While all the space travel and laser fights might scream sci-fi, Star Wars actually has more in common with another genre: fantasy. Despite its interstellar setting, Star Wars has more in common with The Wizard of Oz than 2001.
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As laid out by pioneering writers like Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury and Leigh Brackett (who, incidentally, has a screenwriting credit on The Empire Strikes Back for her work on a crucial early draft), science fiction stories traditionally speculate about humanity’s future and the dangers of the rise of technology. Straightforward science fiction should hit close to home by recontextualizing real-world concepts in futuristic settings.
Instead of taking a look in the mirror to expose humanity’s weaknesses, Star Wars takes audiences to a galaxy far, far away with its own laws of physics. There’s plenty of futuristic tech in the movie’s groundbreaking “used future” production design, but it all blends into the background as a part of everyday life in this universe. With Luke, Obi-Wan, and Vader all using the Force, Star Wars embraces magical realism. It’s not a movie about astronauts or computer hackers; it’s a movie about wizards and monsters.
Star Wars’ closest competitor for the title of most popular franchise set in outer space, Star Trek, is a lot closer to hard sci-fi than Lucas’ saga. Gene Roddenberry conceived the series in the ‘60s to tackle prevalent social issues like racism and McCarthyism using allegories in a cosmic setting. With its use of heady sci-fi storytelling to capture contemporary fears, the original Star Trek series was a lot like The Twilight Zone in space. Star Trek is broadly about humanity’s quest to chart the universe and boldly go where no one has gone before. It imagines the future of Earth and the ultimate fate of the human race. Star Wars imagines entirely new worlds filled with entirely new species – even the humans aren’t really humans. Luke Skywalker might look like a human and have the name Luke, but he grew up on Tatooine and has the Force. Technically, he’s nothing like us.
Audiences are expected to suspend their disbelief when they watch a Star Wars movie. The lore has all been meticulously explained on Wookieepedia, but C-3PO’s programming can’t be picked apart like HAL’s can. In 2001, everything HAL does to get the upper hand – like reading Dave’s lips – can be done by a real computer, which makes Kubrick’s movie all the more haunting. If Star Wars fans actually think about C-3PO’s programming, like the fact that he was programmed to feel pain and fear, his whole characterization falls apart. But then, it’s later revealed that he was programmed by the kid who grew up to slaughter Sandpeople and younglings, so it’s possible it was just a sadistic joke. Viewers aren’t supposed to ask these questions; they’re supposed to just accept Threepio as he is, like the Tin Man. And thanks to Anthony Daniels’ incredible performance, they do.
All the main characters in Star Wars are reimagined fairy tale archetypes: Luke is a farm boy (albeit on a moisture farm), Leia is a princess who needs to be saved, Obi-Wan is a wise old wizard who guides the hero on his quest – the list of parallels goes on. While Princess Leia does initially need to be rescued, Star Wars smartly subverts the “damsel in distress” narrative as Luke and Han spring her from the Death Star’s detention center without an escape plan, so the savior dynamic is promptly flipped and suddenly Leia is saving them. Lucas’ archetypal storytelling was influenced by Joseph Campbell’s studies in mythology, and the “hero’s journey” that Star Wars employed has been emulated by just about every blockbuster since. Former Disney employee Christopher Vogler even turned it into a how-to guide called The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers.
For the distinctive tone of Star Wars, Lucas didn’t take much influence from science fiction. In fact, he drew influence from everything but: westerns; The Lord of the Rings; serials like Flash Gordon, which included high-tech gadgets and weapons purely for the pulpy aesthetic and not to explore technology’s impact on society; and Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, which similarly revolves around a princess leading a rebellion against oppressive overlords and a veteran warrior confronting his old nemesis. The main difference is that it’s told from the perspective of two downtrodden peasants while Star Wars is told from the perspective of two downtrodden droids.
Despite skewing fantasy more than sci-fi, Star Wars does share one key trait with science fiction. Like District 9’s recreation of apartheid with aliens and Children of Men’s study of humanity’s ugliest sides in the context of a dystopian future, Star Wars filters social commentary through a genre story. George Lucas conceived the Rebels’ struggle against the Empire as an allegory for the Vietnam War, which had ended just two years earlier (and was still ongoing when he started writing). Since Star Wars hit theaters and inspired a new generation of filmmakers, more socially conscious fantasy movies have been popping up. Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth sets a traditional fairy tale about a little girl discovering magic against the harrowing backdrop of Francoist Spain.
Outside of The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, the fantasy genre doesn’t get a lot of love. There are plenty of Y.A. fantasy romance novel trilogies trying to be the next Twilight or Hunger Games, but this genre is capable of providing so much more. As a speculative genre drawn from the magical tropes of fairy tales – some of the earliest stories ever told – fantasy stories have the ability to convey powerful parables in an escapist setting. With today’s filmmaking technologies, the sky is the limit.
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