“…I had a story to tell and to me this is one big movie. It's one 12-hour movie in six parts and it's a story"

In spite of the 28 years it took to complete the series, Star Wars are, as Lucas quite rightly claims, one single work of art.

On the page headed “Star Wars are not Popular Entertainment!” we propose that the series, the first in the high concept meta-genre, represents a large scale artistic experiment which by definition requires tight cohesion of all its parts. According to Lucas, the story he had planned as the backbone of this experiment initially covered only what came to be known as the “Original Trilogy”: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, with Luke Skywalker as hero progressing through the stages of the Monomyth as laid out in Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces. (We would like to believe Lucas, but must in that case remain puzzled by A New Hope being ‘Episode IV as well as with Lucas’ promise that there would be nine films in total. That, however, just could have been part of the conceptualist game.) As the Original Trilogy drew to a half-hearted conclusion, however, it became increasingly obvious that the story had chosen its own hero: Anakin.

It was this hero switch which had, in the perception of the audience, taken place at the end of The Empire Strikes Back that caused the half-heartedness of the Original Trilogy’s concluding part. We could see Anakin at peace and we registered the celebratory fireworks, but we remained perplexed and itchingly unsatisfied since we badly needed to know how Anakin had become Vader, how he married and had children and what had transpired between Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi. More importantly, perhaps, Lucas, too, needed to know.

The hero switch changed the level of the entire concept behind Star Wars. What had been an exercise of intentionally applying Campbell’s Jungian “hero” formula to purposefully constructed characters in order to produce an exemplary mythological narrative suddenly became a tragedy the moment Darth Vader, looking down on Luke whose hand he had just loped off with his lightsaber, said, “I am your father.” The quick fix at the end of the Return of the Jedi did little to eliminate the tragic element, and tragedy and myth, according to Campbell, do not readily mix. A new, more complex framework, with reference to other, darker, less clean-cut mythologies needed to be found in order to accommodate the passion of Darth Vader.

In this new framework, the galaxy had become a fallen world in need of redemption rather than a society under a tyrannical regime in need of a revolution. Luke Skywalker became a function of his father’s story and not the other way round. This necessitated some retconning made possible by the new largely in-house developed technology. The audiences new to Star Wars were now facing a choice the original ones did not have: to view the six films in their chronological order or in the order in which they were made, starting, like the original audiences, with Episode IV: A New Hope. Each approach offered a distinctly different perspective and experience. The linear approach created instant attachment to the charming little boy Anakin, concern, disappointment and sorrow as he descended into darkness and the Jedi reaped the bitter harvest of destruction and disgrace. Linearly viewed, Luke’s tale became the solution to Anakin’s problem. The audience’s knowledge was superior to Luke’s and consequently the entire Original trilogy turned into an exercise of waiting for Luke and Leia to ascend to the audience’s level rather than provide the audience with new revelations. That achieved, the viewer was left with a lingering feeling of somewhat melancholy satisfaction, not unlike Luke himself as he stood gazing at the ghostly images of those he had loved most.

The Original Trilogy’s dated, non-CGI special effects and overall look, appearing in the linear sequence after the largely CGI environment of the Second Trilogy, provided for a feeling of consolidated reality, giving one the impression of having suddenly emerged into the bright, almost banal light of day, after having wandered in an ancient, slightly remote Otherworld. The solid, brightly lit, very material world was the world of Luke, the son.

Viewed from the middle backwards, however, Star Wars opened in the rock-solid harsh reality of Luke the poor uneducated moisture farmer, now on equal footing with the audience, whose eyes were gradually opened to the possibility of magic as, together with Luke, they experienced startling revelations and the real scope of the story broadened to include tragedy and transcendental speculation. The Second Trilogy, then, became the answer to Luke’s burning question, “Why?”, always more involving than the melancholy ‘how’. It took place in the mythic past, and little Ani was from the start the object of compassion, since the audience knew exactly the predicament he would end up in. Their admiration for the Jedi faded as they watched them smugly police a galaxy full of cruelty and injustice. In a kind of polyphonic vision, they could not help mentally superimposing the image of two charred skeletons in the burning ruins of the moisture farm over the smiling, fresh faces of young Owen and Beru as they tenderly took baby Luke into their care, unaware that they had just signed their own death warrants. And, completely missed by linear viewers, there was, of course, the sublime yet achingly grim moment when, with all the whys having got their therefores, the last shots of Revenge of the Sith seamlessly slotted into the Original Trilogy and the first seconds of what the audience knew was for Anakin a nearly endless future of unspeakable torment inside a living tomb began ticking away.