“No. I am your father.” The shocking words of Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker, as Luke clings for life at the end of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), made an enduring impression on more than one generation of fans.
That same Star Wars effect, remarkably, continues 35 years on, albeit with some dispute over the franchise’s legacy. These high emotions come to the surface when new teasers are released to whet audience expectations about the release of new features.
Now it is the turn of The Force Awakens, which is due for release at the end of this year. A second teaser was released last week to much excitement. The film is seventh in the Star Wars series, which began in 1977 with Star Wars: A New Hope, followed by The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983.
Director George Lucas returned to the franchise in 1999 with The Phantom Menace, a prequel to the original films, followed by Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005).
Those recent additions to the Star Wars canon received mixed responses and expectations are high for a return to form with The Force Awakens, now under the ownership of Disney.
A New Mythology for a New Age
I was born after Darth Vader broke the bad news to Luke but was captivated with the films from a young age. It is interesting to see this same captivation seize the imaginations of children today and re-live the entry into a world that I had lived with such excitement and wonder.
The lightsabers and guns, the heroes and villains, the Empire and Rebellion, the light and the dark, the adventures and adversities, all make for a rich, imaginative world of which one can become part.
When Star Wars was released in 1977, all those factors, as well as the powerful special effects, cinematography, soundtrack and production, provided the foundations of a new mythology in the premiere medium of the day, cinema.
George Lucas’ stated aim was to create a mythology that could provide moral guidance within the context of renewed sense of spirituality and transcendence.
Lucas was concerned this mythology was lacking both in cinema (following the decline of the Western) and in a post-60s social context. In a 1999 interview with Time magazine, he reflected on these mythic qualities: “I see Star Wars as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down into a more modern and easily accessible construct […] I put the Force into the movie in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people – more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system. I wanted to make it so that young people would begin to ask questions about the mystery.”
This, in large part, helps to explain the enduring quality of Star Wars: it sought to take us deep into the mystery of life and existence through an imaginative and engaging story.
Star Wars purposefully engaged with the full potential of storytelling in film to address a social and cinematic gap. As the enduring popularity of science fiction and fantasy films shows, there is a yearning and need for big stories to be told that deal with universal themes – good, evil, love, friendships, violence and the transcendent.
This trend stands in contrast to the relativist and postmodern tendencies of the age.
The Story Goes Deeper
Star Wars has powerful themes, within a well-constructed galaxy and adventure narrative that appeals to the times.
The story centres on the battle between the evil Empire and virtuous Rebellion, which appeals for its action as well as the injustice that is being fought. But the narrative moves beyond a conventional political and military fight to deeper considerations of character, friendship, technology, transcendence and redemption.
