I’ve been watching through the Star Wars series recently, getting ready for the finale of the Skywalker saga. Star Wars has been a lifelong love for me, from my elitist childhood of ‘original trilogy only’, to unabashedly loving the prequel trilogy, and having a dodgy, critical relationship with the sequel trilogy. I’ve delved into the video games and books (mostly by Timothy Zahn; my elitism endures in some areas) and generally consumed as much of Star Wars lore as I could. It’s a story and a universe that has affected my writing and my sensibilities about storytelling. While some people always circle back to Lord of the Rings as the story that’s most important to them, I always come back to Star Wars. 

Star Wars isn’t without its flaws, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about. A New Hope remains fresh and interesting today because of a few things that it does very right, and that make it stand out from many modern films. These points are half about A New Hope, half about Star Wars trilogies in general. But I did try to focus them a little. 

The thing that strikes me when watching A New Hope is how little exposition happens. After the opening crawl no one’s trying to tell me the history of Tatooine, what the Empire does that makes it so evil, or even that much about Luke’s backstory. We’re shown that Tatooine is an isolated, backwater planet. Han’s brush with Jabba and Greedo show that crime is thriving and the Empire has little power in this part of the galaxy. Darth Vader’s killing of Rebel captives, and later the destruction of Alderaan, demonstrate all we need to know about the Empire; they value life so little that they’ll kill 1.5 billion people to squeeze information out of a nineteen-year-old. (I once read a truly boggling article that tried to say the Empire was totally excusable and wasn’t shown to be bad in A New Hope; I still hold a grudge.) Luke’s goal of becoming a pilot like his dad come up in a very normal dinner conversation with his aunt and uncle, and it’s easy to glean from the conversation that Luke’s felt stifled by Tatooine and the difficult farmer’s life for a while. His longing gaze at the setting suns and the galaxy outside of Tatooine shows us what he wants. 

All of it is storytelling that lacks self-consciousness. It trusts the audience to be smart enough to connect the dots. There are no clumsy ‘as you know’ conversations. The biggest chunk of exposition we get is from Obi-Wan, and by that time we’re almost halfway through the movie and dying for a bit of history. And it’s directly pertinent to the story. The Jedi, the Force, and Luke’s heritage, are all important to our understanding of what happens next. Some exposition is good, especially when we’re jumping into a new universe with new rules. But bogging the opening act down with a lot of explanations slows the momentum of the plot. I like that a lot of the Star Wars universe is presented to us with little description; we have no idea what womp rats are, what creature produces blue milk, or what the Kessel run is. But we can guess. It’s that restraint, that room for the audience to play, that captures my imagination so much. Maybe that’s because I’m a storyteller, and another person might appreciate a concrete explanation. But I never said I was going to be objective. 

The second thing that I enjoy so much about A New Hope is the characters and how immediately, obviously flawed they are. Luke is my favorite, so I’ve heard “But he’s so whiny!!!!!” a lot. My rebuttal is yes. Luke is whiny. It’s called starting your characters with flaws so they have something to grow towards. Luke is immature and reckless. Han is selfish and keeps people at arms’ length. Leia is angry and thorny. And through the course of A New Hope and the rest of the trilogy, they begin to grow from their experiences. There’s nothing wrong with having a character who is fundamentally Good, but they need to have some failings to make them human. 

Star Wars does a good job of having characters with traits and flaws that aren’t always likeable. Almost everyone finds Han to be cool from the very start, with his introduction where he shoots first after trying to smooth talk his way out of Greedo’s hands. But a lot of people find Luke and his relatable desire to leave his small planet and make something of himself to be obnoxious. Maybe it’s owed a little in part to Luke being so painfully earnest in everything he does, while Han struggles with emotional sincerity. Our culture loves to act like nothing matters, so Han and Leia, who are introduced as prickly, independent characters who need support from no one, are the more popular ones. But a lot of people miss that Han and Leia don’t stay those people. Their arcs center around learning to trust others, to stay and care when they’re afraid they might get hurt, and to risk themselves for what they love and believe in. And growth, especially upwards growth, is important for a story. A story that ends in hopeless, bitter tragedy, accomplishing nothing and destroying its characters, gives nothing to the world. A story that looks at its flawed characters and despairing world and says ‘maybe we can change this for the better’ gives some hope to the audience. Star Wars is primarily a story of redemption, so of course its characters have to have something to be redeemed from. Character development is important in every story, but is especially thematic in Star Wars. 

A little soapbox happened there. But the second point blends into the third, so we’ll keep going. Star Wars is a story about hope. And I know this is a very subjective point, but I like stories with happy endings. They don’t have to be 100% happy, and I love a good sad ending. Rogue One and Revenge of the Sith are very high on my list, even with their tragic ends. Gritty, dark, ‘realistic’ stories have been popular for a long time; Game of Thrones, Batman, modern Westerns, all of them hold up a nihilistic view of the world where nothing really matters and no one can ever be truly good. And yes, evil does exist. There are truly terrible people in the world, and awful things happen all the time. But there are also good people, and hope, no matter the odds. And I appreciate Star Wars’ commitment to good vs evil. Even when its theology of the Force wobbles on whether or not good and evil are opposed or sides of a coin, the story itself comes down squarely in the opinion that it is good vs evil. There is complexity–sometimes good people fall and sometimes bad people rise to redemption. But at the core, the story believes that what you do matters, and there is hope for a better world and a better self. 

This was a pretty self-indulgent post, but it’s my blog so I can post what I want. Star Wars, like I said, holds a special place in my heart. What are some stories that are especially close to you, and have any of them affected your perspective or your writing?