callioope | The Stakes of Star Wars: whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal (Reply)

As a writer, I frequently struggle with plot. Is it believable? Is it surprising? Is it exciting? Sometimes, it feels like plot is supposed to be what makes a story interesting. What makes for a cool adventure? The prevailing mindset seems to be: how high can you raise the stakes?

But I think over the last few years of writing, I’ve learned something important about the kinds of stories I want to read, and therefore write.

The stakes are important, but only for what they mean to the character.

It has to be personal.

The original trilogy is personal.

Episode 4 follows a boy on the precipice of adulthood, torn between his desire to make something of himself, his dislike of the Empire, and his own familial obligations. Luke waits around on a desert planet until it’s too late. The people who raised him are killed. He hesitated, and he lost, and now he’s going to see the fight to the end. And yeah, he’s going to recruit Han Solo to the cause, too. The fight against the Empire is personal.

In Episode 5, he grows up. He faces his enemy, but he also faces himself. The stakes are the lives of his friends, his own life, and ultimately his own integrity. And in the final chapter, he finishes what he started. He saves Han. He faces Vader, as both an adversary and family. He saves himself. He will not fall.

The stakes are not:

a planet-killing weapon
outnumbered pilots in a space battle
impossible lightsaber duels
shocking parentage
a second planet-killing weapon
an impossible space battle

The stakes are:

Can Luke trust in his abilities?
Will Han commit to the cause?
Should Luke still try even in the imminent possibility of defeat?
What does Luke risk of himself – not just physically but spiritually?
What will Luke do when two of his core dreams clash? (his longing for his father and his desire to protect his friends and uphold the moral good)
Can Luke reconcile the darkness within himself?
What is the power of our faith in others?

Palpatine literally tells Luke that his faith in his friends is his weakness, but Palpatine is a liar blinded by the Dark Side. His power in the Force does not ultimately protect him; and the power of the Force is not how our heroes triumph over evil.

Faith in others is the greatest power in this series: Lando’s faith in Han and Leia to get those shields down. Leia and Han’s faith in and love for each other. Luke’s faith in Han, Leia, and Anakin. Luke’s faith in himself.

Because those are the stakes that have meaning to us:

Can I trust in my abilities?
Should I - can I – will I – commit to this greater cause? Commit to mankind over the self?
How far should we challenge ourselves?
Where is our moral center? Where is our moral line?
What am I willing and unwilling to sacrifice for myself? And why?
What does integrity mean to us?
What does our community – friends and family – mean to us?

The peripheral story is this battle for the galaxy, but in many ways that’s a backdrop, a container, a vehicle for something larger and more intimate: our relationships with each other, how we treat each other, what we expect from each other. Our faith in others. Our faith in ourselves.

And the only way to craft a story with the right kind of stakes, with the kind of challenges and emotions that carve into us and shape us, is to build plot from character.

The problem with the sequel trilogy is that there is no vision of character here. They wrote The Force Awakens around the shadow that Luke cast. He was too big of a character to use, so they invented a way to remove him from the chess board for some time. Every other element of the story unravels from there. Why isn’t Luke around? Where did he go? Why did he go where he went? Who is looking for him? Why are they looking for him? How will our heroes find him?

Every character is working to an end demanded by the appearance of a beloved fan favorite, and this is backwards from how it ought to be. They have to scramble to justify this void and they lose sight of everything important to other characters to do so. This sets the tone for the rest the trilogy and limits its potential.

We know Rey is waiting for her family. We know at some point she bonds with Finn, and their bond becomes a new motivation for both of them. We know she learns she can use the Force and that Maz seems to think it’s her destiny. But we don’t know why. When Obi-Wan tells Luke that training in the Force is his destiny, we know that Luke longed for his father, that Luke wanted to leave Tatooine and get involved but his familiar obligations were holding him back. It’s a destiny that already jives with what he has wanted.

But why does Rey care about the Force? Why does she care about a person she barely knows, she just met, who has only been cruel to her and her friends? We’re never told this, and this is why for the rest of the trilogy, she seems to be buffeted by the demands of plot rather than propelled by her own desires. Her character arc culminates in her becoming powerful enough in the Force to call on the power of all the Jedi that preceded her so that she can destroy the greatest evil the galaxy has known. Yes, this is very basic, black and white, good vs. evil, and I don’t question that Rey wouldn’t generally want to save the galaxy. But her connection to the Jedi isn’t personal and there are no personal stakes for her. She might as well be an avatar. She may sport the surname Palpatine, but in practice she really is a nobody, sacrificing her ambitions for the greater good. Maybe that isn’t inherently a bad story, but we never see enough of her personal desires to appreciate the weight of that sacrifice.

Who is Rey? What did she want? What did the Force mean to her? What does being a Palpatine mean to her? How does that revelation impact her? What, if anything, does it change about how she feels about herself and what she wants? What place does she carve out for herself in the story? Why does she make the choices she makes?

I love that Rey is powerful, I love that she’s strong, and determined, and the glimpses we are allowed to see regarding how she cares about her friends. I think Daisy Ridley did a phenomenal job with what she was given. But the managing producers and writers on this story failed her and failed the story.

I won’t pretend there weren’t things I didn’t enjoy about the sequel trilogy. The new cast performed well and their chemistry is great. Of course I enjoyed hearing Kanan and Ahsoka and Anakin in that final moment.

But it’s not enough to offer only superficial fan service, without considering what we really truly loved about Star Wars to begin with: a human story

Crossposted to tumblr

Notes:

the subtitle, “whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal” is a quote from Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail
this pretty much sums up how I feel about TROS and the sequel trilogy in general. I could list the things I hated and the things that I liked, but ultimately I think it all comes back to what I've stated here. That said I had more (less coherent) thoughts on my tumblr