From The Times
May 24, 2007

That Frodo Skywalker ...somehow it rings a bell

Patrick West

Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars, later called Episode IV: A New Hope, one of the most enduring movies of recent times. But the reason Star Wars remains adored by millions is not because it was revolutionary, or changed the face of cinema, as its special effects have led many to believe, but because its narrative, structure and imagery were completely derivative.

What George Lucas did was to appeal to archetypes in the collective unconsciousness: images and sequences of events, which, as the psychologist Carl Jung asserted, “occur practically all over the world as constituents of myths”. And there is one popular narrative common to all cultures, according to Joseph Campbell, the Jungian anthropologist.

This ubiquitous “monomyth” involves an innocent, asexual, boyish character (usually estranged from his real parents) who has a task thrust upon him, who encounters an elderly sage-cum-mentor, leaves the safety of home, is tested in a wilderness, is aided by helpers, and who then enters a dark realm to confront the source of evil. At the denouement, the boy faces and defeats his foe, before returning home a worldly man.

If this sequence sounds familiar, then it is indeed the plot . . . of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, a story composed decades before Star Wars. Consider the similiarity: for Luke Skywalker, see Frodo Baggins; Obi-Wan Kenobi was Gandalf; Han Solo, Bilbo Baggins; R2D2 and C3PO were Pippin Took and Merry Brandybuck; Darth Vader was Sauron; the Death Star, Mordor.

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But Lucas was not plagiarising Tolkien. He was merely employing the eternal monomyth, as have J. K. Rowling with Harry Potter and the Wachowski brothers in The Matrix. Before Luke Skywalker there were hero tales of Osiris, Perseus, Odysseus, Jesus, King Arthur, Tintin and Asterix; before Obi-Wan was John the Baptist, Merlin, Professor Calculus and Getafix; before Han Solo we had a “hero buddy” in the form of Jason’s Argonauts, Captain Haddock and Obelix.

Aurally and visually, Star Wars also borrowed freely. John Williams’s score bore an uncanny likeness to “Mars” from The Planets suite, by Holst. Darth Vader’s mask and helmet resembled the mempo mask and kabuto helmet from the Japanese feudal period. C3PO’s demeanour was akin to Rothwang’s robot from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

And if the blaster pistol in Star Wars reminded war-film aficionados of a Mauser, or its tripod blaster a 1908 Vickers machinegun, that’s because they literally were these guns, real-life relics modified for the film to look more “futuristic”.

This is not to criticise Lucas. Star Wars is one of the finest motion pictures ever made. But it was brilliant precisely because it was utterly unoriginal.