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It’s becoming Mystery Week here at Star Wars 7×7, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to start us off with a little more of that short essay I mentioned yesterday, by Damon Lindelof, co-creator of Lost with J.J. Abrams and Jeffrey Lieber. Here we go:
We forget how crucial the idea of mystery was to the original trilogy. Apart from the crawl, setting the stage for civil war, we were completely on our own. Our brains were exploding with questions. Who is Obi-Wan Kenobi? Why is he our only hope? What’s up with this Lord Vader, and good God, what is going on under that helmet?
This, to me, is where the real opportunity for Star Wars: Episode VII lies. In mystery. And even better, it seems that Abrams is very aware of that opportunity. Here’s a quote from him back in November 2013:
I loved how Star Wars had that sense of a world far beyond the borders of what you can see and have been told. It’s one of the things it did so brilliantly. If you watch the first movie, you don’t actually know exactly what the Empire is trying to do. They’re going to rule by fear – but you don’t know what their end game is. You don’t know what Leia is princess of. You don’t yet understand who Jabba the Hutt is, even though there is a reference to him. You don’t know that Vader is Luke’s father, Leia is his sister – but the possibility is all there. The beauty of that movie was that it was an unfamiliar world, and yet you wanted to see it expand and to see where it went.
And why did it work that way? Because you got dropped into the middle of the action, with very little to go on. In fact, this is all we had to go on in 1977 – the opening crawl:
It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy….
Now, I’m not a professional film critic or historian, so I can’t say for sure that what I’m about to say is true. But as far as I can recall, no movie before Star Wars treated the audience this way, putting us in catch-up mode from the get-go. Even crazier, Lucas put the inciting incident off-screen. Meaning, the thing that sets the action of the movie in motion is the Rebel attack that results in the theft of the Death Star plans. And we don’t get to see it! It happens before the movie starts, and all we get to see is one aspect of the aftermath.
The prequels tried to give us similar catch-up situations – putting the start of the blockade over Naboo and the kidnapping of Palpatine off-screen (Attack of the Clones put the inciting incident on-screen, the assassination attempt on Padme) – but for OT fans like me, it just wasn’t as compelling somehow. Why? Because we already had a sense of what the world of Star Wars was like in the days of the Old Republic. The mystery wasn’t there. And we didn’t have to invest ourselves in figuring it out.
I think that last part is the most important for us Original Trilogy fans. Because we weren’t trying to understand the mysterious world unfolding in front of us, the prequels just weren’t as compelling to us. But you ask people who grew up with the Prequel Trilogy, and they largely had the kind of experience we had with the Original. They had to invest, because that’s where they started.
This, ultimately, is one of the many reasons I’m hopeful about Episode VII. Because Abrams understands our need for mystery. Because the Expanded Universe is only a legend now. Because 30 years after Return of the Jedi is a long time. A long time. There’s no way to guess how the galaxy, or our heroes, have changed. We’ll just have to catch up with George’s vision again. And all three generations of fans – OT, PT, and ST – will be in the same boat together.
Star Wars Fun Fact
Surprising or little known Star Wars tidbits, sometimes related to today’s Force Feature.Did you know? The original opening crawl for Star Wars did not include the phrase “Episode IV A New Hope” as Lucas had wanted. The story as told on Wikipedia goes that 20th Century Fox wouldn’t allow Lucas to subtitle it that way because there had been no prior Star Wars movies released, and a sequel was not guaranteed at that point by any stretch. Fox thought it would be confusing to moviegoers, and you know, I can’t say I blame them. It was finally put in for the 1981 Star Wars re-release.
Life on “Tweet”-ooine
A featured dispatch from the Star Wars Twitterverse!It’s 15 days till Halloween! Anyone remember these #StarWars costumes? #Halloween pic.twitter.com/x1dfaqQWqc
— Rancho Obi-Wan (@RanchoObiWan) October 16, 2014
Star Wars Swag Bag
So many fun, quirky, and awesome ways to bring Star Wars into your daily life!Stormtrooper Helmet Prop Replica – click the pic for details!
Trivia Time!
Test your knowledge of the Star Wars universe!Yesterday’s answer: Two
Today’s question: What Rebel pilot’s last words were “Wait, wait!”?