Why Star Wars was good

[RX-79G]

8 years ago I started a SF graphic novel project with some folks I met by posting an ad. The ad contained these notes as a jumping off point. I could expand on these, but I think they are still largely spot on, and demonstrate why many of the films fall so short of the originals. (Pardon the sentence fragments.)


What was good about Star Wars?


Technology not catered to. The audience was told they were looking at antiques and junk while being shown treasures. Little or no oral or visual exposition on technology – the audience does not need to know how it works, and the magic is broken when they do. Don’t fill in meaningless details with discussion, controls, tooling or displays. How did he fly that loop? By piloting – nothing more is necessary.



Faceless enemy. If you’re going to kill a lot of bad guys, it’s better if the majority of them aren’t individuals at all. Don’t distract the audience with unnecessary personal connections when not warranted. Uniform masks and suits are good. Nameless, faceless, numberless.



Simple characters, simple motivation. Bad guys are bad, good guys make decisions and stick to them. No deep psychology. Situations are funny, characters are not.



No swearing. No speeches. Neither are necessary, both are distracting.



A backdrop of terror. There must be horror if the bad guys are evil, but the horror should not be dwelled upon. Make it part of the larger scene or a quick punctuation – not the scene itself.



Simple design. The overall shape of the future should be easy to sketch and remember. Grossly complex designs are less fascinating than basic shapes with interesting details. Guns, armor, ships and buildings.



No stargazing. The story gets the screen time. The backdrop, no matter how fascinating, is just backdrop. The characters aren’t amazed, and the audience is there to follow the characters, not take a tour. They get to sneak the tour in.



Avoid prophesy. No one is Jesus. Some people are more gifted than others, but even the “normal” good guys can be very talented – let them.



The truly bad guys are people. Not robots, not aliens. Only a person can truly be evil to another person. Minions don’t all have to be human, but life and death battles should be a contest of life against life – not a pointless fight against appliances. There is no fear or bravery involved in cutting up robots.



No puzzles. The audience doesn’t need to see the characters “figure out” how to get past a complex but largely unconvincing gateway puzzle. Characters use their heads to out think other characters – not their environment.

 

[hopewrites]

Except that now we do battle appliances, and the environment. Society has zoomed in on the border war between good and evil with a mostly grey area flanked on some sides by what used to be black and white issues.

The structure of society has changed to the point where bureaucrats and corporate heads have taken the place of faceless uniformed troops. A melee of creeds held and dropped at convince prevent there being any one army to be against.

Love has been defeated by lust.
Greed has toppled credo.
Subterfuge has replaced Word.

By the preceding centuries standards the world is dystopian.
How to distract and veil that truth is left to the entertainment industry. Industry.

***

Star Wars was what it was not only on the merits of the things you mentioned, but how they slotted into the time frame of their release dates. By being unprecedented, as well as good.

 

[RX-79G]

The structure of society has changed to the point where bureaucrats and corporate heads have taken the place of faceless uniformed troops. A melee of creeds held and dropped at convince prevent there being any one army to be against.

I don't believe any corporate heads have been gunned down by plucky rebels, so I'm not following you.

Star Wars was what it was not only on the merits of the things you mentioned, but how they slotted into the time frame of their release dates. By being unprecedented, as well as good.

I agree, but I don't think anything that follows borrows much from Star Wars in the ways I've outlined.

Consider Luke as a character: He shows no fear when threatened by a murderer in the cantina, doesn't cry when his adoptive parents are killed, participates in the close quarters execution of two storm troopers to steal their uniforms, essentially leads a covert assault and rescue mission on the Death Star, and then jumps into a X-wing that he has never flown before and joins a squadron formation for an all out assault. Luke is maybe 20, his convictions so strong that he never hesitates, quibbles, gasps at enormous heights, breaks down or even doubts. He was a farmer and pilot - now he's a leader and gifted killer.

