George Lucas: Star Wars Creator, Unreliable Narrator & Time Travelling Revisionist... — Page 9

Something I thought of recently after a few weird interviews, as usual, with George. Two separate incidences:

George insisted: “The purpose of Star Wars was – it was during the Vietnam War, I was going to do Apocalypse Now and I couldn’t do it. So, I took a lot of the ideas and put them into this movie."

“When I did it,” Lucas replied, “they were Viet Cong.”

Except the whole of Star Wars was WW2 in space. The Imperial uniforms. The Dam Busters dialogue. The cutting of war footage into the temp version without finished special effects. The literal stormtroopers. Why the hell is he trying to say now it was always a USA in Vietnam analogue?

It could stem from the time he was trying to make Revenge of the Sith seem deeper than it really was.

“That was the period where Nixon was trying to run for a [second] term,” Lucas told the Chicago Tribune in 2005. “[That] got me to thinking historically about how do democracies get turned into dictatorships? Because the democracies aren’t overthrown; they’re given away.”

Then the later interview with James Cameron seems to be the source of the Viet Cong idea which he probably just made up there and then to sound cool in front of the camera. Unless the Making Of books have anything in them to back this up.

Lucas obviously had contemporary politics in mind when making his movies why would he lie about that. The Force is riffing on new age hippie mysticism. He named like half the villains in the prequels and the clone wars after corrupt american politicians and arms manufacturing companies. Even if sometimes he exaggerates and says “Star Wars is about Vietnam” you’re very silly if you deny that his political views manifest in his work.

Also

NFBisms said:
also just kind of an insane story, they were gonna do that shit in the actual war

oh my God

The Viet Cong analogue is probably more relevant in Return of the Jedi, when the Ewoks fight the Stormtroopers. But even as regards the whole Original Trilogy, the “WW2 in space” analogy can only go so far (and refers mostly to the visuals and special effects), because the Original Trilogy is not about a war between political equals (despite the fact that A New Hope confusingly refers to a “Galactic Civil War” in the opening crawl). Rather, it is about asymmetric war between insurgents and an all-powerful totalitarian regime.

Channel72 said:

The Viet Cong analogue is probably more relevant in Return of the Jedi, when the Ewoks fight the Stormtroopers. But even as regards the whole Original Trilogy, the “WW2 in space” analogy can only go so far (and refers mostly to the visuals and special effects), because the Original Trilogy is not about a war between political equals (despite the fact that A New Hope confusingly refers to a “Galactic Civil War” in the opening crawl). Rather, it is about asymmetric war between insurgents and an all-powerful totalitarian regime.

Yes the Ewoks, however poorly executed, at least resemble low-tech fighters against a much larger and more advance power. I just don’t see it as a metaphor for the US military action during that period. The iconography just doesn’t work.

However, the WW2 thing is more clear since you can take the Battle of Britain era with one small island against the whole of the Third Reich. Or resistance fighters in places like France and Norway. Later they gain more allies and fight on a more equal scale which turns the tide, etc. George saw movies about that in the 1950s after all.

Because the imagery of The Galactic Empire is more clearly defined as I said already.

It was always about the very technological imperial US, who at the time happened to be fighting Vietnam. Lucas talks about how the Empire is “10 years after Nixon makes a coup in America and becomes president forever” and stuff. In earlier drafts there’s even annotations like “Make Rebels more like the Viet Cong”. Leia’s hairstyle is reminiscent of Mexican revolutionaries, when it came time to pick an astronaut outfit for the Rebels Lucas decided to go for the Soviet orange versus the American white. Honestly baffling anyone would really dispute any of this, Lucas has been saying/writing/etc about all of this since forever. Not at all a contradiction or a rewrite of history.

There’s a difference between drawing visual and thematic inspiration from Vietnam, and doing a full-on allegory about the Vietnam war. And if Star Wars really was meant to be a Vietnam allegory, then it’s a really bad one for several reasons.

