The Problem With Star Wars: Myths Aren’t Canon

As a lifelong fan of Star Wars, I’ve watched it evolve from a hit series of movies in the late 70’s/early 80’s, to a pop culture sensation that could exist outside of the movies in the 90’s (when no new films seemed forthcoming), to the slew of Star Wars content that has oversaturated the market — and most people’s patience — in the early 21st century. When I was a kid, nothing brought like-minded fans together than talking about the films, the action figures, the comics, and the soundtracks. Honestly, so many of my early friendships were forged over John Williams’ scores, as we imagined other adventures that fit between the famous films that were suggested by those timeless tunes.

Today, sadly, nothing divides fans more than discussing all-things Star Wars, especially which films are good and which are awful, what things are canon and what things are anathema, and what makes a ‘true’ Star Wars fan. The latter topic is almost always advanced by someone born long after The Return of the Jedi was released, and used to insult someone who remembers standing in line to buy tickets to one of those first three films. My point being, why should a work of art that was pure fantasy, pure imagination, pure speculative hodgepodge, be used as a gate-keeping yardstick? It’s ironic that the very people the academics and other watchdogs of culture used to thumb their nose at are now aping their arguments and mannerisms internally — that is, using it to distinguish hierarchies of Star Wars academia.

After reading countless articles and debates about the franchise and being involved in many of them myself, I think I can boil the problem with Star Wars down to a single indisputable fact:

Star Wars is a mythology, not a genre. It always was.

What I mean by this is that Star Wars isn’t a specific work that follows very specific laws that are unique to this world and these characters. Rather, it has become much more like the mythology that Lucas always intended, a medium, a lens for telling many different types of stories within a familiar landscape. Which means that every work that takes place in the Star Wars universe is a distinct perspective on the characters and the stories, and doesn’t necessarily have to be consistent with any other story or film.

While some might argue that Star Wars was always meant to be a science-fantasy movie in the vein of Flash Gordon serials, that’s only partly true. The real truth is that George Lucas based Star Wars on everything he could get his hands on. If you look closely, the very first Star Wars film, Episode 4: A New Hope, is all of the following:

• A work of golden-age Science Fiction
• A work of high fantasy (just with the trapping of science fiction)
• A western, particularly the ‘Spaghetti Westerns’ so popular in the 1960’s (which in turn, are often inspired by the genre below)
• A story of feudal Japan, ala Kwaidan or so many of Kurosawa’s films (samurai, Buddhist priests, ghosts, etc.)
• A dystopian work, in the mold of 1984, or more strictly, a work following Lucas’ first film, THX-1138
• A nostalgic take on the Republic serials that Lucas grew up with, such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, but also the comic strips that inspired those in the first place, which hearken back to the work of Burroughs, such as Tarzan and A Princess of Mars, or Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda
• A work of mythology, carefully reworking the themes of classic myths from numerous cultures, including Greek mythology, King Arthur, Moses, the life of the Buddha, etc.
• A work of allegory in the mold of classic allegorical poems and novels such as The Odyssey, The Faerie Queen, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Piers Plowman, etc.
• A classic children’s novel following the well-traveled formula of Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, Treasure Island, Peter Pan, and others.

And I’m sure there are many more than I’ve overlooked, since Lucas’ inspiration was eclectic and like any great artist, he drew from diverse sources, some of which he was only dimly aware of. What makes A New Hope so successful is that it combined all of these disparate genres and stories into a package that actually made sense, and gave almost everyone something to enjoy and find familiar.

Indeed, what caused the first film’s extended growing pains was Lucas’ inability to make a script that navigated the tonal differences from one to the other. Early drafts read like re-heated Lord of the Rings with too much new age philosophy thrown in. At times it was simply too dark, too dystopian; at other times, it became too childish, too exotic. With the help of other writers, experienced editors, and the masterful sounds of Ben Burtt, the wizardly of the fledgling Industrial Light and Magic, and the late-Romantic music of John Williams, the story began to acquire its trademark feel and shape. From the opening minutes of A New Hope, you know exactly where you are: it doesn’t feel like anything else that existed before it.

The result was a work both new and old, one that spoke in the rich warble of never-never land, but felt like a journey into deepest, darkest space. Take Darth Vader, a man-machine who looks like a bizarre combination of the robot from Metropolis and Dracula, but still manages to seem like a unique creation of this time and space. But the film doesn’t really define him, either. He could be a robot, or he could be a man…we learn later his true identity, of course, but there are still countless variations on that theme. He is just a shape of evil, almost like a shadow whose true presence is felt but always just off-screen.

