I was sixteen years old when the first Star Wars movie came out, in the summer of 1977. Some of you literally grew up with the series, probably watched it on video when you were babies in the cradle. Star Wars means something important for a lot of us, and certainly I'm no expert in the field. As a matter of fact, I received an email right before this conference asking me if I was going to stick with the four-film "canon" or I was going to talk about the "expanded universe" — the comic books, and novels and everything else. You guys will probably exceed me in your breadth of knowledge here. The last Star Wars "non-canonical" work I had anything to do with was Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which came out about the time the first movie came out. Not to say all that stuff isn't wonderful. If you love that stuff, more power to you. But this will be film-comment only.

We're here, indeed, to comment about the Star Wars film saga, and its importance to an entire generation.

Obviously, Star Wars is just a movie. And if George Lucas were here, he'd want to make sure we realize it is only a movie. But "only a movie" can be a big thing. Anything human is important, and Star Wars is a very human thing that means a lot to a lot of human beings.

We're here especially to address what Star Wars has to say about religion, philosophy and morals. All of us, I'm guessing, are familiar with the type of religious person who would, in fact, warn us away from Star Wars. And I'm not here to uncritically accept everything Star Wars is, does, or said, or every word that proceedeth out of George Lucas's mouth. But it seems to me, that of the most interesting things, in our day and age, is that a movie talks about these matters at all. Because we live in a very aggressively secular media culture, one in which it seems strange to even see a character pray in a movie anymore — unless they're some raving Fundamentalist who wants to destroy the world or something. So that Star Wars is so at home talking about religious things is very interesting to me.

Nevertheless, some Christians I've seen have been very suspicious of Star Wars. The religious ideas present in this saga seem exotic — foreign to Christianity. Some of these ideas sound Eastern or New Age.

Now, I'm not here to deny that there are some legitimate concerns involved here. Neither am I here to do the embarrassing "LUKE SKYWALKER = JESUS" thing. But what I do want to do is evaluate Star Wars soberly, sharply, in love — and with discernment. I want to avoid the pitfalls of both uncritical acceptance and knee-jerk Y2K-style panic.

Let me start by clearing two things up right off the bat:

I AM AN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN.

GEORGE LUCAS IS NOT.

First of all, I am not a liberal or a modernist or a higher critic of any kind. In fact, I'm probably one of the stodgiest, most traditional people I know, theologically speaking.

I believe in:

An inspired, infallible Bible that is without error in all that it affirms.

I believe in a literal Virgin Birth, a literal Adam and Eve, a literal Resurrection.

I believe in the blood atonement, in the literal return of Christ in glory, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. AMEN.

Furthermore, I firmly believe that the heresy of I call "indifferentism" is among the worst of heresies. Indifferentism is the belief that all religions are equally true, equally valid, and equally effective in seeking union with God. This is not to say that there is not truth in all religions. I believe there is an enormous amount of truth in all religions. But all religions are not the same, and all paths do not lead to the same place.

Why am I saying all this?

To avoid any misunderstanding.

I'm not ashamed to say that I'm a great fan of Star Wars, and I think its effect on the world has been almost entirely positive. But my purpose in these talks will be to evaluate George Lucas and his movies in the light of recognized Christian Orthodoxy — and no other standard. I think these movies can be defended by these standards. And where they can, that's what I intend to do. Where I cannot defend Star Wars by these standards I will point out also. Though you may be surprised at how little of this is really necessary.

My second point in this further clarification is this: George Lucas is not upholding these standards. Though he was baptized as an infant in the Lutheran Church of Modesto, California, George states plainly that he is not an orthodox Christian — and indeed, doesn't quite know what he believes in. He says that he puts religious ideas into his movies because he's interested in religion. Period.

Therefore, we cannot expect that his movies will express the complete Christian truth as we know it. Likewise, we can't fault Lucas for not putting into his movies religious ideas that he doesn't subscribe to. And third, we can't think of him — just because he's white and an American — as some kind of a traitor to a faith that he has never claimed to hold. In short, it's not George Lucas' responsibility to preach the Christian Gospel in films. It is the responsibility of those who claim to believe and are attempting to live out that Gospel.

