This previous semester I took a class about Religious Communication, and for our final research paper we were given this prompt: “The purpose of the Research Project is have you synthesize key principles of the class and, in applying them to some particular religious or cultural artifact or practice, to extend our understanding of both a particular culture or cultural dimension or religion or religious dimension and the intersection of religion and popular culture.”
One piece of media that endlessly fascinates me is Star Wars, a movie that its creator let be far more critical and forward thinking than it needed to be. I wrote a paper on the subject, and it received a high grade, and I thought it would be dope to share it with the world
Introduction:
In the year 1977, the film Star Wars was released. The film was a cultural phenomenon, with crowds lining around the block to escape into a futuristic fantasy that was being projected onto screens across the country and the globe. A fantasy in which a young boy named Luke Skywalker leaves his home to go on a galactic adventure with a giant furry creature called Chewbacca, a scoundrel that went by the name of Han Solo, and an old Jedi named Obi-Wan Kenobi. The motley crew rescue Princess Leia, destroy a weapon of mass destruction, and live happily ever after. Three years later, The Empire Strikes Back was released, bringing back all the characters and the world created by George Lucas. After this, with the release of The Return of the Jedi in 1983, Star Wars was assumed to be finished. The world created by Lucas would now live on through books, board games, video games, comics, and similar media. Nearly two decades after The Original Trilogy, as it would come to be referred to, Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace, was released. The Original Trilogy got a rebranding at this time, with the 1977 movie, originally called Star Wars, now being titled, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. The Empire Strikes Back became Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, and the final film in the trilogy was now Star Wars: Episode VI - The Return of the Jedi. In the ensuing years after Return of the Jedi, Lucas had become interested in writing and filming a prequel trilogy, set years before the original films had come out. He spent half a decade writing the story of this trilogy, which would follow Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader) and his journey from a young boy to Jedi, followed by his fall to the Dark Side. The Phantom Menace was received well, and three years after its release, Episode II - Attack of the Clones, came out. Following this Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, the final film in the trilogy, premiered in 2005. None of the films in this trilogy were critically acclaimed, but all were incredibly successful at the box office. A unique shift in the movie industry was starting to brew around this time. Hollywood and the film business became a global product. Companies and producers realized that designing films to be universally appealing, instead of specifically for American audiences, would help gross more money. In 2012, Disney also bought Lucasfilm, the company that owned the rights to Star Wars. This deal, combined with the growing film market, caused a new trilogy of Star Wars films to be put into development. The captain of this expedition was J.J. Abrams, a well-known writer and director, whose success with the TV show Lost led him to direct the Star Trek reboots. Witnessing Abrams’ ability to take an outdated franchise and revitalize it for modern audiences, Disney hired him to do the same for Star Wars. The next three years were spent writing the script for episode VII, and drafts for VIII and IX. In December of 2015, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, brought back Star Wars for a whole new generation. The Force Awakens was an instant hit, at the time having the highest-grossing opening weekend of all time. Two years after this, Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi, was released, and climbed up to the second highest-grossing opening weekend of all time, right under The Force Awakens. The continued success of this new Sequel Trilogy allowed for two spin-off films to also be created. Rogue One, a side story set immediately before A New Hope, neatly tied off one of the loose story threads in that film, and Solo, an origin story about Han Solo. Both films did moderately well at the box office, with Rogue One performing better at the box office and critically. The final film to cap off this five-movie campaign by Disney and Lucasfilm was Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker, which was released in 2019, and did the worst of the trilogy, both critically and financially, coming in below the projected numbers. It was not exactly a fitting end to the beloved movie franchise that had captured fans’ imaginations and wallets for nearly five decades.
In this research paper, I will be examining the three Star Wars trilogies, the way religion is used in the story, and determining whether or not it reflected, rejected, or critiqued America’s views of religion.
The Force:
Star Wars was and is inherently religious. The force is a mystical energy that its’ followers can harness and utilize for their benefit. For example, in the climax of A New Hope, Luke Skywalker takes a deep breath and opens himself to the force, which influences his actions, allowing him to hit a nearly impossible shot, saving the day and stopping the Empire from their total reign of the galaxy. Not all force-wielders use their power for good. The leader of the Empire, Palpatine, and his main henchman, Darth Vader, are Sith, otherwise known as the Dark Side, beings who use the Force for evil. Vader can choke insubordinate officers, killing them in mere seconds with no physical contact. Members of the Dark Side are never too far gone though, as we learn in one of the final scenes in The Return of the Jedi, where Luke Skywalker converts his father, Vader, back to the Light Side of the force, and they defeat Emperor Palpatine. Nearly every conflict in Star Wars is about the opposing sides of the force. The Light Side and the Dark Side are always trying to gain more control of the galaxy. Lucas didn’t base The Force off of one religion in particular, but rather combined common attributes from different religions to create a combination that could resemble any number of religions.