Lucas was careful to give us allegorical types rather than distinct characters, so they could be reinterpreted later on by other storytellers from other points of view. It was for later films, novels, and comics to do that, which introduced the unfortunate concept of ‘canon’ to the argument. What was real and what speculation? What had to be ignored and re-written so that the ‘real’ and ‘authoritative’ story could be told? And what does it mean when one story replaces another one that exists in living memory? Did the events of The Holiday Special occur in a parallel universe? And what about all those books and comics where Luke and Leia are clearly romantic partners? Is that all taboo in a world where they have become, irrefutably, brother and sister?

Mythology works in exactly the same way: the stories and told and re-told with shifting emphasis in different times and cultures. The story of Pandora is a great example. According to the general story, Zeus gives Prometheus the gift of Woman (who didn’t previously exist) as a double-edged sword, since women are trouble! Prometheus would never accept such a gift, because his name literally means “forethought.” But his brother, Epimetheus (literally, “afterthought”) wasn’t so clever, and so accepted the gift willingly. He told Pandora to watch over a magic jar (not a chest, according to most myths) which had all the evil of the world packed into it. Being curious, or mischievous, or clever, she opened it and unleashed all the evils of the world onto the land…but managed to smash the lid shut before the one good thing, Hope, got out. So according to different stories, Pandora is like Eve, a foolish woman who brought suffering into the world. But from a different perspective, Pandora is our savior, since she saved Hope for mankind, the one thing we can cling to in the worst of times. So was Pandora a gift or a curse? What was Zeus’ real purpose in giving her? And in some stories this gift never even occurs! So which one is canon?

The answer is surely all of the above. Is that a paradox? Not in the language of myth, which, like language, evolves and adapts. Otherwise, it dies away. As Helen Morales writes in Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction,

“The real advantage of allegorical interpretation is that it expanded the possibilities for imaginative readings of the well-known narratives. Paradoxically, perhaps, the reduction of myth to metaphor enabled mythic lore to be remythologized…It is a process that typically takes control away from the author of a narrative and gives it to the reader. It is the reader who decides whether to interpret writing on a literal or a symbolic level. In giving greater control to the reader, the allegory allows for imaginative and reflective analyses of mythology, and for its ideological purposes to be criticized, as well as affirmed” (64–66).

This was the great discovery of literature and myth, that it works on an allegorical level, that changes depending upon the reader and their cultural moment. So you can’t speak of Greek mythology as a genre that has a specific message of meaning, since so many readers/writers worked within it and told different stories using the same themes and characters.

The same is true of Star Wars since the very beginning: it could be a comic-book serial (see a book like Splinter of the Mind’s Eye), a work of myth and religion (this comes to the fore more in Empire Strikes Back with Yoda), a hard-edged dystopian thriller (the recent Rogue One and Andor play up this angle), or even a shoot-em-up Western (The Mandalorian). They all work, because the potential for each kind of story/interpretation is in the characters themselves. Lucas wrote it this broadly for a reason: he didn’t know where he wanted to go with it (beyond some basic ideas and some old drafts), and didn’t want to be tied down to a specific plot or outline. Indeed, he had no idea that Darth Vader was Luke’s father or that Luke and Leia were siblings at the beginning. That evolved as the story he wanted to tell evolved, though even these ideas come from Greek myths themselves.

And here we have a very modern problem when it comes to literature and education: most people don’t read enough to understand the family tree of stories that inform even the most popular novel or comic book. Everything is connected, and no story or tradition emerges from a vacuum. However, when people are confronted by the diverse stories that stake a claim to the Star Wars universe, their first response is often, “that can’t happen! He/she wouldn’t act like that! They never did that! They never said that! It’s not canon!”

Case in point, the Luke that appears in The Last Jedi. Even Mark Hamill took umbrage at the portrayal of Luke as a bitter, distraught, faithless hermit who wants nothing to do with the Force or the Resistance. And yet, neither Hamill or Lucas or any fan has the last word on who Luke can be, or what story is being told through his archetype. A myth can never truly be canon, other than the most basic points, like the grammar of a sentence. But beyond that, the words can speak anything they want to, even if it turns the previous myth on its head.

One thing I think that Disney has embraced very well about Star Wars is that each self-contained unit doesn’t have to embody the sum-total of the Star Wars universe. A show like The Mandalorian is full of nods to the Prequels and the Original Trilogy, and exists as a fun, nostalgia exercise and a throwback to the very serials that Lucas loved as a child. Andor, however, takes the myth of Star Wars more seriously, and examines how far we can stretch the allegory of a galactic Empire. How much of our own world and history can we tuck into the corners of this epic tale? As we see, the story starts looking a lot less like the swords-and-sorcery tale most people grew up with, than with the 60’s Science Fiction that Lucas was a pivotal part of — works like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek, or even Logan’s Run. And yes, Star Wars and Star Trek can join forces to tell the same story in the same universe!

