"The interesting thing about Star Wars is, and I don’t ever push this very far, there’s a lot going on there that most people haven’t really come to grips with yet. But when they do, they will find it’s a much more intricately made clock than most people would imagine." - George Lucas, Vanity Fair

“Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science fiction movie, and it is going to be very hard for someone to come along and make a better movie as far as I’m concerned. On a technical level, [Star Wars] can be compared but personally I think that 2001 is far superior.” - George Lucas

"...with Star Wars (A New Hope) I achieved about 40% of what I was going for" -George Lucas

In the wake of dystopian nightmare THX-1138’s failure at the box office, George Lucas began gathering notes and writing in longhand a film project he labeled The Star Wars, an epic he based on his own memories of cheaply made weekly serials that preceded A-level features in theaters since the 1930’s and had slowly disappeared from film programming in the 50’s. As counterpoint, he even opened nightmare THX with prologue from a Buck Rogers serial preview, ensuring audiences would know just how off their bets were, the future was not only doomed, we had guessed dead wrong.  These memory-serials would have an immense impact on American film, the American Blockbuster Summer Film was born from them, both Star Wars and Indiana Jones are mutations of these genres, they blend three-act structures with stop-start action rhythms, and somehow are able to behave as if they’ve ended explosively while allowing key heroes and villains to survive the mayhem and reappear years later, primed for repeated attacks. These are complex films-in-hiding; their nostalgiac updating is not entirely healthy, darknesses are hidden behind brightness, they are woven as subtle, free-form satire at times (Strangelove and Star Wars are both giddy hysterias of absurdities). Audience glee is slyly dual in experience, it requires a lack of awareness to ignore things as weird as mecha-planetary holocausts (audiences cheer as an entire population of Imperial humans, both clones and individuals, are decimated at film's end). Star Wars is probably the most avant-garde studio film of the 70's since it is both homage and subtle satire of the source genres while its ulterior function, maybe its most magnetic and unconscious aspect, was to explore and test audiences with visual conformity and conflicts they are entirely unaware of.

Its massive success was unexpected.

And the name, Star Wars, an apt projection into parallax space, a naming convention like no other. The ultimate brand to the human race is this expression of control (or total lack of) into outer space, Lucas is well assured that once humans expand their horizons in time-travel, we will no doubt endlessly sow the universe with conflict and weirdly we will label its myth somewhat mistakenly (at its most visually eloquent, Star Wars is a sequel to 2001 and an evolution of its own cosmogonic conquest of the inner.). No stars go to war, but the beings that emerge from these self-generating light sources do.  So much so that humans (that speak English with a colonial accent), once aware of the sphere’s possibility of total dominance, will build a massive one that murders other spheres with glowing green beams.

Notice how the matte painting (2nd image above) of the temple left mirrors the actual pyramid edge angle above, right.

And what is Star Wars’s central source in mythology? By ending the original movie on the moon of Yavin, Lucas hints at a laymen's comprehension of archeoastronomy easily available to any well-read grad student of the 70's. Establishing shots in the film and design of the interior hangar temple and procession room are distinctly Mesoamerican. Lucas is even specific enough to add a skywatcher, a guard who uses a calibration device for a moment (aiming at the center of the frame) as the Falcon arrives, and he shows us in the near distance two temples of similar height that jut above the lowland forest (these acted as skymarkers for Mayan astronomers), all are shot at the ancient city of Tikal,  jewel city of the Early Classic and Classic eras, Tikal was a central city of the Peten lowland that, like all Maya centers, extensively utilized astronomy, so much so that astronomy could be perceived as a unifying religious practice (it’s difficult to distinguish religion from language from science in Maya culture, all are unified and evolved in unity).  The astronomers of Tikal were timekeepers as well as scribes that defined a framework for all local and mythic history. Most Maya mythic data integrates with the sky (The Popul Vuh, a Maya creation myth, is heavily encrypted with sky data). To be careful it should be known that what we label a myth is not exactly what the Maya would, and our western ideals have mistaken many acts and beings found in carved glyphic data. Since it's clear the Maya elevated ancestors to a supernatural status, it is harder to define what myth really is, which story is actual versus which occupies the sky as an astrologically complex version of storytelling. They used movements of the sky so completely that even wars were divined astronomically at Tikal and its neighbors (6th-7th Centuries AD); unaware Venus is a planet, The Maya called this glowing and speedily moving sky-dot “The Morning Star” and at some point, the Maya of the lowlands like Tikal began using Venus as a warfare tool, allowing its movements to point to conflicts with other cities, pointing at their representational constellations or markers on a horizon on a particular date.  In Maya studies, there is a famous, as yet untranslated glyph that is found in numerous classic and post-classic stela that precedes a date of war, and not so strangely, it has been temporarily labeled “the star war glyph.”

