Episode 19: Star Wars and Storytelling (11/19/2020)

Hey y’all. Welcome to Fast Facts for Gen Z. I’m your host, Callie, and I don’t know anything about anything. Come with me while I explore the world, and I’ll tell you everything you ever, and never, wanted to know, through the eyes of Generation Z.

Today’s episode: The phenomenon that is the Star Wars franchise and the propensity of humans to lean into familiar stories.

If you’ve known me long enough to make me not self-conscious about my interests, you’ll know that I absolutely love the Star Wars franchise with my whole entire heart. Except the prequels. We don’t talk about the prequels. It’s complicated to explain why I love it so much, but I suppose this is the place for working through complicated thoughts. The original three Star Wars movies are literally the first movies I remember watching. My family had the OG VHS tapes, so none of the weird late 90s/early 2000s CGI got in the way of my fascination with the series. We don’t have a working VCR anymore, so now I have to watch the remastered versions, and they are simply not as good. Close-up CGI of odd, rubbery-looking space creatures that don’t move in any sort of life-like way feels gratuitous, you know? It’s just there to say hey, look at these weird creatures we made with cool effects. Anyway.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Star Wars, I’ll give you the briefest plot summary I possibly can give about 9 movies. You know The Odyssey? Like, Homer’s The Odyssey? It’s like that, but space. It’s the hero’s journey. Main character gets a challenge, they leave home, they get taught by someone wiser, they go through many challenges and trials and grow as a person, and then they come home a hero. That’s the original trilogy and the new trilogy (but in space). The prequels follow a similar sequence, but it’s a villain arc instead of a hero arc with the main character. He ends up evil instead of coming home a hero. That’s really all you need to know.

I think Star Wars is so, so cool. I mean, who wouldn’t want to fly a spaceship and have a robot best friend and wield a lightsaber and use the Force? It’d be so cool. I think that even if the plot were bad, those parts of it would still be pretty darn cool. The Jedi are also awesome. Even, and perhaps especially, in the prequel movies, the Jedi take a stand for peace and balance and the protection of the weak. In the lore, they’re not supposed to have any romantic relationships, because strong emotions and loyalties can distract them from protecting the greater good, and may make them extra vulnerable if their loved one is captured, but this rule is routinely ignored. I would like it more if they actually followed that rule, but alas, mainstream media simply does not know how to not include romantic subplots. I just think that if you introduce a rule like that and then break it a lot, but it only sometimes matters, then you haven’t done rule-breaking well. Now that I think of it, ignoring that rule basically drove the entire conflict of the prequels, which is part of the reason that those movies are not compelling at all unless you absolutely adore 19 year old Hayden Christian Anderson, which like, why? When you have a franchise like Star Wars that’s built on epic stories of empires and good vs evil and interplanetary war and diplomacy, and then you base the conflict of three movies on a love story between two young characters with a 5 year age gap and very little chemistry, it’s underwhelming at best.

For a lot of people who love the original movies, the new trilogy has felt disappointing. I love it, but there are other “traditionalist” fans who really, really do not. Half of me thinks it’s the misogyny, since the new trilogy has a strong female protagonist with almost no romantic subplot that people on the internet love to hate, but the other half understands that for some people, the Star Wars saga was over, and to bring it back is to ruin the resolution that came to theaters in 1983. Now, the nine movie sequence is called the Skywalker Saga, after its main characters, and it is officially over. But that doesn’t mean Star Wars is over, because Disney cannot help but wring every last drop of money out of the franchise. Exhibit A: The Mandalorian. Which, don’t get me wrong, is a great show, but I’m not confident in Disney’s ability to make all of its new Star Wars content great. Eventually, I think it will be time to stop, but the Star Wars universe is legitimately so big and so detailed that there might be a lot of content left to be made. Lots of stories left to tell.

Also, the people who have only seen the new movies blow my mind. Some people have told me that they watched the new movies and didn’t really get it, and that… like… yeah. It’s a nine part series. Disney gave you movies seven through nine and said, “here, this is Star Wars.” It’s like starting Harry Potter on the last book and being expected to understand all the characters and history and references and conflict. Understanding the core conflicts of the new trilogy hinges on the audience having seen the originals. You don’t have to have seen the prequels though. Doesn’t matter. It adds a little lore and backstory, but you could watch Star Wars and love it and never need to see the prequels.