There has been nothing in film like Luke (or Leia) since. He is a perfect hero, and remains so until the complications of his father become clear to him.

 

[hopewrites]

He was a hero in a time when people were asserting their convictions. Thus the any-man could relate, also he winged a little and wasn't al out perfect, making him more relatable.

Zip a head to the early '00s and Anakin. Plucky kid who doesn't take s*** from the run down company that owns him, tries to do right by everyone he meets, and awkwardly flatters pretty women. Ok, people are on board and kinda like that they relate to him a little. Villains as heroes is hot stuff, adding to the desire of the public to relate.

Episode II is where the rioting starts.
Have you ever seen an awkward teen movie where the ending implys that the awkward teen grows up to be a murderous lackey to a hypervillian? no. all the relatablity from episode I is gone, and is replaced by none of the fear or grace we expect from episodes IV-VI.

One feels the franchise has punched one in the gut, and run off with one's lunch money laughing "sucka!"


But again, let's look at the context of the world it was presented to. Heroes are not relatable because they are like us, but because they are what we like. (Yes I just implied the world is currently somewhat self loathing. Prove me wrong and I'll gladly take it back.)
What's the line from Iron man III? "Give evil a face; a Mandrin, a Bin Laden, a Gaddafi - and you give the people a target." Said by the villain who made sure his face wasn't the public face of the evil he was. That he had a ready scapegoat to make him larger than life and cover his mistakes. Ironman's enemy is ego, his or personifications of.

Who is Anakin's enemy? The emperor? why should someone who sells their soul to an empire that is promising the means to protect that which they fears is unprotectable not be relatable to masses of people who are owned by their companies in a similar manner?
Because we don't want to be related to that way. Who wants to have it pointed out that for the amount of money it takes to put a roof overhead and keep food on the table we are willing to turn a blind eye to what the corporate heads do or stand for? who wants it pointed out to them that in pursuit of enough to secure happiness they've lost the things that made them happy.

We got scrooged.


I expected better.
Looking back, I realize I shouldn't have, but I did.

 

[RX-79G]

The Anakin from Ep I was a horrendous character. Dialogue like a children's story, constantly blathering on to his robot. And nearly everything he "achieved" flying his fighter was a series of happy accidents. It was as if Curious George was a Star Wars character. Then he grows up into whiney YA type character.

This was a bill of goods we'd been sold, because what little Ben had described about Anakin left the impression of a highly experienced peer, who at the height of his maturity as a Jedi gave in to the temptation of a short-cut to being a more effective warrior. Instead we get a two movie public service announcement about the dangers of parents giving teens too much freedom.

Where was the "best pilot in the galaxy" part?



The fascinating thing about Luke and Leia is that there is absolutely no hand-wringing, second guessing or moral weight hanging on them about anything they decide needs to be done, and then they do it with great competence. Han Solo is the anti-hero. You would be hard pressed to find any heroic character in literature - or especially film - that is as pure in purpose as Luke is until he goes down the Jedi rabbit hole. The closest heroic character I can think of is Superman, and writers have spent a century trying to squeeze some moral ambiguity and ethical quandary into him. Or maybe the Lone Ranger?

 

[hopewrites]

I agree!

I remember watching IV-VI in my parents basement on a "big" 18 inch TV with "quality" 3.0 surround sound at the pinnacle of VHS technology.

My parents had hyped these movies as world shaping. So my eager young eyes and ears were ready to sponge up life lessons on what it truly means to be human.

They were the only vhs movies my parents bought twice! (And my parents went from vhs to blu ray... don't even get me started on that...)

What was I saying?
Oh yes, I thought prequels were the wrong direction to go from the start. Life starts in the middle, history starts in the middle, part if the appeal of Star Wars is that it starts in the middle.

 

[zmunkz]

I think you raise some good points, though I wouldn't consider most of them as a guide to future story telling (even within the Star Wars universe)... more like, this is a good list of things that, retrospectively, worked in combination for that particular trilogy.

