Hollywood’s Furtive Rights of Passage: A Secret History of the Star Wars Saga

It had been on the tips of everyone’s tongues since the Writer’s Guild of America’s strike began in November 2007. For most industry old timers, it was a story 30 years in the making and on the verge of happening since Star Wars opened at Mann’s Chinese Theater on North Hollywood in 1977. How could it not?

The death of the Studio System, the rise of independent cinema and finally the coming of the WGA having evolved since it’s inception in 1954. When speaking of industry that operates independent of government, business will always evolve this way.

As soon as word had gotten out, of the origins of the Space Odyssey and its roots, simultaneously taking shape as Joseph Campbell began his personal study on Comparative Myth and Comparative Religion, George Lucas was effectively creating a monopoly on what most scholars deemed to be Campbell’s decisive victory — the commonality in all story-telling.

Kevin Smith famously written a scene in his indie sleeper hit, “Chasing Amy,” of a white man, “invoking the holy trilogy,” justly stipulated as what is further implied in the lines delivered by Dwight Ewell… the scene became about gentrification. The genre, Star Wars the Science Fiction Space Odyssey became just that… a means to define an industry.

The problem? George Lucas effectively created a monopoly on what we all understand today as common law. Hero with a Thousand Faces is a common understanding of the archetypal hero figure, being as science fiction has become a metaphor for all things Hollywood and defined by the label as an industry and nothing else, he had placed himself in a very “actionable situation.” He just didn’t know it at the time.

The victory for Lucas became the pitfall of a whole industry of writers. Where he became a billionaire, methodically and essentially over night, the speculative screenplay began to take shape, and in all it’s ambiguity, ill-defined, was delegated to the likes of a business venture based on a hand shake. Some spec scripts ten years later in 2018 would go for the sale of a 4-figure sum. Not standard practice, where most of what is normally agreed upon would have the writer take home something in the 6-figure range, the spec-script became some what of a farce.

It seems that Hollywood had chosen this course of action so as not to make George Lucas liable, as and when he had chosen to adapt a the works of Joseph Campbell to his “Holy Trilogy,” the Star Wars Saga. Again, monopolizing the idea of “the heroes call to adventure,” comes to mind. Once again, how could it not? Story-telling is story-telling is story-telling! Not much more to it than that.

Still, there is a flip-side to this argument. In all my understanding of the Generation X and the Baby-Boomers, there is a man that stands above and takes his experiences growing up in the generation as generally being a good thing, embracing the lack of good parenting where most people of that era do not. Brett Easton Ellis offers some valuable insight into growing up in during this period in his book “White”. Where memory fails me, it would still prove in all its assumption that wanting to be the hero in your own story became accessible. With Star Wars at the helm of said experiences asking yourself, “May I be the good guy this time?” he expressed lightly in all his lacking and anguish, “Can I be the hero?” became commonplace.

And again, the success of Star Wars can, and for the sake of argument, will be equated to all that has just been stated and summed up in two words: Gen X.

The film opened modestly and had a two-week running time, before it was replaced by a now forgotten movie and finally brought back to the Chinese Theater in North Hollywood to thunderous applause. It was a great experience for movie-goers of two demographics, Caucasian middle class folk and the Chinese Diaspora of the time. The cultural impact goes without argument. The cross-section laid down. But, what is it today and how did it affect the fall of the studio system and demise of the spec-screenplay sale is the big question?

With so many people born between the years of 1965–1979 the establishment even sought to differentiate the Star Wars generation even further, designating them the Xennials, born between the release dates of the original trilogy, they became a demographic all its own.

With so many influenced by the impact that the original Star Wars Trilogy was to have in years to come, there is still but one angle by which we have failed to analyse the phenomenon known as Star Wars. Marketing!

What I am simply suggesting is that the writer’s market in Hollywood, especially if you do not conform to the, “Not what you know but who you know,” ideology, is that the executive in Hollywood, understated in the likes of George Lucas and the height of his notoriety today by which he has come to know, understands all too clearly how much of an impact the original Star Wars Trilogy and its corresponding bridges into other media and merchandise, has had on the world of Cinema. From fans to globalization and the cross-cultural diversity kick the industry seems to be on now, its influence is clearly understood… and by the Studio System no less.

So the question is, what does this all mean?

It is a common belief(or a myth if you prefer not to believe in superstition) among screenwriter’s especially since the 3- month collapse of the WGA, that Hollywood, working as one entity has and will continue to justify Lucas’s claim to the fabled story-structure laid bare in Joseph Campbell’s decisive work, “Hero with a thousand faces”.

It may have been a near miss for Lucas, for who knows what kind of law suit it might have entailed, but to keep the people happy surely must have been its agenda.

Hollywood’s chosen course of action may have made one poor man very happy in the years to follow, but even today, with the rise and decline of Steve Jobs and with his stint at Pixar to the acquisition of Marvel from Fox Studios to yet another acquisition of Star Wars to Disney, there is just way too much more to discuss, but as it were, the industry will continue to evolve as time moves forward.

Business is business, and if there is some semblance of any solidarity left for the writer… well, they seem to be on the rise again.

And finally, the sacred rights to passage in a successful career in Hollywood is simply in understanding the status quo. Knowing that Darth Vader is a Cinematic Icon simply understood for its screen presence is not enough. It goes deeper that the image itself. He represents the revolution, which tore down the status quo of old and forged a new identity for Hollywood — one marked by rebellion and of the archetypal hero figure in Luke Skywalker. George Lucas for the most part plays a very big part in the conformity of Modern Hollywood. Time will tell the rest.