“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
― Henry David Thoreau
Star Wars — since the very beginning — has been completely intertwined with the concept of rebellion. George Lucas, himself rebel-minded when it came to the existing shackles of the day in the Hollywood system, set out to not only tell HIS story in HIS way with the original “Star Wars” in 1977, he also burned the candle at both ends to ensure he would be able to continue to do so into the future. He then laid all of those threads of rebellion into his “space fantasy” film in as overt a fashion as possible.*
* Notably, his previous film, “American Graffiti” was overtly rebellious as well.
Indeed, strip out the magnificent world building and brilliant riffs on epic storytelling done in Star Wars, and what are you left with? What is the point?
Well, in a global sense, the conflict is the point, and said conflict arises from the yin and yang of oppression and rebellion.
As I’m fond of saying, it’s called Star WARS for a reason.
However, looking beyond the black and white conflict of the Rebellion and the Empire, you’ll still see this theme at play within the character of Han Solo, the handsome roguish smuggler who plays by his own rules and doesn’t adhere to societal conventions. Moreover, he actively seeks to avoid being trapped into situations that threaten his “freedom,” and in the process, he becomes one of the most iconic characters in modern film history.
If you decide, as a company, that THIS character’s back story is worthy of its own feature film (as Disney did), you also decide that themes of freedom, subjugation, slavery, conflict and rebellion are going to be a major part of said film.
Continue reading Solo retrospective: Crawling out of the sewer
