May the 4th Special: Why we love Star Wars
This
year, Star Wars Celebration paid
homage to the 40th anniversary of the first Star
Wars film hitting theatres. But honestly, it’s kind of hard to believe
that. In less than half a decade, Star
Wars has impacted popular culture in a way that barely anything has before
it. Even people who’ve never seen one of the movies know who Darth Vader and
R2-D2 are, and John Williams’ score is one of the most iconic film soundtracks
ever composed.
So when
it came time to write my piece for May the 4th, I wanted to try and see why
people loved these movies so much. I mean, obviously we love Star Wars because the movies are quality
productions that are very entertaining to watch (well, most of them), but for a
series that has such an enormous impact on the world around us, I wanted to see
if I could really figure out the reason why these movies are so beloved.
After
Rogue One was released on Blu-ray, I
did the only sensible thing for any Star
Wars fan to do: I rewatched the Original Trilogy and Force Awakens afterwards. They really are the types of movies that
I could watch over and over again and never get tired of. While they aren’t
exactly the type of movie where you notice something new every time (although I
love pointing out the stormtrooper that hits his head on the door in A New Hope), but the movies really are
the type of adventure that you can watch forever.
I
think part of that is thanks to the simplicity of the story. George Lucas has
gone on record saying a lot of the plot of A
New Hope was based on Joseph Campbell’s 1949 work “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, more commonly known as Monomyth.
The story of a hero coming from humble beginnings but being key to defeating an
unstoppable force is one we all can relate to, because everyone’s fantasized at
some point of escaping their boring everyday life and going to Coruscant or
Middle Earth or Hogwarts or whatever your favourite fictional place is.
I
think that’s why we relate to Luke, Anakin and Rey so much. We see them
starting off as a farmhand, slave and scavenger respectively, meaning we have
so much more of a connection to them as we watch them grow and change over the
course of their trilogies. We see them leave their desert homes and travel to
the stars, fighting evil and learning about the Force. They go on the
adventures we wish we could.
That’s
why I love Star Wars so much. For two
hours it allows us to leave our boring lives the same way Luke leaves his. We
get to escape the constant stress life gives you and visit a galaxy far, far
away. Despite how dark the movies get at times, there’s always a sense of hope
built into the stories. At the end of Empire
Strikes Back, even when Han has been frozen and taken to Jabba and Luke’s
just had his entire world sent crumbling down upon him, they’re still looking
optimistically towards the future. It sends a good message to the viewer, that
being that even when things seem to be at their worst, hope will get you
through to the light at the other end.
And I
think that’s why Star Wars has
changed pop culture more than anything else ever has in just forty years. It
helps that the action is awesome, the characters are immensely likeable and the
galaxy is a fully-realized and believable world (plus it helps that A New Hope basically invented modern
cinema), but I think the real reason why it’s so popular is how relatable and
optimistic it is about the world around us. We all want to be noble
adventurers, and Star Wars allows us
to fulfill that for a little bit. We love these movies, books, TV and games
because they give us the chance to experience something we never could in real
life, and that’s what I think makes them awesome.
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