The Original Trilogy:
There are two ways that the Star Wars films are often watched by fans. Chronological Order, in which you start with Episode I and end with Episode IX, and Release Date Order, where you start with the first released film, Episode IV, and end with Episode IX. The most logical way to examine the religious and cultural trends linearly would be to start with the Original Trilogy, and then move on to the Prequel Trilogy, and conclude with the Sequel Trilogy. A New Hope was originally written by George Lucas in the 70s. Two of the largest events happening culturally were The Vietnam War, one of the most controversial wars America has fought, and the hippie movement, which was brought about in part by America’s involvement in Vietnam. These two things were on Lucas’ mind as he wrote his fantastical space opera. In an interview with James Cameron, Lucas explains that he based The Rebels, who were fighting against the Empire, trying to restore the Light Side of the force to the position of power, on the Vietcong. (AMC, 2018) Star Wars was from its conception, anti-government and anti-establishment. This reflected the views of many Americans, especially young Americans, who were tired of the violence and the way their government was acting. The anti-establishment focus of the hippie movement also fled into religious establishments. Religion was much more analyzed than it had been before, with young adults rejecting the teachings they had learned as children, and criticizing the establishments in power. Joanne Beckman wrote in an article a summary of America’s shift of religion, “In the late 1960s and early 1970s, then, religion itself was not rejected so much as was institutionalized Christianity. The Church, along with government, big business, and the military—those composing "the Establishment"—was denounced by the young adults of the '60s for its materialism, power ploys, self-interest, and smug complacency.” (Beckman, 2000). Religion wasn’t altogether rejected, but the traditional types of Christianity, which for the longest time had been the most dominant form of religion, were being less favored, and different religions were accepted and practiced. Buddhism, Hinduism, and meditation were all taking the spiritual parts of peoples’ lives. The characters in the Original Trilogy viewed the Force in much the same way as the younger generations of America thought of Christianity, with an excess amount of distrust about The Force and its followers. Han Solo, the most vocal doubter, says in a famous line: “Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other; I've seen a lot of strange stuff. But I've never seen anything to make me believe that there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything.” Solo’s disbelief in the Force is shared by many of the inhabitants of Star Wars. Many of the themes in the Original Trilogy were inspired by these new waves in the culture. The old ways are dying, and new ideas and methods of thinking have begun.
The Prequel Trilogy:
In the Prequel Trilogy, set before The Original Trilogy, the Jedi have dominant control of the galaxy and are viewed as keepers of the peace. In several terrorist attacks, The Separatists, an army of droids, led by Count Dooku, a Sith, start to seize control of planets, slowly beginning a conquest to rule the galaxy. The Prequel Trilogy takes place during this Galactic War, also called the Clone Wars. Much of the struggles in these films revolve around the corruption of Anakin Skywalker, The Chosen One, who was prophesied to bring balance to the Force by destroying the Sith. This prophecy however, does not become true, as Anakin in the final moments of Revenge of the Sith, overestimates his power and gets cut in half by Obi-Wan Kenobi, only to be rebuilt as Darth Vader. This trilogy is much more concerned with war and the politics of war than the Original Trilogy, which was about family and realizing what ones’ true calling is. Lucas's powerful writing shows through the themes within the film. These themes are incredibly mature and more complex than films targeted at children would have to be. There were two developments in the world that might have led Lucas to adopt a darker more mature tone. The first development was the introduction of CGI, computer-generated effects, into Hollywood. It was a lot easier to create sci-fi worlds full of aliens, lasers, and flying spaceships than it had been in 1977. CGI allowed Lucas to think on a grander scale because whatever he envisioned, computers could generate. The event that I think shaped Lucas’ mind, even more, was September 11, 2001, when members of Al-Qaeda took over planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center, sending shockwaves across America. After this eventful day, America began a“War On Terror”, and deployed troops across the Middle East. The influence of these attacks, and the fallout because of it, is incredibly clear in the themes of the Prequel Trilogy. The second movie in the trilogy, Attack of the Clones, begins with a bomb going off in a spaceship belonging to members of the Republic, which resembles America. The characters later learn this was a Separatist attack, one that happened on Coruscant, the political homeward of the Republic. The analogy doesn’t stop there, as the Sith and the Dark Side of the force closely parallel Al-Qaeda’s extremist version of the Islamic faith. The Republic also has a lot of overlap with America, besides what I’ve previously mentioned. The governing system is similar, and the leaders of the Republic are the Jedi, who in turn have their own council and leadership system. While America has always separated church and state, that doesn’t mean it’s entirely separated. People’s religious beliefs will always seep into every part of their lives. At a time when many consumers in America were looking for safety in their homeland because of terrorist attacks, the characters in Star Wars were doing the same.
