“Star Wars”
Screenwriter: George Lucas
Page count: 127pgs
Genre: Science Fiction
Draft date: November 29, 1974
Logline: After discovering that his father was a legendary warrior, a farm boy becomes entangled in an intergalactic civil war.
Comments: STAR WARS is a fairly conventional story that isn’t quite unique enough to stand out from the other sci-fi properties. It’s nothing more than the classic Hero’s Journey set against the backdrop of outer space. The writer’s feeble attempt at world building merely consists of name-dropping extraneous alien species, spacecraft and weapons. There is no real substance or original ideas in STAR WARS, leading to a decent if forgettable read.
PLOT
While the act structure is serviceable and hits the requisite beats, the plot is fairly standard, going from station to station (sometimes literally). After a text-heavy exposition dump at the top, we move into an alien world featuring a merciless empire, a rogue rebellion and a desert planet. Whether in “Flash Gordon” or Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” we’ve seen this story many times before.
Strangely, the script provides zero narrative closure for Darth Vader's character. He is the main antagonist, a dark Jedi and the murderer of Kenobi. Yet he simply spins away into space at the end. This is the villain who killed Luke’s father, yet Vader and Luke have no interactions in the script. You would think that Luke could get some semblance of revenge. This loose plot thread smacks of lazy writing.
While we're on the subject of weak plotting: The painfully named “Death Star” (If the space station doesn’t kill you with its giant laser, it will brow beat you with subtlety) is destroyed thanks to the laughably implausible deus ex machina of an open drainpipe.
The script inhabits a sci-fi world, but the writer also feels the need to introduce magic in the form of “The Force.” Adding a mystical element on top of the robots and spaceships might be too big a leap for audiences to make.
“The Force” is a hand-waving catchall (sometimes literally) that provides mind control, choking, and apparently the ability to give posthumous advice (in Act Three, Kenobi’s ghost visits Luke without any pipe being laid for this device). Without a scientific explanation for the mechanics of Jedi powers, this Force cannot be taken seriously.
The backstory of this world remains unexplored. There is mention of a Clone War and an Old Republic, but they are never expanded upon. I would have appreciated a look into the political chaos and economic events that led to the Empire’s rise.
CHARACTERS
The script’s one-dimensional characters are all pleasant enough, but nothing to really sink your teeth into. There aren’t many gradations or shades of gray to the villains. Darth Vader is pure evil and Tarkin is a mustache-twirling adversary who goes down with his ship.
Luke Skywalker offers a clear coming-of-age story (although it relies on the overused trope of “the long lost, heroic father”). But does his character arc track? He is the same person at the end of the script as he as at the beginning. He goes from wanting to be a hero to becoming a hero. What lesson does he learn? What is his core flaw that he overcomes? These issues are never addressed, as Luke’s heroics are never called into question.
Han Solo is the lone bright spot, as he is the only character with a pronounced arc. He moves from being only motivated by self-interest and money to selflessly returning to the final battle. He is also the recipient of the majority of the script’s better one-liners.
The romantic relationship between Luke and Leia needs to be more prominent. Their romance is a strong point of the script, but we only get one kiss. We need more of Luke and Leia together for their love story to resonate and heighten the intergalactic drama.
The rest of the supporting cast is made up of bumbling robots and monsters. It’s difficult to market characters who speak exclusively in grunts and beeps.
DIALOGUE
While a throwback to “Flash Gordon” and other serials of that era, the dialogue is appropriately campy but also borders on clunky. When the dialogue isn’t on-the-nose or expository, it is written entirely in the jargon of the world. As stated before, the writer’s strategy for world building is to drop as many unique sci-fi terms as possible. This gets in the way of learning who these characters actually are.
With lines such as “The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force” (page 37) and “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced” (page 58), the writer doesn’t demonstrate an understanding of the way people actually speak.
FINAL THOUGHTS
There are a few engaging set pieces and a good character or two, but STAR WARS doesn’t add anything to the existing sci-fi tableau. With its formulaic plot and under-rendered characters, the script is generic to the point of being derivative.
It also bears noting that in addition to being a pastiche of pulp sci-fi, the script is eerily similar to Akira Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress.” Will audiences recognize this borderline plagiarism? In this reader’s opinion, they definitely will.
RECOMMENDATION: PASS
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