Background of the movie
Star Wars is an epic space opera franchise initially conceived by George Lucas. The first film in the franchise was simply titled Star Wars, but later had the subtitle Episode IV: A New Hope added to distinguish it from its sequels and prequels. It was originally released on May 25, 1977 by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, spawning two immediate sequels released in three-year intervals. Sixteen years after the release of the trilogy’s final film, the first in a new prequel trilogy of films was released, again released in three-year intervals, with the final film released on May 19, 2005.
As of 2008, the overall box office revenue generated by the six Star Wars films has totaled approximately $4.3 billion, making it the third-highest grossing film series. The Star Wars franchise has spawned other media including books, television series, video games, and comic books. These supplements to the film trilogies comprise the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and have resulted in significant development of the series’ fictional universe. These media kept the franchise going in the interim between the film trilogies. In 2008, Star Wars: The Clone Wars was released to theaters as the first ever worldwide theatrical Star Wars film outside of the main trilogies. It was the franchise’s first animated film, and was intended as an introduction to the Expanded Universe series of the same name, a 3D CGI animated series based on a 2003 animated 2D series, also of the same name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars
Summary
The prequel trilogy follows the upbringing of Anakin Skywalker, who is discovered by the Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn. He is believed to be the “Chosen One” foretold by Jedi prophecy to bring balance to the Force. The Jedi Council, led by Yoda, sense that his future is clouded with fear, but reluctantly allow Qui-Gon’s apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi to train Anakin after Qui-Gon is killed by the Sith Lord Darth Maul. At the same time, the planet Naboo is under attack, and its ruler, Queen Padme Amidala, seeks the assistance of the Jedi to repel the attack. The Sith Lord Darth Sidious secretly planned the attack to give his alias, Senator Palpatine, a pretense to overthrow the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic. The remainder of the prequel trilogy chronicles Anakin’s fall to the dark side, as Sidious attempts to create an army to defeat the Jedi and lure Anakin to be his apprentice. Anakin and Padme fall in love and eventually she becomes pregnant. Anakin soon succumbs to his anger, becoming the Sith Lord Darth Vader. While Sidious re-organizes the Republic into the Galactic Empire, Vader participates in the extermination of the Jedi Order, culminating in a lightsaber battle between him and Obi-Wan. After defeating his former apprentice, Obi-Wan leaves Vader for dead – but Sidious arrives shortly after to save him and put him into a suit of black armor that keeps him alive. At the same time, Padme dies while giving birth to twins. The twins are hidden from Vader and not told of their true parents.
The original trilogy begins 19 years later as Vader nears completion of the massive Death Star space station which will allow him and Sidious, now the Emperor, to crush the rebellion which has formed against the evil empire. He captures Princess Leia Organa who has stolen the plans to the Death Star and hidden them in droid R2-D2. R2-D2, along with his counterpart C-3PO, escapes to the planet Tatooine. There, the droids are purchased by Luke Skywalker, son of Anakin, and his step-uncle and aunt. While Luke is cleaning R2-D2, he accidentally triggers a message put into the robot by Leia, who asks for assistance from Obi-Wan. Luke later assists the droids in finding the Jedi Knight, who is now passing as an old hermit under the alias Ben Kenobi. Obi-Wan tells Luke of his father’s greatness, but says that he was killed by Vader. Obi-Wan and Luke hire the Corellian space pilot and smuggler Han Solo and his Wookiee co-pilot Chewbacca to take them to the rebels. Obi-Wan begins to teach Luke about the Force, but allows himself to be killed in a showdown with Vader during the rescue of Leia. His sacrifice allows the group to escape with the plans that allow the rebels to destroy the Death Star.
