To be completely honest I had NO IDEA what I was going to write about this week, but Star Wars seemed like a good direction to head in. I guess a good place to start in talking about Star Wars is why is it such a big deal? Well from my own knowledge it was the first film of it's kind with it's advanced technology and story line. Star Wars had special effects that revolutionized the film industry; not to mention when it came out we had just visited the moon not even ten years prior so the "space age" was still all the rage. Another reason I assume Star Wars is such a big deal is because of how Lucas created these crazy new worlds--hm, so did JL Rowling, I guess Harry Potter has this same draw?--, the names for the characters, the character's themselves, and most of all the language and politics of this galaxy far far away.
Now what if I told you that Star Wars, although super cool with the Millenium Falcon, the exploding of the Death Star, Darth Vader and Tatooine wasn't all that ground breaking? It's not! Obviously. No story is really that original, everything's been written before no? Star Wars certainly has it's own story line-enough to make 6 going on 7 movies plus television series like the Clone Wars and all that jazz-but alas it's nothing more than variations of various different OTHER stories written before.
One of Star Wars' most obvious characteristic is it's representation of fantastical archetypes such as knighthood, chivalry, princesses, royalty and the typical "epic hero". You could find elements of Julius Caesar, The Odyssey and maybe even Beowulf within Star Wars. The climax of the series' plot is influenced by the fall of the Roman Republic and rise of the Empire; although that's not a story, it's still a historical event that's happened and not made up out of Lucas' head necessarily. Lucas has been noted saying that he was also influenced by the Lord of the Rings trilogy which has a lot of biblical influence in regards to plot. Lucas was also admittedly heavily influenced by Akira Kurosawa's work such as The Hidden Fortress as well as Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. This is not to say Lucas is a plagiarist, just that he-like all writers-has only written a variation of stories told before him.
I was only able to present you with the influences I was able to source although I have have heard people speculate that Star Wars is based on stories in the bible, or government events, etc...which nobody's here to say it was or wasn't but none the less it was a groundbreaking, impressive film deserving of it's praise. It had more appeal than Star Trek due to it's more romantic, human, hero's as opposed to militaristic types. Star Wars also was less typical science fiction and more mythological and fantastical. So, in a way, Star Wars had more appeal due to it's more traditional less groundbreaking epicness. Guess it's better to recreate the old in a crazy new impressive way than to take too many risks?
P.S.-I met Princess Leia. I have Carrie Fisher's autograph, someday I want a real, movie prop quality, light sabre. I get the nerd points this week.
P.P.S.-I suggest you watch this, it's actually pretty factual, and if you like LOTR you will enjoy this even more...I must warn you it has some rough language.....definite Parental Advisory rated R for language.
I don't know anything about Star Wars at all, but I thought it was interesting how you said that the story is similar to other famous stories. I'd go so far to say that the vast majority of stories are derived from only a handful of basic plot lines. Some people like to think that they're super creative and can break these conventions, but as most will agree, anything "experimental" that doesn't adhere to these conventions is pretty much insufferable.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's JK Rowling, not JL Rowling. Get it together, brah.