So what’s the problem with new Star Wars episodes and what’s the origin of this problem? I am going to investigate it.
I argue that the deepest problem of Disney Star Wars is conception. The classical Star Wars were based on certain patterns of myth and fairytale while Disney has disrupted them. George Lucas was inspired by works of Joseph Campbell — a famous mythologist who dedicated his life to studies of myth and religion. Cambell revealed that all myths and fairytales in the world are variations of the same narrative pattern called monomyth.
This pattern images the way of a young hero going through a harsh quest to beat a monster or to find a treasure. During the quest the hero is been through symbolic death and revival which are mandatory attributes of so-called initiation — a ceremony of accepting a young member of some society into a group of adults. Hero is to be dead as a child to be reborn as an adult. Thus the ultimate goal of hero’s journey is leaving a childhood and entering a mature life. But to do this he has to forsake his previous life and left behind its values and pleasures.
This pattern is to be found in various myths, fairytales, books and films. It is the main basis of each narration. Campbell argues that such sustainability is to be explained in accordance of terms of Jungian analytical psychology — a science which studies a collective unconsciousness. We can say that initiation pattern is included into a subconsciousness of each human being on the Earth. Above mentioned narrative activates this pattern and drives the human’s psyche along the way it should work, turning a young person into a mature one. The border between hero’s routine life and magic world symbolizes the border between consciousness and unconsciousness. When the hero crosses this border he literally deeps into his unconsciousness and we as viewers follow him. This is why we love a kind of stories like Star Wars or Harry Potter — they invoke our deep psychological mechanisms which reboot and refresh our psyche.
The pattern of hero’s quest includes a row of mandatory stages called «Departure», «Initiation» and «Return». Departure stage starts with «The call of adventure» and following «Refusal of the call». Luke Skywalker in «Star Wars Episode IV» lives a life of an ordinary farmer until he gets «The call of adventure» through two droids and meets Obi-Wan Kenoby. Obi-Wan calls him to cross the border between routine and «magic» world, but Luke refuses this call. Only extraordinary circumstances make him answer this call and set off into a journey. Here he has to abandone his previous life and a part of his identity dies being left in the past. Withdrawing hero from his community starts his way of transfiguration into a new person. Obi-Wan is a classical image of a magical helper who gives hero an artifact which is needed in following adventures — in this case artifact is a Lightsaber. I will not describe all stages since it takes a lot of time. If you are interested in the monomyth pattern, you can read Cambell’s book «The Hero with a Thousand Faces». The main point here is that hero has to abandon his past and symbolically die to be reborn as a new kind of a person.
The same pattern works in Anakin Skywalker’s story where the boy has to abandon his mother to reach the new level of his personality and become a Jedi. Anakin and Luke journeys activates the same subconscious program in viewer’s mind so these stories invokes our natural energy hidden underneath our mind.
But what about Rey from Disney Star Wars? She was a scavenger on a retarded planet Jakku until she was dragged into space adventures by casual encounter with a droid. This story tries to follow the pattern of Luke and Anakin except one significant detail: unlike Luke and Anakin, Rey doesn’t have to abandon any valuable part of her life to cross the line between routine and «magic» world. Her life on Jakku was tough and lone so it cost her nothing to leave it. Here the creators of a new Star Wars lose an essence of monomyth — there is no symbolic death for a hero. She just faces new troubles but she doesn’t leave the part of his personality to turn into a new person. This is why she knows everything about force without studying — the pattern of hero’s journey is broken from the beginning so Rey doesn’t have to grow from a child to an adult person through suffering and long study.
Disney tries to tell us a story of underdog - a looser who suddenly becomes successful. But Star Wars never was about success — it was about personal transfiguration. So the whole plot of a new Star Wars goes past the original conception and the atmosphere of Lucas epic collapses. The narrative of a classical Star Wars based on a monomyth conception was filled with an archetypical sense. Unfortunately the narrative of episodes VII and VIII is left empty. The only thing which Disney successfully kept is visual effects. They are doubtlessly well done.
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