Vader continues to hunt down the rebels, and begins building a second Death Star. Luke travels to find Yoda to become trained as a Jedi, but is interrupted when Vader lures him into a trap by capturing Han and the others. Vader reveals that he is Luke’s father and attempts to turn him to the dark side. Luke escapes, and returns to his training with Yoda. He learns that he must face his father before he can become a Jedi, and that Leia is his twin sister. As the rebels attack the second Death Star, Luke confronts Vader under the watch of the Emperor. Instead of convincing Luke to join the dark side, the young Jedi defeats Vader in a lightsaber duel and is able to convince him that there is still some good in him. Vader kills the Emperor before succumbing to his own injuries, and the second Death Star is destroyed, restoring freedom to the galaxy.
<span style=”font-style:italic;”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars</span>
Analysis
1. Structuralism
Structuralism is a form of cultural science; it tries to explain how the visual and audio representation of film creates meaning. Structuralism tries to avoid the subjective, critic-based flaws of many other film analysis methods, and to use a more empirical, objective approach. The creation of structuralist film criticism helped introduce the notion of systematic study and scientific rigor into film criticism.
Structuralism looks at a film as a form of language, and like linguistics, it studies reality as a system of signs. Structuralism assumes that meaning is culturally construction, and that meaning is arbitrarily assigned to the signifiers. Once a signifier is created to represent something, its meaning becomes a cultural convention. The structuralist method attempts to understand how meaning is culturally constructed through signs. According to structuralists, film does not copy external reality, but instead it constructs its own reality through a structure of signifiers.
Structuralism focuses on the syntagmatic axis of the linguistics model, and studies the sequence of signs, similar to the concept of a grammar. Structuralists believe that discovering the order of a film’s signs in time and finding the “grammar” of the film can give us a better understanding of how film’s meaning is constructed.
2. Structuralist Criticism on the Star Wars Trilogy
In George Lucas’ film “Return of the Jedi,” the third film of the “Star Wars” trilogy, it is revealed that Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia are brother and sister, and that Darth Vader is really Anakin Skywalker, their father. The introduction of familial relations in the third film of the trilogy sheds a new light on the interpretation of the first two films, “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back”. When you consider the content of the three films as a whole, keeping in mind the new information about the Skywalker family, it appears that there may be an underlying theme concerning family relations throughout the trilogy. By performing a structuralist analysis of the films, it may be possible to cut through the surface details of the film and find the underlying opposition around which the story revolves. After viewing and taking screening notes on the entire “Star Wars” trilogy, focusing on the action between members of the Skywalker family, I have found that there are four major categories of events which are repeated:
2.1.Harmful Parental Power
When the scenes are divided up in this manner, it appears that the “Star Wars” trilogy deals with rites of passage, in which the children must defeat their father in order to maintain their independence. While the father uses his power to either capture his children, question his children, or to destroy the alternative families that his children have built, the two children strive to escape from, to fight, and finally to defeat his parental influence. The trilogy appears to revolve around the opposition between parental power and the independence of the children. The opposition is similar to a line which Princess Leia said to Governor Tarkin in “Star Wars”, The more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers.” Replace the word “systems” with the words “your children” in this quote, and you will have a good description of Vader’s position in the trilogy.
2.2.Escapes from Parental Power
While it appears that both children need to go through rites of passage, they do it in very different ways. Luke’s rites of passage are very direct. Luke faces his father in three instances: in the aerial Death Star battle in “Star Wars”, and in face-to-face confrontations using light sabers in the conclusions of “Empire” and “Jedi”. In the first confrontation, Luke manages to destroy the Empire’s deadly space station, the Death Star, despite Vader’s attempts to stop him. By destroying the Death Star, Luke destroys a weapon which is both a symbol of and a major cause of his father’s power, and thereby fulfills his first rite of passage.
In Luke’s second confrontation, Luke is badly beaten by Vader, but he is able to escape with Leia’s help. Although Luke did not defeat Vader in this confrontation, it was here that Vader showed the first signs that he was changing, and it was the turning point towards the resolution of the opposition.