Now, it may be that George Lucas is, in fact, leading people astray with his films. I don't think so myself, but the concern is a legitimate one. But even if he is, it won't be through treachery or malice, but simply because he himself hasn't found the true path yet. And the proper Christian response to that situation is prayer and fasting by us on his behalf.

So. With these red herrings out of the way, I think we can move on to a discussion of the films and their real origins.

Where Did Star Wars Come From?

It's important to put Star Wars in its proper context.

"There is nothing new under the sun. Never before in the history of the movies has so much time and technology been spent — just for fun. STAR WARS. Rated PG. Parental (beep beep) Guidance suggested."

— Radio commercial for Star Wars

Here's George Lucas on why Star Wars clicked.

"I think one of the key factors in the success is that it's a positive film, it has heroes and villains, and that, essentially, it's a fun movie to watch. It's been a long time since people have been able to go to the movies and see a straightforward, wholesome adventure."

Now, from the sound of all this, we might think Star Wars was reactionary — some kind of conservative counter-attack aimed at what we might call the "wised-up" hippie culture of the 1960's and early 70's. The return of "wholesome family entertainment" and all that. And there is an element of truth in this.

Star Wars undoubtedly became the enormous hit that it was because of the atmosphere into which it was introduced. Remember, in the early 1970s — pre-Star Wars — going to the movies was SERIOUS BUSINESS. Movies for teenagers included films like Easy Rider and Bonnie & Clyde, and Patton. Even the comedies were serious. The biggest comedy of the era was M*A*S*H. As far as the science fiction movies, we had cheery films like Soylent Green, Logan's Run, and Planet of the Apes.

And of course, the reason all of these films were so popular is that they were so completely in tune with that worldwide psychic event we call THE SIXTIES. This national "coming of age" that led us to question everything we had been taught as kids: values like PATRIOTISM, and THE AMERICAN WAY, and HEROISM, and all the ordinary 1950s ideas of GOOD & EVIL. There is a certain legitimacy in the reassement of this period, for certainly those virtues can be and were subject to abuse.

"I have formed a very clear conception of patriotism. I have generally found it thrust into the foreground by some fellow who has something to hide in the background. I have seen a great deal of patriotism; and I have generally found it the last refuge of the scoundrel."

— G.K. Chesterton

But here's the difference:

Green Berets was made by oldsters — people over thirty who had rejected the experience of "THE SIXTIES" wholesale and right from the start. Star Wars, on the other hand, was made by people of the generation of "THE SIXTIES". In fact, I contend that Star Wars made the splash it did because it was the first major questioning of "THE SIXTIES" by "THE SIXTIES".

George Lucas grew up in the 1950's totally devoted to Roy Rogers movies, Republic serials, reading Captain Marvel comic books, etc. In 1967 he went to USC and graduated in 1970. That's a very important number to keep in your mind. While he was there he somehow evolved, like all the rest of us during those years, from a kid who loved John Wayne WWII movies into a college student who was co-writing the script for something that was going to be called Apocalypse Now. Many people don't realize that's George Lucas's movie, even though his friend Francis Coppola ended up making it. George Lucas lived "THE SIXTIES".

Lucas's first movie was THX-1138 — and a blacker, more "wised-up" Sixties film would be hard to imagine. And how did this first film by the future box-office king do at the box-office? It bombed. And Lucas's next Science Fiction film was Star Wars. Now, does this mean Star Wars is a repudiation of THX?

No — because in between came a little movie called American Graffiti.

"So... after I finished THX I didn't quite know what to do. Like most kids that grew up in the valley, I had a strong interest in cruising. When I got to college and began to study anthropology, I realized that this was really a uniquely American mating ritual involving automobiles. I came up with the idea of doing the movie... it was in the 60's, it was the hippie culture.. you know, drugs... cruising was gone.

So I felt compelled to sort of document the whole experience of cruising and what my generation used as a way of meeting girls and what we did in our spare time. I wanted to document the end of an era... how things change, the life passages, how you go from being a student out into the real world.

And you leave your hometown, your family, and you leave everything behind and go off on your own. And then to parallel that with what was going on in the United States at that time, in terms of the loss of innocence; getting in the Vietnam War, the advent of British Rock... and generally issues that center around the idea of change."

