Star Wars As Intimate Family Drama: A Speculation

“It’s true. All of it. The dark side. The Jedi.”
– Han Solo

theforceawakens5Leia has most definitely lost something. Or… someone.

Star Wars is full of fodder for Sacred Earthlings with warrior-monk Jedi, the mystical Force and the Manichean struggle between “the dark side and the light,” so as we get closer and closer to The Force Awakens, you’ll probably hear a lot more about it.

Today, though, we’re talking about storytelling — specifically, the success of stories that have related “epic” and “intimate” arcs, and manage to mirror and advance both at the same time. The success of the original Star Wars wasn’t just all about cool-looking TIE fighters and Han Solo shooting first; it was about the personal struggle between father and son that represented the relationship between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance.

theforceawakens3“I’m nobody.” No, Rey. You’re obviously somebody, you look exactly like Natalie Portman.

There are a lot of successful modern epics out there — stories with national, world-bound or pan-galactic consequences, featuring heroes whose personal success, personal foibles and personal dreams have serious consequences for people all around the world. These stories succeed for a reason. The most recent successful example of this is Avengers 2, when Tony Stark’s hubris creates Ultron, an AI that nearly destroys the world in less than a week. And then there were the unsuccessful examples of this seen in the Star Wars prequels, where Anakin Skywalker’s inability to control his teenage mood swings lead him to become Darth Vader. (It’s a lot cooler in my headcanon, where Anakin is tempted, Jesus-like, with power and glory, and in the end has a crisis of faith that leads him to trap himself in the armor of the dark side, trapped behind the voice and exoskeleton of Vader, divorced from his true self. Come on, it’s totally cooler.) I believe Lucas tried for the dual-level story, the pan-galactic and the personal, and failed with a spectacular “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

I think Star Wars: The Force Awakens is going to succeed where Lucas failed.

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Finn regrets all of his decisions.

I haven’t read any spoilers, so this is just wild, rampant speculation, but I believe our heroine Rey and our villain Ren are actually brother and sister; that they’re the Solo twins of the EU re-imagined to Disney’s specifications. Imagine if they were: both of them are Force users, inheritors of the Skywalker blessing through their mother, Leia. Somehow, Ren turns to the dark side, and Rey to the light. (Obvious naming schemes for $300, Alex.) He searches diligently to take on his grandfather’s legacy, unknowing of Anakin’s turn back to the light at the end of Jedi. As a Sith disciple, he’d be attracted to Vader’s power and Vader’s abilities, and want them for his own. Perhaps Rey is hiding from him on Jakku, her own Force training interrupted. Perhaps Leia and Han are watching everything they’ve built and worked for their entire lives fall apart with their own son at the helm of the destruction. Perhaps they’re terrified of losing Rey, too. Perhaps they’ve already lost Luke. Perhaps they know they must move against their own child, and it’s killing them. Gulp.

All of a sudden, a pan-galactic conflict also becomes intimate, one family’s tragic story writ large. How incredibly cool. Who could resist telling — or getting involved — in a story this delicious?

theforceawakens2A burned testament to the truths of George Santayana.

There’s a hint of Battlestar to the trailer, too, the deja-vu visuals, and the unshakable feeling that all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again; it’s the endless Manichean struggle between dark and light that characterizes the Star Wars extended universe, of course. Played well, it should be less of a brick point (you know, where the plot hits you over and over the head with the Obvious Brick) and more of an atmospheric note.

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Also, THIS GUY.

Use the Force, JJ. Don’t let us down!

If you haven’t seen the trailer, I’ve embedded it here:

Messiah Week: Cindi Mayweather from Janelle Monae’s Metropolis

“I imagined many moons in the sky lighting the way to freedom.”
– Cindi Mayweather

tumblr_l2j53fZPbB1qag189

Messiah: Cindi Mayweather
Messiah Level: Cyber

No pop star on Earth does it quite like Janelle Monáe. She has the voice. She has the moves. She has the clothes. She has the staggeringly beautiful science fiction epic. (“Wait, what?” I’m hearing you say. “In R&B?”)

Oh, yes.


The only thing wrong with this video is that it’s only six minutes long.

Her Metropolis albums chronicles the journey of her alter-ego, Cindi Mayweather, an android who has the misfortune of falling in love with a human. In Metropolis, androids are treated as little more than slaves (“She’s not even a person,” says caller Peggy Lakeshore in “Our Favorite Fugitive,” and the short film “Many Moons” chronicles an actual android slave auction). The punishment for this love is death, with her “cyber-soul” delivered to the authorities by bounty hunters and licensed hunters. Cindi, already becoming aware of the terrible conditions in which androids exist, flees — and, on the run, discovers that she is the ArchAndroid, the quasi-religious savior meant to rescue androids from slavery and apartheid. She becomes the “Electric Lady,” returning ready to save not only Metropolis, but humanity and androidkind, from the oppressive Great Divide, which despises love and freedom.