In the third and final confrontation, the opposition is resolved when Vader turns away from the dark side of the Force and saves Luke from the Emperor. Not only did Luke physically defeat Vader in this battle, but he made his father renounce the evil person he had become and return to being the good Jedi Anakin Skywalker. Vader was forced to do something which many children would love to see their parents do, and admit that his son had been right while he was wrong. Vader died shortly after saving Luke, but was able to achieve immortality through the good side of the Force as Yoda and Ben Kenobi had before him. Luke completely fulfills his rite of passage by not only defeating the parental power which had harmed him, but by converting the parental power into a form of power that helped him instead.
2.3.Battles Against Parental Power
When you look at Princess Leia’s rites of passage, however, you find that they are not as clear as Luke’s were. Leia does not achieve her rites of passage merely by direct combat with her father; instead, she forms alliances which enable her to achieve her goals and fulfill her separation from parental power.
In “Star Wars”, Leia is an organizer of the Rebel Alliance, and she recruits Luke, Han Solo and Chewbacca as allies. Prior to the final battle in “Star Wars”, Leia pleads for Han to put himself aside and to help the Rebels fight the Death Star. Han initially refuses, and appears to escape with his well-earned fee. However, he returns at the end of the battle just in time to send Darth Vader spinning off into space, preventing Vader from killing Luke and allowing Luke to destroy the Death Star. Leia’s plea motivated Han to return and assist his new-found friends rather than allow them to be destroyed by the Empire.
It is very interesting that Leia falls in love with the man who shot down her father and saved her brother, even though she didn’t know that she was related to either one at the time.
In “The Empire Strikes Back”, Leia’s grief at Han Solo’s capture and carbon-freezing is instrumental in causing Lando Calrissian to end his uncomfortable alliance with her father and help Leia and Luke to escape Cloud City. Lando betrayed Han and Leia when they arrived at Cloud City, turning them over to Vader in the belief that they were only bait for capturing Luke, and that they would be turned over to his control after Luke was captured. However, Vader tortured Han and Leia, and carbon-froze Han as a test for the planned carbon-freezing of his son. Vader also informs Lando that he will be retaining control of Leia and Chewbacca and taking them away on his ship. Lando watched Leia’s anguished face as his old friend Han was carbon-frozen, and shortly thereafter, he helped Leia to escape and to rescue Luke.
Finally, in “Return of the Jedi”, Leia forms an alliance with the Ewoks, who are instrumental to the final defeat of the Empire. Leia, Luke and Han go to the planet Endor on a mission to destroy the energy shield that protects the Death Star. The Rebel Fleet will then arrive and destroy the now-vulnerable Death Star. Leia crashes her speeder bike and encounters Wicket, a furry young creature called an Ewok. She establishes trust with the young Wicket by giving him food, and he takes her to the Ewok Village to meet with the Elders. The Ewoks agree to help the Rebels defeat the Stormtroopers on Endor, allowing the Rebels to destroy the generator and allow the pilots to destroy the Death Star.
2.4.Defeats of Parental Power
I will now go into a closer analysis of the concluding battle and scene from “Empire”, in order to provide some more specific evidence to back up my contention that the trilogy revolves around a binary opposition between parental power and the children’s independence, and that the opposition is often revealed through the children’s rites of passage. The sequence alternates between scenes of Luke fighting Vader and scenes of Leia escaping from Cloud City with Lando Calrissian, Chewbacca, and the two robots R2-D2 and C-3P0. First I will discuss how specific details from Luke’s battle with Vader support my theory that this scene is the turning point of the opposition, and when the signs first begin to point towards a possible resolution.
