out of DrJ008’s excellent review of Kurasawa’s _Hidden Fortress_)

Star Wars has been much maligned. Kurasawa enthusiasts claim that Lucas stole plot details, and characters, and slide cuts from Kurasawa’s Hidden Fortress. Other critics deride the simplistic plot, the prototypical characters, the flat acting. Yet, its appeal lives on. All these criticisms are true. The appeal must come from elsewhere.

(What was stolen from Kurasawa was perhaps excessive, but should not diminish the achievement of Lucas. Plot details, a clever duo, and interesting cuts, were helpful in making Star Wars, but none of this is responsible for making it *great*.)

There are two reasons.

1) The special effects. These have always been Lucas' forte and his pride and joy. This is where his mastery comes to bear. Skywalker Ranch, Industrial Light and Magic, THX, Lucas Arts and his Creature Lab and all these things. Lucas hasn't written/directed/produced a movie in a while (we will forget The Phantom Meance which taught has us that he shouldn't), because he has come to focus on his passion. From the Abyss to Jurassic Park to A.I., nearly everything cutting edge in special effects has come from Lucas.

Think about it. 1977. Can you picture the special effects of comparable movies? Think about the Star Trek movies. The silly people shaking back and forth as their keyboards sparked and killed them. The Star Wars effects were so complete and immersive and well done, they still look good today. The way Yoda came to life (yes, he is a standard Taoist monk prototype which is derivative, but he is also a little elfin ultra-lifelike alien which is earth-shattering, far more lifelike than say Gizmo or ET even), the magical hum of the light saber, the thrills of interstellar dog-fighting, nifty computer displays, lifelike robots that you gain emotional connection with, an immense towering ominous fortress "That's no moon...."

Normally special effects are not nearly enough to make a movie legendary, (who remembers The Abyss), but they do in this case because they are essential for setting up Reason #2,

2) The Myth of Star Wars. The title of the Smithsonian exhibit is “Star Wars: The Making of Myth and Magic.” It uses Joseph Campbell’s seminal book Hero with a Thousand Faces, a book Lucas read and used when he first undertook the Star Wars project, to illuminate the Star Wars mythos. Campbell’s thesis comes form an examination of the classic hero cycle, the backbone of all the stories that have touched the human imagination, from Homer’s Odyssey to the modern western, and finds similarity in every culture’s mythology. Star Wars fits neatly into this taxonomy. The characters are prototypes, Luke Skywalker the naïve neophyte who becomes the hero, the wise advisor Obi-wan, the embodiment of evil in Vader and later the Emperor, the heroic quest to save the lives of billions. The black and white battle pitched between good and evil. These are the images that speak to the human psyche, and this is why Star Wars has embedded itself so deeply into our collective consciousness.

Some say a film is supposed to break the bonds of convention, yet Star Wars’s success proves there are some stories our spirits yearn to hear. Some say its execution leaves something to be desired, and that perhaps a wittier writer, or deeper character development would have made the film more appealing to critics. But this is the cream, not the substance. The simplicity of the plot and of the characters is a large part of the universality of the appeal. This universal appeal reveals the true genius that Lucas possesses.

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* I actually do own the THX remastered boxed set. I highly recommend this over the re-release, which I feel ruined the purity of the movie somewhat. But this is irrelevent to my point.