While some might argue that this is a crass attempt to commercialize the Star Wars universe, the seeds for this approach were planted from the very beginning. Not only in A New Hope, but even in the next two films, which are dramatically disparate in tone and thematic intent. The Empire Strikes Back is the most ‘mature’ of all three films, as it moves all the main characters closer to real life and emotions. We get more religion, more philosophy, and more politics; in short, more of what science fiction was always trying to do, which is to use metaphors of the future to talk about the world around us.

Yoda is the core of that film, since he is a throwback in every sense of the word: a lizard-like creature who seems to be from a distant point in the evolutionary scale, still practicing magic and nature worship. He is the polar opposite of the new-age messiah, Darth Vader, who has replaced every scrap of his humanity with circuitry and armor. Only his belief in the dark side of the Force — and his sheer cruelty — remind us of the human being within. So how to remain human when the world stretches beyond the borders of Earth and only machines keep us alive? How to remain ‘Yoda’ in a world of ‘Darth Vaders’? This is Luke’s dilemma (and he learns in the cave in Degobah) and likewise, our own.

Return of the Jedi, on the other hand, softens the edges and offers easier victories, since the bad guys become cardboard (Jabba and the Emperor) and even Darth Vader suddenly grows a heart. With the inclusion of the Ewoks and a generally light-heared tone, we see the myth evolving from questions of adulthood to the promise of a perpetual youth. It is the most Peter Pan-like installment of the series, since Luke never has a doubt of his ability or rightness, and defies the Emperor with the sure knowledge that he will live forever (and man, shouldn’t he have died ten times over after that Sith electrocution?). The inclusion of the Force Ghosts at the end (including the ‘real’ Anakin Skywalker) shows us that this was all just play, that nothing was for real, and that heroes can risk everything knowing they’ll come out good in the end.

But we get a curious glimpse of what the film might have been with the original title, “Revenge of the Jedi,” and Luke’s all-black outfit and his propensity to force-choke Gamorrean guards. An early draft of the film even had Luke flirting with the Dark Side, and being sorely tempted by the Emperor’s promise of power which could be used to ‘cleanse’ the galaxy. Clearly Lucas had second thoughts, saving these ideas for Anakin’s journey in The Revenge of the Sith…

The point being, Star Wars is large enough to tell every possible story: the Victorian myth of an endless childhood and the 21st century Posthuman Nightmare. If consistency were that important, than all of these films would cancel each other out. Indeed, A New Hope seems so self-contained that making a sequel initially seemed pointless (many critics were very dubious about it at the time). There seems to be nothing more to tell, since the myth is entirely at the service of allegory. The only way forward was to make the characters human again, which Empire did with aplomb. But rather than take that to the next level (as we see in Andor, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi) Lucas pulled back, deciding that Star Wars could tell better stories, or at least more fruitful ones, in a juvenile landscape. It was the 1980’s after all, and the world of THX-1138 wouldn’t have sat well among so many Rambos and Rockys.

We all have our favorite Star Wars, and naturally, there are some episodes we won’t like. But the reason can’t be because it’s wrong or invalid. It’s just interpreting the myth in a new way that isn’t consistent with the story you were told, or want to hear told. Otherwise, we would only have one religion, one book, one history, one nation. It’s not ‘woke’ to prefer a plurality of voices or approaches, since that’s what keeps languages and cultures alive; many people contributing to the mix and finding hidden meanings and ideas in even the most familiar material. Star Wars did this from the beginning, though it was so popular and ever-present that most people missed the point. Yet now we can see it clearer because there’s even more of it, and therefore, more room for ‘canonical’ disagreement.

I’ll close with a quote from Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth, which reminds me what Star Wars, and all mythology, does when it really works:

“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth — penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words…Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told…It is important to live life with the experience, and therefore the knowledge, of its mystery, and of your own mystery. This gives life a new radiance, a new harmony, a new splendor…”

Star Wars hints at that greater truth, by placing it in a form that seems alien at first glimpse, so utterly unlike our own boring, workaday world. Yet with repeated viewings, we start to see ourselves in the story, our own struggles and journeys. Star Wars makes ‘poetry’ of modern life, and shows us that anyone can be a Jedi, or a Sith, depending on how you interpret the allegory. How we maintain our humanity in an increasingly commercialized, mechanical world is the great question of the 20th and 21st centuries. Star Wars can never hope to answer this question, or even to present it in all its contradiction and complexity. But myth never sets out to provide easy answers, or even answers at all. Like the ancient Greek Oracle, it merely provides us clues that are ours to interpret, to puzzle over, and to use as the building blocks for new stories and civilizations. I look forward to seeing what the seeds of Star Wars will build in the future — both in fantasy and in reality.