George has always been one to speak bluntly. He’s not gonna beat around the bush and say something like “I drew on the visuals and themes of Vietnam to enhance my story.” He’ll just say “It’s about Vietnam. Palpatine is Nixon.” Because he speaks bluntly. That doesn’t make it a full allegory, necessarily.

Lucas mostly just wanted to get across the idea that plucky underdogs can overcome a technologically superior enemy if they truly believe in what they’re fighting for rather than intangible and abstract goals that they’re apathetic about like “stop whatever this thing called communism is in some other country I’ve barely heard of halfway across the world”, which is what his main takeaway from Vietnam was.

George certainly didn’t object to Kirshner making the Empire all Brits and the rebels all Americans (and having that stick!) as the same basic idea got across.

Servii said:

There’s a difference between drawing visual and thematic inspiration from Vietnam, and doing a full-on allegory about the Vietnam war. And if Star Wars really was meant to be a Vietnam allegory, then it’s a really bad one for several reasons.

George has always been one to speak bluntly. He’s not gonna beat around the bush and say something like “I drew on the visuals and themes of Vietnam to enhance my story.” He’ll just say “It’s about Vietnam. Palpatine is Nixon.” Because he speaks bluntly. That doesn’t make it a full allegory, necessarily.

While I appreciate the note about Cosmonaut orange there are few real references to things in the Cold War (you’d have to ignore that Yuri Gagarin fought the Nazis not the USA). The Imperial troops aren’t wearing tiger-stripe green and being entrenched in guerilla warfare. The WW2 stuff just overrides almost everything else. They’re not in an arms race, they trying to stop one big new weapon like the 1940s. They’re not a down and dirty faction using any basic tools they can, they’re equipped with fighters that in many cases are better than the big bad have, like in the 1940s.

Admittedly the like of Rogue One and Andor muddy the waters but the point stands. “Palpatine is Nixon” falls apart because there’s no opposing leaders to fit that analogue. Are the leaders from Yavin the Chinese? Are the Mon Calamari the USSR? Even if he did say “I drew on the visuals and themes of Vietnam to enhance my story,” then it falls down. Which is very funny when you think that James Cameron is the one that has made multiple films built in incredibly blunt 'Nam references.

NFBisms said:

For Lucas, it’s just valent to his prequels (and the context of the 70s) that his Empire is America. It’s a reflection of Star Wars’ contemporaneous moment. One of the most ‘revolutionary’ times in pop art and music.

Oh sure, it’s clear from characters that say things like ‘I’m not in this for your revolution sister,’ that certain contemporary ideas are being pulled in. Or at least ones from the previous decade. I just feel like because of the prequels having to be part of his ‘original vision’ these elements like the ‘war on terror’ have to align with earlier social issues. So of course he will say it was always about Vietnam. It was always six movies, and so on. I just don’t really see the broad strokes in the OT at all. So I guess we can agree to disagree.

Yeah, I mean, whenever someone talks about Star Wars being “WW2 in space”, it’s generally accompanied by clips of X-Wings banking like a WW2 fighter plane, or gunners manning a huge laser canon and firing out the window into space like on a WW2 battleship, etc. The “WW2 in space” thing mostly refers to aesthetic/stylistic choices manifested in the groundbreaking visual effects. The story itself is more closely analogous to an asymmetric conflict between insurgents and an oppressive technocratic dictatorship. But perhaps it has more in common with a fantasy where an evil Kingdom is defeated by an unlikely hero than anything rooted in real world politics.

I remember, at least anecdotally, people used to draw parallels with the American revolution, drawing on superficial things like the Imperials all having British accents. (It’s likely the Imperials all have British accents because it was convenient to find British extras at Elstree Studios in the UK where a lot of Star Wars 1977 was filmed.) But I find it very unlikely George Lucas had that in mind. He obviously felt some affinity with the 1960s/1970s counter-culture and the anti-war movement at the time. This probably influenced some things in Star Wars in some minor way, but I think most of it was influenced simply by pulp-sci-fi tropes and Flash Gordon, which often featured evil tyrannical Empires as the bad guys.