The Sequel Trilogy:
Critically considered the weakest trilogy, the Sequel Trilogy was Disney’s big push to get Star Wars back onto movie screens across the globe, and revitalize the franchise for new audiences, all so that they could make tons of money. Their lead creative on the projects was J.J. Abrams, who had successfully directed a trio of Star Trek films that were critically and financially successful movies. However, Disney’s continued involvement with the production of the new Star Wars films led to a micro-managed series of movies that had no real through-line theme or themes. J.J Abrams set up a whole new slew of characters in the first film of the trilogy, The Force Awakens, and Rian Johnson helped add to their backstories and motivations, only for Abrams to come back and reset everything in The Rise of Skywalker that Johnson had built up in The Last Jedi. What made the Original Trilogy and Prequel Trilogy so unified was the fact that one creator had complete control of everything from the story, how the characters and world would be portrayed on-screen, and where they would end up. Disney wanted a variety of thinkers to come in and give their own take on the Star Wars universe instead of just one individual controlling it all. Before this, each trilogy had a unifying theme. The Sequel Trilogy didn’t have that and instead was a jumbled mess of themes that don’t connect in tone. In The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, the main point was that it didn’t matter where you came from, whether you were a nobody or a somebody, but that you could always pull yourself up by your bootstraps and become great. Abrams either didn’t like this message, or it wasn’t what he had envisioned for the characters, because in The Rise of Skywalker, the plot twist was that the main character was secretly connected to a long lineage of Force wielders who had been battling each other for centuries. These contradictory themes were part of the reason that consumers and critics didn’t enjoy this trilogy as much as the other two. The Force didn’t play as big a part of the story as it had in the other films either. During the four years that the films were released, America went through various waves of cultural realizations. Gender and religious identity were being explored like never before, and Civil Rights Movements were starting up in full force. This was part of the reason that Disney made the main characters of these movies diverse. Women and people of different ethnicities were being placed at the forefront. They saw this as a way to appeal to audiences but also rake in more cash. Religious establishments were being criticized, much like they had in the 70s when Lucas created the first Star Wars films. George Lucas was enamored with radical thinking, while Disney was much more intent on being fun and friendly than critical. The theme of it not mattering who you are, who your parents are, or where you come from, you can be great, would have been a perfect fit for the cultural revolutions going on at the time, but it wasn’t maintained throughout all three movies. Instead of reveling in the cultural changes happening, Disney instead dipped their toe into the pond without really diving in and creating a massive wave. For the first time, Star Wars wasn’t as radical as it could have been.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, Star Wars is usually created so that it parallels the real world, and often criticizes it. George Lucas was an outsider and a rebel growing up, and maintained that mindset when creating the two Star Wars trilogies he wrote and directed. While Lucas’ target audience was kids, he didn’t shy away from mature themes, using the characters and story as a way to introduce the younger audience to anti-establishment and radical thinking. Disney, which resembles the establishments that Lucas was so critical of, did not have this outsider mindset and was more interested in making a lot of money. The films they produced reflect their investor mindset, as there is no deeper meaning to the films. The directors and writers aren’t trying to say something about the world they bring the movies into, but just aiming to entertain mass audiences. Star Wars reflects the religious and critical views of its American audience and isn’t afraid to be critical of subjects that aren’t often criticized by mainstream movies, such as political ideologies, religious disbeliefs, and longing for something that the world isn’t providing.
References:
Beckman, J. (2000, October). Religion in post-world war II america. National Humanities Center. Retrieved April 24, 2023, from https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/education-material/religion-in-post-world-war-ii-america/
George Lucas reveals how Star wars was influenced by the Vietnam War: AMC Talk. AMC. (n.d.). Retrieved April 24, 2023, from https://www.amc.com/blogs/george-lucas-reveals-how-star-wars-was-influenced-by-the-vietnam-war--1005548