From some perspectives, Star Wars is a little bit silly. A lot of the characters are EXTRA annoying, at least before they grow as people. The jokes repeat themselves and the storyline is a bit predictable. In the new trilogy, parts of the plot feel true and epic and right, and other parts feel unnecessary or too far-fetched, even for a story set in space with characters who have telekinesis and laser swords. But, from other perspectives, the themes and messages and emotions hit home. The characters’ values and actions are a reflection of our own values and actions, albeit in a different world. But isn’t that all storytelling is? We put ourselves into worlds that could never exist, just to see if we’d still be human. Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses, and though we can never expect to completely overcome our fears and insecurities, we can learn to coexist with them. And even though we know how it will end – good will overcome evil, and justice will triumph – it’s still an ending we root for. Because that’s what we want in real life, isn’t it? We want to believe that good will always win in the long run. It’s a hard fight in real life, and there’s a lot of disagreement as to what constitutes “good” and “evil,” or if those concepts even exist at all. In a fictional universe, it’s much easier to discern between good and evil, and the conflict can be neatly wrapped up in the span of a few hours.

I said earlier that there might be lots of stories left to tell, and in a way, that’s true. But at the same time, how many times have we heard the hero’s journey? Not just Star Wars, but also Harry Potter, Spider-Man, The Lion King, Lord of the Rings, countless others. The Lion King is just Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Shakespeare pulled from Greek and Roman plays. Mythology from all over the world features mortals overcoming insurmountable odds, and gods that are a bit too prideful, a bit too angry, a bit too human for their own good. More recently, every Hallmark movie ever made is the exact same. In my family, when we watch a movie or show, one of us will often manage to predict the next line almost word for word, and then we’ll comment, “It writes itself.” Every story is just another story. But for some reason, romances are still popular and I’ll never get sick of watching Star Wars. So, why? Why do we lean so heavily into repetition?

Big surprise, I don’t know. Remember, I don’t know anything. But my theory is that we want worlds that reflect our own, stories that reflect our own, and troubles and challenges that reflect our own. And, in the end, we want to give ourselves hope. We see ourselves in the characters we create, and we see them go on to do great things and overcome the barriers that represent our own, and it helps us to believe that we, too, can be free of our own tethers and triumph over any perceived evils in our lives.

Of course, up until now, I’ve been saying “we” as if the human experience is any one, complete thing, and the characters and stories I see myself in are the same for everyone. But of course, that’s untrue. The particular hero’s journey I love may be very different from the hero’s journey somebody else loves. The story format works, but characters matter just as much. For example, if I had been alive when the first Star Wars movie came out, and I had been introduced to this blond-haired, blue-eyed, skinny white boy who whines incessantly and is obsessed with a father he never met but doesn’t care about his mother, and then I had seen him get telekinesis and a lightsaber and guidance and opportunity and glory, I’m not sure I would have gone to see the next movie. I wouldn’t have seen myself in him. It’s important to note that there are exactly three women in the entire original trilogy, and one of them dies a quarter of the way into the first movie. Because, you know, women weren’t invented until the year 2000. There is also, I believe, one singular person of color. Aliens don’t count. I’m not saying that women or people of color weren’t fans of Star Wars, because of course that’s not true, but the experience is just different. I think that might be part of the reason why the new trilogy resonates with me so much.

For the first time in the main Star Wars movies, we got a female Jedi. And, when she first took on the character, the actress was only 21. She was easy for me, specifically, to see myself in, and for the first time it felt like I was being taken along the journey of becoming a Jedi, and I was really a part of Star Wars, instead of just standing by and watching. It’s the same story, even closer than other hero’s journeys because it takes place in the same universe. But to me, it means more. So maybe we do all like the same kinds of stories of hardship and triumph, but when we see our real selves reflected in the story, that’s when the enjoyment of the art turns to love.

Thank you for listening to Fast Facts for Gen Z. Transcripts of this episode and every other episode are available now at www.fastfactsforgenz.wordpress.com, so go check that out if you’re interested! This is Callie, signing off.