It’s difficult to write something new about 1977’s Star Wars: what it is, how it was made, what it means, what it means to me, what it may mean to you. The original Star Wars, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, Star Wars: A New Hope, has been replicated, reviewed, revered, re-imagined, rebooted, and rethought for decades. Star Wars, the template for tentpoles, is, you know, Star Wars. What’s left to say that hasn’t been said?
So, instead of writing about the many things Star Wars is, I’d like to start by taking stock of what Star Wars isn’t.
Star Wars is not a film about redemption.
Redemption is one of the most persistent, recognizable themes in the Star Wars Saga. The original three films coalesce into a story about the redemption of Darth Vader, the ultimate galactic antagonist. The prequel trilogy only deepens the redemption story, paralleling Anakin’s fall with the fall of the entire Republic. There’s a galaxy to be redeemed, in essence, not just one lost Jedi. The sequel trilogy goes all-in on the redemption theme, not only centering the conflict around the redemption of Ben Solo, but also giving Han, Luke, and Leia a hand to play in the redemption of their lost child.
Redemption appears everywhere. Lando redeems himself after betraying his friends; Boba Fett redeems himself after trying to kill our heroes; The Mandalorian redeems himself after turning The Child over to the Imperial Remnant; IG-11 redeems himself and becomes a protector after nearly assassinating Grogu. It’s a subject you can find underlined in pen in every Star Wars script.
But redemption not the theme of Star Wars, itself.
Star Wars is also not a film about confronting with fear and hate.
This overarching theme, about grappling with darkness (confronting fear, rejecting hatred, overcoming anger, and letting go of what we fear to lose) is asserted directly in sequels, prequels, and surrounding series. From Anakin’s fall, to Luke’s confrontation with his father, to Ahsoka overcoming her fear of being a mentor, to Rey’s rejection of the Throne of the Sith, the temptations of power and rage are laced throughout the series, almost everywhere - except Star Wars itself. Nowhere in the original film is a Jedi tempted to fall, to give in hate or anger, or wrestle with their fear. The closest Star Wars gets to this beat is Han Solo, an avowed scoundrel, choosing heroism over a reward, but it’s never framed as a choice between light and darkness.
If these familiar tropes are not a part of the original Star Wars, what is it about? What does the ur-text of this spider web of storylines and timelines and families and characters have to say?
Chiefly, Star Wars is a contest between faith in technology and faith in the Spirit.
The unlikely carrier of this message, early in the movie, is Darth Vader himself. During one of the all-time great Star Wars scenes, hilariously officious Imperials reject Vader’s “sorcerers ways” and revel in the supremacy of the Death Star (“the ultimate power in the universe”). It’s the Dark Lord who asserts that their “technological terror” is “insignificant next to the power of the Force.”
Darth Vader may believe this, but he himself represents the over-reliance on machines, at least in the first film. He is a “technological terror” the Empire has constructed: a monstrous, faceless machine leading stormtroopers that are both inhumane and inhuman, masked and anonymous. When he and his wingmen fly TIE fighters, they look as if they are not so much sitting in their cockpits absorbed by them.
Our heroes, though, are messy, natural, frowsy, and human. They squabble, they’re anything-but-uniform, even the Droids. They’re not single minded in their purpose like the Empire. Luke Skywalker and Ben Kenobi are a duo in earth tones, blending in to the sand and rocks. Han Solo’s ship is a piece of junk, a flying bachelor pad, and he lives with, basically, his dog. Princess Leia is just-so-tired-of-this and can’t quite land on an accent. The Rebellion is not surrounded by pill-shaped lights in long, flat corridors, it’s nestled in an abandoned temple, in a jungle, teeming with life.
And their ally is the Force. While Darth Vader uses the Force to choke a few haters, he rarely uses its power beyond that. Ben Kenobi’s interpretation of the Force isn’t about abilities: it’s about not letting your senses decieve you. Luke is first trained to feel the Force by his sight being taken away; and in the final act of the film, he re-enacts this lesson in order to make the impossible, possible.
As Grand Moff Tarkin refuses to exacuate when it’s clear the Rebels pose a threat, believing he is untouchable, wrapped inside a metal planet, entombed in his own machine. Luke makes the opposite choice. He turns off his computer and trusts in something more. At this point “Use the Force, Luke!” is tossed off so casually it’s easy to forget the line’s context. It’s not about lifting rocks. It’s about using the Force instead of using the computer; about trusting energy, the divine, in the spirit, instead of the false sense of security and precision that technology can bring.
(It’s one of the few missteps, I think, of Rogue One. In explaining all-too-literally why the Death Star has a tiny flaw that could destroy the station - it was put there on purpose by a spy - it slightly undercuts the hubris of the Empire. They believe so firmly in the infallibility of their Giant Gun, they leave it exposed to the one thing they can't fathom: that a less powerful group would risk their lives to stop them.)
There’s something profound about Star Wars, a franchise that is synonymous with pushing technological boundaries, using that innovation to express skepticism of an over-reliance on the machines. Is it hypocritical? George Lucas, I think, never believed in technology as a shortcut, but as an enabler of the imagination. He wanted what was in his head translated to the screen, and stubbornly insisted on innovations to make that a reality. Certainly, there are studios and creators that fall back on technology instead of investing in story, and we often see the less-than-Star Wars results. I imagine Lucas’s ILM band thought of themselves a making special modifications to the Millennium Falcon, not inventing a planet-killing weapon. (But did they become the very thing they swore to destroy? That’s for another conversation.)
This is all to say that most well-worn themes of the Star Wars Saga are, in fact, departures from the first film’s primary interest. Star Wars was about having faith, not just hope, that there is a benevolent Force in the universe, and if you are willing to trust in it, it will take care of you. If you have too much pride in the material, in the mechanical and artificial, then that pride cometh before a fall. Later films do touch on technology-versus-nature (The Phantom Menace and Return of the Jedi especially), but not in a way that’s meant to contrast computer science and the psyche in quite the same way as Star Wars.
Perhaps the increasingly secular society in which we live has meant writers are less likely to tease out themes of overt faith in their narratives, or maybe the evolving themes were more rife with human drama and therefore attractive to creators. After all, Deus Ex The Force isn’t going to be as consistently dramatic as a psychodrama between parents and their children. Frankly, if George Lucas had mandated that Star Wars’s theme was ‘faith versus technology’ and then attempted to slavishly deliver that moral in all subsequent sequels, it would have been an impoverished effort. For whatever reason, other themes, such as redemption, outpaced the original’s ‘man versus machine’ motif, and became more central to the Saga overall.
Still, I hope the subject of A New Hope gets as much contemplation as less weighty matters like its abstract ‘cultural influence.’ Questioning technology is more relevant to us today than it was in the 1970s. Lucas’s Star Wars may have evoked World War II and the dangers of the atomic bomb; and yes, awfully, Nazis are a thing again; but a reliance on tech was nowhere near today’s epidemic levels. (Apple Computers in 1977 looked like this.) Now, technology is relied on for everything from booking a plane ticket, to taking a pictures of food, to waging war with remote drones, to determining who should get a mortgage, to which neighborhoods should be policed. Machines are doing quite a lot of our thinking for us, often convincing us to substitute data for our own intuition. As we face a future where AI will tempt us to overuse and dependence, it’s worth revisiting what Luke Skywalker learned at the Battle of Yavin.
Listen to your inner voice, turn off your targeting computer, and let go.
I totally agree with this essay. I would say that A New Hope is the "most sci-fi" of the saga.