“One verbal compound over all others expresses the total event of warfare waged against another city-state. This is the “star-war” event, consisting of the “star” sign with falling droplet extensions, placed over the syllabic sign yi:

It cannot be read, but is is a verb since it can take the verbal suffix –YA. The ‘star-war” glyph is usually placed before or even over the main sign of the enemy city’s Emblem Glyph, as seen in these examples:”

-from Reading the Maya Glyphs Michael D. Coe & Mark Van Stone Thames and Hudson

Lucas revolutionarily advanced archeoastronomic warfare into outerspace and converted a Mayan prediction warfare into a projected, mechanized version in the sky we still utilize as a mythic repository (see: astrology), weaving myths and tales and zodiacal knowledge, he replaced mythic mirror wars in the sky from our past with a real one in a far past, consciously or unconsciously replacing "the Morning Star" with the Death Star.  The skywatcher in front of Tikal’s temple complex is the giveaway, he's awaiting a sign of war from the sky. This quick compression and simplification of a tool and its agency allows for unceasing blendings of our earthly mythic mirrors blasting non-linearly through a cosmological universe populated by forms and beings. It IS a human war in projections on all levels.  Along the way he crafts a linear fable using subliminally complex visuals, mirrors and portals, blended into what must be seen as filmically conscious mythmaking, he initializes his own myth using various resources: he draws from both history and film’s own myths and mythical structures, advancing knowledge systems primitively developed by Kurosawa, Ford, and others developing further an advancing and evolving motion-language. As you’ll see they are wordless (or better yet, label-less) progressions.  The art and process of filmmaking have component values inside the film as well, he also coopts Kubrick’s ultimate form, the monolith, the darkened movie screen turned upright (notice in 2001 both the overture and intermission music is played only when the screen is pitch-black or when the monolith appears in the film, he tells us when the monolith is present by playing Ligeti) and uses it within the screen's frame to underline both ship departure/arrivals (both docking bays' entrances) as well as universal destruction POV’s (the viewing windows from the Death Star).  Though nowhere as complex structurally as Kubrick, Welles or Hitchcock, Lucas is more inventive in other ways: his compression. Notice the doors in Star Wars, the variety of entrances, rejections, exploded ones versus opened ones, almost all involving men in white plastic. Now consider the other forms you see reused, forms like spheres, tubes, light, even stars.  He seamlessly blends these disparate worlds while keeping their visual aspects in both communion and conflict, he even advances Kurosawa's wipe-transitions as proof of these forms' connections and oppositions:

That Japanese, Nordic and Native American myths literally merge within shot is proof of his elaborate skills, and that he keeps this madness upbeat, pulpy and swift proves he also has his pulse on mass comprehension.   Here below is a scene by scene guide to Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Color-coded, the Star Wars films begin with Lucas' former logo against black, basic Helvetica greens that started in THX-1138.  A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away is colored blue and it predicts more reading... And with the blast of music that predicts its unceasing emotional explosions, the curved yellow (and black, no stars appear inside) Star Wars logo recedes symmetrically and quickly (a reverse explosion, its curves and color borrowed from the 2 in the 20th in the opening logo, in fact the whole move backwards mimics the Fox logo's depth backwards extrusion as an animation, now centered), until it disappears, and to the steady marching of the beat, text appears below us, like soldiers marching to war in formation. Symmetric lower movement aimed at a centerpoint. It speaks of a civil war, a paradoxical phrase borrowed from our own past. These purified colors will later appear as pulses of conflict, laser blasts that kill and defend.