Honestly, most of the “political messaging” in Star Wars, (if it even exists), always feels tacked on as an afterthought by Lucas as an attempt to elevate the material. Tying in the Bush Administration and the War on Terror with Palpatine’s story in the Prequels always seemed like a really desperate stretch, not because it wasn’t at least partially a valid analogy necessarily, but because I just don’t really believe George Lucas when he claims to have thought much about these things while writing the script.

Here’s a direct quote from J. W. Rinzler’s “The Making of Star Wars”:

In enlarging the treatment to what became a nearly two-hundred-page rough draft, Lucas was continually aided by the transference of his Apocalypse Now ideas to the fantasy realm. Some of his notes scribbled on yellow legal pads are: “Theme: Aquilae is a small independent country like North Vietnam threatened by a neighbor or provincial rebellion, instigated by gangsters aided by empire. Fight to get rightful planet back. Half of system has been lost to gangsters … The empire is like America ten years from now, after gangsters assassinated the Emperor and were elevated to power in a rigged election … We are at a turning point: fascism or revolution.”

This is from when he was piecing together what the movie would be about, and is pre-rough draft, so around Spring 1974. You must remember that Lucas wanted to make Apocalypse Now after THX 1138, and the only reason he dropped it was because no studio would make it. But Lucas really wanted to make it, and while I won’t say Star Wars is Apocalypse Now in space, to deny Lucas’ politics and ideas at the time and how they influenced Star Wars is just incredible. It’s definitively kept as subtext - the best part of Star Wars is how it’s so many things at the same time right, not just a western, or just sci-fi, or just fantasy, etc. - but it’s undeniable subtext I think, especially when viewed through the lens Lucas provided with his prequels.

NFBisms said:

“Politics” do not [necessarily, or often] work via the same mechanics as a fable’s moral or lesson. These aren’t ‘messages’ at the end of an after school special or Saturday Morning Cartoon episode.

They are manifest in all work, as a reflection of the author’s perspectives, the context in which work is created. It can be as simple as the Empire dissolving the Senate being portrayed as bad, or as thematic as Leia being portrayed counter to conservative femininity. There are things you wouldn’t write, and things you likely would, if you were to write your own story. That is politics.

Lucas can go back outside of his initial intentions and verbalize what precisely might have inspired him. It’s no different than Spielberg realizing how his parents inadvertently inspired how the aliens communicate in Close Encounters. But instead of making The Fabelmans, Lucas makes the prequels.

Having political inspiration inherent to oneself doesn’t even have to interplay with intention. I absolutely believe Lucas intended to just make a fun, swashbuckling space opera. I absolutely believe Lucas was more influenced by Flash Gordon than he was Vietnam. But the context from which the story arose from him is worth talking about, especially for himself to analyze. There are aesthetics and what a story is (its genre form, its intention), and then there are the values a story inherently has.

Right, I’m mostly reacting to the (implied) idea that Lucas began writing Star Wars (either the OT or the Prequels) with some clear, historical/political allegory in mind, in the way that, say, George Orwell did while writing Animal Farm. I think it was more like, Lucas was thinking “I want to write this cool story with space ships and lasers and wizards and fairy-tale endings, and I sure love those old WW2 movies and serial adventures where they fight Nazis. But I also think my cool film-school friends are on to something with this anti-war and revolutionary stuff that’s going on now. I feel like I have something to say about all this, so I’ll sprinkle in some thematic fragments here and there.”

I mean, these perceived allegorical dimensions of Star Wars always seemed way more “tacked on” to me, and much less organically emergent from the story itself, than other comparable sci-fi like Dune or Star Trek.

It’s similar to how Lucas is now strongly associated with Joseph Campbell, even though the “hero’s journey” stuff sort of just naturally seeped into Star Wars via cultural osmosis, rather than Lucas actually reading Campbell and methodically setting out to write a story constrained by specific Campbellian parameters.

Anyway, for a clear example of Star Wars with (mostly obvious and intentional) political messaging done correctly, see Andor.