30 Years of Star Wars - Why is it still a Saga with Force?

It has been 30 years since "Star Wars: A New Hope" first entered into the world lexicon as a profound comment on our popular culture. (25 May 1977 to be exact).

Having seen the film first at the age of 8, it forever changed the way I look at the world, and everyone from scientists to critics to comedians have attempted to explain its phenomenal legend. But nothing specific to the film has ever become synonymous with Star Wars' grand success, and I believe this constitutes the exact reason it became such a widespread cultural icon. It means many things to many different people, and ultimately, I believe, gains its popularity because of the realistic assertion that there can often be little to base our lives upon that is concrete and unchanging. You find a similar paradigm in those of faith. And indeed, my argument for the brilliance of Star Wars is that, unlike "The Passion of the Christ," which chronicles perhaps the salient points of the Christian faith, Star Wars is about the human religion, the human faith. But in what you might ask? What is the human faith?

Undoubtedly, I would say the title of the 1977 epic is quite clear on this point. The human religion, is Hope.

Empires rise and fall, dreams begotten become lost, or fade. Love, brilliant as all the stars might seem, and eternal as all the gems might claim, is a personal object. But hope, our perhaps foolish assumption, as a species, that tomorrow will bring better skies, even that tomorrow will come at all, still brighten with twin suns even the darkest hours, even the deepest sorrows of eternal night. That hope is this fundamental to the human condition speaks volumes, I believe, about who "the humans," if we could be tertiary and clinical in our view, really are. Star Wars possesses all of these touchstone human foibles, and becomes a work about human belief, set so symbollically in a world where humans are not the only species.

We have been called "walking shadows," "brief candles," by Shakespeare, "gamblers with others' lives" by H.G. Wells, and Emerson called man "A god in ruins." And yet of all the myriad and infinite words that have been pinned to the ephemeral nature of our impemenant constructs, Hope cannot be removed. Hope that we perhaps are one thing, and not another, hope that we can become what we may never be, hope that we might see truth that doesn't exist, hope that we might rise to the sun one day, and know who it was that we were - hope then, that we might see the grand vista of our own lives and how they wove inextricably with those around us, and with the universe, on whose gracious and profound hospitality we exist at all.

I believe the most iconic scene in all of cinema, and the graphic answer to the question of the Saga's power is seen in the 30-year celebration poster of Star Wars - the famous "binary sunset." Clearly the artist agreed.

Looking out at a horizon has some powerfully human element to it that I don't believe I will ever forget, since that first time I saw a young man look off into the sky, wondering if indeed, something more lay beyond just what he could see - that perhaps out there there was some great destiny which he could only hope to envision. Indeed, the story tells us that he would find his family, he would help save a galaxy, he would save his father from eternal damnation, and along the way, he would learn to believe.

John Williams' classic score "Binary Sunset," during that scene is one of my favorites. It is recognizable the world over as one of the iconic pieces of music from the saga.

I believe this cinematic representation of hope is a faith no lesser than all the canon and all the religious wars and all the prayer could ever foster. Is there a greater faith than believing our destiny lies out somewhere amongst the stars? The human religions I know, and the science I know, both tell us - there, those heavens, that is from whence we came. Master of that realm, Galileo, believed we could not be taught anything about the stars, but that we could be shown what they were within ourselves. Quaint as that might be, perhaps that is the ultimate faith to which our race should ascribe.

I think the picture of an alien sunset on a distant world somewhere in our human imagination, is the epitome of hope. A Hope that neither dies, nor was ever born; simply the physics of our minds, the chemistry of our progression, the biology of our faith, forever forged and rediscovered anew.

Star Wars, for 30 years, has created generation after generation of those who seek a human faith, no matter the actual reason they believed Star Wars was important to them. Yes there are countless motifs and mythical elements strewn throughout the Star Wars Universe. There are heroes, tragic and flawed, there is evil, there is religion, there is love, there is genocide, there are politics and humor, war and peace, science and science-fiction.

But besides relating to the human experience, this wrapper of agreeably entertaining cinema is not Star Wars. A small rebellion could only fight an empire if it believed in something. Outnumbered and outgunned, a new hope was needed, a new belief. The symbolism of that hope - THAT is George Lucas' Star Wars.

That question which is asked by that sunset, that ephemeral wonder which only flights upon the briefest and most unconcious of thoughts: What is out there beyond that sun, those stars... What's out there beyond that endless sea on whose winds we will never sail?

We may always hope, it seems to me, it is one of the few things we can always, always do. Hope then, is our faith, and I think it so fitting that a complete story whose ultimate points revolve around the full spectrum of human hopes, the fate of a galaxy, freedom from slavery, the love of a parent, should enjoy such global and historical acclaim.

We watch "A New Hope" with a different view every single day. The fact that the film and its message is so omnipresent in our conciousness and to some has become a religion unto itself, is not at all inconsistent.

30 years of Hope. Perhaps there are some in the world who would do well to watch Star Wars who have not had the pleasure of experiencing it. World leaders, visionaries, the old, the young, the pessimist, I cannot imagine a person who would not benefit from that profound immersion in the belief, the Hope, that is uniquely the Human Religion.

May The Force Be With You.
25 May 2007