Luke and the Jedi of the Round Table

Twas kind of a Star Wars Christmas here at the Mannions.  The ten year old's favorite gift is his Lego Star Wars II game, which is, as far as he's concerned, the whole reason we got the new computer.  Can't say he's been playing it nonstop, because we chased him up to bed sometime before midnight last night and I'm pretty sure he managed at least two hours sleep.  At any rate he was at the computer when the rest of us woke up this morning.

The teenager asked only for books this Christmas.  That's not all he found under the tree yesterday morning, but his books are pretty much all he's cared about.  In addition to Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth and C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair, the penultimate book in the Narnia series---old-timers, you have to adjust.  Lewis' heirs rearranged the sequence so that The Magician's Nephew is now the first book and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the second---which completes the teenager's set, and I don't know how he managed to get The Last Battle before The Silver Chair, Santa brought him Star Wars: The New Essential Guide to Alien Species, Star Wars: The New Essential Chronology, Star Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary, and The Art of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

Old Pop and Ma Mannion gave him The Making of Star Wars Episode III.

We're hoping this passes before any conventions come to town.

I've had a chance to browse through a few of his new books and it's given me a little more insight into what's called, in fan circles, The Expanded Universe.  The Expanded Universe is the backstory to the movies that's been told, is being told, and will still be told a long time from now, in galaxies far, far away, the way new stories about Hercules and the Knights of the Round Table are still being told, in the comic books, novels, computer games, and cartoons officially sanctioned by George Lucas.

The story of the expanded universe reaches backwards in time several thousand years to the rise of the Sith and the coming together of the first Jedi Knights and forward in time to the adventures of Han and Leia's grown children.   And reviewing it last night in the teenager's books I was bothered by the same thing that has bothered me before when I've checked into it.

The history of the Expanded Universe is a history of perpetual war.

Yes, I know the whole enterprise is called Star Wars.  And yes, you could say that the history of the Expanded Universe is just mimicking the history of this planet, at least its history since human beings began writing down their part in it.

So I shouldn't be all that surprised.

But the core of the original movies is the tale of the last Jedi Knights, and now I am going to say something complimentary about George Lucas.

Lucas based his knights on the Knights of the Round Table.  Luke is King Arthur.  (Interestingly, but fittingly, in the Expanded Universe, it's Han and Leia who go on to rule over Camelot, while Luke becomes a version of Merlin.  The Jedi don't want power, after all.)  Obi-wan and then Yoda share the role of Merlin.  That's always been obvious.  The three prequels/sequels have underscored it.

And in the first three movies Lucas cared more about his main characters' stories as knight's tales than he did about their roles in the war that drives the plot.  The war is only the background to the important stuff, which is why Lucas allows the war to be mainly fought and won by secondary and minor characters.  Luke, Leia, and Han help save the day, but Lucas makes it clear that the rebellion itself doesn't need them.  This is why Wedge Antilles, Luke's ace pilot pal, is an important character even though he appears only briefly in each of the original three movies.  Wedge must be at least as good a pilot as Luke, but as far as we know he's not strong in the force nor is he a famous hero.  He's one very good pilot among many.  The Rebel Alliance has all the troops, all the Wedges, it needs to fight the war.

Which leaves Luke free to pursue his own ends.

Which he does.

As do the other two "knights" in the originals, Han and Darth Vader.

King Arthur fights his share of wars, but most of the tales of the Knights of the Round Table are not concerned with any epic battles and several of the most important tales---Arthur and the Sword in the Stone, Gawain and the Green Knight, Launcelot and the Cart, Perceval and the Fisher King, and the entire Grail Quest---don't even involve any combat.  They are tales of individual derring-do, and usually the challenge to the knight whose tale is being told is moral or spiritual not physical.

That's how it is in Star Wars.

Han's challenge is to learn how to be a good man, worthy of a Princess' love.

Vader is walking himself backwards through his own life to re-confront the moment when he went over to the Dark Side.

And Luke has to learn who he truly is, face his own temptations, and establish himself as the greatest Jedi ever, which, as it turns out in the Expanded Universe, is a matter of his becoming less of a warrior than a teacher.

These are relatively simple tales and it's to George Lucas' credit that he kept his focus on telling them in his first two Star Wars movie, which is partly why A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back are so satisfying.  They are triumphs of storytelling.  The knights tales necessarily moved a little to the side in Return of the Jedi to make room for the wrapping of the war---and Lucas lost his head over the Ewoks and spent way too much time on them when he should have been telling another knight's tale, the tale of the redemption of another fallen knight, which he began to tell in The Empire Strikes Back.  Billy Dee Williams, should have been given more to do than fly the Millenium Falcon into a blue screen, and Lando Calrisian should have died.