— George Lucas

I believe Star Wars was the next step in this re-evaluation process for George Lucas. And Star Wars took off with the public because it represents the counter-culture's nostalgia for something they left behind when they "dropped out".

However — and this is vital — Lucas's film expressed that nostalgia in a way that allowed the emerging culture to keep what they'd learned from the counter-culture as well.

I believe the fans coming out of Star Wars were smiling because they had been healed a little. The Generation Gap — which had been so painful to both parents AND kids in those days had been narrowed a bit. And the Mouseketeers who had turned into Hippies could now admit that they still loved Sky King and The Lone Ranger and George Reeves as Superman without betraying the revolution.

Screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan who wrote The Empire Strikes Back said this in 1980:

"There was a great need out there for this kind of grand, funny, fun adventure movie. I don't think George understood, when he started this thing, how great that need was. He may have known it was there because he felt it himself, but I think everyone was surprised at how hungry people were for this kind of a movie."

This being the case, let's take a close look at the origins of Star Wars.

Here's Kasdan again:

"The Star Wars Saga came out of George's history, out of the things he liked and felt when he was a kid. It sprang from fairy tales, comic books, myths, films. The result is an emotional landscape for people of all ages to travel over."

"What happens is that no matter how you do it, when you sit down to write something all of the influences in your life come into play. The things that you like, the things that you've seen, the observations that you've made... these are ultimately what you're working with when you're writing. You're influenced by the things that you like, the designs that you like, characters you like, moments you remember, that you were moved by. It's like trying to compose a symphony."

"I think it's a little bit of everything George Lucas liked about Saturday Matinees. Everything from Ivanhoe and Captain Blood to Forbidden Planet and The Wizard of Oz. Another source of reference is the King Arthur legends and the handling of the light sabers is almost like Excalibur..."

From the 1950s:

• Flash Gordon serials
• The Wizard of Oz, which was shown annually on TV in the 50s
• Television Westerns — and today you can't imagine how many tv dramas were Westerns
• Hot Rod culture

• Tolkien's Lord of the Rings triology
• Frank Herbert's Dune saga
• Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Akira Kurasowa films
• The novel The Once an Future King by T.H. White
• The Beatles & Eastern Religion
• Carlos Castenada & Joseph Campbell

Now let's look at them one at a time.

Flash Gordon provides the setting for Star Wars — here was a science fiction serial that somehow mixed in knights, emperors, princesses, wizards — Medieval stuff. It was Ivanhoe in Outer Space. Lucas has said that Flash Gordon was the single most important influence on Star Wars. Flash also provides a planet-hopping structure: from Cloud City, to the Underwater City, to the Forest Moon, to the Emperor's Throne Room, etc.

Westerns provide the Han Solo element of the story: the gunfighter/loner figure. The tension of "individualism vs community." Tom Donophan in Liberty Valance. The gunfighter who knows he is empty — who must find community to live, yet surrenders individualism only painfully.

The Wizard of Oz provides the mythic Structure of the Quest — as a symbol of the search for spiritual completeness. A motley band of fairytale characters picked up one by one on the Yellow Brick Road: Luke is Dorothy, who leaves Kansas/Tatooine for "over the rainbow"; Chewie is The Cowardly Lion; Threepio, the Tin Man; the witch's castle is the Death Star.

WW II Movies provide the Empire's design aesthetic — Nazi Chic; the Rebellion — the French Resistance; Star Wars' final "air" battle was literally adapted from real footage taken from "Flying Leathernecks" etc.

Hot Rod Culture provides the other part of the Han Solo element: the hip, contemporary edge, the "teen-age" quality to the dialogue and humor. This is the "comic relief" that keeps things from getting too serious and self-important. It's also one of the things that some people have a problem with in Episode I: there's no Ordinary Joes, everybody's exotic, there's no hip American teenager like Han Solo to identify with. Interesting that Han Solo is Harrison Ford — who also played the hotrodder Bob Falfa in American Graffiti.

These are the influences on Star Wars from the Fifties.

On to "THE SIXTIES".

First, from the literature and cinema of science fiction.

