Star Wars steals from everything. Here’s a review I wrote (in about 1999) of the (original) Star Wars trilogy:
Let me tell you a story:
There was once an orphan who had grown up on an isolated farm with a childless aunt and uncle. When separated from them, the orphan went on a quest with several other characters, one a metal man and another a large furry creature. They were advised by a wise old man to defeat a certain villain, but instead they were captured. Armed with a powerful item they had acquired, the orphan freed the others and killed the villain. Though they were all rewarded for their heroism, the orphan had acquired no riches, no kingdom to rule, and no romantic partner.
Perhaps you recognize what I have done. I’ve simultaneously told you the stories of the Star Wars movies and The Wizard of Oz. These resemblances aren’t coincidental. There’s a pattern here – the classic quest tale – and you can find it in other versions as well. Consider the following story:
Our hero, who had grown up as an orphan hearing about great adventures of old, found himself going on a quest with several others in which they had to destroy a powerful object and kill a villain. A wise old man who aided them sacrificed himself for them, but he returned later to give them advice. The hero lost an appendage in a battle with the villain and learned that the almost magical powers that he had acquired could be misused. Although all the central characters were rewarded, the hero has no family to return to and no romantic partner.
Here I’ve simultaneously told the stories of the Star Wars films and The Lord of the Rings. These films also have many resemblances with other versions of the quest tale, including the King Arthur legend and the Prydain books by Lloyd Alexander. Thinking of the Star Wars trilogy in this way has made me realize that things in them that struck me as odd at first are just parts of the archetype. Luke Skywalker had to have grown up as an orphan, and it had to be Han Solo, and not Luke, who wins the love of Princess Leia.
Archetypal quest stories don’t get much respect from literary critics or from film critics. There was quite an uproar in Great Britain earlier this year when a survey showed that the top choice among readers for the greatest book of the century was The Lord of the Rings. The Star Wars movies are an even more stripped-down archetypal quest than The Lord of the Rings. There’s certainly no brilliant acting in these films. Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher are only workmanlike actors. Even Harrison Ford isn’t really a great actor. There’s no deep exploration of a character’s psyche and no agonizing over a tortuous moral choice. It’s not really even true that these films get by on their special effects, since today there’s no longer anything particularly striking about the look of these movies. They’re still a great story though. One of the commonest complaints about them is that they’re just fairy tales or simplistic battles between Good and Evil. But really it’s not a trivial choice when Obi-Wan Kenobi dies to save the others or when Luke has to kill his father, and far from being an obvious fight between Good and Evil, I find myself confused by the muddled distinction between using the force for good means and being seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.
George Lucas has thrown other things into the trilogy that I don’t find nearly as interesting. The main one is the references to World War II films. Consider the visual design of the Millennium Falcon. In its clunkiness, it doesn’t look like 1990’s technology or even 1970’s. It looks like something out of the 1940’s. Those space battles using a gun turret only make sense in World War II technology. The way the fighters fly is stolen from old aircraft combat, and the scene where the fighters dive-bomb the Death Star is modeled after a World War II film called The Dam Busters. More specifically, the Star Wars movies seem like a Howard Hawks film about World War II. They have many of the themes that director Hawks liked to work into his war and Western films. There’s a diverse group of men who want to prove themselves in action, and there’s one equally brave woman with two of those men contending for her. There’s also a conflict between a younger man and a father-figure in which the young man must prove himself against the older.
In addition, there are many other old movies referred to – The Hidden Fortress, The Searchers, The Triumph of the Will – but this makes Lucas sound like Quentin Tarantino, as though Lucas were just an obsessive film nut who could throw in homages to all his favorite movies. At times there are almost too many elements in this mix, but most of the time Lucas has assimilated all his sources into one great story. I hope you have a chance to see these films in their current re-release.