Words Mean Things

I thought the film was about how Obi-Wan seized upon the opportunity that the Death Star crisis presented. Obi-Wan's true motivation (and the true plot) of the  film was to get Luke "Involved" with the rebellion, and therefor into a position where Luke could become the "New Hope" of the Jedi Order. 

In fact, it was never intended that Obi-Wan would have anything to do with the plans beyond delivering them to the Rebellion.  They did not even know what the droid was carrying. The main drive was Obi-Wan's snaring of Luke to be a Jedi. That Luke decided to Join the fight and blow up the station, was not the main objective. It was that Luke had become Force sensitive as a result of his involvement in the battle and blowing up the Death Star.  

Yeah, TheBoost is right, the Death Star plans are definitely not a McGuffin.

A good example of a McGuffin would be the ark of the covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, or the time traveling device in Primer, or the holy grail in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

TheBoost said:

I'm going to star with a word that none other than George Lucas decided to rob of all meaning.

Typos are kind of funny when you're making a rant about words.

RE: The DS Plans or the Ark of the Covenant as  Macguffins/McGuffins/McMuffins/Etcs...

I think it applies here.  As FF said, Star Wars (1977) is decidely NOT about the DS plans.  The plot may center around the plans, but the story doesn't.  The story is about the characters, the galaxy, good vs evil, Jedi Knights and lightsabres, etc...

I had seen Star Wars 100 times before I realized that the plot was all about the DS plans.

And Raiders of the Lost Ark isn't about the Ark... it's about the RAIDERS.

Your point that the wrapping of the plot shouldn't involve the MacGuffin is interesting... but I think it remains a flavour of MacGuffin (egg and sausage) and not the sole definition.

I swear, Fink just follows me around looking for typos. Everytime I make a typo there is Fink, right behind me, quoting my typos to ensure they are forever preserved.

EDIT:

As for Xhonzi's post... actually, irregardless of the joking in my previous post, I still have to agree with TheBoost. The term McGuffin was coined to describe something very specific, and things like the Death Star or the Ark of the Covenant, being HUGE plot points, are not it. Even if you want to say, "Star Was is NOT about the Death Star plans" or Raiders is more about the people trying to raid the ark than the actual artifact" those things are still the focal point of the entire story.

C3PX said:

A good example of a McGuffin would be...

"The Parade" in the "Live from the Mardi Gras, it's Saturday Night on Sunday!" special from February 1977!

Now who here is old enough to remember that one? *grin*

"Remember, "Mardi Gras" means "No Parade"."

Chewtobacca said:

I entirely agree.  This kind of abuse of language infuriates me.  It is slowly robbing the English language of its precision and elegance.  I seem to remember C.S. Lewis making a similar case in respect of the word gentleman.  

This is all the fault of descriptivist modern grammarians with no respect for the traditions of the English language who are too eager to invoke the all-excusing "languages change over time" argument to accommodate all manner of sloppy uneducated speech.  The day will soon come when have to use whole clauses and phrases to explain simple concepts for which we once had useful efficient words.

Oh man! You are my new best friend!

TheBoost said:

xhonzi said:

I think it applies here.  As FF said, Star Wars (1977) is decidely NOT about the DS plans.  The plot may center around the plans, but the story doesn't.  The story is about the characters, the galaxy, good vs evil, Jedi Knights and lightsabres, etc...

 

The plot to Star Wars is about the DS plans. From scene 1 it is the #1 thing the drives the plot.

It is why the princess is captured. It is how the DS is destroyed in the last scene. If the DS plans weren't there, the plot wouldn't work at all. Regardless of the elements that make it a great movie (good/evil, lightsabers, etc) the PLOT is driven by the DS plans.  They are fundamental to the plot structure on all levels.

The MacGuffin DOESN'T drive the plot. The money in psycho, the 39 Steps, the Maltese Falcon (which never acually appears in the movie), the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, the microfilm in every spy movie made in the 1960s; the identity of these objects don't matter to the plot, the only thing that matters is that the characters want them.

The DS plans, the Ark, the Holy Grail are all pivotal to the plot, and couldn't be replaced with anything else.

Luke becoming Force Sensitive, and the interpersonal relationships he makes, and adventures they all have together along the way is just as important as the plans if not more so. If Luke had not become Force Sensitive, and Han Solo did not intervene at the last moment, the plans would have not been worth squat. It was only because Luke and Han got together (through  Obi-Wan's secret agenda) that the Death Star was blown up at the end, and the rebellion saved. Had the plans got to the rebellion without involving Luke or Han or Obi-Wan, the rebellion would most likely been wiped out. That is why I say the plans are no more important then the Millennium Falcon is without Luke becoming Force Sensitive and making his relationships with Han and Obi-Wan. 

I'm saying that Lucas told the story following the DS plans, he could have told the same story and had the same end result had he followed the origins and history of the Millennium Falcon as the focus. You would still need Luke becoming force sensitive and hooking up with Han to get the end result of the film. The Death Star blowing up. With out the plans, no DS blows up, without the Millennium Falcon, DS does not blow up...

TheBoost said:

FanFiltration said:

I'm saying that Lucas told the story following the DS plans, he could have told the same story and had the same end result had he followed the origins and history of the Millennium Falcon as the focus.

 How would that have gone, and how would that have been the same story?

The Movie could have started with Han dumping the cargo of Jabba the Hutt, and his arriving at the spaceport. Next scenes could be his trying to avoid Jabba and his men, and then Luke shows up with Obi-Wan, and the rest of the story plays out.. That's how. Han needed to make money to pay Jabba back.

