This Has All Happened Before, And It Will All Happen Again: The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
by Michael Giammarino
7. “Alas, Poor Vader, I Heard Him, Horatio”: Composite Characters and Kylo Ren as Hamlet
In a trilogy whose very story is about inheriting (and defending) a legacy, it's only fitting that our villain is chasing the legacy of the most notorious villain in the galaxy, second only to Darth Sidious. I mean, any villain you follow Darth Vader with will be compared to him; it's inevitable. It's only fitting, therefore, that Kylo Ren is literally living in Vader's shadow. What would have been an unavoidable critique becomes part of the story. Even Kylo's entrance into the story is very much like Vader's. The gangplanks on the troop carriers barely even lower all the way when the Stormtroopers start firing, cutting a swathe through Tuanul Village. In A New Hope, it's barely even a second once the blast door leading to the Tantive IV's main corridor expIodes and the troops begin charging. When Kylo Ren arrives in his shuttle moments later, John Williams’ swashbuckling score announcing him prestigiously, everything is under control. Arrests were made. Villagers who resisted are dead. Tents and other habitats are burning. Kylo Ren is basking in it all. This event has its poetic antecedent in A New Hope. The blast door on the Tantive IV burned and sparked, like the creature of the Id burning the door down in Forbidden Planet. (This referential motif was revisited in The Phantom Menace when Qui-Gon stuffed his lightsaber through the blast door leading to the Neimoidian command ship's bridge, like a warm knife pressed into a stick of butter. The parallel to Forbidden Planet is even more apparent here.) The door explodes, and troops storm in, blaster fire criss-crossing the corridor, clearing a path for Vader's arrival. When Vader finally walks through, it's with piles of dead Rebel bodies strewn out before him. If we continue to follow its course backwards, the poetic thread that links Kylo's entrance in The Force Awakens to Vader's entrance in A New Hope links A New Hope to its actual inspiration: Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. When this 1968 Spaghetti Western opens, a group of outlaws massacres a settler and his family for control of the railroad being built across his property. These outlaws kill most of the family while hiding in the bushes bordering the property. When it comes time to reveal themselves, they enter the frame in classic Leone slow motion fashion, making way for the moment this has all been leading up to… the arrival of the big bad, the leader of these outlaws. And Henry Fonda steps out into frame. Sergio Leone wanted to cast Fonda as the villain because of his status as a dramatic leading man, an actor who had never played a villain in his life. He wanted Fonda based on his reputation as a good guy, an everyman, a dramatic actor, and because of the actor's piercing blue eyes. He wanted to surprise the audience. He wanted to show the audience that this good man had gone bad. At the time A New Hope was released, in 1977, all George Lucas was interested in was giving his villain the kind of entrance Sergio Leone gave his villain in Once Upon a Time in the West. Once the concept for George's villain changed going into The Empire Strikes Back, one can look back at Leone's directorial intent in presenting a good man gone bad – the good guy actor playing a bad, bad man – and find perfect symmetry in where George took Anakin Skywalker in his story, as a good man gone bad.
Kylo idolizes Darth Vader. Why? Obviously he knows Vader saved Luke and turned on the Emperor, finding redemption in the end. Why would he be so fascinated with Vader?
J.J. Abrams explained to IGN:
“Kylo Ren idolizes Darth Vader, not Anakin Skywalker. He idolizes what Vader represents, and what Vader was trying to do. And the idea that Vader didn't succeed, if you look at it from Ren’s point of view, he was seduced by the enemy and failed because of that seduction. So the idea is that Ren wants to complete the thing that Vader started.
“[Ren has] an incredible power, incredible force, incredible potential, that, like many young people, is misguided and unclear. And the story, for him, is one of conflict; not just external conflict but internal conflict. And it's what makes him, I think, a rather interesting villain.”
Before there can be a Kylo Ren, there is Ben Solo. Just as before there can be a Darth Vader, there is Anakin Skywalker. Both impressionable, both emotionally stunted, both manipulated by Darth Sidious. Ever since Anakin became the unexpected – some might say accidental, others might say it was the will of the Force – hero who brought an end to the Neimoidian invasion on Naboo, Sidious, under the false face of Sheev Palpatine, kept his eye on Anakin, worked Anakin, gained his trust, twisted his loyalties, and made lofty promises, leading Anakin down a horrible path. Likewise, Sidious kept his eye on Ben, fixated on the young man's bloodline (“that powerful Skywalker blood”) and, using a different false face – his proxy, Snoke – worked Ben, gained his trust, twisted his loyalties, and made lofty promises, leading Ben down a horrible path. In both cases, Sidious used existing tension within their closely knit familial and peer groups, gradually sowing enmity that severed those relationships.
When George cast Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker, he was looking for a specific quality. He told Premiere Magazine in June, 2002, “What attracted me to [Hayden] was the fact that he had this underlying kind of James Dean angst going on.” Now, I don't think George thought Hayden was “the next James Dean.” But I do think George saw an aspect of James Dean in Hayden, an aspect he saw in Anakin Skywalker. Vanity Fair concurred in their report on Revenge of the Sith in 2005:
Throughout Attack of the Clones, Anakin is an impatient, arrogant teen, with great powers beneath a James Dean pout. Audiences who had expected a more heroic protagonist--someone like the easy-to-root-for farm boy Luke Skywalker--may have been confused by this sullen kid, who is alternately boastful and whining. Lucas believes Christensen took an unfair hit from critics and fans merely for carrying out what was in the script. “Poor Hayden,” he says. “His performance is great. They just don't like the character.”
The way audiences and critics treated Hayden's performance echoes how some treated our original trilogy cast. Remember what Pauline Kael said about Star Wars in 1977:
“George Lucas has got the tone of bad movies down pat: you never catch the actors deliberately acting badly; they just seem to be bad actors, on contract to Monogram or Republic, their klunky enthusiasm polished at the Ricky Nelson school of acting.”
And how People magazine articulated disdain in their Empire Strikes Back review in 1980:
“Worse, the more one sees the main characters, the less appealing they become. Luke Skywalker is a whiner, Han Solo a sarcastic clod, Princess Leia a nag and C-3PO just a drone. Nor will the acting of the performers who play them, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, stand much scrutiny.”
And of course, there was that Andrew Gordon Return of the Jedi review in Film Criticism:
"The bad acting, which was cute in Star Wars, has by now become tiresome. Instead of exuding the confidence and authority of a Jedi Knight, on his first entrance Luke (Mark Hamill) only makes us aware that he is doing a poor imitation of Alec Guinness. The Emperor (lan McDiarmid) hams it up unmercifully. And all the actors appear to have been required by director Richard Marquand to telegraph every line of the predictable, corny dialogue.”
I've devoted a whole chapter to the poor reviews the original and prequel trilogies have received, so rather than reheat all those put downs, I'll leave it at three to make my point. Those original trilogy critiques didn't exactly hold up well in the intervening forty-some-odd years. But it just goes to show how history repeats itself, again and again and again.
George continued to speak up for Hayden's performance in Entertainment Weekly's 2005 Revenge of the Sith report:
"Lucas felt bad that Hayden Christensen got slammed for playing Anakin as a petulant brat in Clones. Anakin was a teenager. A pain-in-the-ass teenager,' says Lucas, 'and I hate to say it, but that's what a lot of teenagers are!"'
But Christensen had his own concerns about playing Anakin the way George wanted him portrayed. In a 2005 Evening Standard article, Hayden said:
“I can recall reading the script and saying to George, 'If I play Anakin as on the page - the whiny teenage quality - there's going to be a backlash.' And there was. But I thought the critics got it wrong. Sometimes they were blasting me for Anakin's flaws. Sometimes the feedback was...sometimes I had to remind myself that George must have seen something in me.”
George commented further on this issue in Rolling Stone:
"[Hayden] said, 'I don't want to be this whiny kid.' I said, 'Well you are. You gotta be a whiny teenager.' He said, 'I want to be Darth Vader.' I said, 'You gotta be a petulant young Jedi. You're not going to be the guy you thought you'd be when you signed your contract."
At a press event for Revenge of the Sith's initial DVD release, Hayden added:
"It was challenging, honestly it was, because you are cast as this character that is the connective tissue to someone who represents all that is evil and so your natural instinct is to try to take him there. And George was constantly asking me to pull back from that and to make him someone who is struggling and someone who allows his frustrations to present themselves in ways that aren't necessarily perceived as evil but may be in other ways. And to keep it at that and to not really show any sort of a character arc in 'Episode Il' because it was more about who he was at that time in his life. ‘Episode lll' was about changing him and making him evolve into Darth, which was why I was very excited to get to Episode Ill to finally get to do that. Which was something that I sort of built up in my head for so long.”
This acting style is just how Star Wars was conceived and designed. Before Attack of the Clones was released, George explained to Entertainment Weekly:
"We're working in a particular kind of style – a sort of theatrical style very prevalent in movies in the 1930s. I don't use, you know, 'reality acting.' That's not what these movies are."
He hammers on this point with Entertainment Weekly again in 2005, calling Star Wars an amalgamation of "1940s-style storytelling and acting, which verges on the operatic -- and something that's contemporary and has weight to it. I don't mind [the style]. If anyone wants to go back into film history they can go, 'Oh, I see.'... But that's the style, and unfortunately, I've been trapped in it for 30 years."
Recall what George told The Guardian's Emma Brockes, defending Attack of the Clones against criticism of being camp:
“It's not deliberately camp. I made the film in a 1930s style. It's based on a Saturday matinee serial from the 1930s, so the acting style is very 30s, very theatrical, very old-fashioned. Method acting came in in the 1950s and is very predominant today. I prefer to use the old style. People take it different ways, depending on their sophistication.”
It's easy to see this James Dean quality in Hayden's performance and in the character of teenage Anakin Skywalker, especially if we recall the famous outburst Dean (as Jim Stark) gives his father in Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without A Cause, and the rebellious type of youth the two characters are, Anakin and Jim. But the closest parallel to Dean and Anakin, in Attack of the Clones, to me, is in Elia Kazan's adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel East of Eden.
In East of Eden, Dean plays Caleb Trask, the moody, brooding younger son of devout Christian, farmer and draft board chairman Adam Trask. Brought up believing their mother had died in childbirth, Cal learns she is quite alive and working in a brothel. Cal trails his mother into the seediest parts of town, just as Anakin seeks out his own mother in the Jundland Wastes of Tatooine. (Anakin on his swoop bike, whipping through the Jundland Wastes in search of his mother in Attack of the Clones easily draws parallels to James Dean, whether in Rebel Without A Cause or in his real life on a Triumph TR5 Trophy.) Ultimately, Anakin and Caleb both return home unhappy with what they find. Cliegg Lars tells Anakin Tusken Raiders have captured his mother, and is very likely dead. When he finds his mother in the Tusken camp, and she dies in his arms, Anakin acts out violently, killing everyone in the Tusken camp. He returns to the Lars homestead with Shmi wrapped in a shroud. After her burial and funeral, Anakin has an emotional breakdown, lamenting to Padmé how he should have been able to save his mother's life and how the Jedi – especially Obi-Wan – have been holding him back. Seeking out his mother and disappointed to find the rumor of her being the town madam to be true, Cal acts out vindictively when he returns home. When Adam disciplines Cal by having him recite Bible verse, Cal doesn't take it seriously, which Adam finds unrepentant, sinful and bad. When Cal is being disciplined, Kazan shoots Dean half in light, half in shadow, indicating Cal's indecision. (This same technique is used in Return of the Jedi, when Luke is cast in light and shadow, listening while Vader provokes him, threatening to turn Leia to the dark side, and in The Force Awakens, to denote Kylo's state of mind when he confronts his father Han Solo, drawn to the light but compelled by the dark.) When Cal is reciting from the Bible, he's in shadow. Kazan also frames those shots in the scene at a Dutch angle, a sign that something dangerous is ahead, a sign of impending doom. When Adam finally gives up on Cal, Kazan cuts to a wide angle, and the camera has straightened. After Adam makes up his mind about Cal, Cal tells Adam he knows his mother is alive, that one of his father’s former ranch hands told him she was, and he followed her. Now, Cal is no longer in shadow. When he confronts his father about his mother, he's in the Iight, because he's now confronting his father with the truth. Adam ultimately admits Cate left him because she was consumed by hate. Cal believes he may be just like her. (In A New Hope, when Luke takes umbrage with his Uncle Owen about having to remain on the moisture farm another season rather than applying to the academy like they'd agreed, and storms off, Aunt Beru points out to Owen, “Luke's just not a farmer, Owen. He has too much of his father in him.” To which Uncle Owen replies, “That's what scares me.”)
Once he's deemed the black sheep of the family, Cal still tries to make good, even if it isn't exactly honest. He steals a coal chute to help move his father's lettuce shipment. When the coal miners pass by and tell Adam about the theft (before he learns his son Cal was the one who swiped it), Adam reflects:
“So much lawlessness. It's this war in Europe, spreading a wave of lawlessness across the country.”
This wave of lawlessness Adam sees in the world is like the pull of the dark side Yoda notices in Attack of the Clones, as well as the wave of arrogance he's noticing in the Jedi Order, all occurring under the umbrella of the developing Separatist War. Just as the war in Europe slowly but surely draws America into World War I, the Separatist War draws the Republic into the conflict, leading to the Clone Wars. In East of Eden, a newspaper headline (WAR WITH GERMANY!) announces the United States entering World War I. The first word in the opening crawl of Revenge of the Sith, WAR!, references newspaper headlines heralding America entering World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbor. We can look at the wartime parade and the soldiers lining up to go to war in East of Eden and form a parallel to the clone troopers lining up, ready to go to war (which, in Attack of the Clones, is framed and blocked to evoke Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will).
There's an attraction between Aron’s girlfriend Abra and Cal throughout the picture. In one sequence, Abra arrives with lunch for Aron, but Cal is supervising the work that day. So Abra and Cal spend some time together laying in a patch of flowers, talking. There is a parallel here with Anakin and Padmé picnicking in the grassy fields of Naboo in Attack of the Clones. The two scenes bring both couples closer together, and the attraction only builds as both pictures progress. Looking back at that scene in Clones after watching East of Eden, it's hard not to come away thinking this is anything other than ‘50s melodrama. That is what George is going for. George absolutely is going for ‘50s melodrama in every scene with Anakin and Padmé, with Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman. In the coffee table book The Star Wars Archives: 1999-2005, George says: “It [the dialogue] is presented very honestly, it isn’t tongue-in-cheek at all, and it’s played to the hilt. But it is consistent, not only with the rest of the movie, but with the overall Star Wars style. Most people don’t understand the style of Star Wars. They don’t get that there’s an underlying motif that is very much like a 1930s Western or Saturday matinee serial. It’s in the more romantic period of making movies and adventure films. And [Star Wars: Attack of the Clones] is even more of a melodrama than the others.” In the Guardian article I quoted earlier, George mentions how the acting in the prequels are based in a ‘30s style, before the emergence of Method acting in the 1950s. Melodrama, however, existed in the 1930s, and goes back even further. The term comes from 19th century France, and the style comes from Greek tragedies. Let's be frank: nothing about Star Wars, particularly the prequels, is modern, except the cinematography and the special effects. Cal comes to Abras's defense during the seasonal fair when a soldier tries to force himself on her, and they spend some more time together away from the hustle and the bustle of the fair. Abra admits her relationship with Aron is strained. Abra feels she's lost Aron. If Aron does love Abra, she can't tell anymore. “Maybe I don't know what love is, exactly. I know love is good, the way Aron says. It's more than that, it's got to be. I shouldn't talk to you this way, I know I shouldn't, but I don't know who else to talk to. And sometimes I think I'm really bad. Sometimes I don't know what to think.” She kisses Cal but pulls back quickly. We can see an echo of this in the interrupted kiss that follows Anakin’s sand soliloquy in Attack of the Clones. Abra loves Aron, she does, but she's conflicted. Padmé loves Anakin in this moment in Clones, she does, but she's also conflicted. There's a point in East ofEden when Aron begins to suspect Abra and Cal have become way too close. His suspicions mirror Anakin’s suspicions in Episode III when he begins to see visions of Obi-Wan and Padmé together, and a sense that Obi-Wan has stopped by to see her in his absence. When Anakin finally lashes out at Obi-Wan on Mustafar, after he has Force-choked Padmé unconscious, their exchange easily matches the confrontation of the two brothers in East of Eden.
