The Mythology of Star Wars Essay

“ The force will be with you, always.” This is advice given to Luke Skywalker by his mentor Obi Wan Kenobi. In the archetypal hero’s journey a wise and experienced mentor such as Obi Wan will often help guide or offer advice to the youthful and budding hero. Throughout time and across different cultures there are certain symbols, events and characters which can be found in literature and Star Wars IV: A New Hope follows this trend step by step. During the film Star Wars IV: A New Hope, the main protagonist Luke undergoes a stereotypical, or in literary terms an archetypal hero’s journey. Luke starts from humble beginnings and when he is called upon to save the galaxy; he then faces various tests which help him hone skills that he will need for the final life or death battle.

We are delighted to have the opportunity to examine Star Wars because we feel intimately connected to the film and all that it represents. We grew up with R2D2, C3PO, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, and Chewbacca. We dressed up like them for Halloween, we played Star Wars games for countless hours, we imagined ourselves using their futuristic technology, and now we want to study how this artifact has affected our society and how it might affect our future.

That number is a far stretch from $4.5 billion right? Well the Star wars franchise includes much more than just the 6 movies box office totals. The video and DVD sales are about $3 billion 775 million as said by statistic brain. This includes all DVDs and movies from all 6 movies and Star wars the clone wars. The video game sales grossed $2.9 billion. These games range from the oldest super Nintendo games to the newer PlayStation and Xbox games. The book sales have grossed $1.82 billion. This is an example of just 1 of the 23 books my boyfriend alone has, all together there are over 100 books written. The toy sales have grossed 12 billion this includes all collectibles, action figures, and toys such as puzzles, Legos, coloring books, or bobble heads that talk. The last bit is considered “other” which includes licensing, television shows, and merchandise grossed appx. $1.304 billion to date. Merchandise includes Pez despisers, posters, and any other Star Wars affiliated product.

Lucas’ movie Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, was not only the biggest sensation of its time,”...winning seven Academy Awards…” (Kiminski 10) , but also a substantial influence on the toy world. Lucas stated in his interview, “Ten year old boys will

With the record setting release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens the sci-fi franchise is the center of attention. No small talk begins without saying, Have you seen the new Star Wars?

First, in “A New Hope”, Obi-Wan’s fight with Vader expresses the good vs evil conflict. When Obi-Wan states, “You can’t win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine” (67), he shows that good will win the fight no matter what happens. In their fight, the two are balanced with each other. Towards the end, Vader uses the overwhelming force of his talents and youth to take down Obi-Wan. Even though Obi-Wan is no longer alive, he became more powerful, showing that good will always prevail against evil. Lucas expresses how good is always more knowledgeable then evil and uses it to exploit evil’s weaknesses to defeat them. Even if it seems like evil has won a small victory, good always wins more from it. Next, in “The Empire Strikes Back”, Luke fights a good vs evil conflict within himself in the Dagobah cave. Luke realizes the evil inside of him when his head pops out of Darth Vader’s mask, stated when the narrator says, “The black helmet and mask fall away to reveal Luke’s head. Across the space, Luke gasps…” (51). Luke realizes the anger and aggression inside of him and what it could make him. Luke has to chose if he will prevail with good or become an evil servant to the Dark Side. He knows after his head popped out of Vader’s mask that he could just as easily head down the path just

The ideas presented in the Star Wars Documentary relate to my journey when it comes to the hero's journey, the good and evil choice, and the uncontrollable event that sets life in motion. For starters, the hero’s journey, which is based off mythology and history, represents the transition between one identity to another. For my life this is represented from when I was a little kid to now. Going from a child, who has fun and nothing else to worry about, to a teen in high school who has to worry about grades, relationships, and careers. Secondly, the good and evil choice is seen in my life, just not as literally as in Star Wars. My good and evil choice was made in middle school. I could have chosen to slack off, never do work, but I chose to

George Lucas or the man I hope we would know by now as the creator of Star Wars, in various occasions has credited Campbell’s theory of the monomyth as the inspiration for his intergalactic series of films. It is quite easy to pick out many of the structures of a monomyth within the films. Often this popular example is used in classrooms when teaching the monomyth since it makes it easily relatable to younger audiences. By 1975 George Lucas had written two drafts for Star Wars and even though they were already written up and completed he felt they were lacking. He knew his drafts lacked

Star Wars is a classic representation of the science fiction genre of the 1970s and 1980s because it has helped to popularize

Luke Skywalker is a pop culture hero to children and adults alike. However, have you ever thought what makes Luke a hero? Luke, throughout his journey, has faced many obstacles. For example, having to destroy the Death Star or having to fight strong foes like Darth Vader. He also has to deal with the emotional scar of the evil man, Darth Vader, being his father. Luke, however, did not have to fight through this journey alone. He had the help of Obi-Wan, Han Solo, Princess Leia, C3-PO, Chewbacca, R2D2, and others. Luke has many definable traits that could make him be considered a hero, however, I believe his most prominent traits are his bravery and selflessness, but he has the weakness of not being able to control his emotions well.

"A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." (Lloyd) is the infamous beginning of one of the biggest, if not the biggest pop culture phenomenon of our time. Star Wars is a famous trilogy well known for it's action-packed scenes and technological achievement. The movies center around the all-powerful, all-controlling "Force". With all that we have come to know about Star Wars, we have yet to discover the true meaning of "The force" and if it is really a representation of some thing much bigger and much closer to us than we think.

During the summer of 1999, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace stormed theaters with a wave of anticipation that was unprecedented. By that point, Star Wars was assumed to be a thing of the past – until George Lucas decided to revisit his beloved creation. It sent fans into a frenzy of immeasurable proportions, lighting a fire in the adolescent hearts of millions and millions…and millions.

Star Wars was first released in May 1977. It is a series of movies based on an epic space adventure and was created by George Lucas. The franchise depicts a galaxy described as "far, far away" in the distant past, and portrays two important characterization like the Jedi as a representation of good, in conflict with the Sith, their evil counterpart. The overall box office produced over 4.38 billion dollars, making Star Wars one of the fifth highest grossing films of all time. Many believe the film would not have reached its highest without the prominently themed music created by John Williams. The renowned themes 'the force' and 'imperial march' are one of Williams most widely known music scores and motion pictures of all history. John Williams was able to vividly depict the characters conflict between good and evil through the use of musical elements like timbre, pitch and duration to create the individual characters.

Throughout the years, Star Wars has played a prevalent part in Sci-Fi culture. However, with the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the main audience of the franchise has made a major shift from its original demographics and has garnered a more mainstream group of viewers. In addition to its traditional audience of males age 18 to 44, females and teenagers have taken a new liking to the film. Because of these new age groups and gender groups finding more of an interest in the mega-blockbuster saga, Lucasfilm and Walt Disney Studios can expect a major economic upturn upon release of future Star Wars films.

While observing the set Lucas says that the set is so much better than his set and the movie will make much more money than Star Wars to Lucas’s dismay. Lucas also said “Oh my God, your movie is better than Star Wars! This is gonna be the biggest hit of all time. I can’t believe this set” Lucas said he would trade some earnings with Spielberg. They would each trade 2.5 percent of their movies earnings to each other. Then Spielberg agreed to the bet but actually Star Wars made $775 million at the box office and close encounters only making $304 million. Though Lucas did not lose much money since after the movie he was still a billionaire so there was not a giant hole in his wallet after the bet which surprised Lucas. He was very surprised that Star Wars got almost double the earning of close encounters and now had so much money.