Bruce Lee as Obi-Wing Chunobi, in Enter the Jedi (1973), an early inspiration for Star Wars
There has been a lot of Star Wars news this weekend, and it all looks jolly good, just like it always does when things are announced at big industry events. Me being me, I’ve spent time looking at some of the online reaction on YouTube; it has been entertaining.
Reaction on YouTube falls into two broad categories – on one hand, neutral or enthusiastic breakdowns of the news and of the Ahsoka trailer, on the other hand, a rash of hastily-produced videos by angry boys and men (always boys and men and usually American) in their bedrooms criticising every aspect of the announcements, frequently on the basis that Disney has ‘ruined’ Star Wars via excessive ‘wokeness.’ Often, their comments are no more than thinly disguised misogyny. I think these guys are under the impression that they have something valuable or critically worthwhile to say. They do not. Mostly they are swapping prejudices amongst themselves.
That’s not to say that there aren’t critical analyses to be made, just that these guys aren’t making them (and no, I’m under no illusions or delusions about my own scribblings either.)
What remains to be seen is the degree to which the newly announced material expands the storytelling in fun and new ways as opposed to retreading old ground. The bits of relatively recent Star Wars that I’ve enjoyed the most have been the bits that have done new things (Andor) or have brought a fresh perspective to the familiar (Rogue One). Notably, the film that was the most interesting and thoughtful about the galaxy far, far away, The Last Jedi, is the one from which the hastiest retreat was beaten. And that’s a shame.
As for the core strand of the TV material, much as I like Dave Filoni’s work, and I’ve watched it all, it rarely deepdives into the unknown. At least on the basis of what has been released so far, Ahsoka is picking up on existing books by Timothy Zahn and hatching expanded-universe easter eggs. That’s fine, and I’ll watch it, but it isn’t new.
Tony Curtis as Long-John Jones in the 1958 original of The Phantom Menace
What was notable about Star Wars (the first film) was that the script had just sufficient mythology and backstory necessary to drive a single film, but no more than that. It wasn’t made to articulate a developed mythology, that all sprang into being when the success of the first film spawned sequels, prequels and the expanded universe, and took on a life of its own.
In a sense, the onus on the current corporate production team, the heirs to the empire, is neither more nor less than to churn out entertainment and make a return. There is no harm or shame in mindless entertainment, except that, after a while, repetition becomes boring. Hence the need for the innovation in either the stories or the storytelling. It doesn’t have to be Tarkovsky (though a Tarkovsky Star Wars would be something to behold), but it does need to engage the imagination of the intended viewer.
The strengths of the original film and the subsequent mythology are also the root of the inherent problems with the material: the embedding of the (male) hero’s journey monomyth, and the primitive dualism of the conceptions of the Force. This sets up fundamental notions of good and bad, light and dark, noble and ignoble, sacred and profane. That works for one or two films, but strains when translated to a larger scale. The expanded universe sometimes grappled with this problem, as did the Clone Wars animated series written under head writer Christian Taylor. Clone Wars, though, was a series of rapid-fire stories designed for a younger audience, and that determined how issues were raised and addressed in service to a larger plot.
When I say ‘fun and new,’ I mean stories that consciously question the underlying mythology and thus open out the possibilities for storytelling. The Last Jedi did that and was far and away the most interesting and radical of the recent trilogy. The words put into the mouth of Luke Skywalker by Rian Johnson, it’s time for the Jedi to end, were exactly the correct sentiment. And that’s also why, of the three announced films, it is the one featuring Rey that has the potential to be the most interesting and transformative, assuming that they don’t chicken out. Quite what this story will involve, given that it needs some kind of antagonist, I don’t know, but I reckon there is an interesting story to be told with Rey as protagonist, one that goes beyond the naïve dualism of Jedi and Sith.
Back in January (Hearken to the Jedi Rune) I wrote,
For ages I’ve had a notion of a Star Wars story sketched in a notebook. I probably won’t write the story because I can’t do the technobabble, but every so often it creeps out of my subconscious. I rewatched The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and the Rise of Skywalker with an eye on one particular character who would be the protagonist of the putative story.
That character was Rey and the story in the notebook, which remains only in note form, arose from my interest in mysticism and my long-standing habit of reading Hermann Hesse. If a Rey film is in the works, then I’m pretty sure I won’t write the story now. I could do it as fan-fiction, I guess, but it’s not as though I’m short of other things to write.
Maybe I’m overthinking this 🙂
Art by Lindsay.
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