Using the Fox Fanfare music as a guide, Lucas and John Williams continue the uptempo key and Star Wars begins with a British Marching Fanfare, the type of music used liberally to code the colonial might of the British as they conquered one nation to the next from the late 18th through the 19th centuries. Incredibly this same musical form arrived in film to showcase both these excesses (Gunga Din) as well as the force required to expel or interact with subsequent World Wars 1 and 2 (Bridge on the River Kwai).  In effect, this theme is coded by the conquerers, it is unusually successful since it is both propellant and satiric. Lucas even hires english-accents to both lead the Empire and play one of the last surviving Jedi.  Perversely, as the crawl disappears into the starfield, peaceful music plays. None of the stars are at any form of war, he shows you the starfield we see when looking into outer space from earth. Peaceful. And now you see the idea of any literal Star Wars is as paradoxical as a Civil War. You are about to watch an adventure film that is coded in parallel to a satirical film that plays along.

Once we are sure peace resides in the starfield, Lucas pans downward, a reverse of Kubrick's pan into the stargate of 2001. Immediately he offers us a central moon, a nod to 2001's opening, and then an off-center, larger moon left and a vast, yellow expanse of Tatooine below. Here's where the war is. Like the letters that marched off to battle, the chased/chasing ships duplicate the text's motion and the tilt down movement allows us to see these objects are another view of the words we saw from a different angle above. "Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her spaceship.." comes to life. Immediately our first view of any ship is overtaken by an explosion. The two monochromatic ships exchange green and red blasts and are propelled by red and blue glowing engines. Oppositions. The ships both aim left towards a horizontal centerpoint the first moon established (but has since disappeared, obliterated from view by the Destroyer). He shows us the propellant ports on the Destroyer are relatively the size of the moon. And back to Lucas' clock quote above (it equals in a way with "A long time ago..."), if he is this adroit, if he says what he means, then Star Wars is a form of narrative involving numbers and time, Lucas even lucks out and has the century this emerges from begin the film. The first views in Star Wars affords us even counted sets of numbers: the Blockade Runner and Destroyer have sets, the Blockade's engines are arrayed 4-3-4, and the Destroyer has 3 (engines) 4 (docking ports). Numbers are even essential for the Droids who are forms that embody both numbers and language (R2-D2 is also Artoo Deetoo: in essence he makes their shapes the real "name" by defying both codes' ownership).

The shape-form the paragraphs took, rectangles that skew into travelling yellow arrows that moves into a parallax center, is split into two realms with the pan down: now the monochrome Star Destroyer mirrors them at a slight angle shifted left and from above and in the symmetric text's former place is the yellow of Tatooine. Lucas is deftly choreographing this color-play/form-play.

The reverse, and we see Lucas employing relative motion, he increases the angle away from a centerpoint crossing this view with the previous: shows the Blockade Runner (named from British exploits on the high seas and colonial powers willing to risk life and limb to defy them) emerge from the space the Star Destroyer inhabits. And as they pull apart visually, we see both how different they are (the Runner is curvolinear to the straight lines of the Destroyer) and how similar (they both have sharpened axes at front, splitting them hemispherically and employ mirrored symmetry). Cut inside the Runner and we are now in a primarily monochromatic space, almost all white (in reverse to the blackness of space, Lucas employs optic white, a 'shade' of white rarely seen, and R2 has this pure white coloring as well), with a pair of nearly mirrored golden droids both with circle emblems, sun-star forms, at their midsection, they are yellow that follows text to planet to droid (the nearer is C-3PO) with the half-dome of R2-D2 in place of Tatooine's off center sphere. An animation from spaceships in motion to androids in motion, the first shot of bipeds in Star Wars is not of humans.  Lucas is suggesting we comprehend this conflict only in black and white terms, that all wars appear this extreme yet underneath these surfaces are unseen things that guide war to its conflicts. Lucas utilizes symmetries and color-forms as codes, portals, and passages, devices that create flow between scenes and among groups and forms. The question is meaning. By unifying these passageways of form Lucas is suggesting there is no inherent conflict, the conflict is self-created. Men in gray with white plastic helmets align the walls predicting invasion. To show you the purity of the white, he shows you the complexion of the rebels: they are ruddy.  Soon humanoids dressed in pure white plastic will explode into a corridor that they are best camouflaged against: they belong in here. These are clearly humans in a civil war,  dressed to hide and withdraw from color. This is precisely the same conflict that littered THX (even the helmets help to render the Rebels bald), except Lucas has simplified the conflict's focus and added animated color of energy and covering.  The robots are the only creatures here that have any color (besides the laser blasts that follow), and they have no real relationship to the battle, no one is really aiming at them. Men in gray with curved white helmets take up position along a wall, aiming for a doorway at parallax center. Above them, at an angle, are three light sources (rectangles) that mimic the three paragraphs of text we just saw parading off to a center point, they were below us and since we've panned, now they are above us, he even has the men glance at them while they unconsciously look for the source of the Destroyer's noise. Notice the angles are still crossing per cut, gray flooring has numerous cut-ins that mimic the Destroyer framing that follows. Back in the black of space, again in contrast to the white interior, the Blockade Runner is absorbed into a door underneath the Destroyer.