Lucas' obsession with creating the perfect special effects got the better of him in the recently completed prequels/sequels, and he needlessly complicated, and confused, his own story by caring about the politics behind the rise of the Empire and cluttered up the screen with too many epic battle scenes, but the simple knights' tales are still there.

In The Phantom Menace, Qui-gon Jinn searches for the Chosen One.

In Attack of the Clones, Obi-wan sets out to solve the mystery of who is trying to murder Padme, which reminds me that I promised Jaquandor that I would write a post about Obi-wan's career as the Jedi's top private detective.

And in Revenge of the Sith, Anakin faces and succumbs to temptation.

I can and, given time, probably will write posts about the mistakes I think Lucas made in the tellings of each of these simple knights tales, but for now I'd rather note that Lucas tried to stay true to his original conception all the way through all six movies.

The Star Wars movies are not about war.  They are about individuals facing moral and spiritual challenges that come mainly from within themselves.

This is why I was dismayed that the Expanded Universe seems to be so much more concerned with wars and epics battles.  All the many writers who have contributed to expanding the Expanded Universe have had before them George Lucas' example and they appear to be ignoring it, which, because Lucas has to approve all the "canonical" stories, means Lucas is ignoring his own example himself.

Of course, the teenagers' new books are all overviews and it's difficult to do a fair job of judging.  It looks as though some of the novels, particularly the young readers series, are knights tales, adventure stories about individual derring-do and personal quests rather than war stories.

But it also looks as though some of the war stories are necessary to the telling of one knight's tale.

There are five top Jedi in the saga.  Their stories dominate the movies and the Expanded Universe, and all but one of them have their personal legends defined by simple knights tales.

Yoda, Qui-gon, Obi-wan, and Luke.

Only one of them has his legend, and his entire adult career as a Jedi, defined by what he does as part of an army in wartime.

The first four are truly knights.

The fifth never gets to be anything but a mere warrior.

To understand how important this is, all you need to do is remember that the greatest knight of the Round Table, Galahad, never draws his sword in battle.

Which suggests that when he set out to tell his own story of a new Round Table, George Lucas knew exactly what he was doing with Anakin Skywalker.

There's probably more Star Wars geekiness to follow while I'm working up my review of a movie for actual grown-ups, Little Miss Sunshine.

Comments

[merciless]

Terrific, Lance. Of course, you could write the same article about Star Wars as the Christ story (the scene in One where we find out that Annakin was conceived sans father made me cringe).

Also, there's a woman's perspective to this story that I find particularly interesting. Leia always seemed like the uber-woman, but Padme, even though she is a legitimate queen, seems less personally powerful. She needs bodyguards, she needs body doubles, she falls in love with a guy who's, what, twelve? Then she dies giving birth for no apparent reason. Igraine, perhaps? That would make Leia Morgana with earmuffs.

Anyway, hope you had a nice Christmas.

[Sabutai]

The Silver Chair will always be the fourth series of the book, meddling heirs notwithstanding. Also my favorite of the series, after Last Battle.

I don't know if your son has read The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, but that series is akin to going to solid food after having masticated on the mush of Narnia.

[Victoria]

Another vote for Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, of which The Golden Compass is the brilliant, bracing, and utterly thrilling first.

Will be interested to read your complete thoughts re: Lucas, as I believe he lost his way. In story, and in life. The mythology that remains is from a checklist, not inspired - that's the sorrow of his life's work.

Also interested in Little Miss Sunshine, my Christmas Eve viewing, and something I am still thinking and talking about with surprisingly deep satisfaction.

[travy]

i watched little miss with the family on xmas eve as well and found it to be exceptional. looking forward to your thoughts...

[Greg]

They can put The Horse and His Boy wherever they want.as far as I'm concerned, but The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe should always be read first, and the Magician's Nephew second to last. I don't care what Lewis's executors or even Lewis himself has to say about it. They're quite simply wrong. LWW was written to be read first. It was written for an audience that knew nothing about Narnia. By contrast, TMN was written for an audience that knows quite about Narnia. The joys of LWW all come from being introduced to a world, whereas the joys of TMN come from being shown the history of an already-familiar world. There are so many details in TMN that only make sense if you're familiar with the rest of the books. Take the bit about the Queen/Witch throwing the lamp-post in the ground in Narnia as it's being born. If TMN is your first Narnia book, you only appreciate it on the basic surface level. But if it's your sixth Narnia book, you can also appreciate it as a not just a bit of continuity, but a callback to your first experience with Narnia. The whole book is full of stuff like that. To read them out of order is to rob both books of their greatest strengths. IMHO, allowing a child to read LWW and TMN in chronological order rather than by publication order, is like telling them that there's no Santa.

