If I invited you over to my house for dinner, and I promised to serve you spaghetti and meatballs, but served chicken alfredo instead, how would you feel? Pasta is pasta, right? Eat up! Yum, yum! Or, would you look at me with a furrowed brow and tell me you feel like you were tricked and lied to? I believe that if you're going to promise something, you should do your best to deliver it.
So, Star Wars is a film franchise with the themes of family, faith, and mythology. If someone tells you they're making a Star Wars movie, and the themes are not these, would you feel like you were promised spaghetti and delivered alfredo? In other words, have your expectations been unmet leading to disappointment? For some people, the answer is yes.
Now, what happens if I offer you spaghetti and meatballs, but I actually serve you chicken alfredo, except underneath the chicken alfredo is shepherds pie with pickled beats? Ok, that's a little weird, right? And certainly not what you were expecting. Now, you're disappointed and also confused.
To break it down, Star Wars 7 is spaghetti with meatballs. Star Wars 8 is the chicken alfredo. Star Wars 9 is shepherds pie with pickled beats. I regret that the problem with my food analogy is that I've picked foods that I like to eat. In reality, Star Wars 7 is spaghetti with cucumber spirals instead of noodles and tofu for meatballs. Star Wars 8 is rotten fish. Star Wars 9 is trail mix on top of pizza that's still frozen in the middle. One of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong. This trilogy does not have a feeling of consistency or cohesion. It's like the Mona Lisa with pasta and glitter glue. As a result, it's less than what it could have been.
Thank you for patience. Let's talk about the themes in Star Wars 7, 8, and 9.
What is / are the theme(s) of Star Wars episode 7? The movie begins with Poe doing spy-guy things, then Kylo-Ren does villainous things, and then we introduce Finn who does traitor things. Then Poe and Finn crash on a desert planet. Thematically, what do we set up? A sort of a found-family in the making? Cool. I like that.
Then we introduce Rey. She's alone on a desert planet and counting the days. She's unhappy with the world as she finds it. I see where we're going with this, and I'm getting excited! The first real weakness with the theming is that Poe goes missing until one of the final scenes of the film. This right here is the promise of spaghetti and meatballs and the delivering of the cucumber spirals instead of noodles. Darn.
So, let's speed this up. Rey does not have any family. You might say she's desperate for a family. Then she meets Han Solo. She might as well ask, "will you be my daddy?" And Han Solo being a guy with a rough exterior, but a heart of gold takes her under his wing. OK, I love it! What could possibly go wrong?
Skip ahead, and Kylo-Ren kills Han Solo. D'oh! So close!
OK, so the theme of family is still on the table (pun intended, see my food analogy above)! Very, very much so! How do we tie this knot? Well, let's discuss the family. The family in question is the Skywalker family; Or rather, the Skywalker-Solo family! Yes, these families are tied together via the marriage of Han and Leia. Kylo-Ren's real name is Ben Solo. Cool! That means Han, Leia, Luke, and Kylo-Ren are all family. Yippie!
But what about Rey?
Rey was 100% intended to be a Skywalker! I'm not privileged to the behind-the-scenes information, but how could you not piece this together based on episodes 1 through 7? Let's review. Luke Skywalker went missing. Why? Unclear; but if Luke went missing, does it not stand to reason that maybe he also wanted to hide his baby? Gasp! Rey is Luke's daughter? Can it be true? Well, why the @#$%! else would Leia Organa-Solo snub Chewbacca and hug Rey at the end of episode 7, you twit! And why the @#$%! else would Rey be so gifted with the force if she wasn't a descendent of Anakin Skywalker whose midi-chlorian count (bleh, I threw up!) was the highest ever recorded! Duh!
So why was Rey later revealed to be the daughter of a no one in Star Wars 8 and then re-revealed to be a Palpatine in Star Wars 9? That's the rotten fish dish and the half-frozen pizza topped with trail mix that I previously told you about. There really isn't a pay-off to wild changes like this, and it means we need a new reason for why Leia would hug smelly Rey Palpatine.
If Rey is the daughter of Luke, then she would be Kylo-Ren's cousin, and thus, the family theme could be salvaged! Rey's goal would be to save / redeem her cousin like Luke's goal was to save / redeem his father. Insert the clip of the interview with George Lucas talking about the prequels when he says, "it's like poetry, it rhymes." Ta-da! Instead, the way movies 7-9 work out, Rey turns out to be a Palpatine who survives when all Skywalkers and all Solos die, and Rey Palpatine, daughter of the villain of 7 movies, inherits the name and legacy of the heroes. She ends up alone in a desert without Finn and Poe. So, the found family concept is dropped, and Rey ends up as alone as she was at the start of the movies except for force ghosts. She has no kids or family of her own.
Now, let's talk about theme conceptually. What is a theme in a literary context? Well, stories are as much about entertainment as they are about teaching a lesson. The lesson is therefore the substance of your story. The lesson is the theme; the theme is the lesson. In stories, the lesson is communicated to the audience through the hero who must learn the lesson. The value of the lesson is communicated through the hero using that lesson to overcome the conflict (and presumably win or survive or achieve their goal). If the hero fails, it's usually because they didn't learn the lesson. So, if there is no lesson, there is no literary theme, and your story is entertainment with no substance. It's hollow and unfulfilling. It's unsatisfying, like the 2021 Mortal Combat movie. It's just an excuse to watch people fight and blow stuff up for 90 minutes, and it's lacking the human element.
What lesson did Rey have to learn on-screen in order to achieve her goal? @#$%! if I know.
So, I invite you over for spaghetti and meatballs, but I serve you something else. Is my analogy working? OK, let's change it; what if I promise you spaghetti and meatballs, but it's all tofu and it's chemically altered to taste like spaghetti and meatballs, but it's not very accurate, and it leaves you feeling like something is missing. You're unfulfilled. You just sort of scrunch up your nose and try not to think about what you could have eaten instead. You regret your meal. It was a waste of time. But worse than that, you don't know if you can ever appreciate pasta again. That is the Disney Star War trilogy.
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