The Magic of Movies: A Star Wars Exegesis, Part Five

Obi-Wan’s line reacting to the destruction of Aalderan is one of the most famous in a film that’s quoted with the intensity and scope of Shakespeare or The Simpsons, and it really is a beautiful and simple line. It’s hard to take seriously given that oversaturation, but I would be interested in comparable lines about reacting to mass tragedy. It is also funny that the same scene has the wacky chess game between Artoo and Chewie; it’s a great little cinematic moment when they convey Artoo’s determination with a simple tilt of both his head and the camera. You have to admit, this movie is pretty good at getting comedy out of characters who don’t speak English.

People have commented on this franchise’s odd belief that ancient ways can be taught in half an hour, but this is a natural result of them being movies; the idea of Luke training against the little floating ball and thus becoming a Master Jedi in a few days is ridiculous, although this also overlooks that a) Obi-Wan has no idea he’ll be dead in a few hours and is presumably just getting started with simple exercises and b) the imagery is great as a shorthand for a larger set of exercises. The basic idea is pretty sound; a phrase I’ve heard is that people can look at their target rather than their actions, and Obi-Wan is trying to get Luke to let go of that.

Han dismisses this as hokey nonsense and I have two thoughts here. The first is that this infamously looks silly in the context of the prequels, which suggest that the Jedi and Republic fell when he was ten years old; this would be like me believing that the Twin Towers were a hokey American myth. The second that Han obviously represents cynicism and materialism in the moral universe of Star Wars. It’s not as complex as the way Star Trek: TNG has characters representing pure ethical reasoning, violent retribution, or compassionate humanism, but there is a basic diversity of perspective here.

If a character is what they want, Luke wants glory – and his perspective on this will evolve over the trilogy – Han wants material success, Leia wants justice, and Obi-Wan wants spiritual enlightenment. It’s done in a way that’s appealing to and comprehensible by children, and it gives each character a journey. I do love that Harrison Ford expresses Han’s perspective through a fairly lazy drawl (I do love the writing of the line “There’s no mystical energy field controls my destiny,” and how it breaks technical correctness for speed).

I suppose if there’s a theme to this, it’s trusting intuition over what seems, initially, like logic. I admit this is a perspective I’ve come around on in my thirties; it’s easily possible to overthink something, and god knows I’ve done that too much. Eastern philosophers and businessmen have criticized Westerners for overrationalizing their thinking – chasing a bottom line and dollar amount over family and community. And from an individual perspective, one can forget that one’s brain is doing a lot one is not and never will be aware of; I know there’s a lot of cases where I’ve learned much more than I realize.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Vader and Tarkin discover Leia did indeed lie and gave false information. I’m increasingly of the conviction that Tarkin is the main villain of this film and Vader his scary sidekick a la various Bond villains and their henchmen; up to this point, Vader hasn’t just been Tarkin’s instrument of power, he’s been his sounding board for ideas and commentary. The arguments for Vader have largely been style over the substance.

The crew of the Millennium Falcon stumbling across the remains of Aalderan is such a great, sad scene as they struggle to understand what we already know. This is one of the few times I really enjoy the technobabble, mostly because it isn’t babble – everything they’re saying makes sense and their arguments are about strategy as opposed to tactics, and we get a big wide of everyone to watch them bounce off each other. And Obi-Wan realizing what’s happening is a fantastic moment of dread. We get our very first moment where someone has a very bad feeling about this.

I love models so much. I hate how we live in an age of CG; I do enjoy CG, but it’s so much less tactile and real than actual models people actually built with their own two hands. Star Wars is a visceral experience; somebody had to actually glue all that shit on with their own two hands! And I love how it’s all composited together. Actors have talked for nearly a century about how having actual physical props and sets to play off improves their performance enormously. Why do we settle for cheaper and uglier?

