This week Neil Calloway cautions against too many films in the franchise…
The news that Kathleen Kennedy plans a whole universe of Star Wars movies should be greeted with trepidation.
I love Star Wars, but I can’t help but feel more movies will chip away at the mythology of the films.. The prequels already gave us Midi-chlorians and a rather disappointing explanation or what the cool sounding Clone Wars actually were. I’m looking forward to Rogue One, and I hope it lives up to expectations, but some things are better left to our imagination.
At heart, Star Wars – the original trilogy at least, is a Western, a fight between good and evil on the margins of a lawless world, the hero rides in, saves the day and disappears, that in a way, is what happens in A New Hope, with Han Solo standing in for the archetypal hero. If we bring in a backstory, we’re going to lose that mystique that the Western hero requires; watching The Searchers (an influence on Star Wars, if only in the fact that the characters drink at a cantina), you know very little about Ethan Edwards, the character played by John Wayne, the same is true for Han Solo in Star Wars (and Mad Max in his films); you don’t know and more importantly you don’t need to know his backstory; he has a past, is slightly damaged, but can be relied upon to get you out of a scrape.
Boba Fett is similar; for such a popular character very little is known about him, or rather very little was known before the prequels. From an appearance at a parade near San Francisco in 1978 (where he was played by LucasFilm’s Duwayne Dunham, who would go on to edit Return of the Jedi, and direct episodes of Twin Peaks, to an animated appearance in the notorious Star Wars Holiday Special to roles in Empire and Jedi, Fett rose to become one of everyone’s favourite characters, yet watching the original trilogy all you are told is that he is a bounty hunter with cool armour, but really, what more do you need? A backstory, more than a few scraps of dialogue and showing some emotion might ruin that mystery.
I’m a Star Wars fan – I not only know what BBY and ABY stand for, I know what they mean, I know the names of the bands in the Mos Eisley Cantina and at Jabba’s Palace, I know about the Endor Holocaust, but will the franchise be enhanced by more films? I don’t think it will.
Heavily influenced by Joseph Campbell’s work on myths and the idea of the hero’s journey, Star Wars is as close to a 20th Century Myth as you can get; people list themselves as Jedi on census forms; Tolkien fans don’t tend to do that, CS Lewis fans don’t call themselves “Narnians” when asked for their religion. The watering down of this myth that comes with each instalment will only damage the myth.
“It’s just a film, you’re a grown man, get over it.” You might say, and I’d have to concede that you have a point, but some things are important, and this isn’t like people boycotting Ghostbusters because of its all female cast. I’ll watch the new films, but I can’t help but feel something will be lost with each new one. Star Wars shouldn’t become just another franchise in a world of franchises. But I’ll work on getting over it.
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future instalments.
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https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published September 25, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
