The Heros Journey in A New Hope
George Lucas’ Star Wars: A New Hope, is a classic story of the hero going out on an adventure to fight evil, and as such, should closely follow the seventeen step Hero’s Journey. However, the movie’s plot skips many of the steps, particularly towards the end of the Journey. In total, I was only able to count ten out of the seventeen steps of the Journey used in A New Hope. The first step in the Hero’s Journey is the call to adventure and in A New Hope, this would be represented by Luke seeing Leia’s message to Obi-Wan. The call to adventure is followed by the refusal of the call, which is arguably displayed by two scenes during the movie. One takes place before Luke has seen the message, where his uncle rejects his request to go to the academy and tells him to stay for the year's harvest. The other is more conventional, where Luke is reluctant to go to Alderaan with Obi-Wan after they both view Leia's message in its entirety. The destruction of the Death Star represents multiple steps in the Journey: Atonement with the Father (Step Nine), Apotheosis (Ten), Ultimate Boon (Eleven), and Master of Two Worlds (Sixteen). I believe the destruction represents Atonement with the Father because through it, Luke was able to atone for not being able to save Obi-Wan due to his lack of mastery of the Force. It can also be argued that Obi-Wan’s death is also Atonement because Darth Vader is literally Luke’s father. The destruction represents Apotheosis, Ultimate Boon, and Master of Two Worlds, because Luke masters the force and his skills of being a pilot after listening to Obi-Wan and achieves his ultimate goal of blowing up the Death Star. Why does A New Hope skip so many steps of the Journey? Clearly, George Lucas needed to leave room for the other two movies in the trilogy, but I felt that the plot seemed a bit rushed, and that the movie did not age well. There isn’t a very good progression in Luke’s journey to master the force. We see him struggling with learning the Force on the Millennium Falcon to blowing up the Death Star with his apparent mastery of the Force without much time in between to develop his skills. This accelerated timeline also serves to make the destruction of the Death Star somewhat anticlimactic because even though we have been with the hero for the entire journey, we have not really seen the development of his Force skills. The return section of the Journey is almost entirely non-existent, and I think that maybe that a bit more runtime could have been dedicated to fleshing that part of the story out.
Great post! Your last bit of the blog definitely makes sense. Luke doesn't really learn much from Obi-Wan aside from recognizing that the force exists. However, in the scene where Luke learns the force through the training droid, Han undermines it by calling it luck which makes me feel as though the force was just a little side project. in my opinion, I would say that Luke should have had a longer time in developing his force skills.
ReplyDeleteThe pacing of A New Hope is definitely a bit odd when viewed in the context of the Hero's Journey. Personally, I believe that this is because of some odd choices Campbell made in codifying the steps of the Hero's Journey. However, your point about the film feeling rushed in general is also completely valid, and I totally agree with that. Perhaps Lucas had to compress the film for budget reasons, Who knows.
ReplyDeleteI tend to disagree with some of your points. I do feel like A New Hope was a bit rushed - blowing up the the Death Star is a MAJOR plot point, and more time could have been devoted to the planning, etc. I think George Lucas' use of Obi Wan to help Luke master the Force when he needs it the most was a good choice though, and I agree that that is the atonement with the father moment. I feel that for a better experience we could have watched the first trilogy of Star Wars instead of just the first movie. While it would have taken a lot more time, it probably would have also shown us all the steps of the Hero's Journey, spread out across three movies. Good blog post!
ReplyDeleteI agree that the movie skipped some steps, but I think, like you also mentioned, it’s important that it’s part of a series. The hero’s journey is so complex that it needed the other episodes to fully develop Luke’s narrative. Personally, I thought the deconstruction of the Death Star was pretty climatic, especially since I know that Luke’s journey will continue, but I haven’t watched Star Wars in a while, so maybe it was less intense than I thought.
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