I should have said, the end results of the protagonists would have been the same.  The only thing the DS plans do, is get characters involved with each other. It's a device to move the story along. And that is what a "MacGuffin" is. The story is not about the plans anymore then it is about the Millennium Falcons, or even the Death Star itself. Can't we say the story is truly about the Death Star, and how it is a failed and flawed device of war?

quoting Hitchcock, and wikipedia:

"[We] have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin.' It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers."

Interviewed in 1966 by François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock illustrated the term "MacGuffin" with this story:^[2]

It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says, "What's that package up there in the baggage rack?" And the other answers, "Oh that's a McGuffin." The first one asks, "What's a McGuffin?" "Well," the other man says, "It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands." The first man says, "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands," and the other one answers "Well, then that's no McGuffin!" So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all.

Hitchcock related this anecdote in a television interview for Richard Schickel's documentary The Men Who Made the Movies. Hitchcock's verbal delivery made it clear that the second man has thought up the MacGuffin explanation as a roundabout method of telling the first man to mind his own business. According to author Ken Mogg, screenwriter Angus MacPhail, a friend of Hitchcock's, may have originally coined the term.^[3]

To summarize, I think a McGuffin should have a relevance on the plot, no matter how big a relevance, if we see the mcguffin or if we don't, if we understand what it is and how it works. I don't think it is something easy to define. For instance, I think the Dmc Delorean in the BTTF Trilogy, while being one of the protagonists, is also a McGuffin, because we have a vague idea of how it works, yet the stories center around the vehicle, and happen because of it. The plans in Star Wars could also be defined as McGuffin I think, for the same reasons.

TheBoost said:

xhonzi said:

I think it applies here.  As FF said, Star Wars (1977) is decidely NOT about the DS plans.  The plot may center around the plans, but the story doesn't.  The story is about the characters, the galaxy, good vs evil, Jedi Knights and lightsabres, etc...

 

The plot to Star Wars is about the DS plans. From scene 1 it is the #1 thing the drives the plot.

It is why the princess is captured. It is how the DS is destroyed in the last scene. If the DS plans weren't there, the plot wouldn't work at all. Regardless of the elements that make it a great movie (good/evil, lightsabers, etc) the PLOT is driven by the DS plans.  They are fundamental to the plot structure on all levels.

The MacGuffin DOESN'T drive the plot. The money in psycho, the 39 Steps, the Maltese Falcon (which never acually appears in the movie), the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, the microfilm in every spy movie made in the 1960s; the identity of these objects don't matter to the plot, the only thing that matters is that the characters want them.

The DS plans, the Ark, the Holy Grail are all pivotal to the plot, and couldn't be replaced with anything else.

 I understand- but I don't think the MacGuffin has to be unpivotal to be a MacGuffin.  I think the Maltese Falcon drives the plot unseen just as well as the DS plans do.  You don't "see" the DS plans until the very end of the movie.

quoting Hitchcock, and wikipedia:

"[We] have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin.' It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers."

Interviewed in 1966 by François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock illustrated the term "MacGuffin" with this story:^[2]

It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says, "What's that package up there in the baggage rack?" And the other answers, "Oh that's a McGuffin." The first one asks, "What's a McGuffin?" "Well," the other man says, "It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands." The first man says, "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands," and the other one answers "Well, then that's no McGuffin!" So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all.

Hitchcock related this anecdote in a television interview for Richard Schickel's documentary The Men Who Made the Movies. Hitchcock's verbal delivery made it clear that the second man has thought up the MacGuffin explanation as a roundabout method of telling the first man to mind his own business. According to author Ken Mogg, screenwriter Angus MacPhail, a friend of Hitchcock's, may have originally coined the term.^[3]

 

Leonardo said:

To summarize, I think a McGuffin should have a relevance on the plot, no matter how big a relevance, if we see the mcguffin or if we don't, if we understand what it is and how it works. I don't think it is something easy to define. For instance, I think the Dmc Delorean in the BTTF Trilogy, while being one of the protagonists, is also a McGuffin, because we have a vague idea of how it works, yet the stories center around the vehicle, and happen because of it. The plans in Star Wars could also be defined as McGuffin I think, for the same reasons.

So, to summarize, words DON'T actually have meaning, The Boost. Or at least very few people here are in agreement with you that they do.

I was actually unaware that Mary Sue had shifted to be so broad.  That's the first I've heard of it.  Frankly, the term that annoys me is Marty Stu.  Yeah.  We really needed to make a gender specific version of this term... what are, Spanish?  Mary Sue worked just fine for everybody.  Marty Stu just sounds stupid.

But I'll contribute my own:  PREQUEL.  Prequel is not any work of fiction that chronologically takes place before any other work of fiction.  It is a SEQUEL that chronologically takes place before a preceding work of fiction.  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is not a prequel to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

TheBoost said:

...the Maltese Falcon (which never acually appears in the movie)...

Oh...yeah....apart from the open titles....AND THE SCENES IT APPEARS IN

:D

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSd_MCIIKNk )

Jar-Jar Binks = Mary Sue

** prepares for death threats **

Davnes007 said:

TheBoost said:

...the Maltese Falcon (which never acually appears in the movie)...

Oh...yeah....apart from the open titles....AND THE SCENES IT APPEARS IN

:D

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSd_MCIIKNk )

I think he means that the REAL Maltese Falcon never appears in the movie. :P