Seriously, try not to dance to this song. It’s impossible.

There are so few female messiah figures in SF/F, so the Electric Lady is extremely welcome — especially since Monáe takes the spotlight to draw attention not only to Metropolis’s fictional issues, but to the very real racial, societal and class-based challenges facing our world today. (Do we need a Cindi Mayweather?) She references Jim Crow as well as Philip K. Dick; her lyrics are poetic and intelligent, and the music itself is completely infectious. Her songs also work on a number of levels — you can listen to them casually and enjoy them quite a bit, or you can pick them apart to explore the multi-layered world Monáe has built.

Remember: Believe in the ArchAndroid.

We’ll be posting Janelle Monae videos on Twitter all day long.

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Messiah Week: Paul Atreides from Dune

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe
that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”
Frank Herbert, Dune

It’s Messiah Week!
#1: Neo from The Matrix
#2: Paul Atreides from Dune

dune1Walk carefully.

Let’s Talk About… Paul Atreides
Messiah Level: Through The Roof, Or Like A Ton Of Bricks

If you thought The Matrix was too overtly Messianic, you obviously haven’t read Frank Herbert’s Dune.

It’s really difficult to summarize Dune in a simple fashion, because it’s not a simple book, even though it masquerades as one. The first novel’s Messiah story seems fairly straightforward: a prophesied superbeing, visions of glory and pain, martyrdom for one’s people, a religious figure stepping forth to save the world and convert a lifeless desert planet into a paradise, an eschatological (or very real) City of God. A good thing, right?

*crickets*

dune2Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides

Dune is the story of Paul Atreides, the son of Duke Leto of Caledon and Arrakis, and his rise to galactic power. After the original novel, things get a little complicated, so for now we’re sticking with the first part of Paul’s story.

Paul is the unwitting product of a generations-long breeding program by the mystical Bene Gesserit sisterhood. The Bene Gesserit had been attempting to create the right combination of genetics that would become a super-being known as the Kwisatz Haderach, who would be able to see the future, and would have power over space and time. They’d been planning for the Kwisatz Haderach to be a trained Bene Gesserit, so that when he ascended to the throne he would be completely under their control; Paul, a product of love between the Bene Gesserit concubine Jessica and Duke Leto, came early and threw a wrench into ten thousand years of careful planning. Oops.

Paul survives a vicious attack on his family’s governance of the planet Arrakis by the galactic Emperor and the evil Baron Harkonnen, and flees into the desert, where he meets the native Fremen and takes on the Messianic mantle of Mahdi, or “Muad’dib.” Mahdi had been long prophesied as the being who will save the Fremen and make their desert planet into a paradise — much like how Jesus promises his followers the Kingdom of God. In the book, Paul leads the Fremen against the Harkonnens and the Emperor, avenging his father and eventually taking control of the Empire itself.

Seriously Messianic, right?

I told you it was complicated. Hang in there!

dune4Arrakis by EvaKedves

One of the coolest parts of Dune‘s Messiah story is how it doesn’t rely entirely on prophecy, or the nitty-gritty death-and-resurrection details, to really describe Paul as a classic Christlike savior, although that’s all completely obvious. Instead, Herbert gives his Space Warrior Jesus a literal “desert experience” much like Christ’s own, which is something that doesn’t always happen in other Messianic takeoffs. Living in the desert with the native Fremen, existing in an ascetic life that had previously been unthinkable to him, awakens Paul’s latent abilities as the Kwisatz Haderach. His visions become clearer; he is better able to predict the future; he realizes what he must do. He begins to step forward publicly, and be adopted, as the Fremen savior.

This echoes Jesus’ own experience in the desert; after his baptism by Paul, he spends a subsequent forty days in the desert that changes him. He sees visions of the devil, which tempts him; he realizes what he must do. When he emerges from the desert, like Paul, he begins a public ministry that will forever change the world. Like Paul, Jesus knows what is coming; he has seen the sacrifice he must make, he knows what he must do, and he works towards it.

Lest you think Herbert really means to anoint Paul Atreides as a perfect messianic hero — and it’s easy to do — don’t forget that Herbert meant to subvert his own story with a very different message, something that becomes clearer once you progress further into the series. Reading Dune after knowing Herbert’s purpose for writing it might give a reader a completely different take on what Herbert really meant to say when he put Paul in power.

dune3“The bottom line of the Dune trilogy is: beware of heroes. Much better rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes,” Herbert said in 1979.

In 1985, he echoed: “Dune was aimed at this whole idea of the infallible leader because my view of history says that mistakes made by a leader (or made in a leader’s name) are amplified by the numbers who follow without question.”

Knowing that, Dune is an entirely different kind of story, isn’t it?

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