By the end of the film, everything changes. To get back in his father's good graces, Cal takes advantage of the rising cost in beans once the United States enters World War I. The lettuce crop his father was depending on has spoiled, and Cal sees bean futures as an opportunity to make that money back for his father. When Cal's father turns down the money, Cal cracks emotionally. When Aron forbids Cal from seeing Abra, Cal, in retaliation, tells Aron about their mother, and takes him to her. Safe to say, it doesn't go well. When Aron confronts his mother, he cracks, and Cal delights in his brother's neurotic break. Granted, Cal doesn't foresee the lasting effect this will have on his brother, or his father.
When Aron learns his mother is alive, believing everything he's ever known to be a lie, he deserts his family, enlists in the army and goes to war. The pain of losing his once dutiful son causes Adam to fall ill, succumbing to a stroke. In the end, Cal is the only one at his father's bedside, redeemed in his father's eyes, and also, as far as Adam is concerned, redeemed by God. Return of the Jedi reverses these roles. In Return of the Jedi, we have another father and son moment, where Luke is by Anakin’s side as Anakin lays dying, after sacrificing himself to save Luke. Here, Anakin is redeemed in his son's eyes, and also redeemed by the Force.
When we get to Revenge of the Sith, Anakin has changed. Dressed in darker clothes and darker Jedi robes, with wilder hair, a long, ugly scar running down alongside the edge of his right eye, and his mechanical arm (replacing the arm Count Dooku severed) covered with a long black glove, Anakin now resembles the inventor Rotwang in Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece Metropolis.
East of Eden is an allegory of the Biblical Cain and Abel story. Cal, like Cain, is jealous of the attention doted on his brother Aron (née Abel) by their father, Adam. When Adam doesn't accept the money Cal gives him, but welcomes Aron’s news that he and Abra are engaged, Cal can't take it anymore. Even worse, it’s a cheap shot. Aron never proposed to Abra. Abra probably wouldn't have said yes even if he had. Aron suspects she and Cal have been romancing behind his back (which isn't entirely untrue), and this is his preemptive strike. Abra isn't going to challenge what he said and make waves, and Aron isn't concerned with Cal being argumentative, because being argumentative, or lashing out, never gets Cal anywhere. So instead of butting heads with his brother, he manipulates him, and takes him to meet Mom. When Cal returns home alone, his father wonders where Aron is. “Am I supposed to look out for him?” Cal replies, securing his role as Cain. Is Cal his brother's keeper?
And is Anakin his brother's keeper? If these connections with East of Eden are legitimate, do the 1955 film's allegorical Christian themes also connect? You can find plenty of Christian themes in Star Wars.
Good vs evil.
The immaculate conception.
The Force being analogous of God.
The Chosen One, or Messiah prophecy.
Satanic symbolism in the Sith, particularly Darth Maul and Darth Sidious.
Redemption.
Sacrifice.
Martyrdom.
But are these themes specifically Christian, or are they a melange of multiple religious themes?
After watching East of Eden, it's hard not to see James Dean in Attack of the Clones’ Anakin Skywalker, if not in Hayden Christensen's performance. It's also hard not to see the same Biblical allusions in Star Wars that we see in East of Eden. Are there shades of Cain and Abel in Anakin and Obi-Wan?
The topic of religious allegory in Star Wars came up when George Lucas sat down with Bill Moyers to discuss The Phantom Menace:
BILL MOYERS: What do you make of the fact that so many people have interpreted “Star Wars” as being profoundly religious?
GEORGE LUCAS: I don’t see “Star Wars” as profoundly religious. I see “Star Wars” as… as taking all of the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down into a… a more modern and more easily accessible construct that people can grab onto to accept the fact that there is a greater mystery out there. When I was 10 years old, I asked my mother — I said, ‘Well, if there’s only one God, why are there so many religions?’ And over the years, I’ve been pondering that question ever since. And it would seem to me that the conclusion that I’ve come to is that all the religions are true, they just see a different part of the elephant. A religion is basically a container for faith. Faith is the glue that holds us together as a society. Faith in our culture, our world, our — you know, whatever it is that we’re trying to hang on to is a very important part of, I think, allowing us to… to remain stable. Remain balanced.
BILL MOYERS: And where does God fit in this concept of the universe? In this cosmos that you’ve created? Is the Force God?
GEORGE LUCAS: I put the Force into the movies in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people. More a belief in God than a belief in any particular, you know, religious system. I mean, the real question is to ask the question, because if you — if you — having enough interest in the mysteries of life to ask the questions, is there a God or is there not a God?, that’s, for me, the worst thing that can happen. You know, if you asked a young person, ‘Is there a God?’ and they say, ‘I don’t know. ‘ You know? I think you should have an opinion about that.
BILL MOYERS: Do you have an opinion, or are you looking?
GEORGE LUCAS: Well, I think there is a God. No question. What that God is, or what we know about that God I’m not sure. The one thing I know about life and about the nature of the human race is that it… the human race has always believed it’s known everything. Even the cavemen thought they had it all figured out and they knew everything there was to know about everything. Because that’s what… that’s where mythology came from. You know, it’s constructing some kind of context for the unknown. So we figured it all out and it was fine. I would say that, you know, cavemen had, you know, on a scale — and understood about one, you know? Now we’ve made it up to about five. The only thing that most people don’t realize is the scale goes to a million.
BILL MOYERS: The central epic of our culture has been the Bible. And it’s about fall, wondering, redemption, return. But the Bible no longer occupies that central place in our culture today. More and more people today are — young people, in particular — are turning to the movies for their inspiration, not to organized religion.
GEORGE LUCAS: Uh-huh. Well, I hope that doesn’t end up being the course that this whole thing takes, because I think there’s definitely a place for organized religion and it’s a very important part of the social fabric. And I would hate to find ourselves in a completely secular world, where, you know, entertainment was passing for some kind of religious experience.
BILL MOYERS: One reason when critics said that “Star Wars” has been so popular with young people, it’s religion without strings attached, that it becomes a very thin base for theology. In fact…
GEORGE LUCAS: Well, it is a thin base for theology, that’s why I would hesitate to call the Force God. When the film came out, almost every single religion took “Star Wars” and used it as an example of their religion and were able to relate it to young people and saying, ‘This is what’ — and relate the stories specifically to the Bible and relate stories to the Koran and, you know, the Torah and things. And so it’s like, you know — if it’s a tool that can be used to make old stories be new and relate to younger people, that’s what the whole point was.
BILL MOYERS: We downloaded something from your Web site the other day and there you were talking about how you wanted the Jedi to be more than just fighters. You wanted them to be “spiritual,” but you didn’t say what you meant by that?
GEORGE LUCAS: Well, I… I guess they’re like ultimate father figures or negotiators. And at this point in time they are… they’re sent out to negotiate a deal. They help to put forth answers where people are in the middle of a dispute. They aren’t an aggressive Force at all. They try to conflict resolution, I guess, is what you might… intergalactic therapists.
BILL MOYERS: Have you been influenced by Buddhism, because “Star Wars” came along just about the time there was this growing interest in America in Eastern religions, and I — and I notice in “The Phantom Menace,” the new Episode One, that they discover this slave child who has a… an aura about him. And it reminded me of how the Buddhists go out to look for the next Dalai Lama.
GEORGE LUCAS: Mm-hmm. Well, there’s a… again, a mixture of all kinds of mythology and religious beliefs that have been amalgamated into the movie, and I’ve tried to take the ideas that seem to cut across the most cultures, because I’m fascinated by that and I think that’s one of the things that I really got from Joe Campbell, was that… what he was trying to do is find the common threads through the various mythology, through the religions.
BILL MOYERS: One of the comparisons that came to mind just when I was re-watching the series recently is when Darth Vader tempts Luke to come over to the Empire by offering him all that the Empire has to offer, I was taken back in my own youth to the story of Satan taking Christ to the mountain and offering him the kingdoms of the world if only he would tum away from his mission.
GEORGE LUCAS: Right.
BILL MOYERS: Was that conscience in your mind?
GEORGE LUCAS: Well, yeah. I mean, that story also has been retold; the temptation. I mean, Buddha was tempted in the same way. It’s all through mythology. I didn’t want to invent a religion. I wanted to try to explain in a different way the religions that have already existed.
BILL MOYERS: You’re creating a new myth.
GEORGE LUCAS: ... and I’m telling an old myth in a new way. I’m just taking the core myth and I’m localizing it. As it turns out, I’m localizing it for the planet. But I guess I’m localizing it for the end of the millennium more than I am for any particular place. This is the… the… you know, this is… again, part of the globalization of the world we live in. The average human being has much more awareness of the other cultures that exist… co-exist with them on this planet, and that certain things go across cultures, and entertainment is one of them. And film and the stories that I tell cut across all cultures, are seen all around the world.
So, what one person might see as being inherently Christian, someone else might see as inherently Buddhist, and neither person is wrong, because both mythologies… both concepts… both elements… intersect with each other.
By his own admission, George gathered common elements in many religions, massaging them into the fabric of his Star Wars mosaic. A rorschach mosaic, in a sense, where we see things in it that reflect stories we've already been told, which makes Star Wars the ultimate “twice told” tale.
A twice-told tale is any story that has been told so many times that it's ingrained in our culture. It's become part of the fabric of our culture. The term “twice told tale” originates from Act 3, Scene 4 of William Shakespeare’s play King John, written in the mid-1590s, published in 1623, and refers to something – a story, a lesson – that is well known due to repeated telling. The Shakespeare resource website No Sweat Shakespeare, while it references the use of the idiom in the wrong place (Act 1, Scene 1, instead of Act 3, Scene 4), and attributes it to the wrong character (King Philip rather than the Dauphin), gets this much right:
“A twice-told tale” refers to a story or narrative that has been recounted or retold multiple times, often losing its original freshness, impact, or authenticity with each repetition.
At its core, “a twice-told tale” conveys the idea of redundancy or repetitiveness, highlighting how the same narrative can lose its power to captivate or engage when revisited too often. Moreover, “a twice-told tale” may also symbolize the human tendency to cling to familiar narratives or experiences, even when they no longer hold the same significance or resonance. It serves as a reminder of the importance of seeking fresh perspectives and embracing new stories to prevent stagnation and ensure continued growth and learning.
The idiom “a twice-told tale” originates from (Act 3, Scene 4) of William Shakespeare’s play King John, written in the late 16th century. In this scene, (Louis the Dauphin), a cynical and outspoken character, speaks the line “Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale.” He delivers this line while expressing his dissatisfaction with the predictability and monotony of life.
DAUPHIN
There's nothing in this world can make me joy.
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,
Vexing the ear of a drowsy man:
And bitter shame hath spoiled the sweet world's taste,
That it yields naught but shame and bitterness.
The context of (Louis the Dauphin's) statement reflects his disillusionment with the world around him and his disdain for the conventional expectations and norms of society. By likening life to a “twice-told tale,” he suggests that existence has become repetitive and tiresome, devoid of novelty or excitement.
Shakespeare’s use of this phrase serves to highlight (Louis the Dauphin's) cynical worldview and his inclination to view life through a lens of scepticism and disillusionment. It captures the sentiment of existential dissatisfaction that pervades (Louis the Dauphin's) character throughout the play, setting the tone for his rebellious and irreverent attitude towards authority and tradition.
The idiom “a twice-told tale” permeates various forms of media, often serving as a motif to convey themes of repetition, familiarity, and the passage of time. In literature, authors employ it to underscore the monotony of everyday life or the diminishing impact of a recurring narrative. Filmmakers use it to explore the concept of déjà vu or the cyclic nature of history. Moreover, the idiom frequently appears as a title for books, movies, and other artistic works, signalling a narrative that revisits familiar territory or offers a fresh perspective on a classic story, inviting audiences to reconsider familiar themes through a new lens.
A famous example of that is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Twice-Told Tales,” published in 1837. Hawthorne employs the idiom directly as the title of his collection of short stories. This choice underscores the recurring themes and motifs found within the tales, emphasizing the idea of storytelling as a cyclical and repetitive endeavour. Similarly, in film, titles such as “Twice-Told Tales” (1963), a horror anthology directed by Sidney Salkow, with Vincent Price, based on Hawthorne’s collection, directly invoke the idiom to suggest narratives that revisit familiar tropes and themes. These examples demonstrate how the idiom permeates both literature and film, serving as a meta-commentary on the nature of storytelling itself.
That's what Star Wars is. That's what Star Wars does. By following Joseph Campbell's monomyth, by structuring his story using Greek chiasmus and other Greek and mythological patterns, Star Wars becomes George Lucas's meta-commentary on the nature of mythology itself. That's what makes Star Wars the ultimate twice-told tale. The sequel trilogy preserves this process. It has to, or it wouldn't work as a properly cohesive continuation of George's six episode original story. (This is why Luke goes into exile in The Last Jedi. Luke sees the cyclical events occurring around him. He notices the chiastic nature of his universe, and by going into exile – taking himself off the board, as it were – he thinks he can prevent history from repeating itself; but what he neglects to notice until he decides to project his astral presence on Crait, is he's only been repeating what his own masters have done in the past. There really is no avoiding the cyclical nature of history.) Star Wars not only repeats stories we've already been told in childhood, it repeats its own story, from original trilogy to prequel trilogy to sequel trilogy, to each subsequent generation. This was always George's intention; at least as far back as The Phantom Menace. Here's what he explained to Bill Moyers:
GEORGE LUCAS: The importance of, say. friendship and loyalty, you know, and most people look at that and say, 'How corny.' But, you know, the issues of friendship and loyalty are are very, very important to the way we live our lives.
But it's not common knowledge among young people. You know, they're still learning. They're still picking up ideas. They're still using these ideas to shape the way they're gonna conduct their life. And you need to tell the same story over and over again every generation so that generation gets it. And I think we've gone for a few generations where a lot of the sort of more basic stories have fallen by the wayside.
