Spoilers What do casual fans get wrong about Star Wars?

[MoonSong]

Also the importance of trade policy.

Well, it's important.

 

[Reynard]

Is there a book that is a deep dive into the philosophy, politics and compromises of Star Wars in 197x (i don't know how long it was in production)? Cause that would be really interesting.

 

[Deset Gled]

Is there a book that is a deep dive into the philosophy, politics and compromises of Star Wars in 197x (i don't know how long it was in production)? Cause that would be really interesting.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Reynard]

The Hero with a Thousand Faces - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Cute. Not helpful, but cute.

 

[Gradine]

 

[Deset Gled]

Cute. Not helpful, but cute.

I'm being serious. There are extremely few direct allusions or real politics in Star Wars. This becomes even more obvious when you look at early versions of the scripts, projects like Splinter of the Minds Eye, or stories like how Revenge of the Jedi got turned into Return.

What's really happening is that it's a strong version of the monomyth. Which means people can cut-and-paste any other version of the monomyth onto Star Wars and claim it's an allegory. The same thing happens in Tolkien discussions all the time.

Lucas did borrow a bunch of stuff. Editing from the Dambusters and Ben Hurr. Some mythology from Dune. Robots from Flash Gordon. A shot or two from Lawrence of Arabia. Some generic "the walls are moving" plot from any adventure serial. But none of that constitutes philosophy; it's somewhere between homage and theft, depending on your mood.

 

[Koloth]

That Captain Kirk destroyed the Death Star with the USS Enterprise Battlestar Galactica.

There, fixed.

 

[gnarlygninja]

Is there a book that is a deep dive into the philosophy, politics and compromises of Star Wars in 197x (i don't know how long it was in production)? Cause that would be really interesting.

Check out The Secret History of Star Wars or The Making of Star Wars. Fair warning though, The Making of can be fairly expensive and there's one for each movie.

 

[The Firebird]

I'm being serious. There are extremely few direct allusions or real politics in Star Wars. This becomes even more obvious when you look at early versions of the scripts, projects like Splinter of the Minds Eye, or stories like how Revenge of the Jedi got turned into Return.

What's really happening is that it's a strong version of the monomyth. Which means people can cut-and-paste any other version of the monomyth onto Star Wars and claim it's an allegory. The same thing happens in Tolkien discussions all the time.

Lucas did borrow a bunch of stuff. Editing from the Dambusters and Ben Hurr. Some mythology from Dune. Robots from Flash Gordon. A shot or two from Lawrence of Arabia. Some generic "the walls are moving" plot from any adventure serial. But none of that constitutes philosophy; it's somewhere between homage and theft, depending on your mood.

I think this is important to keep in mind when the discussion makes real-world analogies. A popular one here is "Star Wars is critical of America for reason X". Certainly that is there in the text; but there are as many references to Rome (e.g., Palpatine = Palatine) as to America. Star Wars blends so many different influences and outlooks that isn't about X, in the way that Dr. Strangelove is a very targeted critique of the Cold War arms race. To some extent, people watching Star Wars miss ideas that seem obvious to others because there are just so many ideas there. And what a person gets out of it says as much about what they are looking for in media as about the text itself.

 

[gnarlygninja]

I am not really sure I can actually respond to that without violating the rule on politics, but imo that is undercutting the extent to which criticizing American imperialism is baked into Star Wars. Consider that he only started making that movie after the studios all universally passed on Apocalypse Now.