Part four of a great fantasy series

Rating: 10/10 (18 December 2006)

This is the fourth part of my essay on the themes and motifs of Star Wars.
The first Star Wars film was released in 1977 and started not at the beginning of the story, but in the middle. A New Hope begins the series with the galaxy in civil war. The Republic has fallen into ruin and has been replaced with the Galactic Empire, which is opposed by the Rebel Alliance. The children of fallen hero Anakin Skywalker now take their place in the epic.
One of the most prevalent themes in Star Wars is the fallibility of technology and the conflict between technology and humanity. Nowhere is this conflict more evident than in the menacing villain Darth Vader. Horribly disfigured in Episode III, he is kept alive only by a mechanical suit. Yet, enslaved as he is by technology, he is very much aware of its limits. He chides an imperial officer, Admiral Motti, over his pride in the Death Star super weapon: "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force." This statement is further reinforced at the climax when Luke Skywalker uses his humanity, as embodied in the Force, to destroy the Death Star when a powerful computer could not.
Yet technology is not all bad in the Star Wars universe. The droids, R2-D2 and C-3PO, are technological and yet they show more humanity than the film's human villains. In addition to Vader, these villains include dehumanized storm troopers hidden behind Nazi-style helmets and effete officers like Grand Moff Tarkin who are so detached from humanity that they think nothing of killing millions of people to make a political point. These acts of villainy remind us both of the events of the past and the ongoing events of modern times. Perhaps the best message to take from the film is the necessity of maintaining our unique humanity, even under the most dehumanizing circumstances.
In 1977, few would have predicted that Star Wars, like the struck-down Obi-Wan Kenobi, would become a phenomenon "more powerful than you can possibly imagine." Ultimately it owes this legacy not simply to revolutionary special effects, but mostly to great story-telling and timeless, primal themes of humanity.
10/10