Star Wars: Is there a Fast Lane to the Force?
It’s New Year’s Eve tonight. I could lay out my thoughts about what I’ve done and what I haven’t done this year, and my vows to be more of the kind of writer I need to be.
Or I could talk about Star Wars.
I’ve Got a Good Feeling About This, Luke….
As Han made a point of saying, “It’s all true.” The Force Awakens really is a solid return to that galaxy we visited a long time ago, and it pushes all the buttons it needs to. Lightsabers and stormtroopers, cute robots, and sheer adventure for the sake of liberty and a good ride. And you’ve probably heard it’s more a familiar return than a try at any new territory, and that’s true too.
(After all, would anyone really want a Star Wars movie to mess with the basics? Their strength has always been trusting the story’s simplicity, with just the right added wrinkles. And Lucas showed us what happens when someone thinks they can get too careless with it.)
One thing I’ve been saying for years is that everything with the brand on it since the original movies is simply fanfiction. It might be expertly done (Timothy Zahn writing books, or Genndy Tartakovsky applying his Samurai Jack animation magic), or with all kinds of claims to be canon. But everyone who claimed their own story actually connected to that core always struck me as fooling themselves.
[bctt tweet=”All the #StarWars between Return and now has been fanfiction. http://bit.ly/StarWarsFastLane”]
Until now. We finally have a real sign that the magic is starting up again, that the new journey’s going to be worth taking—and I think the whole world’s been surprised to see how much we want to go there together. Credit J.J. Abrams (once again), along with the marvelous Daisy Ridley, Harrison Ford himself, and all the rest for making it possible.
Rey’s a Marvel – not a DC
One thing does stick in my mind watching the Awakening. One often-forgotten gem about the original trilogy was how slowly its “chosen hero” grew into his role. In the first movie Luke only got his lightsaber out for one round of training (and for that much more iconic poster), and spent most of his time being led along by Ben, Han, or Leia until the Force helps him make that one climactic shot. A couple years later, it’s still all he can do to summon his dropped saber, and Yoda’s training doesn’t entirely change that. It made the Force seem more a real part of the Star Wars universe, that truly understanding it might take a lifetime.
But Rey… for her, “potential Jedi” means working the Mind Trick, seeing visions, and winning duels within a day of discovering her power. Hmm.
The easy answer is that it’s simply to put the action at a faster pace. Let us see the new hero jump up to her flashier level in the one movie, instead of trying to hold our interest with mostly-human tricks all te way through. It gave us a good battle and all, but as a pacing decision I kind of miss the orginal New Hope‘s humility there.
Or there might be other reasons for it.
To go a little off-track, it reminds me of other points we can see, in some of the comic book achetypes:
DC Comics made its name with heroes like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman that had a destiny for most of their lives. They’ve grown up trying to control or learn what’s going to make them unique, and they rarely pretend they wanted to be anything else. Or consider Tarzan, King Arthur, Sherlock Holmes… or Luke’s own feeling trapped on that farm and his slow, earnest (if delayed) growth into a hero once he got his chance.
Marvel came of age during the “atomic scare” 60s, but I think there’s more than that to the early Marvel attitude. Once those heroes get their powers (a saying you can’t even use for the Superman types), the Thing only wants to be human again, the Hulk is his own and everyone else’s worst enemy, Spider-Man is even more of a misfit than Peter Parker, and the X-Men find their genes have drafted them into a race war. The more suddenly change comes with a radioactive spider bite—or a vampire bite, or a computer file full of spies’ bytes—the more a reluctant hero can think the rest of his life bites too.
(Irony check: it was mostly those “bitten” heroes that Marvel made famous enough to sell off the movie rights to, so they were left with their more DC-like lifelong warriors and inventors to launch the Avengers universe. Meanwhile DC’s TV spotlight is now on their lightning-charged Everyman the Flash…)
They’re both fine ways to set up character and abilities, of course.
A hero who was human yesterday and never forgets it stays closer to the reader’s experience, plus it makes the most of those wild scenes where he first finds himself trying to control his new gifts. I’ve written that myself; The High Road is all about picking up a magic talisman and realizing how much you can suddenly do, and what a target you might be.
On the other hand, Shadowed let me start Paul as someone who’s had years to get used to his ability—if not all the history behind it. Slower-growing heroes like him and Luke can seem more organic, though not many modern action movies take the time to follow that the way A New Hope did. Then again, that side of his arc now seems more like a mainstream military or sports story, where the team and the mission get more attention than the new hero who’s earning his place there.
Rey doesn’t do that. But just what this means, we don’t know yet.
The very first Star Wars mention of the Force was Ben saying it “was strong in” a Jedi. I wonder, does that mean some Jedi really are just that much more gifted than others, more than Luke or Vader ever were? Could be.
And does it mean Rey’s going to find herself in over her head as fast as some of those other hurried, harried heroes? Just how strong is she, and how much will she have to cope with soon? Since Force Awakens was a clear parallel to A New Hope, that’s an ominous sign for how dark the next movie might turn.
Or it might just mean that Rey was already more confident and able to look after herself than young Luke. Maybe she’d been using the Force a little over the years already (say a bit of persuasion to keep those oasis thugs away?), and just needed Han to tell her it was real. She might already have been closer to her Jedi potential than she knew.
Only time, and the next movie, will tell. But I can’t wait to see Daisy Ridley do it.
(I’ve written a bit about Star Wars before, as a guest in Janice Hardy’s blog. That time it was about Luke on the farm, as an example of how a writer can keep the “oridinary moments” interesting—call that a study in making the most of whatever destiny was there at the moment, before the Force and the Stormtroopers kick the door down: http://blog.janicehardy.com/2014/09/your-scene-needs-problem.html.)