READ THIS ESSAY ALL THE WAY TO THE END!!!! I implore you all to read this beautifully written post. This is the most insightful piece of Star Wars analysis I’ve ever read, and it hits the nail on the head every single time. I’m just absolutely floored, because it perfectly encompasses every single point I’ve made in speaking against The Force Awakens, and PERFECTLY sums up why the fandom is so divided on the issue.
THE PEOPLE WHO DO NOT TAKE ISSUE WITH THE FORCE AWAKENS ARE NOT VIEWING THE ORIGINAL FILMS AS WHAT THEY ACTUALLY ARE: OPERATIC EPICS SET IN SPACE, INCARNATIONS OF MEDIEVAL LORE, RELIGIOUS THEMES AND SYMBOLISM, AND EMULATIONS OF GREEK MYTHS. If they do not see why the new film is incompatible with the originals, it is because they do not understand the message and nature of the completed saga.
I’ll just pull my favorite quotes from the piece for those who don’t want to read the whole thing:
“From the beginning, Star Wars was conceptualized not as a science fiction film, but as a mythical epic, consistent with those of poetic eddas, from Beowulf to the Iliad and the Odyssey. In Empire of Dreams, these are cited as influences, as well as the Legend of King Arthur, and other assorted Arthuriana, determining that they comprised the pool from which Star Wars drew it’s mythic archetypes.”
“So where does The Force Awakens go wrong, all matter of opinion aside? Why did an OT fan, a general audience viewer, and a Saga fanatic alike all pan the touted ‘sequel film’? What things in the equation were changed? Why does Grandma’s cookie recipe suddenly taste store-bought? The Force Awakens overturns all the concepts previously explained, acting as if these long-established and intrinsic elements of the coherent myth are suddenly in need of subversion. It is anathema to the very prospect of it. While it fulfilled many fans’ generally acknowledged desired return to the OT, (in characters only, not in concept, which I’ll elaborate on) and allowed fans to glut themselves on nostalgia (to the point of near blatant plagiarism of ANH) it does not follow the formula set forth as precedent by all six preceding films, original trilogy and prequel trilogy alike. It completely lacks a hero archetype to carry the myth. None of the new characters have an arc that complies to these basic principles. To try and create a new ‘Chosen One’ from any of these characters would be utterly contrived. In addition to that fatal flaw, TFA physically denies the character arcs of all the original trilogy’s main cast, because the film spends too much time looking back, and not enough time looking forward.”
YES!!! How long have I been saying this???? Bless this wonderful person for so eloquently and precisely honing in on this issue.
“This is exactly his problem. In relegating Luke’s character to being in absentia for almost the entirety of the film, Abrams likewise decided to disregard everything previously determined about the character. He altered the very facts that defined Luke Skywalker, and his journey. This action is commonly called character assassination. Luke, who stubbornly refuses to give up on anyone, even Darth Vader, is now a man who leaves everything and everyone he knows and goes into exile, leaving his nephew to drown amidst the tides of the Dark Side. Abrams has tried to turn Luke Skywalker into a myth, but he’s missed the point. Luke cannot be ‘a myth’ if his character arc, as now retconned by Abrams, ends in meaningless failure. The whole point of a myth is to remind people of a basic and universal truth: myths exist where good eventually triumphs over evil, where there is some purposeful resolution. In failing to understand that, Abrams has undermined the entire purpose of the six film Saga as a whole.”
AGAIN FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK
“Star Wars, as it was, either Episodes I- VI, or IV-III, depending on how you want to look at it, is a complete entity. Other stories could and did exist in T-canon and C-canon, but they were all secondary to the Saga itself–aka, the six films that told the story of Anakin Skywalker’s rise, fall and redemption. By attempting to continue an already completed story, Abrams found himself suddenly between a rock and a hard place. The simple fact of the matter is that no sequels, no matter who might have written them, ought to have existed as ‘canonical’ films in addition to the Complete Saga.”
I want this essay bound in leather. Or printed and framed and hung all around my house.
“The Skywalkers’ story ends with a balancing of the universe in which it exists. To go any farther, and to claim to be a true, necessary part of that story, is to deny the purpose for which Star Wars was written. To move forward from this point, and try to maintain that it’s still part of the Saga, is a completely erroneous act.”
“Therein lies the fault of The Force Awakens. Warmed by scenarios pulled too liberally from ANH, pressured into disliking the prequels due to popular bias, lulled by the familiar faces of Han and Leia despite their blatantly regressed characterization, fans have been coerced into ignoring the wrongness of the characterization, the language, even the cinematographic style of TFA. It does not fit into the cohesiveness of the Skywalker Saga because it cannot be part of the Saga. The Saga is over, complete. Its vision fulfilled.”
“Star Wars without mythopoesis, is just simply not Star Wars at all.”
This is it. This is why I have such problems with The Force Awakens. This is why I reacted so strongly to the new canon. This is why I, a student who spent my undergrad in Masters courses on medieval literature, arthurian legend, and greek tragedy–examining the very themes and individual works from which Lucas drew his inspiration–have been running into so very many problems with people lauding The Force Awakens. Fans who just couldn’t seem to understand WHY so very many of us were coming away with the exact same sentiments. And the truth of the matter is that A LOT of us have THE EXACT SAME OPINION. It’s not a coincidence that again and again, so many viewers are reaching the same conclusion. It’s not for nothing that countless bloggers have sent me incredibly emotional messages regarding The Force Awakens and how WRONG it was to them–almost to the point of sacrilege–and how relieved they were to realize that they are not alone in that opinion: that the new film negates the original saga, that it renders our heroes’ journeys and victories invalid, futile, and meaningless. This is why just yesterday I was utterly BAFFLED when someone suggested that Luke might once again come perilously close to falling to the Dark Side. This is why it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to see Han and Leia in the film. This is why an enormous amount of people say things like “I loved the new characters, but I hated how the old characters were treated.”