So, if Anakin and Obi-Wan don't emulate Cain and Abel the way Aron and Cal do in East of Eden, do they emulate anyone at all?
Yes.
Rather than Cain and Abel, the two men Anakin and Obi-Wan emulate most are Messala and Judah Ben-Hur in William Wyler's Christian epic, Ben-Hur. In fact, like Metropolis, Ben-Hur acts as a referential thread which runs through the entire prequel trilogy.
If you've seen Ben-Hur (and if you haven't, that's a gross oversight and must be rectified instamatically), then you know how much The Phantom Menace's pod race sequence owes to the stupendous chariot race in that 1959 film. (To be fair, it also patterns itself after aspects of John Frankenheimer's 1966 film Grand Prix, a 1975 Norwegian stop-motion animated film called Flåklypa Grand Prix, aka The Pinchville Grand Prix, and 1994's The Little Rascals.)
George Lucas was 12 when he discovered Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials on Adventure Theatre at 6 pm every night on TV. He was 15 when Ben-Hur was released on November 18, 1959. Ben-Hur is what epic filmmaking looked like when he was a kid. This was the era when Hollywood produced big spectacles using incredible cinematic techniques to compete with the draw of television; huge entertainments presented in VistaVision or Cinemascope, Cinerama or Technicolor, or 3D. This is what captured young Lucas’s imagination and contributed so much to Star Wars.
In the 2005 documentary Ben-Hur: The Epic That Changed Cinema, George said:
When I went to film school, Andrew Marton, who was the second unit director on Ben-Hur, came and spoke at the school, and broke apart the chariot race, which was, you know, in going back and seeing it again at school, it was a very interesting piece of cinema, of how that thing was put together.
With Ben-Hur they were able to have big set shots and they hold on things and they had to do the whole thing; it gives you a very strong quality.
I sort of relied on things like Ben-Hur to remember what it was like when I first saw that and how exciting that was and how I could instill that into some of the chases and events and action sequences that I was doing in my movies.
It's kind of what I did with Star Wars… and moved a little more to the extreme, and just didn't dwell on the grandeur of it. One, because I didn't have any grandeur to dwell on, so by not dwelling on it, it looked like I had a lot, but I actually didn't.
It's possible he was referring to the original Star Wars – A New Hope – in the quote above. Here, he expresses how opportunity enabled him to give even more referential attention to Ben-Hur with the prequels, particularly The Phantom Menace:
The pod race in Star Wars (The Phantom Menace) originated from my fondness for auto racing, and one of the first things I remembered was the chariot race in Ben-Hur and how exciting that was.
I decided I would make a modern version of that race. It was, instead of horses and chariots, they would be speeders hooked up to giant engines.
Ben Burtt, who was George's sound designer on the original trilogy, and doubled as both sound designer and editor on the prequels, also contributed:
Any Biblical epic done in the 1950s was always going out there and saying, “we're the biggest and we're the brightest, and we're the most sweeping panorama you've ever seen,” so they had to deliver that to the audience as well.
The chariot race is remembered as one of the greatest action sequences we've ever seen.
One real difference between Ben-Hur and Phantom Menace is that Ben-Hur built some very large sets. In Phantom Menace, very little was constructed on a location. They built a number of full sized pods so they could have an array of them sitting on the starting line. They built some bleachers and put groups of aliens and townspeople in them and you had a limited number of them and you could film them from different angles in the computer and repeat them and replicate them and try to populate a whole stadium but principally the stadium and everything in it was created as a rather large miniature at Industrial Light & Magic for the aerial cues of the race.
The exclusive use of sound effects in the race allowed them to create a real point of view visceral experience for the audience, because you're hearing the race as the charioteers hear the race. Left with the suspense of not knowing exactly what's really going to happen. There's a danger when you score an action sequence that you'll shortcut the audiences conclusion about what's going to happen, that you'll give away what rhe audience should really be there to discover in real time.
Andrew Marton mentioned, if you have two chariots and they have four horses driving each they actually can't get close enough for the wheels to touch because as they come closer together the horses will collide first and so it's really a big cheat that you can have these two teams of horses and the chariots get close enough to make contact with one another.
Of course it was magnificently done with all its stunt work and real horses, real chariots, real dirt, you're impressed with the physicality of the race.
Probably in the first conversation I had with George Lucas about the pod race, a casual mention was made about the pods, that they're something like chariots, single driver vehicles pulled along by engines, and you might look at it and say these engines are really just two horses, or four horses.
And certainly, parts of it are an homage to the Ben-Hur race, because you've got the lap counter, you've got the hero and villain banging into one another trying to push each one off the race course. Anakin was really driving to win his freedom, the same way Ben-Hur was driving to win his freedom.
All of us in the film business today are inspired by the films that went before us, especially the films I know that I saw growing up, the epics, like Ben-Hur. Certainly they had an effect on the attitude i have about what I think is good moviemaking.
Of course, the parallels go way beyond the pod race.
Judah Ben-Hur, a prince of Jerusalem, is wrongfully enslaved due to vindictiveness and spite. Like Anakin, he is told anger and hate will give him strength, make him powerful.
When he escapes the galley's rowing stocks on Roman Consul Quintus Arrius' flagship, and protects Arrius when Macedonian pirates attack, Arrius repays Judah by freeing him and adopting him. Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi fill this role in the prequel trilogy, as Anakin's guardian.
Welcomed into Roman society but never truly accepted, Judah mirrors the way Anakin is welcomed into the Jedi Order; granted inclusion but never given the access or acceptance other Jedi have.
Eventually, both Judah and Anakin return to their homes and receive painful news about their loved ones. In Attack of the Clones, Anakin returns to Tatooine to confront Watto, the junk dealer who kept him and his mother as slaves. Rather than exact his revenge on Watto, all he wants are his mother and sister. In Ben-Hur, as an adopted son of Rome, Judah is able to gain audience with Messala and, rather than exact his revenge on him right then and there, all he wants is information about his mother and sister. Messala lies to him, telling him his mother and sister are dead, when in fact, they have been cast out as lepers. Anakin learns his mother has been freed from junk dealer Watto's enslavement and married moisture farmer Cliegg Lars, but has been abducted by Tusken Raiders, and dies in Anakin’s arms when he ventures out to rescue her (in a sequence heavily referencing John Ford’s The Searchers). Learning they're too late to save their loved ones has dire consequences, kindling Judah's thirst for vengeance, and provoking Anakin to murder the entire Tusken camp, including women and children. (A threat against Luke’s sister Leia provokes Luke’s rage against Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi.)
Messala was Judah's childhood friend. In adulthood, patriotism, rank and power have gone to his head. When he returns to Jerusalem as commander of the Fortress Antonia, he beseeches Judah to give up the names of criminals and enemies of the state. Judah objects, and remains steadfast. And in that moment, Messala rejects years of friendship for the glory and imperialism of Rome. It finally comes down to Messala giving Judah this ultimatum: “Judah, either you help me or you oppose me, you have no other choice. You're either for me or against me!” We see a similar exchange in Revenge of the Sith, during Anakin and Obi-Wan’s standoff on Mustafar, and Anakin’s ultimatum to Obi-Wan resembles Messala's to Judah: “If you're not with me, then you're my enemy.” Opposing Messala eventually leads to Judah being arrested on a trumped up charge. (Speculation ran rampant in 2005, and for years afterwards, that when Anakin tells Obi-Wan in Revenge of the Sith, “If you're not with me, then you're my enemy,” George was making a serious dig against George W. Bush. But whereas plenty of political parallels can be made throughout Star Wars lore, and the prequels are certainly replete with political assertions, like The Phantom Menace's opening crawl explaining how “the taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute,” while the ‘90s were considered, as ScreenRant notes, “the dawn of the modern, globalized economy,” Trade Federation Leader Nute Gunray's name blatantly satirizing Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan, and fellow Neimoidian Lott Dod's name taking a jab at Senate Leader Trent Lott, as a critical rebuke of the 1994 mid-term elections, referred to by the Right as the “Republican Revolution,” or “Gingrich Revolution,” George's producer on the prequels, Rick McCallum, told the Chicago Tribune in a 2005 piece, in no uncertain terms, that Anakin’s line in Revenge of the Sith wasn't commenting on Dubya in the slightest: “First of all we never thought of Bush ever becoming president, or then 9/11, the Patriot Act, war, weapons of mass destruction. Then suddenly you realize, 'Oh, my God, there's something happening that looks like we're almost prescient.' And then we thought, `Well, yeah, but he'll never make it to the second term, so we'll look like we just made some wacky political parody of a guy that everybody's forgotten.’” Granted, McCallum's quote did not foresee Bush's second term.)
While in this instance, during this exchange, Obi-Wan represents Judah and Anakin represents Messala, there are times where Judah and Messala both represent sides of Anakin’s conflicted personality; Judah when Anakin’s a Jedi, and Messala when he has become Darth Vader.
When Messala says, “Rome is real power on Earth,” one can easily find its parallel in Vader saying, “You don't know the power of the dark side.”
Arrius, Judah's adopted Roman father, encourages Judah to tap into his hatred: “Your eyes are full of hate - that's good. Hate keeps a man alive. It gives him strength.” Similarly, the Emperor encourages Luke to tap into his own anger: “Good. I can feel your anger... Let the hate flow through you... Your hate has made you powerful.”
Slaves on Arrius’s ships row in sunken pits, while lower ranked Imperial officers operate terminals in sunken pits on the bridge of Vader's Star Destroyer.
Esther, who Judah also knew in childhood, and encounters again later in his life, is dressed similarly to Queen Amidala's handmaidens. She also mirrors Padmé quite well, which works out, because even Padmé masqueraded as one of her handmaidens while on Tatooine.
Watto, the Toydarian junk dealer who Qui-Gon makes a deal with to repair the cruiser he, Obi-Wan, Queen Amidala, her handmaidens, and Captain Panaka appropriated to escape the Trade Federation invasion on Naboo, is undoubtedly modeled after Sheik Ilderim, who enjoys betting on the chariot races, and who offers Judah the blue and gold horse-drawn chariot (which mirrors Anakin's yellow and blue pod racer) to compete against Messala. Anakin’s pod racing rival, Sebulba, serves as Messala's proxy. Sebulba's orange and black pod racer mirrors Messala's red and gold chariot, drawn by black horses. Both Messala and Sebulba force Anakin and Judah onto off ramps. Both races conclude when Anakin and Sebulba's pod racers and Messala and Judah's chariots collide and entangle, causing Sebulba and Messala to lose control.
When Judah appears before Messala, who is nearly dead after being trampled on during the chariot race, his mangled form is somewhat evocative of Anakin after his immolation during the lightsaber duel on Mustafar.
Judah also encounters Jesus Christ; once while he is a slave, twice when he glimpses him on the Mount of Beatitudes, and a third time when he is crucified. While Judah is a slave, Jesus gives him water. Judah repays this kindness when Jesus is being led to crucifixion. After the crucifixion, Jesus repays Judah's kindness, healing his mother and sister. And in Return of the Jedi, when Darth Vader cannot bear to see his son Luke in pain, he attacks the Emperor, throwing him to his death. This selfless act causes the Force to recognize him as Anakin Skywalker again, rewarding him in the afterlife as a Force ghost, something that can only happen to a Force user on the light side.
But if George claims he never intended to focus strictly on Christian doctrine, why does he seem to use Ben-Hur as a religious model? Anakin’s immaculate conception can and has been compared to Jesus Christ's virgin birth, making Tatooine a metaphorical Bethlehem or Jerusalem. Coincidentally, Pernilla August, who plays Shmi Skywalker, young Anakin's mother, portrayed Mary, Mother of Jesus, also released in 1999. And, as Shmi, portrays a character very similar to Mother Mary.
Well, the further we work our way through these films, the further they'll touch on Christian religious aspects, Hindu religious aspects, Taoist Buddhism… several different points of view, all integrated into tenants of the Force, the Jedi and the Sith. The chosen one concept isn't exclusively Christian. The chosen one concept can be found in many different religious, mythological and spiritual cultures and traditions. As is the concept of a Messiah or savior, good vs evil, Gods and Devils, spread across multiple mythologies and multiple faiths.
There are other moments where Star Wars and Ben-Hur reflect upon each other. The parade concluding The Phantom Menace is evocative of Ben-Hur (as is The Fall of the Roman Empire). And to my eye, the grounds of the Naboo palace in Theed resembles Judah's home in Judea.
Ben-Hur and Star Wars also touch on duality. Judah questions his place in the world: as a Judean prince, a slave, and an adopted son of Rome. Is his life one of vengeance or love? Anakin also goes through his own crisis of conscience, shifting from the light to the dark and back again.
Kylo Ren follows suit, tempted by the dark but drawn to the light.
But the glue that truly binds Ben Solo with Anakin Skywalker is their relationship with Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The website Entertainment Earth News observed, if not perfect, at least subtle parallels between Anakin and Shakespeare's Prince Hamlet exist:
Two young men who are ruled by strong, reckless emotions. Both Hamlet and Anakin have seen trauma and grief in their lives, and end up acting out in damaging and destructive ways, especially towards the women in their lives, Ophelia and Padmé. Arguably, Hamlet is a slightly more nuanced character, who is trying to expose corruption, while Anakin ends up murdering a bunch of Padawans and joining the corruption. Still, the parallels are definitely there.
Those "strong, reckless emotions" are something Ben Solo and Anakin Skywalker both share, especially their irrational temper tantrums.
The similarities between Hamlet and Star Wars don't stop there. Entertainment Earth also notes:
It happened when I was reading Ophelia Thinks Harder, a play which reinvents William Shakespeare’s Hamlet from the POV of Ophelia.
I was struck by how much this characterization of her reminded me of someone else – a character I had grown up with, and who I had always felt got the short end of the stick, not unlike Ophelia: Padmé Amidala from the Star Wars prequels.
Naturally, I couldn’t stop thinking about this and soon enough I was daydreaming about Anakin Skywalker as Hamlet himself and Obi-Wan Kenobi as Horatio. Then the idea for this article was born.
The parallels aren’t perfect; there’s no clear Star Wars characters to fit Gertrude (Anakin’s mother is nothing like her), Fortinbras, or Laertes, but I hope you enjoy this silly mash-up nonetheless!
(Padmé Amidala and Ophelia) begin their stories with the world at their feet – one is a senator, the other a young noblewoman. They are beautiful and full of life, and wind up as tragedies in the environments around them, mostly thanks to politics and their leading men. Neither gets an ending that they deserve (except for in the case of Ophelia Thinks Harder, where Ophelia finds herself liberated), but they still manage to make long-lasting impressions.
Soft-spoken and reasonable, (Obi-Wan Kenobi and Horatio) act as the best friend and, largely, conscience to the leading men. Both Obi-Wan and Horatio are far more rational than Anakin and Hamlet, but still compelling characters in and of themselves. Furthermore, they also both have fascinating relationships with Padmé and Ophelia, especially in Ophelia Thinks Harder for the latter, where they explicitly develop romantic feelings for one another. These parallels of the two main trios are especially striking in both stories, and it makes me wonder if George Lucas wasn’t at least partially influenced by the Bard.
