The Three Pillars of Star Wars<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Conceptually, I divide the universe into three domains, and in turn each of these domains is bound to one of our original characters:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Luke Skywalker<\/b>: The world of the Force where the Jedi battle the Sith try to overcome one another with hokey religion and ancient weapons.<\/p>\n
Princess \/ General Leia Organa<\/b>: The world of politics, where different factions wage massive-scale war for control over the galaxy. Here is where you get your politics, doomsday weapons, and fleet battles.<\/p>\n
Han Solo:<\/b> The underworld of bounty hunters, crime lords, smugglers, mercenaries, and other assorted lowlifes.<\/p>\n
Lots of people only seem to care about one of these – or strongly favor one branch over the other twoPersonally I’m a fan of Han Solo’s domain, which probably explains why I’m so into the Mandalorian.<\/span> – and so even within the original trilogy there’s a bit of stratification among the fans about what parts of the story give the world its identity.<\/p>\n Most novel \/ game \/ TV show adaptations seem to focus on just one pillar. On the other hand if you’re someone at Disney and you’re trying to make a new mainline movie to carry the franchise forward, then maybe you could start with a premise like, “A Jedi, a bounty hunter, and a politician walk into a cantina…” and see where that takes youNote for Hollywood writers: I don’t mean they literally meet in a bar. I’m just saying you shove those three archetypes together and build a story out of the resulting character conflict.<\/span>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The prequels had Padme for the politics and Everyone Else for the Force stuff, but they lacked a Han Solo. The sequels had Rey for the Force, but Finn and Poe were never in a position to represent one of the other two pillarsActually, Abrams tried to shove Poe into Han Solo’s slot in the third film by making him a spice runner, but that felt like too little, too late.<\/span>. Maybe this means my entire “Three Pillars” model is hogwash, but I still find it a useful way to think about Star Wars stories.<\/p>\n So let’s talk about what makes something Star Wars-y…<\/p>\n I never thought that the Star Wars universe revolved around the Skywalker family. Sure, those first three movies were about Luke Skywalker redeeming his father and defending his sister, but that was just one story, right?<\/p>\n But then we got the prequels, which were all about Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the Dark Side, which ended with the birth of his SUPER-SPECIAL CHILDREN. But that was the prequel. Now we know the full story of the Skywalkers and we’re free to move on and tell stories about…<\/p>\n NOPE!<\/p>\n The sequels came out, and we’re once again focused on Skywalkers vs. Palpatine. The movies are even called the “Skywalker Saga”!<\/p>\n For some of us, this is a universe that revolves around the Skywalker family, and for other people the Skywalkers are these obnoxious celebrity camera hogs that distract us from the rest of this cool galaxy.\u00a0<\/p>\n For some people, the fight against an oppressive military government is an inescapable part of the setting. For them this is a series about massive-scale war. Abrams and Kazden thought this concept was so important that they cooked up The First Order to replace the old Empire, and they didn’t even see a need to explain how such a group rose to power. Of course there’s a big evil government! You can’t have Star Wars without one!<\/i><\/p>\n Personally, I never cared about the scale of the conflict. The Mandalorian<\/em> isn’t wrapped up in galactic-scale conflict and politics, and it feels more like Star Wars to me than anything made in the last 40 years. For me the fight against the Empire was a one-off, and for the next person it’s the entire point of the setting.<\/p>\n For me one of the most interesting bits of Star Wars was the uneven way in which technology was distributed. The Empire had massive ships of pristine metalNot to mention the Death Star!<\/span>, and yet other parts of the universe had this patchwork technology that reminds me of third world countries where you’ll see people with western T-shirts and cell phones inhabiting towns that barely have running water. I don’t want to call it “realistic”, but it did add a certain sense of verisimilitude and texture to the setting.\u00a0<\/p>\n Star Wars showed us towns with dirt streets and beasts of labor that also had droids and flying vehicles. But then again… it only showed us one<\/b> place like that. Is Tatooine this weird exception in an otherwise settled galaxy of stable infrastructure, or do most planets feature a few ramshackle towns carved out of a vast desolate wilderness?