The film 2001: A Space Oddysey provides the visual look of Star Wars: these space ships don't look like they came from This Island Earth, they look like they came out of 2001. Only here we get lavish amounts of time and attention spent "for fun" — on something that was, up till now, kiddie matinee stuff.

The novel Dune provides the perfect setting for Obi-Wan's exile. The Desert Planet with Two Suns Moisture Farming. Fremen/Sand People. Spice Smuggling. And those peculiar Star Wars-y names: from Duncan Idaho to Luke Skywalker. Dune also inspires the alien messiahs and frank religious elements of Star Wars.

Kurasowa movies provide the "Eastern spin" in the design — Vader's costume, etc. I remember the first time I saw some stills from Star Wars before I ever saw the film I commented that it looked like it was Japanese. Darth Vader's helmet looks a little like a Nazi Stormtrooper's helmet, but really it's much more like a Samuri helmet of the 15th or 16th centuries along with the rest of Darth Vader's armor. And the films of Akira Kurasowa were very big in the films schools of this era, as a part of a cultural exchange that was a two-way street: from The Seven Samurai to The Magnificent Seven and likewise from Macbeth to Kurasowa's Throne of Blood. By the way, the "Death Star rescue" plotline is from the Kurasowa film, The Hidden Fortress.

Tremendously influential on the Sixties in general was T.H. White's novel, The Once and Future King. The book was the basis of the play and film Camelot, and thus the source of the JFT/Camelot analogy — the brief shining moment when idealism was shrined, and then the triumph of the Military-Industrial Complex and you've got Lyndon Johnson as president. Something that wasn't lost on that generation. Part One of this book is the single-most direct source of the plotline of Star Wars: Episode IV. If you've seen the Disney movie Sword In the Stone, you already know the synopsis:

A young orphan named Arthur is a miserable floor scrubber in a backwater castle. He has been nicknamed "Wart" by his cruel, thoughtless relatives — relatives who are deliberately hiding his true identity from him.

But Wart dreams of adventure and of rescuing damsels in distress.

One day, young Arthur encounters a mysterious Old Man — a crazy old wizard, in fact — named Merlin who informs him that he is, in reality, the long lost son of Uther Pendragon, a once glorious knight and former king of the realm. Merlin takes the boy under his wing, and gradually trains him in the ways of magic and heroism. Under his training Arthur is able to claim his father's magic sword Excalibur — the ownership of which proves his title to the throne. Arthur himself then becomes a great knight and begins to take back his father's lost kingdom.

LukeNo, my father didn't fight in the wars. He was a navigator on a spice freighter.

BenThat's what your uncle told you. He didn't hold with your father's ideals — thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved.

Luke You fought in the Clone Wars?

Ben Yes. I was once a Jedi Knight, the same as your father. Luke I wish I'd known him.

Ben He was the best star pilot in the galaxyÉand a cunning warrior. I understand you've become quite a good pilot yourself. And he was a good friend. Which reminds me. I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade like your father did.

C-3PO Sir, if you'll not be needing me, I'll close down for a while.

Luke Sure, go ahead... what is it?

Ben This is your father's lightsaber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster. An elegant weaponÉof a more civilized age. For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times... before the Empire.

At the moment, though, we have one more element of Sixties' influence on Star Wars which must here be considered — The Beatles, Eastern Religion, and pop-mythologist Joseph Campbell — which we'll dwell on in depth in the next "Episode" of our series here.

The question which might already be raised is this: Was Lucas just being derivative in drawing from many sources? I think he knew just what he was doing. And the following quotes on that subject are a perfect way to conclude this fourth episode of our discussion.

"Well, when I did Star Wars, I did consciously set about to recreate myths and the classic mythological motifs. And I wanted to use those motifs to deal with issues that exist today... I knew that I was going to attempt to do something that hadn't been done before.

I was very interested in creating a modern myth to replace what I'd seen had been occupied by the Western. The Western was sort of a modern American mythology that helped to explain the mores and values and the way things work in our society. And so I started working on this and realized that it had to take place 'somewhere over the hill'..somewhere outside people's known realm of awareness.

And the only area like that that we have now is outer space..."