Warning: Spoilers for the franchise as a whole (but not for Episode 7, don’t worry!)
I got hooked on Star Wars from a very young age. I never got to see the original theatrical releases, but I did get to see the re-releases in the mid-1990’s, when I was not much more than 7 or 8 years old. And it fucking blew my mind. From the now-infamous opening crawl, I was hooked. There were so many things to draw a young mind in. Space battles! Intergalactic sword fights! Cuddly robots and teddy bear aliens! Daring heroes and terrifying villains! The epic scale, the totally relatable characters, and the unbelievable action, they all combined and burned their way into my brain, and from that moment on I was a Star Wars mega-nerd.
I write about this because, for those of you who live under a rock (or possibly in the vast deserts of Jakku), there’s a new Star Wars movie that just came out this week, the seventh installment in the series proper and the first of what will undoubtedly be a long and intricate reboot courtesy of the Walt Disney Company. I’m not going to review Star Wars: The Force Awakens for you because, honestly, it doesn’t need reviews. Everyone who wants to see it has either already seen it or is going to see it very soon, and everyone who doesn’t is a sad individual who doesn’t understand the meaning of hope or adventure. Instead, I’m going to explain why I think Star Wars matters, why it mattered then, and why it will matter 200 years from now when they’re on Episode 76.
Because at this point, Star Wars is more than a movie series, or even a franchise. It’s a modern day mythos, a cultural phenomenon that brings people together from across the globe. It’s a series of legends with a similar impact on our lives today as something like King Arthur had in the Middle Ages, or Greek mythology in the days of antiquity. It’s something that takes futuristic technology and puts it into the lens of something very old (hence the “A long time ago…” part), almost as if it was an oral tradition passed down through generations. And like any mythos, what makes these movies special is not the setting or (as the unspeakably bad prequels would show) even the creator. It’s the characters: who they are, what they do, and what they represent.
In the early 20th century, psychologist Carl Jung came up with his theory of archetypes, aspects of our personality that are present in every human being and shape our culture through the use of storytelling. Jung reached back to ancient and classical mythology for his ideas, but they can just as easily be applied to literature and movies, our modern form of myth making. The most obvious of these is the hero archetype, which is applied to everyone from Achilles to Superman and of course, Luke Skywalker. Or there is the mentor archetype, who assists the hero in their journey: Lord of the Rings has Gandalf, the Harry Potter series has Dumbledore, and Star Wars has Obi-Wan Kenobi.
What Star Wars does so well is take these incredibly common and universal characters, toy with them, put them in a captivating sci-fi environment, and change them to reflect our own wants and desires in the present. Sometimes characters change from one archetype to another, such as Yoda starting off as a mischievous little trickster in The Empire Strikes Back and then revealing himself to be a wise and very old Jedi. Or you have the classic story of Darth Vader starting as a Dark Lord/Devil archetype, in the same vein as Sauron or Voldemort, but eventually redeeming himself and becoming a hero in his own right.
These are all characters we understand and can relate to. Everyone has had a teacher or mentor in their life. Everyone understands the concepts of good and evil (or the light side against the dark). And everyone understands, and to some extent wants to be, a hero – someone who rises from humble beginnings to prove themselves and help others. Every Star Wars film, from 1977 to 2015, has had these elements, and they are elements so pervasive that you could show these movies to someone living 2000 years in the past or the future and they could still relate to them.
What I love about The Force Awakens is what I loved about watching the original trilogy as a little girl. You still can see a hero’s journey – for the first time, told from a woman’s perspective in Rey. You still have the dichotomy of good versus evil, of betrayal and redemption. You have your old favorites like Leia and Han Solo on screen, now functioning as mentors to the new generation. Everyone knows and understands these characters, and many of us have spent their whole lives loving them. I’m sure 20 years from now, there will be even more Star Wars sagas out, and they might give me the same chills as the first time I saw A New Hope a long, long time ago.
marissatheterrible 