Star Wars Speculation: The Poetry of the Star Wars Saga

Welcome readers to another installment of Star Wars Speculation!! I took a break to bring you my first "In Defense Of" entry, In Defense Of: 'Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice' (The "Martha Scene), but today I'm back to dive deep into Star Wars again in the mere weeks leading up to the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. This week's topic I'll be tackling is "The Poetry of the Star Wars Saga" and I'll be using that as the basis of my argument that The Force Awakens isn't a rehash of A New Hope. Also, keep in mind that I'm writing this with the base assumption that you'll have at least seen A New Hope and The Force Awakens so there could be somethings you may consider spoilers if you haven't seen either for whatever reason... Although, I suspect you would not be here if that were the case. 

The Poetry of the Star Wars Saga

So I'm sure many of you are wondering what the heck poetry has to do with Star Wars, and the answer to that comes from the Saga's creator himself, George Lucas.

Back in 2002, Lucas told Entertainment Weekly "I create themes, and I repeat those themes, in different chords and different arrangements" regarding how the Prequel Trilogy mirrors the Original Trilogy. Within the Skywalker Saga, there are many moments that reverberate and are echoed across the Saga. Lucas explained it like this, "It's like poetry. Every stanza kind of rhymes with the last one." There are quite a few story beats that carry thematic significance within the Saga, and these are absolutely integral to the DNA of Star Wars. Naturally, these aforementioned segments resurface as a means of strengthening the overall narrative.

Evidence of Lucas' comments can be found all throughout the Star Wars saga, but I've embedded a link to a brief Vimeo video from Pablo Fernández Eyre that keys in on some of the prominent examples below:

Now that you've hopefully watched the video and have some idea of what I'm talking about, let's dig in.

Lucas' approach refers back to the ancient style of poetry commonly found in The Old Testament of the Bible that is often called parallelism.

Now you may have noticed in the video that the Prequel Trilogy and Original Trilogy relate to each other in this way with The Phantom Menace correlating with A New Hope, Attack Of The Clones with The Empire Strikes Back, and Revenge Of The Sith with Return Of The Jedi.

How does this apply to Star Wars now?

I suspect the ongoing sequel trilogy will fit into this pattern as well. The Force Awakens has already broken into the cycle by mirroring A New Hope, and subsequently The Phantom Menace, but it remains to be seen how much The Last Jedi will evoke The Empire Strikes Back or Attack of the Clones. Based on the trailers though, it seems that there will at least be a few similarities so I suspect it's very possible it will jump in while also differentiating itself.

The brilliance of this technique though is how it permits wiggle-room for the storytellers to deviate the pre-established path and simultaneously incorporate the integral elements of the franchise. I think people get hung up on the idea that just because a film homages something, it automatically means that it ripped the other one off. However, Star Wars is a franchise that has always stayed true to itself in the face of exploring such an expansive galaxy.

Why 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' isn't a remake of 'A New Hope'

I remember when The Force Awakens first came out, just about everyone loved it. It wasn't until a few weeks afterwards that someone on the Internet pointed out some similarities harkening back to A New Hope.

Of course, this spread like wildfire and people turned on the film saying things like "OMG, J.J. AbRaM5 rU1N3d St4R W4r5!" or "tH3 f0Rc3 4W4k3n5 5ux 4ND T0R3 Ap4Rt MY CH1LdH00D!!" Yes, the fandom whined. Like they always do. Now, I'm not here to refute that there are some similar story beats to A New Hope. That much is crystal clear, and I can see the reasons why the parallelism was implemented.

First of all, people need to take into account the state of the franchise at this point. Star Wars was not as commercially viable as it once was. The Prequels had soured the general moviegoer's appetite for anymore Star Wars. Sure, there were The Clone Wars and Rebels animated series, comics, novels, and video games, but there hadn't been a live action Star Wars film since Revenge of the Sith... There was a lot riding on the success of The Force Awakens, and fortunately it decimated the box office, but Disney was taking a gamble buying Lucasfilm. What if they were unable to create something that would appeal to both old and new fans? That's where the parallelism comes in.

