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While Star Wars approaches the Hero’s journey in a rather classical manner, it never loses sight of the hero’s reason for being: Renewal. In this case, the hero renews the balance between the opposites good and evil. This is the film’s great strength. To interpret the film as merely the triumph of good over evil is to miss the point. For while Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) battles to eradicate the forces of darkness, and Darth Vader (David Prowse/James Earl Jones) fights to obliterate the forces of light, the story itself seeks to rectify the imbalance between these polar opposites without utterly destroying either. Furthermore, Star Wars firmly grasps the cycles of power. It goes to great pains to emphasize that we enter the story at a very particular time. In the past the balance of power was different. Through the generations power slowly shifted: the Jedi Knights faded away, civil war broke out (further indicating that this is a struggle, not between alien civilizations, but between brothers), and the emperor grew in strength until the scales tipped so egregiously in favor of darkness that the forces of light now face near extinction. They have only one prayer: the arrival of a hero – “A New Hope”. An early image of Princess Leia’s (Carrie Fisher) tiny ship being sucked into the empire’s enormous Deathstar illustrates the disparity of power. As if she were sitting on one end of a seesaw and Jabba the Hut were sitting on the other, she sees the hopelessness of her situation and does the only sensible thing: she finds more weight.
Approximate Word count = 1026
Approximate Pages = 4.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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