[sfmike]

George Lucas has been the most unintentionally evil storyteller of our times, helping to extend war-culture way past its expiration date.

And ditto Greg on Narnia birth order.

[ookpik]

The Narnian chronicles should be read in the original order. Greg's explanation of why is perfect.

Have to disagree with the others on "His Dark Materials", though..."The Golden Compass" is great, but "The Subtle Knife" is less satisfying, and with "The Amber Spyglass" Pullman lost me as a reader. (Not confused-lost, bored-lost.)

[Tom]

It's interesting, now that I think about it, that so little of Star Trek takes place during wartime--really, only the last two seasons out of seven of Deep Space Nine (although the runup to the Dominion War started at the end of the second season of that series). Of course, there were numerous skirmishes with the Klingons and Romulans, a couple of short-lived Borg invasions, and a "Klingon Civil War" that lasted about as long as the first Persian Gulf War, but otherwise the focus has been on exploration and negotiation with other worlds, not big-ass space battles--all of the space battles from the Dominion War, put together, wouldn't be enough for a single one of the Star Wars movies.

[Patrick J McGraw]

Regarding Obi-Wan as the Jedi's top private detective: in the Star Wars Roleplaying game, there are two basic Jedi classes (one combat skill-oriented, the other social skill-oriented), and a number of "prestige classes" that an experienced Jedi can take on, such as Jedi Master (teacher), Jedi Swordmaster (lightsaber expert), Jedi Ace (pilot), and so on. In his official RPG stats, Obi-Wan has levels in three classes: the basic Jedi Guardian, Jedi Master, and Jedi Investigator.

[Redbeard]

Sabutai is right, Lance. I just finished His Dark Materials, and it is very, very good. The first one has a fair amount of clunky prose--and I conjecture that the editor didn't care to tighten it up, figuring a fantasy book for young adults would sell well regardless of its prose quality. But the other two books have better constructed sentences. Part of what makes Pullman's books so good is that his fantasy world is constructed as a counterweight to perceived racism and sexism in C.S. Lewis' work, a theme Pullman fully developed in this piece. And Pullman has a very good point: Aslan wins because he's more powerful than the Snow Queen. Compare that to Tolkien's reasoning about how Sauron's Ring was destroyed, and Lewis' conception of a struggle between good and evil seems more like "The Good Side is more powerful and happens to be compassionate, and the Evil Side is less powerful and happens to be mean." And then the reason to choose Aslan has more to do with getting right with the powerful side rather than choosing compassion for its own sake.

[Judd]

This is a very interesting point. I'm new to this site, and late on the conversation, but I did want to suggest that the issue of history being taught through war is not one that's even slightly limited to fantasy. Our textbooks and high school and college curricula fetishize war at the expense of all else, privileging kings and emperors while ignoring life "on the ground", or art and culture and religion.

It doesn't surprise me that the Star Wars back story, or any other along those lines, would follow this trend. The avoidance of this simple narrative is what makes The Silmarillion such an amazing read; only when it goes into straightforward "war mode" does it become somewhat tedious, as the characters blur and the story loses potency. Meanwhile, like in Camelot, the micro-level is where the real action happens. I also happen to be a musician, so the constant references to songs as being of the utmost importance, and actually a sort of progenitor or initiator of the Universe, is refreshing!

Thanks for the thoughtful essay.

[Andrew]

One of the few movies that I've ever watched in embarrassment is "The Phantom Menace", which I had persuaded my wife to see. It's hard for me to get across how bad I think the movie is - dear god, mitichlorians?

Compare the escape/pursuit from the Death Star sequence in "A New Hope" ("Great, kid! Don't get cocky.") with the underwater chase scene in "The Phantom Menace" ("There's always a bigger fish.") Liam Neesson, one of the most charismatic actors in film (Michael Collins, Rob Roy, Schindler's List) delivers flat line readings throughout the whole movie. Do you think for a moment that Anakin is in danger in the pod race? No, it's a video game - the nod to "Ben Hur" is simply ludicrous.

Sadly, neither Episodes II or III made any more impression. I think Lance's idea that there are resonances to the King Arthur legend is an interesting starting point for discussion, but I wish I cared more about the people presented to me on the screen.