It's easy to see the similarities between (Qui-Gon Jinn and King Hamlet) – both father figures to the male lead (one literally a father) who meet their demises, leaving our male leads without that specific type of guidance which could have shifted the entire story. While we’re far more familiar with Qui-Gon, it’s hard not to see how these two characters are related.
Of course, what would a good story be without some type of villain or antagonistic force? While they do not occupy exactly the same roles, both Palpatine and Claudius are able to manipulate the situations and environments surrounding them, and wind up causing a lot of the tragedies and chaos that ensue. Palpatine starts a galactic war and gets Anakin to the dark side, while Claudius murders his brother, King Hamlet, setting off the chain of events which lead Hamlet down his path.
Count Dooku is definitely more effective than Polonius, and far more evil, but they both act as side characters to the antagonists and make some truly horrible choices throughout their stories. It’s easy to intensely dislike both of them.
Before I talk about this last parallel, let me say I am aware that this image of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not from Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet like the rest of the images, but I just couldn’t resist Gary Oldman and Tim Roth’s depictions, and they are largely the most famous and recognizable Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Anyway, this might be one of my favorite parallels, and the one that really sealed this article for me. Both pairs of characters (See-Threepio and Artoo-Detoo and Rosencratz and Guildenstern)
are friends to the male leads, and end up as witnesses to everything that transpires. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern definitely have more ambiguous roles to play (whether they know the contents of the letter Claudius gives to them, Shakespeare never reveals), but they still act as a fun side-by-side comparison to our favorite droids. After all, it’s hard to just dismiss two sets of characters like these without drawing some conclusions.
In the article Studying Skywalkers: Shared Motifs in Star Wars and Shakespeare, at StarWars.com, Dan Zehr writes:
Perhaps the most prevalent motifs found in both Shakespeare and Star Wars is the theme of tragedy. In a Shakespearean tragedy, heroes of prominence in society meet a tragic end, while meeting their fate with grace and dignity, thereby gaining the audience's sympathy. Anakin Skywalker fulfils this category beautifully; as discussed in a previous blog, Anakin is a tragic hero who encapsulates heroism gone wrong, as he turns to the dark side of the Force. Revenge of the Sith provides a canvas for the once promising Jedi to follow a dark path in the name of righteousness, which dooms both him and the galaxy into many years of despair and pain.
Another motif featured in both is the appearance of a ghost that comes to the hero to enlighten them on their quest. Hamlet comes face to face with the ghost of his father’s spirit, who informs him of the journey he must undertake in order to get revenge; this does not end well for the titular tragic hero, but is the catalyst that leads to the climax of the play. Conversely, Luke experiences a similarly transcendent interlocution in the form of his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, who plays the role of father figure to Luke. Both Hamlet and Luke Skywalker receive insights that will forever change the course of their respective destinies. Fortunately for Luke, his Jedi training ultimately leads him to a path separate from Hamlet; both face darkness from fathers, but Luke tempers his passion, while Hamlet is devoured by it.
Young love doomed to tragedy is another theme that is crucial to the drama, as both Romeo and Juliet and Anakin and Padmé face obstacles that seem insurmountable. While both couples have tragic destinies placed before them, it is the choices they make that lead inevitably to unhappy conclusions. Both Shakespeare and Lucas let audiences in on the dramatic irony of each story; the audience knows that both couples will meet a tragic end, but experience the drama with bated breath, hoping for a result that will not come to pass. In both stories, the irony is palpable for audiences.
In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo does not receive the letter from Friar Laurence, which contains essential information that his beloved is not actually dead. The ill-fated letter does not reach its destination due to a plague that quarantines the messenger (Friar John), and prevents him from completing his mission. Romeo assumes the worst, and purchases poison from an Apothecary, sealing his fate. Similarly, the inclination of Anakin to be led by his passion leads to death for both himself and his love. Anakin is not poisoned by an Apothecary, but by his blind loyalty to Palpatine, who wears a robe similar to a friar, but with a dark color that mirrors his twisted soul. Ironically, both Romeo and Anakin believe their initial actions will bring a release from agony, but both characters perpetuate their respective demise, and break not only the hearts on their loved ones, but the audiences as well.
Shakespeare's works utilize motifs that permeate Star Wars, and help enhance our enjoyment of the beloved saga. Through the examples provided above, audiences experience the power of storytelling through these archetypes, and these concepts help to magnify the mythological implications through George Lucas' examination of the Skywalker family.
In a Sporcle Blog article, Vivian Pina finds more Shakespearean similarities in Star Wars:
Duels are a great way to move plot along and to settle conflict—between others and between oneself.
In Romeo and Juliet, we see an enraged Romeo duel Tybalt. This takes place after Romeo’s close friend and mentor, Mercuitio, was murdered by Tybalt. During this duel, we see Romeo lose sense of himself, and he kills Tybalt in complete hatred.
In Return of the Jedi, we see an enraged Luke duel Darth Vader. This takes place after Luke’s close friend and mentor, Obi-Wan, was seemingly murdered by Vader. On top of that, this is when Luke believes his friends’ lives are critically at risk. We also see Luke lose sense of himself as he hatefully attacks Vader and chops his arm off.
Unlike Romeo, Luke regains composure, and Return of the Jedi does not end in tragedy due to the downfall of its main hero, Luke.
Complicated family drama is basically the driving force of Star Wars. Skywalkers, y’know? This is true in multiple Shakespeare plays as well.
In Hamlet, Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, remarries before the play begins. Hamlet seeks revenge believing in conspiracy, and through this vengeance, causes the death of almost everyone involved. Gertrude dies before she gets a chance to explain her thoughts.
In Attack of the Clones, Anakin’s mother, Shmi, remarries before the movie begins. Anakin seeks revenge on the Tusken Raiders who killed Shmi. Through this revenge, Anakin is drawn closer to the dark side, and this spirals into the death of almost everyone involved. Shmi dies before she gets a chance to explain her thoughts.
In A Winter’s Tale, Leontes wrongfully assumed his pregnant wife, Hermione, betrayed him. This led to Hermione dying of a broken heart after giving birth to Perdita. The newborn Perdita is assumed to be dead after the madness of their father killed their mother. However, Perdita was saved and raised in secrecy. In the future, Perdita is told who her real father is, and Perdita is able to save her father from his madness.
In Revenge of the Sith, Vader wrongfully assumed his pregnant wife, Padmé, betrayed him. This led to Padmé dying of a broken heart after giving birth to Luke and Leia. The newborn Luke and Leia were assumed to be dead after the madness of their father killed their mother. However, they were both saved and raised in secrecy. In the future, Luke and Leia are told who their real father is, and Luke is able to save his father from his madness in Return of the Jedi.
Tragedy is really what makes so many Shakespeare plays and Star Wars films hurt your heart. Knowing there is a clear answer, but watching the heroes fall into tragedy is painful. Every time I watch Revenge of the Sith, I always want it to have a happy ending. That being said…
In Hamlet, Ophelia drowns after her heartbreak over Hamlet. She sees her future destroyed before her, and in her love for Hamlet. She dies in water surrounded by flowers.
In Revenge of the Sith, Padmé dies after her heartbreak over Anakin (and democracy, which is like everything she fought for!). She sees her future destroyed before her in the rise of the empire, and in her love for Anakin. At her funeral, she wears a gown very similar to water, and she is decorated in flowers.
In Romeo and Juliet, the fighting and hatred between two families makes Romeo and Juliet’s love forbidden. Romeo comes from one family, and Juliet comes from the other. Romeo loses himself and becomes banished. In the end, Juliet is believed to be dead, and Romeo dies from this just before Juliet revives. Romeo’s real death kills Juliet, and this tragedy is what brings peace between the two families.
In The Rise of Skywalker, the fighting between the light and dark side of the force makes Kylo Ren and Rey’s love forbidden. Kylo is on the dark side, and Rey is on the light side. Kylo finds himself and becomes Ben (joins the light side). Rey dies, and Kylo dies reviving her. Rey doesn’t die from this like Juliet, but after this tragedy, there is peace in the galaxy.
Posted on the blog Transmedial Shakespeare, Kerith Mark “Raffy” De Ocampo writes:
During the Christmas break, my friends and I did a Star Wars movie marathon. Attack of the Clones had this scene where Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala elope under the shady trees of Naboo. This scene reminded me of Romeo and Juliet. Both couples eloped and were forbidden to be with each other. The next episode reminded me again of Shakespeare. Anakin is seen with long hair and black clothes all throughout Episode III. And this is how Hamlet is usually portrayed or so I think because I’ve seen how Hamlet was portrayed by Spark Notes in one of their summery videos. Anyway, I then thought that aside from their looks they too are both tortured young souls. Such observations lead me to an idea of writing a blog entry relating Shakespeare to Star Wars. Here, I will enumerate and discuss similarities between the two.
In Macbeth…
In a blog, jediknight2210 says that both Macbeth and Anakin were good people who turned evil, are both heroes at first and that they also regret what they did. Macbeth was naturally good, as Lady Macbeth says, “Yet do I fear thy nature,/ It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness…”(I. v. 3-4) It is his ambition, ambition to be King of Scotland, that made him evil. What gave him this ambition? The prophecy of the three witches. On the other hand, Anakin was also good. He was part of the Jedi, the light side of the Force. It was also his ambition, ambition to be the most powerful Jedi, that lead him to the dark side. What helped lead him to have this ambition? The prophecy of the Jedi Council. They kept talking about a chosen one who will bring balance to the Force, who will defeat the Sith, the dark side. Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn claims and insists that he is the one. Even Obi Wan believed so. Indeed, prophecies played a big role in both characters’ ambitions.
They were both heroes. Macbeth was a general of King Duncan. He fought the Irish and killed the rebel, Macdonald. Anakin was a skillful warrior and pilot who was loyal to the Jedi. He fought the separatists of the Republic and defeated Count Dooku, a Jedi turned Sith. Both were heroes who were once loyal to someone. Surprisingly, both also fought rebels.
“I have lived long enough. My way of life/ Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf,/ And that which should accompany old age,/ As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,/ I must not look to have, but, in their stead,/ Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath/ Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not,”(V.iii. 24-30) Macbeth vented out his regret that though he was powerful, he knew he still didn’t have honor, love, obedience and real and loyal friends. Anakin, on the other hand, as Darth Vader, regretted his mistake also. He knew that his son was more important than taking over the galaxy. His last words to Luke were: “You were right. You were right about me. Tell your sister… you were right (Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi).” The only difference is that Anakin uttered that he was actually wrong, while Macbeth didn’t.
If Macbeth has Lady Macbeth who builds his confidence saying, “But screw your courage to the sticking place,/ And we’ll not fail”(I.vii. 59-61), Anakin has Chancellor Palpatine who says, “I see you are becoming the greatest of all the Jedi, even more powerful than Master Yoda (Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones).”
In Romeo and Juliet…
Romeo is a Montague, while Juliet is a Capulet. Anakin is a Jedi, while Padme is a politician. The common denominator between them is that they can’t be together because they are from different worlds. In the former couple’s case, their clans are fighting. In Anakin and Padme’s, the issue is that Anakin is a Jedi who must remain celibate. Padme also explains that they live in a real world and that Anakin is studying to become a Jedi while she is a Senator. All the couples’ wish is that this division did not exist. In the balcony scene, Juliet exclaims, “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?/ Deny thy father and refuse thy name!”(II. ii. 33-34)
In Hamlet…
Prince Hamlet is instructed by the ghost of his father to confront the one who killed him. He indicates that it is Claudius who is guilty. “Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast…,”(I. v. 42) he makes a confirmation to Hamlet. In Star Wars, a ghost, Obi Wan Kenobi, also instructs Luke Skywalker to confront “the one who killed his father” which according to him is Darth Vader. Now, we all know the famous line, “Luke, I am your father” and that Anakin, his father, is Darth Vader, but Obi Wan insists that Anakin was killed by Darth Vader himself. He explains to Luke after being asked why he didn’t tell him the truth, “Your father was seduced by the dark side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed (Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi) .” Anyway, the point is that both characters have a common goal, and that is to avenge their father’s death (Greenberg, 2009), to confront the killer. Both characters are instructed and informed by a ghost.
As Hamlet breaks the heart of Ophelia, Anakin breaks the heart of Padme. “That unmatched form and feature of blown youth blasted with ecstasy. Oh, woe is me, t’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!” Ophelia expresses how miserable she is that Hamlet has changed because of his madness. Padme also expresses her disappointment in Anakin that he has changed because of his lust for power, saying, “I don’t know you anymore. Anakin, you’re breaking my heart. You’re going down a path I can’t follow (Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith).”
We may suggest that these similarities might have truly been influenced by Shakespeare. This may show how transcendent Shakespeare can be that something as thought to be unrelated to Shakespeare, as Star Wars, actually had similarities. Through reduction, Lucas might have drawn from Shakespeare.
In an article credited to the American Shakespeare Center, there's more:
The ASC’s Actors’ Renaissance Season dramaturgy intern for Henry VI, part 3, Paul Rycik, has already explored the parallels between Episodes 1-3 of the Star Wars saga and the Henry VI trilogy, but this only scratches the surface of the potential Shakespeare/Star Wars connections. Lucas’s memorable characters, epic plot, and quotable scripts share traits with many of Shakespeare’s plays, and knowledge of their synchronicity only adds enjoyment to the experience of either.
So basically — and just go with me here — the Star Wars Saga (if retold using Shakespeare characters) goes a little something like this:
Episode 1: The Phantom Menace – For Anakin Skywalker’s side of things, the story plays out like the last half of The Winter’s Tale. Camillo (Qui-Gon Jinn), Polixenes (Obi-Wan Kenobi), and Florizel (Padme Amidala) find Perdita (Anakin Skywalker) in Bohemia (Tatooine). Camillo realizes that there is something special about Perdita and takes her with him back to Sicilia (Coruscant). On the political side, the story follows Richard II with the overthrow of Richard II (the Galactic Federation’s Supreme Chancellor) by Henry Bolingbroke (Senator Palpatine), who becomes King Henry IV (Supreme Chancellor).
Episode 2: Attack of the Clones – Anakin’s older now, so for Episode 2, he’s mostly Hamlet with a little Romeo at the end. Hamlet (Anakin) is awkwardly in love with Ophelia (Padme) but has some personal, mother-related issues to work out first. So, he goes home to Denmark (Tatooine), where his mother dies. In a fit of anger, he kills quite a few people over it (but not himself, and there’s no Osric, which is really a shame). At the end of the film, Anakin (now Romeo) and Padme (now Juliet) are married in secret on Naboo (in fair Verona), but instead of Friar Lawrence, they have C-3PO and R2-D2 as witnesses. Politically, this episode is when things start getting Henry VI-ish. Richard, Duke of York (Chancellor Palpatine) convinces the Earl of Warwick (Darth Sidious) to work for him instead of against him. Further, Jack Cade (Count Dooku) leads a Separatist faction that gives Richard, Duke of York (Chancellor Palpatine) the excuse he needs to put together a powerful army.
Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith – Here is where Anakin Skywalker joins the Henry VI plotline, but he has a little Macbeth in him, too. Like Macbeth, Anakin has let supernatural consideration (witches’ prophecy for Macbeth, the Force for Anakin) color his thinking, but within the politics of the story, he enters Episode 3 as Richard Plantagenet, with the decapitated head of Somerset (Count Dooku) in hand. Richard, Duke of York (Chancellor Palpatine) has taken over for Obi-Wan Kenobi as his father figure, and Anakin is quickly on his way to a white rose (or a black helmet). Richard Plantagenet (Anakin) revenges Clifford’s (Mace Windu) attack on Richard, Duke of York (Chancellor Palpatine) and, by submitting fully to the Dark Side becomes a Darth Vader who “can smile, and murder while I smile.”
Episode 4: A New Hope – Again, the story starts like The Winter’s Tale and Tatooine is still Bohemia (at least Tatooine has the climate and topographical features it’s reputed to, which is more than can be said for Bohemia). This time, though, a different Camillo (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Polixenes (C-3PO), and Florizel (R2-D2) find a different Perdita (Luke Skywalker) and realize that she has got something special about her. At this point, Luke Skywalker transforms into a sort of Prince Hal, unprepared for his filial future. So, they go to The Boar’s Head (Mos Eisley) and meet Pistol (Han Solo) and Nym (Chewbacca). Luke, like Hal, is intimately related to, but outside of the rebellions against the government that his father runs. We will not discuss the Luke/Leia business, however, because that all gets a little too much like John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore.
Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back – In both Henry IV and in The Empire Strikes Back, rebellions rage. However, the most important parallel I want to draw is between Yoda and Owen Glendower – both are vital to the rebellions of which they are a part, both are thought of as magical (or Force-ful), and both speak with funny accents. I think I’ve made my point. That said, Prince Hal (Luke Skywalker) must come to terms with the future in store for him and make the choice about what sort of power he will choose to yield, thus approaching the turning point in his story. Meanwhile, Beatrice (Princess Leia) and Benedick (Han Solo) enact their merry war of words – Leia’s “I’d just as soon kiss a Wookiee” versus Beatrice’s “I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow” and Han’s “Your worshipfulness” versus Benedick’s “Dear Lady Disdain.” Just as Benedick agrees to fight Claudio for Beatrice, Han joins the Rebellion, not out of strong political beliefs, but because he wants to satisfy the woman he loves.
Episode 6: Return of the Jedi – Little known fact, there are no Ewoks in Shakespeare. However, here is where Hal, now Henry V (still Luke Skywalker) becomes a strong leader. The final battles are fought and England (the galaxy) finds peace. Also, Leia does as Rosalind, Imogen, and Viola do and disguises herself as a man in order to take care of herself and the people she loves.
As a culture, we love an epic, the rise of the weak against the strong, the fruition of forbidden love, and the fall of the over-ambitious; both Shakespeare’s canon and the Star Wars Saga provide these oh-so-satisfying tropes in spades. The influence of Shakespeare (along with samurai history, Frank Herbert’s Dune, mid-twentieth century spaghetti westerns, and so much more) pervades the very fabric of the Star Wars Universe. In my imagination, Shakespeare reached out his gloved hand (he was a glovemaker’s son, after all) to George in a dream and spoke these fateful words, “Lucas, I am your father.”
For B&N Reads, Kelly Anderson listed The 10 Most Shakespearean Moments in Star Wars:
Obi-Wan’s ghost appears to Luke on Dagobah
In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke experiences his moment of crisis, having witnessed a dark prophecy of the future, when Obi-Wan’s ghost rises to counsel him. If this sounds familiar it’s because you saw it first in Hamlet—albeit with more agonizing and less raising X-wings from a swamp. Of course, Luke is luckier: where Hamlet eventually tortures himself into doing everything the ghost says, and winds up dead for his trouble, Luke ignores Obi-Wan’s eminently better advice, but at least gets to stay alive (if minus a hand and plus a father he wasn’t really into acquiring). While Lucas ultimately has more faith in dead-father-figure ghosts dispensing advice, this scene is all so much Shakespearean deja-vu.
Han thinks Leia’s in love with Luke.
Ah, yes, the love misunderstanding. This one is pretty much the lynchpin of most of Shakespeare’s comedies. Han thinking that Leia is in love with her brother (and offering to step out of the way so that they can be together!) is a pretty mild iteration of a Shakespearean misunderstanding. Hey, at least you didn’t fall in love with a woman disguised as a man, then marry her brother by accident in a time when divorce was illegal! Your shades of Shakespeare were strong with this one, Lucas, but in comparison, you let Han off easy.
Luke and Leia are secret twins!
Now we’re talking. This is where Shakespeare lives. He loved himself some secret twin stories, especially ones like Luke and Leia, who are unaware of each other. He has at least two plays entirely based around twin confusion (the delightfully slapstick Comedy of Errors—which featured two sets of twins—and the more melancholy Twelfth Night); the joke’s been going for a good 400 years and hasn’t gotten old yet. This reveal might have been shocking, but it never would have caught Shakespeare off guard.
Darth Vader turns on the Emperor and kills him
This is the galaxy far far away’s straightforward version of “Et tu, Brute?” with way more lightning hands special effects. Darth Vader has been kneeling to this guy for decades, brought to monstrous maturity by the master monster himself, but finally there comes a time where the tyrant crosses a line that’s too far for even his star pupil to bear. Perhaps the galaxy might have been better off if that line had come sooner than “electrocuting my son to death,” but I guess everyone has their own Rubicon.
Han and Leia in the Space Slug
This whole exchange, and basically all of the pre-Jedi relationship between Leia and Han, plays like a fanfic writer’s version of Beatrice and Benedick, like someone who saw the play and yelled, “Kiss! Kiss already!” every time the title duo spit out stuff like this:
BEATRICE
I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior
Benedick: nobody marks you.
BENEDICK
What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?
Or this:
BENEDICK
God keep your ladyship still in that mind! so some
gentleman or other shall ‘scape a predestinate
scratched face.
BEATRICE
Scratching could not make it worse, an ’twere such a face as yours were.
We thank you, Star Wars, for recognizing the fine tradition of hilarious hatred turned to love, and running with it right into our geeky hearts.
3P0, R2D2 and Chewie, generally
I get it, droids are not the most natural Shakespearean connection. But the Bard loves populating his plays with groups of “mechanicals” who are pretty much there to provide pure absurdist relief. Even if we’re already in a comedy, some of the funny may be of the more cerebral sort. This group’s got your slapstick covered. Lucas’ droids and everyone’s favorite Wookie serve this essential purpose throughout the series. From C-3PO falling to pieces on Cloud City, to pretty much every time R2 beeps and warbles at his indignant golden friend, to the “3-PO is an Ewok god” story in Jedi, they provide us with quotable quotes, classic misunderstandings, and reasons for Harrison Ford to make his patented “are you serious right now” face. It’s the light we need to get us through the darkness of patricide and people being thrown into carbonite.
The part where Luke and Leia’s mom dies of “heartbreak”
In addition to his raucous comedies, Shakespeare indulged in melodrama like nobody’s business. When Padme dies for particular medical reason except “heartbreak” after giving birth to twins, it sounds a lot like the failings of Shakespearean ladies like Hero in Much Ado about Nothing and Hermione in Winter’s Tale. Except, unfortunately, those ladies got the chance to come back to life once things were cleared up and their respective mates had realized what utter donkeys they’d made of themselves. Lucas’ prequel had an already established Vader coming down the pipe, so there was no Padme-resurrection redemption in the cards. Sorry Padme—death due to previously established plot necessity is always permanent.
Luke’s temptation to the Dark Side
The idea of giving in to the worst version of ourselves, even if for totally understandable reasons, is a constant theme in Shakespeare. Some, like Othello and Macbeth, cross over to the Dark Side pretty quickly. Some toy with the idea and ultimately step away, like Prospero in The Tempest. Like Luke, some get caught up in the heat of the moment and almost don’t even see themselves falling—think Romeo’s slaying of Tybalt. Luckily, unlike Romeo, Luke had the help of the awesomest Jedi Master ever and some creepy cave visions to scare him straight well before things progressed to poisons and daggers in the heart.
“Luke, I am your father.” “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
You knew this one was coming: if we were to poll Shakespeare’s characters, daddy issues would rank as one of the top “do not bring up at the dinner table” topics (not sex, though—they’re good with talking about that for most of the night). We’ve got your rebellious and/or orphaned/exiled young ladies (Rosalind and Celia, Juliet, Hermia, Viola), your straight “I’ll never beat my dad/father-figure at anything waaaaaaah” complexes (Henry V, Brutus), and your possibly-diagnosable obsessions (tell us again why Hamlet, Jr. isn’t running hereditary-monarchy Denmark after dad died? I’d like to see that ghost and Hamlet sit down for a therapy session about that sometime). Luke is the latest in a long line of Shakespearean characters who aren’t particularly thrilled about the fathers they’ve been assigned. Chin up, though—at least daddy drew the line at you being murdered in front of his eyes! That’s something.
The big party at the end of Return of the Jedi
Whatever tragedy and/or complete loss of dignity and self-respect Shakespeare put his characters through, he was a big fan of the wrap-it-up-with-a-bow ending. In his comedies, that usually means ending with a literal dance party. Lucas’ celebratory Ewoks and X-wing fighter pilots getting their party on to the beat of stormtrooper helmet drums places the finale firmly in this tradition. And frankly, if we’re picking Shakespearean tropes to root for, I’ll hope for more of this one in the future. (Hope you’re listening, J.J. Abrams!) I appreciate a good tragedy as much as the next person, but if I must choose, I’ll choose dancing Ewoks every time.
And in the sequel trilogy, Kylo's parallels with Hamlet run deep. In an article for Gizmodo, writer Julie Muncy points this out:
Kylo Ren’s design owes an obvious debt to the aesthetics of Darth Vader. But that’s not the only piece of film history that influenced his look and feel.
In a really intriguing thread on Twitter, user @benscalligraphy suggests a really fascinating connection between Kylo Ren and Hamlet, specifically Hamlet as portrayed in the 1921 silent film version made in Germany.
The visual evidence is pretty hard to argue: Kylo Ren’s design, and the particular way in which he’s shot and framed—the sharp contrast between dark and light—owe a clear debt to Asta Nielsen’s 1921 portrayal of Shakespeare’s Danish prince.
This is an interesting comparison for a number of reasons. This version of Hamlet is fascinating not just because, as an incredibly well made version of the film made an important time in film history, it had an outsized influence on what came after, but also because the lead, German actress Asta Nielsen, plays Hamlet as a woman.
In her interpretation, Hamlet is a woman forced to live as a man in order to fulfill her role as the king’s heir. It’s a conflict that shapes the character as she appears in the film, her struggle with the assumed masculine role she’s placed into complicating and emphasizing Hamlet’s traditional moral and existential dilemmas. In a film that doesn’t use any of Shakespeare’s expressive language to characterize the Prince, it’s a narrative tactic that works wonderfully to create a Hamlet that is just as fractured and complex as any other.
Now, I’m not suggesting we all embrace a “Kylo Ren is actually a woman” interpretation of the new Star Wars trilogy. Though I do think that would be an interesting reading, what I’m suggesting, instead, is that framing Ben Solo’s internal conflicts through the lense of Asta Nielsen’s Hamlet is a productive way to view the character. Nielsen’s Hamlet is, as described effectively in this blog about the film, a mess of repression and forbidden desires, struggling with a legacy she feels like she can’t possibly live up to. At the same time, that gap in identity feeds this Hamlet with a certain amount of trickster power. She’s sly, and has a massive secret world that only she knows about, and she exerts a good deal of power from that as well as anguish.
Sound a bit like anyone we know? Kylo Ren has many of these same qualities. He’s struggling under the impossible burden of the men from his past, a pain that breaks him but also infuses him with a brittle, rebellious anger that gives him immense power. Likewise, he’s filled with forbidden longings, all centered around the desire to be a person he just isn’t allowed to be.
I don’t know if any of this was intentional, but it works. Looking at Kylo Ren via Nielsen’s Hamlet highlights some of his most interesting traits. Under George Lucas, the Star Wars series always had a great love for film history, and referenced it copiously. It’s good to see that, even if it’s accidental, the new Star Wars trilogy is doing the same.
YouTuber witandfolly, in the video essay, "Kylo Ren as Hamlet," observes:
No interpretation of character is without flaw, and there is not ever one, true analysis
of a character.
That being said, there is no character who is more fascinating to interpret and analyze to death than Hamlet. When the play opens, we find that all is not well in this kingdom
The mood is dark, mysterious. The characters immediately begin discussing the supernatural - a spectral presence, a bad omen, an impending doom - you start to question what is real and what is not. Is this apparition a restless spirit, is it the devil or an evil spirit, or simply a hallucination?
The king, Hamlet's father, has died and it's possible that his ghost is haunting the castle which is still mourning his death.
When Hamlet's father's ghost appears before him and confirms his worst fear - that Claudius killed him and stole both his crown and his wife, Hamlet is distraught. He vows revenge - to kill Claudius.
And this is where his conflict really begins.
Because Hamlet is a man of strong Christian values. He knows that anger, revenge, and murder go against his moral code. So Hamlet puts on a mask of madness in an attempt to expose Claudius. If people believe him to be mad, perhaps they will be more honest around him - but is this a mask?
His meaning is left ambiguous.
A prominent theme in Hamlet is the constant shift between appearance and reality, both for the characters and for the audience. We are unsure if Hamlet is as he appears to be.
If he actually causes himself to go mad by the time he accidentally murders Polonius, or if he simply continues to just question himself and his purpose throughout the play, unable to grow past his doubts Hamlet, like many tragic heroes, attempts to control his fate in the face of greater forces that are at work Ben feels to be doing the same, in a way.
Both characters believe themselves to be all alone in their own thoughts - no one understands them. No one could. They are both offended and betrayed by their own family.
Kylo Ren: Your son is gone. He was weak and foolish, like his father, so I destroyed him.
Ben probably always felt this conflict - a pull to the light and the dark. When he was told that Vader was a part of him, he likely would have felt incredibly betrayed by his parents - especially his mother for not telling him sooner. Hamlet feels betrayed by his mother because he thinks her immediate marriage to his uncle is offensive to his late father.
They've essentially lost that feminine influence in their lives. Both are haunted by those that came before them – men that are a part of them, that made them what they are. For Hamlet, it is his father, for Ben, it's his grandfather. They each, in different ways, attempt to avenge the deaths of those men; to restore and finalize those legacies. Both characters promote existential ideas – “To be or not to be, that is the question,” and "Let the past die, kill it if you have to.”-- while also feeling great anguish in those thoughts and sometimes grasping for a future where things are better.
Hamlet: To sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream.
Kylo Ren: You're nothing, but not to me.
Ben: Your parents threw you away like garbage
Rey: They didn't.