When Luke first sees Vader in the carbon-freezing facility, Vader says, “The Force is with you, young Skywalker, but you are not a Jedi yet.” With this statement, Vader is denying Luke’s strength and independence, and is apparently hoping to use some of his “parental power” to convince Luke to join him. Luke approaches Vader, and they begin to fight. Vader is surprised by how skilled Luke has become and remarks on it: “Obi-Wan has taught you well.” Luke tells Vader, “You’ll find I’m full of surprises.” Although this appears to be an insignificant quote at first, it becomes more important when seen in relation to the trilogy’s binary opposition. Luke’s remark takes on the appearance of a challenge to Vader, a challenge which Luke lived up to very well when he faced both Vader and the Emperor in “Jedi”. Luke gains the advantage in the fight momentarily, knocking Vader over the edge of the platform, but Vader soon dominates the fight by using the dark side of the Force to throw things at Luke and knock Luke out of a window. When Luke catches hold of a catwalk and begins fighting Vader again, Luke cuts Vader’s shoulder, and then Vader chops off Luke’s hand. The alternation between which character is dominant that occurs throughout this section seems to indicate that neither father nor son has a significant advantage in the fight, and that the battle will not be resolved as simply as Vader might have expected.
Vader backs Luke onto a small platform over a large drop and says, “There is no escape. Don’t make me destroy you.” Vader’s plea to Luke gives the impression that Vader does not want to kill his son, regardless of his promise to the Emperor that Luke would “Join us, or die.” When Vader follows this statement with the revelation that he is Luke’s father, and he asks Luke to join him in destroying the Emperor so they can “rule the galaxy as father and son,” there seems to be a perceivable softening in Vader’s manner. Finally, Vader tells Luke to “Come with me; it is the only way,” but Luke proves that Vader is dramatically wrong in that statement.
Luke looks at Vader, looks at the drop below him, then smiles and let’s himself fall. The combination of Vader’s underestimation of Luke’s strength, the softening of Vader’s manner, and the proof of Luke’s resolve all suggest a subtle change in the relations between Luke and Vader, which will lead to the resolution of the opposition in the next film.
At the same time that Luke is battling Vader, Leia is trying to escape from Cloud City. Han has already been carbon-frozen, and she enlists Lando’s help to escape from the city in the Millenium Falcon. As the Millenium Falcon takes off, Luke is dangling from an antenna underneath the city, where he ended up after his fall. Luke uses the Force to call Leia for help, giving the first clue that the Force might be strong in Leia as well. Leia goes back to Cloud City and picks up Luke. There is a parallel drawn between Leia and Vader here; both contact Luke through the Force within the space of only two short scenes. The parallel drawn between Leia and Vader offers a strong clue to the family relationship that will be introduced in the next film.
Finally, Luke and Leia escape as the Falcon goes into light speed, and Vader is left staring at the void where the ship was only a moment ago. Interestingly enough, two of the strongest hints about Vader’s pending change of heart are reflected in this scene by what he doesn’t do. First, he does not kill Luke, as he had promised the Emperor he would if Luke failed to join them. Second, Vader did not kill Admiral Piett, who was in charge of capturing the Millenium Falcon. In two earlier scenes in the film, Imperial officers who failed to catch the Falcon were executed by Vader. When the Falcon final goes into light speed and escapes, Admiral Piett looks very nervously at Vader, expecting that his fate will be the same as his predecessors. However, Vader merely turns and walks out of the room, and does not kill Admiral Piett. The fact that Vader did not kill the officer who “failed” him indicates the beginning of a change in Darth Vader, a certain softening of Vader’s darkness that acts to foreshadow the complete reversal that Vader will make in the next film.
Conclusion
Structuralism gives critics a good tool for looking at the primary oppositions of a film. It has been useful in revealing the conventions and assumptions of the films, and in helping critics to strive towards a more scientifically oriented approach to film study. However, the structuralist method does have its drawbacks. The method falls apart if you don’t agree with its premise that language should be the paradigm for film study. The potential for bias still exists, and may show up in the critic’s interpretation of the scientific data that the method has collected. Structuralism also tends to be reductive, and may ignore subtle differences between films.
My assessment is that structuralism is a useful method within its confines; it does what it is supposed to do fairly well. However, structuralism is not sufficient to be the only method used to understand films. The only way to gain a thorough understanding of a film is to look at it through many different methods of analysis, and to compare the results from the methods to see what their agreements and contradictions reveal about the film as a whole.
Tags: analysis, literarycriticsm, starwars, structuralism
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