<\/p>\n We spent a whole generation daydreaming about these sorts of patchwork towns before Lucas showed us what a proper inhabited planet (Naboo) looked like. And for a lot of people my age, Naboo just didn’t fit the style we’d come to love. It wasn’t a weird ad hoc technology oasis, it was a proper advanced civilization with cities and traffic and highrise buildings.<\/p>\n Related to the above: In the original trilogy, we really only see two developed population centers: Tatooine, and the cloud city of Bespin. The other planets – Hoth and Endor’s moon – are wilderness.<\/p>\n For me, this created the impression that the galaxy was mostly made up of small isolated communities. It was a whole universe of small towns containing dive bars, gambling dens, fight pits, pawn shops, and palaces for small-time warlords and crime bosses. It seemed like a dangerous world filled with liars, cutthroats, bounty hunters, smugglers, assassins, crime lords, mercenaries, scavengers, and thieves. Bespin – the most livable and stable community in the whole trilogy – comes off like an unusually successful hustle on the part of Lando.<\/p>\n But… was this really an intended part of the setting?<\/p>\n In the original movies, Tatooine was the only planet that worked like this, but I still embraced it as representative of large parts of the galaxy. It was a strange, lawless, dangerous galaxy. And that’s what made it so awesome!<\/p>\n But then the Prequel Trilogy came along and gave us Naboo and Coruscant. From this you might assume that places like Tatooine are the exception, and the galaxy is mostly stable, civilized, and well-behaved.<\/p>\n I never let go of Wild West Star Wars, so I was one of those people who felt like Rose Tico’s gripes about arms dealers in Canto Bight felt weird. Imagine your typical Wild West town. You enter the saloon and see a bunch of cowboys carousing, whoring, brawling, and playing poker. Then Rose Tico shakes her head saying, “These guys made their money by working as poachers, cattle rustlers, and hired guns.”\u00a0<\/p>\n For Rian Johnson (and a LOT of other people) Naboo is probably their template for what “the rest of the galaxy” should \/ could look like. And for them, the galaxy might be a peaceful and just place if not for this small group of powerful and amoral weapons dealers. But for people like me, she was basically complaining that in this galaxy of petty despots and cutthroats, arms dealers weren’t nice people. It’s like complaining that the Wild West is so wild. For me that’s not an in-universe problem to solve, that’s just a feature of the setting!<\/p>\n This was a big deal in 1977. America was in an economic downturn, the gas crisis was going on, the cold war loomed large in everyone’s minds, the Nixon presidency ended in embarrassment and disgrace, and the country was still trying to grapple with the aftermath of Vietnam. On top of everything else, we were discovering the omnipresent dread that came from having a stunning<\/a> lineup<\/a> of serial<\/a> killers<\/a> covered by sensation-hungry media. The Beatles were broken up. We stopped going to the moon. Ford had pardoned Nixon. Classic manufacturing jobs were in decline. Grown adults somehow actually thought that Tonight’s The Night<\/a> was the best song<\/a> of the yearI’m sore about this because 1977 is the same year Fly Like an Eagle<\/a> came out, and that song is the first time I remember really connecting<\/strong> with music. This was some of the earliest uses of electronic synthesizers and I found it hypnotic.<\/span>.\u00a0<\/p>\n In short, everything sucked and there was no reason to think that things were going to get any better.\u00a0<\/p>\n People were grim and cynical. According to conventional wisdom, they didn’t want heartwarming family dramas or playful movies where adorable people would meet and fall in love. They wanted main characters who were bitter and disillusioned. They wanted bleakness and pessimism. The Hollywood wisdom was that America wanted morally compromised protagonists<\/a>, lost causes<\/a>, and bleak endings<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Star Wars wasn’t the only movie<\/a>\u00a0 of the time to reject this malaise, but it was one of the few, one of the first, and it did so loudly and vigorously. Hollywood discovered that not everyone wanted to wallow in nihilism. Some people wanted escapism, and Hollywood was happy to take their money too. Star Wars wasn’t just upbeat, it was a fairytale<\/b>.