The Magic of Movies: A Star Wars Exegesis

Alec Guiness, famous huge fan of his own work in Star Wars, already gives off a paternal amusement from this scene. He’s not really that worried about anything that’s happening and looks totally in control, at least up until Luke drops the name “Obi-Wan Kenobi”. I enjoy how much Mark Hamill comes off dismissive and apathetic as Luke in this scene, unable to recognise the gravity of being in the scene with Obi-Wan. I feel like an entire generation of young people think that a wise person looks like Obi-Wan, and it’s him they’re imitating. The scene ends with an upward wipe right as the characters pick up Threepio, which always distracted me.

This is followed by a bunch of exposition; amongst other things, Luke namedrops the Clone Wars, and Obi-Wan explains his relationship with Luke’s father. The important thing here, at least for this film, is that Obi-Wan has an emotional connection to Luke to make him inclined to teach him the ways of the Jedi, but I must admit, “Clone Wars” is a boss phrase and totally worth making a film or two and a couple thousand TV shows out of. Obi-Wan also gives Luke a lightsaber; if nothing else about Star Wars worked, it would still be necessary to make just to give us lightsabers.

One way of looking at Star Wars is not as a story but as a procession of cool imagery. Cool, of course, not in the classic sense but in the nerd sense. Lightsabers are by far the coolest element of Star Wars – a lot of that must be because of its satisfying “vvvv’ noise, done by waving a microphone near a television and very easy to imitate – and many video games and occasional Star Wars fan films have traded specifically on them being inherently cool. Lightsaber fights are as embedded into childhood play now as cops and robbers or the floor being lava. This makes it incredibly funny that their introduction to the world was done through the most awkward of jump cuts.

Obi-Wan’s exposition largely draws on the idea of a Golden Age; there was a time where everything was great and wonderful, and now we’re in the Dark Times. There’s a doubling up, or at least a personalization of this, with Luke’s father being a specific connection to this Age (I will ignore or draw attention to the fact that Vader is revealed to be Luke’s father in the next film as I see fit). The Golden Age is one of the most common narratives; there’s something deeply attractive about the fact that there was some wonderful previous time, particularly one we didn’t actually live in, and I suspect appealing to this is part of what made this movie popular.

We also get an explanation for the Force, which you’ll notice actually has a fairly generic description; these essays were all written before they went up, so I’d be interested to know how much people in the comments are diving into the philosophy of Star Wars, because it would be a good counterpoint to my deep founded skepticism of its presence within the movies, let alone how it factors into my pleasure in them. Obi-Wan’s explanation of the Force in this scene is actually less sophisticated than animism – not that the movie needs a particularly complex explanation for it. We also get the first association of the Force with “Binary Sunset”.

Of all the Classic Story Beats that Star Wars hits, Luke’s Refusal Of The Call is my favourite, and my favourite example of the trope. As I said in the first part, I’m skeptical that Lucas intentionally followed the Hero’s Journey as laid out by Joseph Campbell (you’ll see what I mean later in the series, especially towards the end) but this is a classic, classic element of it. It’s fairly low-key, even impulsive; Luke is as reflexively dismissive of going on adventure as he is of everything else. I love that Obi-Wan simply accepts it (“You must do what you think is right, of course.”).

In his commentary for the film Bad Day At Black Rock, John Sturges describes a technique he calls “Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch”. A movie has multiple plots going, and when one story runs out of steam, you move over to another. Our jump to Vader is a very good example of it; Luke’s story has run out of steam, we go back to Vader to build up more. Obviously, because Vader is the antagonist, we’re also building up tension. This is what Luke, his old man, his two fragile droids, and his laser stick are up against. This scene also introduces Tarkin; recently, someone raised the interesting question of whether the antagonist of Star Wars is Vader or Tarkin, with the pro-Tarkin argument being that he primarily moves the story (he destroys Aalderan, for example, and he’s usually ordering Vader around) whilst the Vader argument is that he’s big and scary and cool. Both are valid points; I intend to keep track of the question for the rest of the film, though my instinct is that Vader is closer to a deuteragonist and moves the story in, ironically, subtler ways.

Vader’s demonstration of his power (“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”) is a rather famous element of this scene; people enjoy pointing out that the one guy who gets choked is oddly comfortable calling his boss’s religion bullshit. It’s a necessary moment for the story, because it conveys that Vader has Force powers and a willingness to use them violently – which makes him even more difficult for Luke, an untrained novice to go up against. I think this take also forgets or ignores that I think Vader and that guy are supposed to be more equal than their costumes would suggest; Vader in this film comes off more like a liaison assisting Tarkin with the particular task of finding the stolen plans than the head guy in charge.

(I love the eerie wind-like sound used when Vader Force chokes that guy)

Obi-Wan and Luke find the remains of a desecrated Sandcrawler, and this is such great design used for great storytelling. We only saw this thing not twenty minutes ago, and the sight would be sad even without John Williams concerned music. I also love a lot of Obi-Wan’s dialogue here – his analysis of the tracks and battle scars (“Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise.”), a rare moment of Lucas’s dialogue going from wooden to artful, and there’s a great cut from Luke and Obi-Wan thinking about why the stormtroopers would do this to Luke’s POV of Threepio and Artoo. 

Luke realizing his aunt and uncle are in mortal danger is a great moment when all the elements come together; Hamill is famously a weak actor in these movies, but he sells Luke’s immediate panic both in dialogue (“That would lead them back… home!”) and in his rapid movement, and John Williams kicks up the heroic music. I think the Force theme is really about someone choosing to commit to a decision; the first half of it’s famous melody is fearful, observing something scary, and the second half boldly pushes through anyway.I’m pumped to watch Luke try and get back in time even though I’ve seen this a million times and know he gets there too late. The set design is brutal, pumping black smoke into the atmosphere. Luke really does have nothing left.

It’s an interesting choice to jump straight from that to Vader interrogating Leia. Using nothing more than eerie beeping that increases in speed and a closeup of something pointy, the film manages to convey a little bit of scifi horror. For some reason, the fact that it’s round is what’s so funny to me. I do also enjoy the set design here, not only the pointless pentagonal shape of the room but the orange grates on the floor.

Anyway, Luke drives back to Obi-Wan, and I think I see why the Leia scene was there – Luke left Obi-Wan and the droids behind to see the destruction of his family’s farm alone; it’s more moving to see him witness it all alone, and then choose to come back to Obi-Wan (love that Threepio is the one throwing Jawa bodies on a fire), and the Leia scene breaks up what would otherwise be monotonous. Luke’s decision to join up with Obi-Wan and fight the Empire is one of the best in the movie; Lucas’s dialogue becomes forceful and simple. Tony Zhou of Every Frame A Painting once observed that there’s maybe five minutes of film between Luke refusing the call and then accepting it; this was his expression of irritation at overly-schematic films, but I do want to point out a whole lifetime seems to happen between those two points. Obi-Wan accepts it wordlessly.

We get to Mos Eisely (hive, scum, villainy, etc), and the scene of the stormtroopers stopping people to look for the droids feels the most like it draws on Nazi comparisons outside of the wardrobe of the officers (or the stormtroopers literally being called stormtroopers). Granted, any kind of state with law enforcement searching for fugitives will have people, you know, stopping people, questioning them, and looking at their ID; it’s more that it feels like an old World War One film. I get Casablanca vibes from this especially. It’s a bit of a wish fulfilment scene as well – literally waving one’s hands to manipulate a person’s mind and get them to let you go.