Chaos Magnet

Why Star Wars works

I'll freely admit that I've been obsessed with Star Wars since I saw the first movie at the age of nine. I can tell you just about anything about it (as long as it involves the movies; unfortunately I haven't had time to keep up with the gazillion books, hard as I've tried). I find the Force a reasonable allegory for religion and faith. And I'm terrified that the last movie is going to suck.

And of course I'm not alone. This is a film that literally transformed not only filmmaking, but also an entire generation of kids who saw it. It made its way into popular culture in a way that has rarely, if ever, been seen.

Even George Lucas will tell you it's not even science fiction, it's space opera. If you look at the plot of that first film as an adult, it's almost embarrassingly simple. In fact, that's why those who didn't like it have such an easy time looking down their nose at it, and at those who love it.

So why was it such effective storytelling?

For my birthday, my wife got me the DVD set of the first Star Wars trilogy, and this week I've finally gotten a chance to sit down and watch it with the commentary. I've always known that Lucas was inspired by Japanese movies such as "The Seven Samurai", and that he had done a lot of research into Joseph Campbell's writings on heroes and such. But what I discovered is that not only had he done WAY more research than I'd thought, but he'd intentionally structured the story around these basic archetypes that have been in storytelling for thousands of years.

So what looks, on the surface, like a simple story is really tied to basic, deep-rooted psychological threads that most of us don't even know are pulling at us. That's why it was so deeply affecting for so many millions of people -- even though most didn't know why.

I'm sure that there are writers who can happen on something so profound without having a conscious understanding of what they're doing. But knowing precisely what you're going for makes it so much easier, and so much more effective.

My head is spinning thinking about it, and what this means for my own writing, both fiction and non-fiction.

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