‘Star Wars’ was engineered to appeal to us all

As part of an op-ed series, FIU News shares the expertise and diverse perspectives of members of the university community. In this piece, Dan Bentley Baker, senior instructor in the English Department, discusses how Star Wars was carefully crafted employing a universal narrative – the life of the Hero.

By Dan Bentley Baker

Fact: Star Wars (1977) was engineered to appeal to us all.  Is that your standard movie blurb?  Look at more facts.

Before he began writing the screenplay for Star Wars, George Lucas contacted Joseph Campbell, professor emeritus of Vassar College, and brought him to California for story consultations. The subject?  The life of the Hero, the psychosocial theory of the ‘mono-myth.’  The myth of all myths.

The life of the Hero is the inner concept of life’s progression and purpose as laid out by psychoanalysts Otto Rank and Carl Jung, scholar Lord Raglan and Campbell himself – one of our leading folklorists and teachers. The hero story is the narrative of Moses and Oedipus, of Caesar and Jesus, and purportedly each human being in the development of their lives.

No humble premise for a movie, you might agree. But the two men, Lucas and Campbell, got along well.

They talked about The Call (one of the steps in the narrative development) in which Luke Skywalker confronts the deaths of his aunt and uncle and the looming cloud of the empire threatening to destroy everything in the galaxy. They talked about their relationship – Luke as hero and Obi-Wan Kenobi as synex, his aged mentor, parallel to Lucas and Campbell; the mysterious circumstances of Luke’s origins; the odd companions he meets along the way; his face-to-face confrontation with the dark side; and the animus, the hidden persona.  All guarded and manipulated by the force of evil, Darth Vader, whom the theory identifies as the wicked Trickster, the Lord of Chaos and Luke’s inescapable progenitor.

George Lucas

Star Wars (1977) was written ‘by the book.’ Lucas’s first inspired bit of genius was calling his mentor – his Obi-Wan – and schooling himself in the structure of the Hero’s tale.

Why has this franchise done so well, even with missteps like Jar-Jar Binks? (shudder).  It’s because, at base, this film was explicitly designed to go to the deepest and most luminous core of life’s journey from birth to death. And everybody can personally connect to that. Is that all there is?

No. The Hero structure is but one approach to Star Wars. The opening crawl to Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope says: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. . . ” thus connecting this tale with Isaac Asimov’s legendary Foundation trilogy, which a generation before had set as the standard for world-building science fiction. 

The diversity of creatures as represented by the cafe crowd at Mos Eisley, a most “wretched hive of scum and villainy,” suggests another approach. Call it xenobiology.  

How does Star Wars hold up to The Martian and The Hunger Games and Jupiter Ascending?  Each to her own tastes. But some films seem to be instances and iterations of larger narratives, and some seem to be the bigger thing itself. Perhaps time will tell. I was deeply influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey, but some X-ers and Millennials are underwhelmed by it. 

What will be your generational Sci-Fi film? We’ll see. My students are, after all, at a different stage of the hero’s journey. At this point, it seems like The Great Recession and The War on Terror are shaping 20- and 30-somethings toward the nihilism of The Walking Dead.  So be it. 

So rich, so fabulous (in the fable sense), so many levels. Is Star Wars important to you? Personally, I can only wait for the next installment to find out where my life goes henceforward. 

Dan Bentley-Baker is a senior instructor in the English Department. His courses include film studies, major literary modes and creative writing.