Ben: They did. But you can't stop meeting them.
Looking for them everywhere; in Han Solo,
now in Skywalker.
Kylo Ren or Ben Solo may not be a perfect parallel to Hamlet - but our intrigue to these
two figures is. The audiences' fascination to Ben Solo is eerily similar to Hamlet. Ben and Hamlet reflect our greatest prejudices as well as our greatest shames and fears. We feel a sense of dread - of uncertainty with Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens. We aren't sure what to make of him. Many can relate to Ben's angst and internal conflict, just as people relate to Hamlet's. It is the enigma, the mystery, and the uncertainty that makes them so interesting and relatable. What we don't know or what is left ambiguous is the best part. It's what makes Hamlet one of the greatest characters of all time. It is what makes Ben one of the most beloved characters in the current trilogy, despite him being coded as a villain.
And this brings me to my ultimate contradiction. Certainly, Ben possesses the hubris of a tragic hero. He believes in his own definition of morality. whatever that may be. Ben is essentially a prince in the Star Wars story. Ben and Hamlet have some similar traits and project similar feelings to the audience- but what makes them so different is how they react to their conflict. Hamlet is pretty misogynistic and puritanical. Ben does not seem to be, and it's perhaps his one saving grace. Hamlet disregarded all loved ones - he did not allow anyone to seduce him from the darkness, not even the woman he loves. But Ben does. Hamlet is internally conflicted, but it's because he doesn't know who he is. He fights against society, against his community, and ultimately against himself His fears are based in the pure act of living of existing and of death. We know that Ben wants to let the past die But we still don't know why, or for what?
As a refresher - a tragic hero ignores his community, defines his morals on himself and then realizes his own misfortune too late Hamlet's inner conflict makes taking action difficult. The more Hamlet realizes the more knowledge he gains, the more he doubts his reality. But Ben's inner conflict fluctuates based on his community. He is very obviously affected by Finn's conflict, his father, his mother, and Rey In-universe, this has an explanation - Ben's connection to the living force is incredibly strong. He uses both parts of the light and parts of the darkside to be powerful. It is explained in The Last Jedinovelization that:
“Kylo's turmoil all but filled the Force around them, roiling and churning it. The troopers couldn't sense it the way she and Kylo could, but that wasn't the same as saying they couldn't sense it at all; they were a part of life and the Force, and couldn't help but be affected on some level.”
Again, this is Ben's saving grace.
This is the major difference between Ben and Hamlet.
Because he is a powerful force-user, he can feel everything. By letting the past die to become more powerful, he is essentially unable to ignore his community. The more powerful he becomes and the more pain he causes - the more he suffers.
As far as I'm concerned, once you notice the similarities, the parallels are way too apparent not to be obvious, or intentional. In fact, early Kylo Ren concept art (while he was still being referred to by the production as "the Jedi Killer") has him holding Vader's helmet in a manner echoing Hamlet as he held Yorick's skull, during his "Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well, Horatio" reverie.
Also, Kylo's parallels with Hamlet intersect all too well with connections we will see later between Rey, Padmé, and Ophelia.
But was George Lucas consciously thinking about Shakespeare as he was writing Star Wars? There's really no evidence of this, despite all the analysis to the contrary. Author Ian Doescher has even adapted all nine Star Wars saga films into Shakespearean syntax-styled plays: William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope: Star Wars Part the Fourth;William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back: Star Wars Part the Fifth; William Shakespeare’s The Jedi Doth Return: Star Wars Part the Sixth; William Shakespeare’s The Phantom of Menace: Star Wars Part the First; William Shakespeare’s The Clone Army Attacketh: Star Wars Part the Second; William Shakespeare’s Tragedy of the Sith's Revenge: Star Wars Part the Third; William Shakespeare’s The Force Doth Awaken: Star Wars Part the Seventh; William Shakespeare’s Jedi the Last: Star Wars Part the Eighth; and William Shakespeare’s The Merry Rise of Skywalker: Star Wars Part the Ninth. Odds are, any allusions to the Bard came from George consciously thinking about Kurosawa, who adapted Shakespeare multiple times, and through Greek mythology. Emma Poltrack, writing for the Folger Shakespeare Library, has pointed out, “Scholars have identified Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Homer’s Iliad as among the likely sources of Shakespeare’s work. His classical education as a schoolboy would have further exposed him—like much of his audience—to stories of wayward gods, goddesses, nymphs, and heroes that could then be referenced to great poetic effect within the plays. In many cases, the same myth is told differently in different sources, providing a variety of versions to choose from.”
So, is it likelier that George's philosophy and Shakespeare's philosophy intersect with their common interest in Greek mythology? Well, that depends on who you ask. Some Shakespeare scholars believe Shakespeare had no interest or education in Greek mythology.
Matthew Norman, in an article for Greek Reporter, notes:
It was once believed that Shakespeare was intimately familiar with ancient Greek tragedies and romances. However, that theory has long been discredited. How then was the great English playwright influenced by ancient Greece?
Simply put, Shakespeare’s plays are suffused with references to ancient Greece. These include direct assimilations of names, characters, and places. One such example is A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Theseus and Hippolyta. This play is set in Greece, including to a large extent in Athens. Yet other examples of Greek influences on Shakespeare’s work pertain to the reincarnation of mythological characters, as is the case with Troilus and Cressida.
Nevertheless, for a long time, there has been debate as to how Shakespeare even came across any of the ancient Greek playwrights, their characters, and the characters of Greek mythology. Many scholars have held that there was no reason to believe Shakespeare ever encountered any of the ancient Greek tragedians either in the original language or translated versions.
There were no English editions of Greek tragedies published during the playwright’s lifetime, and any influence coming from Euripides, Sophocles, or Aeschylus would have been filtered through Classical Latin sources. Those would have been mediated through Renaissance culture.
Throughout the twentieth century, the consensus of scholars came to be that any meaningful contact Shakespeare had had with ancient Greek culture came through Seneca. On the other hand, some academics have argued Shakespeare was directly exposed to ancient Greek texts and thinkers when he was young.
Some scholars claim Shakespeare had to have held a considerable reservoir of knowledge in relation to Greek literature, history, and politics, and he may have even been taught Greek at school.
It has been suggested that the great playwright learned about Greek drama through a translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans. Yet others posit that he learned about the concepts of Greek tragedy and culture from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Regardless of how Shakespeare came to know about ancient Greek culture, influences thereof have certainly made their way into several of his most famous literary works.
In his play Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare reincarnates figures from ancient Greek mythology such as Agamemnon, his brother Menelaus, the Greek commanders Achilles, Ajax, Ulysses, Nestor, Diomedes, and Patroclus. There were also King Priam, the king of Troy, his sons Hector, Troilus, Paris, Deiphobus, Helenus, and Aeneas and Antenor.
The revered beauty Helen, Hector’s wife Andromache, and the unheeded Cassandra are also present in the play.
In the third part of Henry The Sixth, Act 3, Scene 3, the character Duke of Gloucester says “I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor, deceive more slyly than Ulysses could, and, like a Sinon, take another Troy.”
Moreover, in Much Ado About Nothing, Act 2 scene 1, Benedick says of the character Beatrice, “I would not marry her, were she endowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgressed. She would have made Hercules have turned spit.”
There are many more direct mentions of ancient Greek figures in Shakespeare’s plays, including in their titles, as evidenced by Timon of Athens. The real Timon of Athens lived in the city in the fifth century BC alongside Socrates and Pericles.
It is, therefore, clear that ancient Greece, its heroes, villains, philosophers, and mythology permeated a great amount of Shakespeare’s work. Nonetheless, how exactly this came to be and how he even knew about the works of the ancient Greeks remains unclear.
A Fall 2018 piece for Shakespeare Comes Alive! notes:
The characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are a shining example of Shakespeare’s incorporation of mythology and literature in his works. The mythology used in his works is unique as it is a blend of previously existing mythology and his own ideas of mythology based on Elizabethan culture. His use of mythology and literature most likely stemmed from the curriculum he was taught at his school as a boy. Scholars agree that Shakespeare attended the King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford-upon-Avon (Callow). At school, the pupils would have studied in English, as well as Latin and Greek. They studied authors such as Terence, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid (“Shakespeare’s School”). The influence of Ovid can be seen especially in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. For example, the name “Titania” is taken directly from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as well is the story of “Pyramus and Thisbe.” Shakespeare was not the only writer that was greatly influenced by Ovid during this time period, others include Marlowe, Drayton, Dickenson, Heywood, Chapman, and more (Staton, 165).
Several characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are taken straight from mythology, two of which are Theseus and Hippolyta. In the play, Theseus is the Duke of Athens, who is engaged to Hippolyta. In mythology, Theseus was a founding hero of Athens who goes on many quests, similar to Perseus or Heracles. Stories of Theseus have been written by many prominent and famous writers.
A myth about Theseus that is relevant to the play is the myth of Theseus and the minotaur. In the myth, the minotaur is a monster that is half human and half bull, this is comparable to Bottom once Puck has given him the head of a donkey. The minotaur in the myth is sired from Pasiphae, the Queen of Crete, and a bull. This is reflected in the relationship between Titania and Nick Bottom. Another part of the myth is that Theseus finds his way out of a labyrinth because of his love for Ariadne (a King’s daughter). The labyrinth in the myth is comparable to the forest in the play. Just as love played a role in Theseus finding his way out, it plays a role in the four Athenian’s (Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia, and Helena) ability to get out of the forest (Lamb, 478-480).
The stories of Theseus continue with the myth of how he came to marry Hippolyta. After Theseus slayed the minotaur, he sailed to Hippolyta’s lands and became enamored with her. Theseus proposed that they marry and that he make her the Queen of Athens, but Hippolyta was the Queen of her own people, so she refused his proposal. Theseus then resorted to kidnapping Hippolyta to make her his bride (Geller).
In mythology, Hippolyta is the daughter of Ares, the god of war and she is the Queen of the Amazons, a race of female warriors. As the Queen, Hippolyta is seen as the strongest of the Amazons and a fierce warrior, which is a juxtaposition to the roles of the other women in Shakespeare’s play, who were bound by the conventions of society. The contrast of Hippolyta as a fierce warrior queen and simultaneously a woman who was kidnapped to be married, a woman who is both weak and strong, could be a reflection of the monarchy of Queen Elizabeth I.
Another piece of mythology that Shakespeare makes use of that would have been familiar to many in Elizabethan England is within the character of Puck/Robin Goodfellow. It is uncertain where the character of Puck stems from originally as arguments can be made for an Irish origin, Scandinavian origin, etc. Some scholars believe that the idea of a helper with magical powers stems from Richard Coer de Lion, a story about Richard I, King of England. This could be true, as it is thought that this work also influenced Shakespeare in his play King John (Thomas, 3).
Just like some of the other characters, the origin of the character of Oberon does not come from just one place. There are stories of the “king of the elves” in many cultures; including French and German. Oberon is commonly referred to in mythology as being a dwarf and having magic powers. It is thought that Shakespeare was most likely influenced by the version of Oberon from the French poem Huon de Bordeaux (Britannica).
As mentioned earlier, Shakespeare took the name “Titania” from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In the play, Titania is the queen of fairies. Traditionally, the queen of fairies does not have a name; though before Shakespeare, the queen of the fairies was often identified with Diana, the Roman goddess of the Hunt because both are associated with forests/woods (Staton, 167). The “queen of fairies” has since been compared to Hera and Juno, the Greek and Roman queen of the gods (Britannica).
The four Athenians in the play do not have as many literary or mythological ties, but there have been comparisons made between Shakespeare’s Helena and Helen of Troy (Howard-Vyse). Parallels have been drawn based on Menelaus and Paris fighting over Helen of Troy and Demetrius and Lysander fighting over Hermia. Scholars also believe that the storyline of the four Athenians is influenced by Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale (Bethurum, 85). Knight’s Tale is about two knights who fight over the love of a woman, just as in A Midsummer Dream how Demetrius and Lysander fight over Helena, the difference being Knights Tale involves three while A Midsummer Night’s Dream involves four. Interestingly enough, this story also includes Theseus as a character.
Shakespeare clearly was influenced by mythology and literature. He took preexisting myths and wrote them in a way that suited the culture of Elizabethan England and in doing so he has influenced how certain myths are told and interpreted today.
The Shakespeare resource website No Sweat Shakespeare also adds:
Shakespeare had little formal education beyond a few years in his local grammar school. In a poem praising him as a great genius, his friend, Ben Jonson, concluded with something that had probably been a bit of a joke among his educated friends, that he had “small Latin and lesse Greeke”. When Shakespeare began working in the London theatre he found that all his colleagues were far better educated, some to a very high level, where they would have had a solid grounding in Latin and Greek culture and literature.
But Shakespeare was a fast learner and a prolific reader, and an intellect and talent far beyond that of his colleagues, and his lack of Greek wouldn’t have been a problem as he would have had access to translations of Latin and Greek texts. His plays and poems are sprinkled with references to characters in classical literature, and in 1609 he wrote Troilus and Cressida, based on the Trojan War, depicted in Homer’s Iliad.
While other writers, like Christopher Marlowe, used Greek and Roman mythology, astrology and philosophy, showing off their knowledge, to create sophisticated, ‘educated’ imagery, Shakespeare would find the perfect classical reference to illuminate some aspect of a character. There are 53 classical allusions in Titus Andronicus, 39 in Antony and Cleopatra, 38 in Love’s Labour Lost, 37 in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 31 in Cymbeline, 26 in Coriolanus, 25 in Romeo and Juliet, 25 in All’s Well that Ends Well, 25 in Pericles, 19 in Hamlet, 11 in Othello, 8 in Macbeth and 8 in King Lear. All of them are devices he uses to bring out aspects of his characters.
One of Shakespeare’s plays, Troilus and Cressida, is set during the Trojan War. He may have got the idea from reading George Chapman’s translation of Homer. Shakespeare knew George Chapman, as they both worked in the London theatre at the same time, was not only a playwright but also a poet, and has been mentioned by many as Shakespeare’s rival to the mantel of greatest sonneteer. He was an educated man, and, although he doesn’t stand now as one of the top playwrights of the time, what he is still remembered for is as a translator of classical literature. His greatest work as translator is his Homer. He spent many years on it and began publishing his work in progress, the Iliad, in instalments, in 1598. Shakespeare would have been following the episodes, and he wrote his Troilus and Cressida in 1609.
Troilus and Cressida is not the story of the Trojan War as such. Homer deals in heroic storytelling, telling the tale of the war on a grand scale. His characters are more or less mechanical – they people the great story of the war. Shakespeare, on the other hand, writes dramas about people and their individual concerns. In this play the war is only the backdrop to the intensely personal story of the two young people. The story of Cressida and her lover, Troilus, is a human story that could happen anywhere, at any time, during any war. The other characters, too, could exist at any time.