Technology not catered to.

This is really more of a genre decision than a reason it was good... one of the reasons I like Star Trek is specifically because they spend a little more time building plots around the "how" for the technology. Or are you saying keeping the soft sci-fi contributed to its mass appeal?

Faceless enemy.

I agree. Unless you want to spend a lot of time telling a moral ends-justify-means story, best not to get too bogged down in the fact everyone dying is a person and probably not a bad one. They don't need to be literally faceless... there are plenty of battle scenes where the enemy is hidden within a ship, or a single number in the lines of an enemy army, and you get the same effect. This is a very easy way to do it and to create the sense of a monolithic enemy.

Simple characters, simple motivation.

Hmm, this doesn't come to mind for me when I think of the original series. I don't know the series as well as many, no doubt, but Han always seemed like a complicated anti-hero. The family relationships in the story were certainly tangled. Vader turned out to be very complicated as well. Simple motivations, I agree.

No swearing. No speeches.

Yeah, the speeches thing is so annoying. It seems like an item on the hollywood checklist... the poorly written motivational speech. Swearing doesn't bother me.

A backdrop of terror.

Agree, and Star Wars did that quite well.

Simple design.

Yes, good point.

No stargazing.

Definitely agree, though I don't at all see this as unique to Star Wars, and I think exceptions for spectacular set-pieces (like the Death Star) can always be made.

Avoid prophesy.

I've found a lot of people who are turned off by prophecy stories. I think it is because prophesy is used so often so poorly, as a simple excuse to force a MC into action. I think as with other story-telling devices, it shouldn't be "avoid" or "include," rather it should be, "understand and use properly, or don't use at all."

The truly bad guys are people. Not robots, not aliens. Only a person can truly be evil to another person.

Interesting... I'd love for you to elaborate on this.

No puzzles.

I agree, for the kind of story Star Wars was telling, environmental puzzles weren't needed. Here again, though, this is not true of stories in general and wouldn't necessarily be a guideline for future Star Wars stories IMO.

 

[RX-79G]

This is really more of a genre decision than a reason it was good... one of the reasons I like Star Trek is specifically because they spend a little more time building plots around the "how" for the technology. Or are you saying keeping the soft sci-fi contributed to its mass appeal?

In attempting to explain everything in a short movie format, the depictions of technology universally come off as hokey. There is no way Han Solo effortlessly piloted the Falcon through an asteroid field while having a conversation. Will the story be better if we have to get an extensive explanation of the flight control system, or have to watch Solo pumping pedals and twitching joysticks? No, it will just be hokey.

Star Trek usually handles flight controls the same way, but they do like to blather about engines and such.

Hmm, this doesn't come to mind for me when I think of the original series. I don't know the series as well as many, no doubt, but Han always seemed like a complicated anti-hero. The family relationships in the story were certainly tangled. Vader turned out to be very complicated as well. Simple motivations, I agree.

Han is not as straightforward as Luke, but he isn't much more than an opportunist that fails to keep his professional distance due to the inspiring performance of Luke and his attraction to Leia. Pretty standard character stuff, IMO.

I've found a lot of people who are turned off by prophecy stories. I think it is because prophesy is used so often so poorly, as a simple excuse to force a MC into action. I think as with other story-telling devices, it shouldn't be "avoid" or "include," rather it should be, "understand and use properly, or don't use at all."

Prophesy is just exposition in disguise.

Interesting... I'd love for you to elaborate on this.

Xenophobia is understandable. No one is outraged when a tiger eats a deer, or a person. You can only take the actions of your enemies personally if they are capable of empathy toward you, but choose to ignore that connection.

An alien or machine is understood to have different views of life and liberty.


I wasn't presenting any of these points to say "this is how movies should be written", but if anyone wanted to create the exciting feel of Star Wars and Empire again, they would do well to pay attention to some of this. Most of the failures in the follow on films can be traced to ignoring an excellent formula.