Starstruck by Star Wars
Space-age wizardry but an old fashioned tale of good versus evil
ALong time ago, in a galaxy far, far away — well, Shropshire — my father took me to the cinema to see a film I’d been pestering him about for weeks. Even as the titles rolled, my eyes were popping with anticipation. And as the villainous Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer roared into view, laser guns blazing at its prey, I thought I would expire on the spot from sheer excitement.
If you had told us then that the Star Wars saga would still dominate the world’s imagination nearly 40 years later, we would have rolled our eyes in disbelief.
But unless you have spent the past few days on another planet, you’ll know that the latest Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, goes on general release in Britain today.
Boosted by universally ecstatic early reviews, it is widely tipped to become the highest grossing film of all time. Many experts predict that it will take more than $2 billion worldwide. I realise, of course, that the universe has more than its fair share of Star Wars sceptics, who must already be sick to death of hearing about the new film. Still, there is just no getting away from the stark facts of the franchise’s success.
Indeed, the first film, released in 1977, is among the most influential motion pictures in history, since it revolutionised Hollywood’s approach to cinema and ushered in the age of the summer blockbuster. What nobody has ever really explained, though, is why George Lucas’s swashbuckling space saga has proved quite so successful.
The awe-inspiring grandeur of space travel has something to do with it, of course. And the timing of The Force Awakens — a film made largely, like its predecessors, in Britain — could hardly be more appropriate, given that this week Britain sent its first astronaut to the International Space Station.
I doubt I am alone in finding myself surprisingly moved by the courage of Tim Peake, the former test pilot who is proudly flying the Union Jack in the far reaches of space. And his feat is a reminder that stories of adventure and exploration — whether in fact or fiction — invariably bring out the wide-eyed little boy in all of us.
YET there is more to Star Wars than the majestic canvas of space. What gives it such enduring resonance is the simplest and strongest theme of all — the struggle of good against evil. It is easy to forget now that George Lucas devised his intergalactic tale at a time when the prevailing mood could hardly have been grimmer. Star Wars emerged from the fractured landscape of mid- Seventies America, haunted by humiliating defeat in Vietnam and the pervasive stench of the Watergate scandal.
This was an age of deep cynicism. At the time, Hollywood specialised in dark, violent pictures such as The Godfather and Taxi Driver. Simple heroism was out; producers preferred tortured antiheroes, damaged by war and alienation.
But George Lucas, a shy, geeky young man from the obscure suburban town of Modesto, California, dreamed of something different, as he later explained: a ‘real Errol Flynn, John Wayne kind of adventure’ that would ‘introduce a kind of basic morality’ and recapture the spirit of the old-fashioned comic book. In particular, Lucas wanted to revive the West’s faith in itself. ‘We all know, as every movie in the last ten years has pointed out, how terrible we are, how wrong we were in Vietnam, how we have ruined the world, what schmucks we are and how rotten everything is,’ he said in 1977.
‘It had become depressing to go to the movies. It was time to make a movie where people felt better going out than when they went in.’ And this is precisely what he delivered.
The stunning success of Lucas’s vision, which broke every box office record, was testament to the power of his message. In contrast to so many films made since the Seventies, Star Wars has no time for moral ambiguity. Lines between right (Luke Skywalker, say) and wrong (Darth Vader) are clear. Greed, hatred, selfishness and cruelty are vigorously condemned; honesty, generosity, duty and courage are unashamedly celebrated.
In many ways, that makes the Star Wars films appear remarkably old-fashioned. Precisely as Lucas had intended, they hark back to a more earnest, innocent age, mercifully devoid of the mocking cynicism that so often dominates our modern culture.
But it is, I think, no coincidence that the first Star Wars films coincided with one of the most dangerous periods in the Cold War, when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were rallying Western opinion against the Soviet Union.
Some historians have even argued that the first film’s premise — a plucky band of democratic freedom fighters, standing up to a cruel, totalitarian empire — echoed the theme of the Cold War itself.
Indeed, not only did President Reagan borrow the phrase ‘an evil empire’ to describe the Soviet Union, but his controversial Strategic Defence Initiative, which envisaged building laser weapons in space to shoot down the Kremlin’s missiles, even acquired the nickname Star Wars.
Perhaps it is fitting, then, that as the West confronts an even more chilling antagonist in the deserts of Syria, the Star Wars saga has been revived to remind us that sometimes history throws up genuinely evil adversaries — and that they must be fought. And yet even these historical parallels do not fully explain Star Wars’s extraordinary ability to grip the imagination.
Lucas was famously inspired not just by American comics and Japanese films, but by some of the oldest stories in the Western canon, such as the tales of the Greek heroes and the romance of King Arthur.
And when you strip away the Destroyers and Death Stars, the robots and lightsabers, what you have left are the two basic themes in all literature — God and family.
WHEn Lucas invented the vaguely mystical Force which features so strongly in Star Wars, he was lampooned. Even one of his own characters, sardonic smuggler Han Solo, mocks the hero Luke Skywalker’s faith in a ‘hokey religion’.
Yet, almost uniquely among mainstream blockbusters, Star Wars takes pride in its religious message. If you doubt it, just watch the rousing final battle sequence in the original film, when, flying his little fighter into the heart of the Death Star, Luke Skywalker turns off his computer and relies instead on his faith in the Force.
For the most successful science fiction franchise in history to exalt the spiritual over technological is, I think, enormously refreshing. Little wonder, then, that Lucas once described himself as ‘inherently conservative’.
Indeed, for all its futuristic sheen, Star Wars is at heart a remarkably conservative vision of the world, presenting us with a universe in which there is no moral doubt and no self-hatred, faith trumps technology, and duty always gets its reward.
Above all, though, these are films about the importance of family. Luke Skywalker appears to be an orphan, growing up in obscurity on desert planet Tatooine. The heroine of The Force Awakens, Rey, played by British star Daisy Ridley, appears to be an orphan, too, eking out a miserable existence in another desert world, Jakku.
At bottom, the films are about their quests to find families, whether real or borrowed. In Luke’s case, that forces him to confront the terrifying fact he is the son of none other than Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith and embodiment of evil.
Yet in the original trilogy Luke’s story ends with a moment of glorious redemption. Amid all the spectacular battles, Star Wars reminds the audience that what matters most in this world is the love of parent and child. nothing — not even the power of the Force — can match it.
That is surely the most powerful and fundamental message of all. I shall try to bear it in mind when, in a few days’ time, I brave the crowds at our local cinema, taking my own little boy to see the new Star Wars film, as my father did all those years ago.