As usual with Shakespeare, when he writes about real historical figures, as he does in his history and Roman plays, or, as in the case of Troilus and Cressida, about characters that appear in the fictions of earlier writers, he comes to own them for all time. There is no other way of looking at Brutus or Cassius or Richard III or Henry V or Cleopatra once Shakespeare has recreated them in his own Shakespearean image. Our perception of the young Troilus and Cressida of the Iliad, and indeed, the other characters, Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax, Pandarus, Priam, Hecuba, Helen, Cassandra, and so on comes mainly from Shakespeare rather than from Homer. Each of those characters comes to life in Shakespeare’s hands in his Troilus and Cressida, and the fact that most of them bear no resemblance whatsoever to Homer’s characters is immaterial. We sit back and enjoy the drama with all its humour, joy, pain, suffering and tragedy. The result of Shakespeare’s treatment of the lovers is that they come across to all generations from the 17th Century to the present time, as people we might know, young lovers caught in the circumstances of the time and events in which they live.
Shakespeare was not particularly interested in mythology, history, geography – his interest in those things were that they were good sources for the dramas he made. His characters are all essentially Elizabethan English men and women set in mythological, historical and remote geographical settings. Troilus and Cressida are such Elizabethan characters. Homer barely mentions them but Shakespeare, with a nose for a good story, grasped them and made a story out of them. And so, apart from the fleeting references to Greek and Roman mythology in several plays, the way that Shakespeare used mythology was to look for things that would make plays that would bring the audiences in and let his imagination take over.
Akira Kurosawa adapted Shakespeare several times. Throne of Blood reworks Macbeth, The Bad Sleep Well is his take on Hamlet, and Ran retells King Lear. Lucas could very well be referencing Shakespeare ironically, through Kurosawa. We can see evidence of Kurosawa's influence on George Lucas all over the place. In his unauthorized book, The Secret History of Star Wars (for my money the best – and my personal favorite – of all the unofficial treatises on the making of the original and prequel trilogies), and its companion website, writer Michael Kaminski points out several connections to Kurosawa's films in George's work. A New Hope began almost as a remake of The Hidden Fortress, but we can see quite a bit of the plot of The Hidden Fortress in The Phantom Menace, also. One can see aspects of General Hyoe Tadokoro in Darth Vader, and aspects of Princess Yuki in Queen Amidala and Princess Leia. The peasants Matashichi and Tahei inspired Artoo and Threepio. Even their imprisonment in the closing moments of The Hidden Fortress parallel Artoo and Threepio's incarceration in the Jawa sandcrawler. Both A New Hope's and The Phantom Menace's ending frames resemble The Hidden Fortress's final scene. Luke’s exchange with Dr. Cornelius Evazon and Ponda Baba and the subsequent brawl that results, including Obi-Wan’s means of resolving it, are a direct parallel with a scene in Yojimbo. Using the smuggling compartment as a hiding place is a direct nod to a similar scene in Sanjuro. The Empire Strikes Back shares much with Dersu Uzala, both visually and plot-wise. Even the character Dersu is one of Yoda's composite characters. Luke’s lesson in the dark side cave has its antecedent in Kurosawa's gangster film, Drunken Angel. The “disarmed” wampa in the New Hope Special Edition may even hearken back to the arm-severing in Yojimbo. The speeder bike chase in Return of the Jedi was most likely copying a similar chase, on horses, in The Hidden Fortress. Toshiro Mifune’s clownish Seven Samurai character, Kikuchiyo, is one of Jar Jar Binks's composite characters, and Mifune’s character in The Hidden Fortress is one of Qui-Gon Jinn's. Both Mifune and Qui-Gon even consider greed “a powerful ally.” Also, a deep focus shot in Hidden Fortress, in which we can see Mifune standing in the background of a shot crossing his arms, watching the two peasants in the foreground, mirror the shot in Revenge of the Sith on Mustafar, where Obi-Wan Kenobi stands with his arms crossed in the background while Padme confronts Anakin about the atrocities he's committed. While imagery from East of Eden (and even The Sound of Music) contribute to Anakin and Padmé's love story in Episode II, it is also indebted to the love story in Seven Samurai. The Battle of Geonosis mirrors the two elaborate battle sequences in Ran. Even a subtle moment in Revenge of the Sith, when Yoda strokes what little hair he has left in a contemplative moment mimics Takeshi Shimura doing the same exact thing in Seven Samurai.
Now, it's totally possible these apparent Shakespearean nods in the original trilogy are just complete happenstance; coincidental, illusionary echoes formed through Lucas’s references to Kurosawa's adaptations of the Bard. Be that as it may, Kurosawa's attachment to Shakespeare creates parallels that have followed the saga straight down the line, since the sequel trilogy references the Bard unabashedly. When it does, whatever George may have alluded to (unintentionally, as it were) in the original and prequel trilogies still adapts itself well to the Shakespearean context in the sequels.
However, George does refer to children in the prequels as younglings, as Shakespeare does, for instance, in Titus Andronicus:
AARON: I tell you, younglings, not Enceladus
With all his threat’ning band of Typhon’s brood,
Nor great Alcides, nor the god of war
Shall seize this prey out of his father’s hands.
Coincidence?
Maybe. It's an interesting coincidence, nevertheless. And it does create an ironic parallel. I'll never be able to hear anyone refer to younglings in anything Star Wars-related again without thinking about Shakespeare or Shakespeare’s time. And even if it's something I'm bringing to the prequels, as a viewer, and not the other way around; even if the prequels aren't making this connection on their own, I can't watch Palpatine and Anakin’s relationship without seeing a Shakespearean parallel. And there's nothing wrong with that, because movies will always inspire an intimate, personal relationship with the individual viewer that may not be part of the text, that is unique to the individual. As John Campea of The John Campea Show podcast on YouTube often says, “Movies are experiential events.” I wholeheartedly agree.
It's hard not to see this in the prequels, whether it's really there or it's something I'm bringing to it. And clearly I'm not the only one who sees it.
I like what the blog Kyle's Kliffs says about The Shakespearean Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker:
Anakin Skywalker’s character arc is a mirror of Shakespearean tragedy, and most specifically, the Tragedy of Macbeth. Firstly, it would be helpful to lay out the plot of Macbeth, so that we know what we are working with.
Macbeth is the Thane of Glamis and is traveling with Banquo, and the two are confronted by three witches that offer prophecies. Macbeth receives the prophecy that he will become the Thane of Cawdor and that eventually, he will also be the father to a line of kings, but that he, himself, will never take the throne. After Macbeth becomes the Thane of Cawdor, he believes that the prophecies could actually all come true. Macbeth informs his wife, Lady Macbeth, of the prophecies, and she prompts him to murder the current King, King Duncan, who is staying at their palace tonight. Macbeth goes through with the murder despite the nightmarish vision that he experiences as he prepares his knife. Through various events, Macbeth deceives Duncan’s guards and sons and has the guards killed and the sons exile themselves for fear of their lives. Macbeth assumes the throne, despite the suspicions of Banquo. Due to his suspicions, Macbeth has him killed as well. At a dinner party in Macbeth’s castle, he continuously witnesses the ghost of Banquo haunting him. Only Macbeth can see the ghost. Being disturbed by this ghost, Macbeth consults the witches again to explain their prophecies. The witches warn him to beware Macduff, Thane of Fife, and loyal to Duncan. The witches also tell him that no man born of woman can harm him and that he will be safe until the Great Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill. Lastly, the witches confirm that Banquo will have many kings from his family. Due to the witches’ warning, Macbeth sends for Macduff and everyone in his castle to be murdered. Macduff is away at the time, but his wife and his children are slaughtered. Macduff learns of this treacherous act and also discovers that Malcolm, Duncan’s son, has formed an army. The two form one larger army along with the Earl of Northumberland, Englishman Siward. The armies camp in Great Birnam Wood and cut down trees to use as camouflage as they attack Macbeth in Dunsinane Castle. At the same time, Lady Macbeth is driven insane with guilt for the blood on her and her husband’s hands. Just before battle, Macbeth is informed that Lady Macbeth killed herself. Disheartened, Macbeth enters battle anyway. Macbeth comes face to face with Macduff and brags that Macduff cannot hurt him since he cannot be killed by any man born of woman. Macduff explains that he was not born from woman, but “untimely ripp’d” from his mother’s womb (Caesarian section). Macbeth realizes he is doomed, but battles anyway until Macduff beheads him. With this victory, peace is restored and prophecies are fulfilled as Malcolm claims his rightful spot as the King of Scotland.
Now back to Star Wars. When we meet Anakin in The Phantom Menace, he is a little insignificant child working full time to help pay for him and his mother. He has no father, but was born of a virgin and has way more midichlorians than years since a Cubs world series. Thus, he is strong in the force. Qui-Gon Jin is convinced that Anakin is the “chosen one” that the Jedi had been searching for. He decides to bring Anakin along with him and his padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi, back to Coruscant the site of the Jedi Council. Though the council is skeptical of Anakin being the one to fulfill the prophecy, Qui-Gon pushes to train the boy regardless. The prophecy states that a Jedi skilled with the force will emerge and ultimately bring balance to the force. The force is divided into light and dark sides, much like the Yin and Yang, but that’s a whole other post in itself. At the end of the movie, Obi-Wan takes responsibility for training Anakin as Qui-Gon bites Darth Maul’s dust.
In Episode I: The Phantom Menace, we see early similarities between Anakin and Macbeth. Macbeth is told of a prophecy that he will fulfill. This prophecy has great implications and requires great responsibility on his part, just like Anakin. While Macbeth must assume the throne, Anakin assumes the position as the mender of light and dark. All the turmoil that the galaxy is experiencing is now resting heavily on young Skywalker’s shoulders. The prophecies show the first parallel between Anakin and Macbeth.
Throughout his time training as a padawan in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, Anakin experiences multiple terrifying and implicating nightmares. He acts on them and in Episode II results in murdering a whole tribe of Tuskken Raiders, showing the first hints of the dark side in him.
Macbeth’s visions and hauntings come after his murder of King Duncan, but for Anakin it is actually flipped. Nevertheless, these awful visions exist. For our tragic heroes, their hallucinations place extra stress on them. This stress forces them to continue to break laws. For Macbeth, it leads to more and more murders, for Anakin it leads to marriage to Padme and her pregnancy, both of which are against the Jedi law.
In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin spends most of the film thinking about his new nightmare, that of his wife, Padme, and her death. He tries through the whole movie to save her from her impending death, according to the nightmare. Anakin’s concerns, quick actions, and Padme’s pregnancy lead to even more suspicion from the Jedi Council. Meanwhile, Anakin is unknowingly being seduced to the dark side by Emperor Palpatine (Darth Sidious). Palpatine serves as the “Lady Macbeth” for Anakin. He convinces him to act on his feelings. This results in Anakin’s second killing, (first being the Tuskken Raiders) that of Mace Windu.
Anakin joins the dark side as Darth Vader. Heard of him? He is so swept up in his feelings and wanting to protect Padme, that he has allowed them to blind him. This is similar to how Macbeth is so wrapped up in his visions and temptations from Lady Macbeth that it clouds his judgment to the point of him committing heinous crimes. So far, Anakin hasn’t murdered nearly as much as Macbeth, that is, until the execution of Order 66.
Palpatine bribes the clones to execute Order 66, which were his plans to destroy all of the Jedi. While the clones killed many of the experienced Jedi Masters, Anakin had an integral role in the operation: to kill all the padawans. Padawans are Jedi in training and they start at a very young age. Fortunately, George Lucas spared us the scene, but Anakin murdered a room full of (probably) 30 (or so) 4-10 year old children. Even our Star Wars hero succumbed to temptation and murdered dozens of innocent younglings. Macbeth follows a similar storyline and murders the children and Lady Macduff at Macduff’s palace.
Macbeth meets his tragic end at the hands of Macduff. In Star Wars, though Darth Vader doesn’t die until Return of the Jedi, the “death of Anakin” is known as when he officially became Darth Vader. This is why Obi-Wan tells Luke that Vader killed his father in A New Hope. That comes when Anakin confronts Obi-Wan.
To make the parallel between Obi-Wan and Macduff even clearer, Obi-Wan was one of the most loyal Jedi and teamed up with Yoda after he discovered the deaths of all the padawans at the hand of Anakin. Though Padme is Anakin’s wife, his betrayal cuts so deep that at the end of the film, Obi-Wan is more of a husband to Padme than Anakin ever was. Similarly, Lady Macduff (Padme) and Macduff’s “babes” (padawans) were murdered and Macduff teamed with Malcolm to take on Macbeth.
Though there is no prophecy that leads to the battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin, it is vital to the tragedy as Anakin not only destroyed his life, but Padme’s life, his future children’s lives, and his brotherhood with Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan does not succeed in defeating Anakin by means of prophecy, but Anakin’s arrogance during the battle is similar to Macbeth’s. Macbeth doesn’t fear Macduff because of the prophecy. Anakin doesn’t fear Obi-Wan because of his new, strengthened powers of the force from the dark side. This arrogance leads to Obi-Wan’s defeat of Anakin.
This is the major difference from Macbeth, Obi-Wan spares Anakin’s life, though he slices off his limbs and allows him to burn severely, whereas Macduff beheads Macbeth as soon as he has the chance.
Finally, what must always be discussed at the end of Shakespearean tragedy is the hero’s “tragic flaw.” Hopefully you were able to see it as I explained the stories of both Anakin and Macbeth. The tragic flaws are arrogance and acting impulsively. Take a second to think about the stories, and you will see both of those characteristics lead to the downfalls of Anakin and Macbeth. Pride (and summer) does indeed come before the fall.
One constant amongst all of these analysts is that this isn't a perfect, 1:1 parallel between Lucas and Shakespeare. While there are points where Shakespeare and Lucas do appear to intersect, there are points where they do deviate, minutely or dramatically.
Regardless, even if the original and prequel trilogies never directly reference Shakespeare, the sequel trilogy does, and through the sequels, they create Shakespearean connections with those previous films.
And to be fair, influence or homage or referential language – whatever you want to call it – is almost always done loosely. A story need only to connect to its influence or template as much or as little as the story you're telling requires it to. You take what applies to your story, and ignore the rest. What makes the story interesting is how it deviates from the text you're referencing, because it makes engagement with that story, analytical dissection of that story, and conversation with others about that story much more interesting. You get to appreciate how the story you discuss compares and contrasts the stories it has reverence for.
Like Vader, and like Anakin before his turn, Kylo feels alienated and conflicted. San Tekka tells Kylo, "You cannot deny the truth that is your family." The problem? Kylo's frame of mind is twisted, which means his point of view is mixed up.
From his perspective, his parents didn't want him around. His parents dumped him on his uncle and turned their backs on him, and his uncle tried to kill him, which pushed him ever closer to the dark side. That's the truth about his family he believes cannot be denied.
But is that the truth? Or is it his version of the truth, from a certain point of view?
From Ben’s point of view, his parents didn't want him. His uncle gave up on him. His family cast him out. And he still loves them. So why do they hate him? That is the question Kylo asks himself. That is the turmoil Kylo is living with.
And yet, that isn't the truth. It's only what Kylo believes to be the truth, and Snoke took advantage of that point of view. Throve on it. Snoke's manipulation of Kylo stoked the rage that exists within him. His rage demands release.