It is because The Force Awakens treats the original saga as an open-ended story. Inconclusive. It is because fans of the new film (and by this I specifically mean fans that aggressively attack any of us who take issue with TFA, fans who claim there is nothing whatsoever wrong with the film, and who flat out refuse to concede why some people might not praise it as the best Star Wars movie to grace the Earth) have no problem viewing it as “the next chapter,” as though it were always conceived as a part of the story. Because the new film is “official canon” delivered by Disney and Lucasfilm, fans accept it as a part of the narrative, as though the narrative had still been going on, and the Force Awakens was always going to be a part of the story from the start. BUT IT WASN’T. THE STORY ENDED, AND ITS ENDING WAS DECISIVE. THE LIGHT HAD WON. THE TRAGEDY HAD ENDED. ANAKIN WAS REDEEMED AND SACRIFICED HIMSELF, AND LUKE AND LEIA AND HAN HAD COME TO THE END OF THEIR ARCS, THEIR STORIES FULFILLED, THEIR STRUGGLES VALIDATED AND THEIR VALIANCE REWARDED. THE FORCES OF GOOD HAD OVERCOME EVIL, WHICH WAS THE POINT OF THE ENTIRE STORY. THE PROPHECY HAD BEEN FULFILLED. ALL WAS RESTORED. AND BECAUSE THE NEW FILM TAKES AN ALREADY ENDED STORY, SAYS THAT IT ACTUALLY WASN’T ENDED AT ALL, AND THEN ATTEMPTS TO MANIPULATE THE STORY IN A MANNER COMPLETELY ANTITHETICAL TO WHAT THE ORIGINAL STORY WAS INTENDED TO BE, FANS WHO RECOGNIZE THIS FEEL BETRAYED AND CONFUSED, NOT TO MENTION ANGRY AND DISSATISFIED. IT IS BECAUSE THESE FANS, WHETHER THEY CONSCIOUSLY IDENTIFY ALL THE INCREDIBLY ACCURATE POINTS ARTICULATED IN THIS POST OR SIMPLY DISCERNED THAT ‘WAIT A MINUTE, THIS JUST COMPLETELY CONTRADICTED EVERYTHING THE ORIGINAL SAGA PRESENTED TO US,’ CAN SEE THAT THE EVENTS OF THE NEW FILM ARE INHERENTLY AT ODDS WITH THE EVENTS OF THE ORIGINAL FILMS, AS WELL AS WITH THEIR OVERALL MESSAGE.
And I think OP was entirely right in the diagnosis that many people are not watching Star Wars as the myth that it is, but rather simply as a blockbuster or a regular story or an action film like The Avengers, but that’s not what Star Wars inherently is. And again, I think the OP is correct that many people do not WANT it to be that. They don’t want it to be a work comprised of mythic elements. They’re not interested in media created in that light, when today the nitty-gritty realistic stories and “relatable,” morally ambiguous characters and grim fates are preferred to, say, the hero that Luke Skywalker is and what he represents thematically: the redeemer, the champion of the Light, the keeper of the faith, et cetera.
This is why people will talk about how it’s “interesting” and “more human” and “more realistic” to view a film in which Han and Leia’s marriage has fallen apart, or where potentially Luke could fall to the Dark Side. It is because those fans are failing to recognize the nature of Star Wars as a very symbolic, very spiritual epic intentionally created to emulate classic literature and medieval myth that they don’t realize why Star Wars is inherently not a work meant to treat in that manner. They’re trying to take Frodo and Aragorn and Gandalf and drop them into Game of Thrones, despite the fact that the two works are inherently incompatible, because Game of Thrones’s dark realism is what’s popular right now. And this is why you see COUNTLESS dialogues on tumblr, where one person is lamenting the fates of the original characters as portrayed in The Force Awakens, while others are arguing back that “BUT THIS HAPPENS IN REAL LIFE!!! IT’S COMPLETELY PLAUSIBLE!!!” Yes it’s PLAUSIBLE and yes it happens in “real life,” but Star Wars is not meant to be representative of real life. It exists in a different sphere of truth, where despite the fact that the unquestionable humanity of the characters and the overarching human themes and questions posed in the story make it so powerful and resonant, it is not meant to be “realistic.” A myth is not supposed to be realistic, especially when the theme of good overcoming evil is very often, as we all know, not what is reflected in reality. So when someone protests that everything shouldn’t have gone down the toilet for our heroes post-ROTJ, it’s not because we’re arguing that it’s not realistic, it’s because it goes against the point of the saga.
@oldadastra stated in a recent post, “There’s a sense that Abrams … was pretty cavalier with characters and storylines that many people consider sacred. I don’t say “sacred” in a mocking or condescending way; I mean that for many people, the original trilogy was a perfect story, a beautiful myth that occupied an important place in their psyches, and TFA really did ruin it.” Yes!! The reason many people felt that way about Star Wars is because that’s how its creator INTENDED us to feel. This is what Star Wars was intended to be: a beautiful and carefully crafted myth, with it’s culmination at the end of ROTJ decisively ending the tale, its purpose fulfilled. And this is why The Force Awakens fails. It defeats the purpose of the original story. It retcons or blatantly ignores much of what happened in the original saga, both plot-wise and in terms of characterization. It contradicts the saga’s message. It invalidates our heroes’ victories. And it did all of these things because it tried to take the end of a story and say that it was not really the end, and because it fails to treat the story as the myth–the space fairytale–that it is.
origamiaround
titsay
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