\u00a0<\/p>\n This cultural tug-of-war between cynicism and idealism remains today, and I strongly suspect it’s cyclical. After too much salt and bitterness, everyone decides they want a little sugar. After too much sugar, everyone feels a little sick and wants some bitterness again. The Marvel movies have just given us 12 years of sugar, so I’m sort of expecting that The Boys<\/a>, the Watchmen TV Show<\/a>, Brightburn<\/a> and the general trend of dark \/ adult superhero films<\/a> are a signal that our collective sweet tooth has been sated and cynicism is on the way back. Sure, cynical movies never really went away<\/a>, but I’m talking about what sorts of entertainment dominate the culture. And for the last decade people have been buying a lot<\/b> of sugar.<\/p>\n Besides making Star Wars<\/i> palatable to children, that blast of fairytale hope was exactly what a lot of people needed in 1977. And thus for a lot of people, idealism and moral clarity are an indelible part of the franchise. Star Wars is about hope! It’s right there in the title! Yes! We can actually defeat evil without becoming monsters or destroying everything we love. You can make it if you just keep the faith and do the right thing. Your friends will be there for you, and even if they aren’t you just need to believe in them and your trust will bring them back to the light. Our idealism, not our weapons, is what makes us strong enough to overcome the forces of evil.<\/i><\/p>\n After a half dozen of these movies a few people find themselves asking, “Why do all the movies have to be so treacly? Can’t we have a Star Wars for grownups?” Why can’t we see some bickering and infighting and power struggles within the rebellion?\u00a0<\/p>\n For these people, the fairytale tone isn’t a core part of the franchise, it’s just a weird artifact of the era that created it.\u00a0<\/p>\n We take it for granted now, but the look of Star Wars was groundbreaking. Previously, we’d all imagined a world with sparkling clean spaceships and wide open spaces of pristine white and spotless chrome. It was a world with polished floors, fresh paint, and everyone wearing the same color jumpsuit. Everything was made of brand new plastic, because plastic was the future baby!<\/p>\n And then here comes Star Wars, a world where everything looks scuffed, dinged, used, and lived-in. Their garages were greasy just like ours. Their vehicles were beat up, just like ours. Their clothes were joyless dirty earthtones, just like oursUgh. The 70s were terrible<\/a>.<\/span>! These touches made the world feel incredibly real despite the fantastical setting.<\/p>\n The Star Wars technology was covered in greebles and fingerprints. It was the futureA long, long ago sort of future.<\/span>, but it looked old and used instead of fresh and new.\u00a0<\/p>\n To me, Greebles were the primary ingredient in making the technology look like Star Wars. I thought everyone agreed. But then in 1999 George Lucas gave us the Naboo Royal Starship<\/a>, which looked like the lame\u00a0 featureless smooth chrome ships of the cheesy sci-fi that predated Star Wars. It was the most un-Star Wars-y thing I’d ever seen.\u00a0<\/p>\n It didn’t fit the Star Wars I knew, but it’s pretty hard to argue with the author.\u00a0<\/p>\n Why do droids have quirky personalities? Wouldn’t C-3PO be vastly more useful if he wasn’t burdened with this fussy and cowardly personality? Why do people end up in arguments with droids? Why doesn’t someone program BB and R2 units to speak Basic so average people can understand them? Answer: Because the universe is WAY cooler like this!<\/p>\n It’s a weird idea. In this universe, robots are more like people than in (say) Trek, but at the same time they’re treated less<\/b> like people. There are no robots suffering from Pinocchio Syndrome<\/a> in the world of Star Wars, and so far nobody’s been dumb enough to mess with this rule. It would be a disaster if someone were to attempt a classic “robot uprising” story or a “I just want to be human” character arc within the world of Star Wars. The world is not designed to withstand this sort of investigation and if robot personalities ever became a problem then all of my questions in the previous paragraph would become massive plot holes.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe Skywalker Family<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Space Fascism!<\/h3>\n
<\/div>The Third World in Space<\/h3>\n
<\/div>A Galaxy of Scum and Villainy<\/h3>\n
<\/div>A New Hope(fulness)<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Greebles<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Anthropomorphised Droids<\/h3>\n
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