So, Kylo Ren arrives at Tuanul Village on Jakku, surveys the situation, and pumps Lor San Tekka for information about “the map to Skywalker.” When be doesn't get the information he wants, and San Tekka needles him about his past, Ren kills him. (In the canonical comics, San Tekka and Ben Solo had a history prior to this exchange on Jakku. They accompanied Luke to the Unknown Regions, to a planet called Elphrona, in search of an old Jedi outpost. While there, the trio were accosted by the Knights of Ren, who persuaded Ben to join them until Luke intervened.)
Poe Dameron, in desperation, tries to take Ren out. Kylo senses the attempt, freezes Poe's blaster fire in midair, immobilizes Poe, and troops subdue him.
Every Star Wars movie introduces us to some new force ability we've never been privy to before. We learned what the Force is in A New Hope; we were also introduced to Jedi mind tricks, Force (or cosmic) awareness (the ability to “reach out with your feelings” to sense things without having to see them, sensing disturbances, and sensing someone else's presence), the Force choke, and telepathic communication (with the living or with the dead, as Obi-Wan reaches out to Luke after his death). In The Empire Strikes Back, we're introduced to Force telekinesis or Force pull (the ability to move objects with your mind), Force jumping (when Luke jumps incredibly fast to escape the carbon freezing chamber before Vader can activate it), and Force ghosts. In Return of the Jedi: Force lightning. In The Phantom Menace: Force speed, Force visions (Anakin alludes to this, but Leia may have also alluded to it in Return of the Jedi when she told Luke she’d seen images of Padmé when she was very young), and ESP abilities (when Anakin was being tested by the Jedi Council, “seeing” images on a monitor turned away from him). In Attack of the Clones, Anakin sees visions of his mother in his dreams, and Yoda is able to absorb a Force lightning blast and send it back, during his confrontation with Count Dooku. In Revenge of the Sith, there's the Force Scream (or Sith Scream), used to disorient an opponent, as Palpatine does when he strikes out against the Jedi arresting him, Force concealment (the ability Force sensitives have to conceal their attunement to the Force from other Force users, as Palpatine was able to conceal himself from the Jedi), and the Force (or Sith) mask (Palpatine's ability to hide his true face until his own Force lightning is projected back at him, revealing the true face of Darth Sidious).
Force stasis, what Kylo uses to freeze both Poe and the blaster bolt, is a new ability that makes its debut here in The Force Awakens.
As Poe is led over to Ren to interrogate, he looks in bewilderment at the blaster bolt frozen in place, creating a lens flare in the camera that splits the frame as he and the troops pass by…
… okay, hold on a second. Let's pause.
This is a perfect time, I think, to comment on the treatment J.J. Abrams receives due to his cavalier use of lens flares. J.J. gets a heavy amount of flack for how much lens flare he uses in his films, and I think it's completely unwarranted.
I mean, seriously now, why did J.J. Abrams become the lens flare poster boy?
Lens flare used to be viewed as a mistake; a result of light striking the camera lens directly. When light hits an anamorphic lens, for example, that's when you get that beam that splits the frame. This mistake, eventually, became an aesthetic choice for filmmakers. Which filmmakers? Let's just say… all of them.
I started noticing it most frequently when I was a child in the Eighties, particularly in the films of two of my favorite directors: Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter. Is it at all surprising they are also two of Abrams's favorite filmmakers as well?
Vox, a general interest news site, reported on lens flare use in movies for their YouTube channel:
Lens flare is everywhere. It glows on our Supermen, near our Iron Men, and around our method-acted oilmen. It's in the fifth dimension, the final frontier, and definitely the fictional town of Lillian, Ohio. The lens flare is a technical phenomenon and distinct sensibility - that's taken over.
Lens flares can get pretty complicated. There are countless lenses from the past century of filmmaking, not to mention the physics involved. But a movie fan can identify flare pretty quickly. The basics are that each lens has a bunch of parts, and when bright light shines at the right intensity or angle, it can bounce around in those parts. That bouncing produces a bright haze as well as lens flare.
The flare's shape depends on how diaphragm blades close, to create the aperture, which is where light gets in. If they have fewer blades, you might get a hexagon-shaped flare. More blades and it'll be closer to a circle.
Anamorphic lenses have a different flare. They're designed with an oval-shape to squish more information onto a piece of 35 millimeter film. When they're projected out with another lens, it's in a wider format. And all that makes lens flares that can be like stripes of light across the picture.
But these flares weren't always so trendy. For decades, cinematographers fought to hide them.
When Gregg Toland shot Citizen Kane, he and director Orson Welles innovated - constantly.
Famously, they used deep focus to show a lot of stuff clearly and at the same time. They increased the depth of field by making the aperture tiny and using really really bright lights. So, Toland coated his lenses with Vard Opticoat to reduce glare and lens flare from all that light. And it set a norm and a path for innovation, Lenses were constantly coated with new and better technologies that helped keep light from bouncing around and creating flare. It also set an expectation: to make an immersive, professional movie, you did not have flare… until a revolution in moviemaking changed it.
In the 1960s, new filmmakers wanted to show their movies weren't made in a box.They turned to flare to capture a documentary-like look. Legendary cinematographer Conrad L. Hall's work in Cool Hand Luke was a rebellion that turned into a movement. He even talked about it in 1992's Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography:
“I feel particularly involved in helping make mistakes acceptable. If the light shone in the lens and flared the lens, that was considered a mistake. Somebody would report that, the operator would report - oh, it hit the lens, it flared the lens, cut!”
He showed the heat of chain gang life by keeping in the flare, and that quickly spread to rebel movies like The Graduateand Easy Rider. They symbolized authenticity and, as a result, lens flares did too. Just as flare helped sell the reality of characters, it could sell a sense of wonder.
Flare spread really quickly, like in 1968's Planet of the Apes. And later, Steven Spielberg brought it into Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Flare had entered the sci-fi and action canon.
If early lens flare said, "these feelings are real,” now it said, “these spacemen and explosions are real, too.”
And though J.J. Abrams gets slammed for his gratuitous lens flare use, its use as a tool of realism and wonder has impressed everyone from schlock jocks like Michael Bay to true artistes from Sofia Coppola to Terrence Malick. Malick can't get enough.
It's in videogames, political logos, and maybe your phone's weather screen.
Movies in the 60s had to prove they weren't made in this box, and in the 90s they used lens flare to try to prove they weren't made in this one, even though flare's become available with just a few clicks.
“Lens flare used to be a mistake you tried to avoid. Now, it's a choice you can't escape. So you've seen a lot of computer generated lens flare today, but all of this stuff is actually legitimate.
However, to get it to show up reliably, had to place the light really close to the camera.
That's because modern lenses have a protective coating that's pretty good at stopping flare. It's also the reason that cinematographers on movies like There Will Be Blood and Saving Private Ryan have actually stripped away that coating just so that they can get the old school flare look.”
The Force Awakens’ cinematographer, Dan Mindel, who has worked with J.J. since 2006, expressed to news site Westwood how he and J.J. developed what has been called Abrams’ visual signature:
“The training that I had as a camera technician was such that we were taught to stop any flares to protect the integrity of the photography," Mindel explains, echoing wisdom that dates to the silent era. "It always occurred to me that halation is something that we live with on a daily basis. Things halate—car windshields, light bulbs, everything. I wanted to allow that to happen in a way that brought more realism to what I was photographing. J.J. and I were looking at dailies on Mission: Impossible III, where we were getting incredible lens flares. He really loved what was happening, and it was sort of an open invitation to let it happen more.”
The flares became a hallmark in Abrams’ movies. "With Star Trek," Mindel says, "it [became] a tool for me to allow the sterility of the sets to be amplified by distorting the light on the lens."
Lens flare is nothing new; although traditionally considered an error, it can be seen in mainstream Hollywood films from the 1960s onward, particularly those shot by Conrad Hall and Haskell Wexler. As Mindel points out, it is an attempt to lend verisimilitude—to enhance the illusion of reality by allowing a naturalistic visual "flaw" to occur as it would when the right kind of light meets a curved glass surface.
As digital takes prominence, film-like visuals are disappearing, kept alive by filmmakers who insist upon shooting in the medium in which they were trained — the medium upon which the art of cinema was founded. Cinematographers — including those who have shot digitally and like it — are wary of new dangers.
"One of the greatest people I ever worked with, Tony Scott, taught me that magic comes out of the accidents — to never be fearful to try anything," Mindel says. "The beauty of cinematography was that it was an amalgamation of art and science: the science of photography, or the science of post-production, or the science of photochemical reaction with light.”
Even when lens flares were a photographic mistake, they served the same function – heightening the emotion in a scene or a shot.
Here was J.J.’s reasoning for his use of lens flares in the time period when he made his Star Trek:
"For a period of time, on 'Star Trek' (and I couldn't give it up on this other movie I did [referring to "Super 8"]), there was this idea we had ... that the future was so bright that it just couldn't be contained. That, and you had stuff happening, so if felt like — just off camera — there was something great! And there was this energy in this room! And it gave it this sort-of signature. And I overdid it. And then I went further. And then on the second 'Star Trek' movie, I went nuts. We've all made mistakes, right? Mine was with light. And we ended up ... we literally had flashlights. [Lens flares] weren't put in in post. We had flashlights off camera, these insane high powered flashlights. And we'd do the thing. Every director of photography is like, 'don't do that.' We aimed it right in the lens. And the lens would have a layer of coating on it to not flair, and we wouldn't use it. We got lenses that had no coating."
There's nothing wrong with recognizing when you've gone too far, or doing something about it when you do. But it's another thing entirely to lambaste one person for a widely used, popular technique.
It's not like J.J. is the only filmmaker to use lens flare as a stylistic motif in his films, and yet he does seem to be the only one who gets lambasted when he does. Which is simply not fair in the slightest. J.J. even wound up apologizing publicly when his wife criticized his extreme lens flare use in Star Trek Into Darkness:
"It was a very emotional scene for [actress Alice Eve]. But it looked like bad reception. Like TV from the day TV was invented. My wife looked at it ... and she gave me that look. That was sort of like: 'You've come to the end. Stop.' So I realized it was preposterous, and I had to pull back."
You never hear Michael Bay apologizing about his lens flare use.
You never hear Zack Snyder apologizing for his lens flare use. (Or his heavy use of slow motion, either. And he shouldn't have to.)
You never hear John Carpenter apologizing about it.
You never hear Spielberg apologizing about his lens flares.
So why should J.J. Abrams have to do it?
I get it if it was just too much lens flare in a particular scene. If it's taking over the scene – overpowering the scene – and it shouldn't be, yes, I agree, you should scale it back. But if it has emotional purpose… if it has emotional resonance… it should be there. But chastising ONE FILMMAKER for something virtually EVERY FILMMAKER ON THE PLANET does and gets away with, is ridiculous and hypocritical. It ain't right, people.
I love lens flare. I'm not ashamed saying it. I think lens flare is beautiful. I think lens flare is gorgeous. I think there's an emotional, dramatic purpose to lens flare. It accentuates the emotionality in a scene. It can even ramp up the suspense in a scene. And telling a filmmaker, any flmmaker “YOU CAN'T DO THAT!” is like stealing certain colors away from a painter's palette, wagging your finger, scoldingly, and telling that painter, “YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO USE THOSE COLORS!”
It's not like it's something heinous and ugly and reprehensible and evil.
Okay, maybe for some, lens flare is heinous and ugly and reprehensible and evil. But I've only ever heard J.J. get taken to task for it, which confuses the hell out of me.
It's just lens flare, folks. It's a trick of the light. A beautiful trick of the light. And it isn't there for no reason. It means something.
Cinematography is manipulation of light in order to create an emotional response. Lens flare is just one way of achieving an emotional response in a movie through the camera, through the moving image. It's just one color in the cinematograper's palette. The hope is that it adds to the drama, adds to the story. When an audience is put off by it, that's certainly not the desired effect. The drama should be on the screen, not in the audience.
The worst thing to happen to an artist is to be restricted in the manner in which you approach your art. To restrict an artist, to stifle an artist, to hamper an artist, is crippling. Now, let's look at the bright side. Sometimes forcing an artist to focus on new methods or a different process can be freeing. But you have to be open to the change, or at least passionate enough in your art that restrictions aren't going to threaten your work or your ability to accomplish it. You'll just find another way around it.
Well, he hasn't stopped using those flares, so at least he hasn't buckled under the pressure. And he shouldn't have to.
If you don't like lens flare – or you don't like it when J.J. does it – probably nothing I say is going to change your mind. I know this isn't going to shut up all the naysayers. I can only tell you how I feel about it. But maybe I've given some of you lens flare and J.J. critics some food for thought. That's good enough. It's the best I've got.
I'll always defend J.J., though.
And lens flares. I'll always defend lens flares.
And with that, I've said my piece.
Now, as Joe Bob Briggs says… back to the movie.
Once Poe is brought before Ren, some time passes while Ren tries to get a read off him. Poe breaks the silence with his usual sarcasm, wondering who talks first. Ren realizes San Tekka gave Poe his part of the map. Poe retorts, “It's so hard to understand you, with all the… apparatus,” while the troops search him. This is a subtle nod to Hardware Wars, a short Star Wars parody film HBO played constantly when I was a kid. In it, the Vader character – Darph Nader – spoke only in staticky gibberish, and nobody he spoke to could understand him. (We'll find another Hardware Wars reference in The Last Jedi later.) He doesn't have the map piece on him, so Ren orders the troops to put him on board his shuttle. By hook or by crook, he's going to find that map. He's going to find Luke Skywalker.
In Shakespeare’s King John, Philip the Bastard relates the tedium of life to a twice-told tale. In the sequel trilogy, Luke goes into seclusion on Ahch-To in direct opposition to the chiastic, “twice-told” nature of the universe and Star Wars itself, thinking, by his inaction, he can prevent history repeating. Elsewhere, his nephew, a thematic ancestor to Prince Hamlet, can't help but become tethered to the ghosts in his past, misinterpreting their choices and purposes. He has become (mis)informed by the characters that have inspired and created him. These composite characters that have made him who he is will carry him towards his tragic destiny.
Sometimes when you build a character, the bricks are made up of several other characters, stacked one on top of the other. You create a single character by drawing traits from several. These are called composite characters. Sometimes knowing where these traits come from, who a character's antecedents are, factors into the story's text, sometimes it's only subtextual, and sometimes it only matters to the writer or the filmmaker or both. Anakin Skywalker is made up of James Dean, Judah Ben-Hur, and others, like Paul Atreides in Dune, and Rotwang in Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Ben Solo is Hamlet, but he also shares Anakin's traits and Anakin's journey, and others we have yet to explore.
In Chapter 8, I will discuss Rey, Ben's counterpart in the sequel trilogy's mythical Campbellian dyad. Like Ben, Rey has Greek and Shakespearean character antecedents; composites, if you like. While Ben is following his grandfather Vader's journey and is modeled after a female Hamlet, we will find that Rey has ties to Hamlet's love Ophelia, and is also following the same path as, and is patterned after, a male hero: Luke Skywalker.
This, however, is only scratching the surface.