The Blockade Runner enters the Destroyer's portal and is darkened in shadow. Inside the corridor, we observe the centered door do the opposite, it flares in brilliant light as a prelude to its explosion. This door represents the conflict between two sets of humans that can no longer communicate, they must shoot colored lights at one another or face certain death. There is an absurd reduction the first sequence involves: from the infinite expanse of stars to a single, white doorway.  Lucas litters the film with doors of all shapes and sizes (and closing manners) across the movie, and the wipes he divides the film with behave exactly like them. Stormtroopers repeat this explosion-entrance later in the Death Star's cell-block and while another corridor comes to life with laser-fire exchanges (this time between fake and real stormtroopers), the princess is forced again to lurk in the dark and fight her way out. At one point early in the film, the droids shut a door in Mos Eisley that resembles this exploding one, and Stormtroopers react unexpectedy: "The door's locked, let's move on," yet behind both doors are the Empire's stolen plans. Rather than be a straight-laced adventure film, Lucas is toying with meaning and reaction, the Troopers behave differently per scene, one door is locked and it is blown open, another is locked and it can be ignored. The introduction of Stormtroopers as a naming convention is astute, he blends the English translation of Nazi shock troops then he parades their leader, a Sith Lord named Darth Vader, a German-Dutch wording for dark father. He flips the translation conventions to blend our history and myth and what the words actually mean as if he is cross-fertilizating them. And Lucas's film is unusual in that it is a non-stop dictionary of names, the opposite of THX's randomized labelling, and he reveals their names subtly, despite the audience's craving, Leia says "Darth Vader" one scene after his intro. Jawas are named by Luke's  throw away "..these are the same Jawas that sold us [the droids]." is followed by "...only Imperial Stormtroopers." Lucas knows how to seduce by making the naming use seem real, only used when necessary scenes later. Many things are left unnamed and allow for kids to find out their real names in supplemental material, the names of the fighters, TIE, X-wing and Y-wing are never spoken (or alternate names are never said, Sandpeople are also called Tusken Raiders). And what he gains is an audience's focus on forms instead of names, the shapes, visuals of beings/places/objects, a type of education rooted in how (we as) children access the world, they see (we saw) things before names, before language/labels are taught. This manner is compressed here, but succeeds nonetheless, perhaps exceeds. Star Wars is a futuristic, edupsychallucinational form that extrudes/explores our past. A free-form encyclops: the encrypting eye of knowledge.  After the door is blown, gray (monochrome) smoke fills the corridor's entrance and two mirrored Troopers (aimed like the droids were initially) emerge from the haze, guns blazing. At a standoff point, the droids emerge and walk between their shooting lines, Lucas has them pass through the corridor's center point and evade any laser fire humorously. The establishing frame shows at different points in time, both rebels and Stormtroopers, a deft mirror that the droids cross. They are not part of this gray-monochrome conflict. Also emerging from the gray is an entirely dark biped, Vader, who brings the darkness of outer space, the void, inside. White plastic men under the control of an entirely black leader. Hmmm-hmmm. Vader's entrance shot is deceptively asymmetrical, slightly left of center, like Kubrick's subtle asymmetries, it looks centered but it isn't. As Vader moves inside, he is offered an angle off-center like all shots that follow symmetry, near-symmetry focals (like the Destroyer's initial entrance following the text).

continues