The Millenium Falcon getting captured is a great Act Two reversal. We ask ourselves: how are they gonna get out of this one? Star Wars doesn’t suffer from what’s known as ‘third act stupidity’, in which the villains suddenly become dumb as rocks to let the hero win; the writing may by goofy, but it’s equally goofy, and the villains keep up with the heroes (this is presumably what happens when you’re just as invested in them and their coolness as the hero). Speaking to this, I’d forgotten that the heroes had jettisoned the escape pods; the officer makes the reasonable guess that the ship was a decoy, and Vader reasonably orders him to search the ship anyway.

The shot revealing the heroes emerging from the smuggling parts is so great – timed so the stormtroopers walk off exactly when they emerge, keeping everyone in the same frame as they scheme, and Chewie’s head popping up right at the end as a kind of musical punchline. I love Harrison Ford giving him affectionate head scratches at the end, particularly because he’s still warily looking around. Obi-Wan’s line, “Who’s more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?” is my all-time favourite Star Wars line, especially because it’s one of the least quoted.

The scene of the crew getting out of the Falcon by tricking the guards is fantastic – I love that it’s all done in a single unmoving wide shot, bringing out the humour of the scene, and I love the plot move of Han and Luke pretending their mics are broken when they’re in disguise – it’s such a natural move to make, and it implies a level of systemic complexity on the parts of the Empire. Like, oh yeah, thing’s broken, gotta go fix it. In comparison, the heroes bickering is funny, and in a way that doesn’t feel as forced as it does in this post-Whedon world (for one thing, Luke has been complaining the entire time, so his irritation feels plausible).

Obi-Wan refusing Luke’s help is incredibly cool, and I love Luke’s attempt to help him because I can see every angle of this little conflict. Of course Luke wants to go and help his mentor; it’s a problem that needs to be solved, and Luke doesn’t want Obi-Wan to go alone. One part of the Hero’s Journey the movie nails is that the hero is very reliant on his mentor both practically and emotionally, so that it becomes meaningful when he dies. It’s not just that the hero has to step up, but that he has to feel the weight of the loss and do what he can to make it mean something.

And then for Obi-Wan, I get why he turns Luke away. It’s not that he’s going out there to die, but he recognizes there’s worse things than an old man dying. He also knows there’s the journey Luke thinks he’s going on and the journey he is on. To put it another way, Obi-Wan knows exactly where both he and Luke are on the Hero’s Journey. It’s interesting – I’ve already made fun of people who see themselves as Star Wars heroes, but there is a proven psychological benefit to seeing oneself as on the Hero’s Journey, so long as it’s not in a superficial way. If Luke is on it, Obi-Wan sees it.

It’s pretty much instantly that Artoo manages to track down Leia; Luke, as expected, wants to run away to get her immediately. Obi-Wan’s instinct was right; I think anyone can see it’s much better for Luke to be chasing after her than helping Obi-Wan. This is another very entertaining conflict; Luke insistent whining bounces off Han’s slacker attitude well (Ford makes so many great choices here – leaning on Chewie affectionately as he makes fun of Obi-Wan, leaning back on a chair with his feet up as Luke argues with Han, literally turning his back on Luke). I also love that Luke manages to appeal to his desire for money; it feels right that Luke would try and Han would, against his better instincts, be intrigued.

When both Luke and Han are pretty dismissive of Threepio’s worries, it’s obviously not Gen X detachment, but it does feel like a pretty strong influence on them.

The whole sequence of the trio pulling off the original Wookie Prisoner Trick – as Sawyer calls it on LOST – is so tense; you can see that they’re not quite moving with the discipline of everyone else (Mark Hamill’s improvised line, “I can’t see a thing in this helmet!” is really great here), and Lucas makes sure to surround them with dozens upon dozens of people (an understanding he pulled from Akira Kurosawa). Marsha Lucas intercuts this with Obi-Wan pulling his own infiltration, and Vader reacting to it. I love that editing alone can sell us on a thing like that. I love what movies can do.

Obvious note: Luke lies that he’s taking Chewie to prison cell block 1138, which is a reference to Lucas’s student film THX-1138.