J.J. Abrams was brought on to direct and also had a huge hand in the script alongside Star Wars scribe Lawrence Kasdan and Pixar writer Michael Arndt. The thing is... Abrams is a fan of Star Wars himself, in addition to being a fantastic filmmaker. As a part of the Star Wars fandom, he knew what they would respond well to and so naturally he knew what would click with audiences and what wouldn't. He shot on film, used practical effects/locations, the cast of the Original Trilogy was brought back, and incorporated as many references as possible.

Abrams and Lucasfilm understood that the structure of this new Star Wars had to resemble something audiences were already familiar with if it were to be accepted and jettison a new era of Star Wars, so naturally they pulled from Lucas' pattern itself and echoed some beats from the Original Trilogy. This mirroring technique has already been implemented in Star Wars, yet fans feel the need to complain for whatever reason. They act as though most other film franchises don't do this in order to keep the franchise DNA intact.

Just look at Jurassic World and Creed. The plot of both films are essentially the same base premise of the original film in the subsequent franchise (Jurassic Park and Rocky). Both films also feature pivotal moments homaging back to the original with the same sense of nostalgia utilized by The Force Awakens.

Both films were released in 2015, the same year as The Force Awakens, yet I hardly have ever seen anyone call out either for "copying the original." I've never seen anyone complain about the Prequel's use of parallelism and mirroring either... Although, that could be due to the multitude of problems present in the Prequels...

If someone still wants to complain that The Force Awakens is a remake of A New Hope after reading all of my informed arguments, I ask them to please elaborate on how The Force Awakens blatantly rips off A New Hope. 

Sure, you can tell me that something pivotal to the plot is put inside a droid, there's a desert planet, on that planet is our protagonist who longs for more, there's a super space weapon capable of destroying planets, the antagonist is masked and wears dark clothing, there's a cantina, and the heroes' mentor is killed by the antagonist on the Death Star/Starkiller Base, BUT those are the familiar elements of The Force Awakens I mentioned earlier. I've constantly found that in the internet's insistence to force these two films to fit the same framework, they have to describe the plots with incredibly vague terminology. The further you narrow in on the films, the more different they become. The Force Awakens tells the same story in broad strokes, but the specificity is drastically different.

Also, the whole complaint about The First Order building another Death Star seems sorta stupid to me. Realistically, if you were an evil organization and knew there was a weapon that had previously been built with the capability to destroy entire planets, wouldn't you have a desire to reconstruct it with major modifications to cause even more destruction? Just a thought... Sure, the last two were taken out, but that just shows there's room for improvement. With that being said, I'd still rather not see a fourth iteration of a planet-sized weapon in either The Last Jedi or Episode IX.

So yes, I can agree with the sentiment that Lucasfilm played it safe, but Lucasfilm needed something that could be conceived as commercially safe in order to take some secluded risks. Just take a look at the film's cast... The sequel trilogy's leads are diverse both ethnically and in terms of gender. Rey was the saga's first female protagonist who turned out to be the TRUE protagonist as the force user many had already dismissed the possibility of thanks to marketing showing Finn holding the saber. Finn was the first African American protagonist in Star Wars (sure you could make a case for Lando I guess... but he's more of a side supporting character in my eyes), who was positioned as a turncoat stormtrooper. Lastly, Poe Dameron was the first Latin protagonist.

**Spoiler Warning for Star Wars: The Force Awakens**

Kylo Ren's STILL rather controversial (but I'll dig more into that in my next post), and I don't think the fact he killed Han Solo did him any favors in that regard... Much less, make him a safe choice as an antagonist.

**End of Spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens**

In conclusion, The Force Awakens had a difficult task ahead of it in introducing new characters, bringing back revered, classic characters, continuing the story left off in Return of the Jedi, and making Star Wars commercially viable again, but I think it did all of that beautifully and I still appreciate the film as one of my favorites in the franchise! I'd still even consider the first time I saw The Force Awakens to be one of the greatest experiences I've ever had in a movie theater because it's simply something I longed for most of my life and it delivered everything I possibly could have imagined. For all of those reasons and even more that I won't get into for the sake of length, I absolutely adore Star Wars The Force Awakens and it's use of parallelism to accomplish the daunting task of revitalizing Star Wars.

-As always, may the force be with you!!