TECHNOLOGY GONE
ROGUE:
The most popular film
franchise to date is Star Wars, as will be evidenced soon by the premier of the
most recent film in George Lucas’ saga. Yet despite the increasing prevalence
of science fiction turning into Science Fact in the present day, it is alarming
to note that many millennials* seem to have forgotten the underlying meaning of
Star Wars. And yes: this is beyond interpretation.
*MicroSoft Word does
not recognize this word.
The Star Wars saga
begins aboard an Imperial Space Ship that has tracked down Princess Leia Organa
en route to the Death Star. The Death Star is a device capable of annihilating
an entire planet. Incidentally, the Death Star gets its name from the fact that
it is a Space Station the SIZE and SHAPE of an entire planet, but devoid of
life save for that which is IMPORTED to it.
Leia Organa, whose
surname derives from the same root word as “organism”, “organ”, and “organic”,
is taken captive by a hooded, wheezing menace by the name of Darth Vader, whose
name means “Dark Father” in what I am told is some language of Nordic Descent
(I could all ways check online, but I have a tendency to forget any thing that
I did not really have to WORK for, as I’m sure you do as well.). The mechanical
grim reaper, who is faceless and impersonal as he is terrifying, is secretly
her OWN Dark Father, though she cannot know that, and he might yet be unaware,
as is the Audience.
Before she is
abducted, Leia sends two droids (robots, one of whom is an android and the
other of whom is a beeping trash can) to deliver a message to whoever might
hear it. They escape the vessel, breaking off from what is now a machine of
destruction in the same manner as an amoeboid creature breaks off by
phagocytosis**. Vader’s personnel consider following the escape pod, but they
are told to withhold this maneuver by their superiors, because the pod does not
contain life-forms. It DOES, however, unbeknownst to them, contain rogue
technology, which becomes the two most recognizable robot fugitives in
contemporary history, byfar outshining Johnny Five, Rick Deckard, and the
Terminator.
**Word does not
recognize THIS word, either.
The droids
eventually, after wandering for an excruciatingly long time in the deserts of
Tatooine***, find Luke Skywalker, an everyman with a big heart and dreams more
grandiose than his prospects. The farmer turns out to be Leia’s brother, though
he does not recognize her as any thing more than “beautiful” when he views her
video recording. The droids prompt him to find Old Ben Kenobi, a reclusive
sensei who is one of a minority of adherents to the ancient religion of the
Jedi. The only other apparent Believer is Darth Vader Himself, who has turned
to the Dark Side of the Force. What unfolds is a dynamic Battle between Good
and Evil in a society that has lost all hope of Freedom, under the oppression
of the Empire, and has thereby turned from its Spiritual Origins and resolved
itself to cynical intellect and groveling before the sheer facts, both of life,
(in the case of Luke’s working class parental units) militarism, (in the case
of the Empire Itself and its adherents) and scientific skepticism (in the case
of Han Solo, a con artist whose rugged, atheistic views are heavily skewed by
his own self-interest and egoism). Obi-Wan becomes the bridge between Luke’s
Ordinary World and the Extraordinary World, and even though the Greater World
proves just as cynical as Luke’s uncle, and a lot more heartless, it becomes
the stage for a dynamic battle between Decency and Indecency that involves
magic and mystery. And laser swords.
***Again, Word fails.
Luke Skywalker
becomes an archetypal Hero because the trilogy follows his studies to become a
Jedi, representing Goodness, and he must CHOOSE whether to remain a Jedi or to
become a Sith, representing the evil Dark Side that his Dark Father chose, a
disciple of his Father’s Way, a product of his Father’s Generation and the Hell
that it created, wherein most people live in Godless ennui and anomie,
unknowing that they are being USED by malevolent forces that they are forbidden
by force of habit to believe in.
George Lucas, when
asked by Bill Moyers if he was creating a new myth, insisted that he was
telling “an old myth in a new way”. The Taurus director said that mythology was
how we pass down the “meat and potatoes of our society”, a metaphor commonly
applied to the archetype of the Bull. He drew his inspiration from his own
mentor, an Aries by the name of Joseph Campbell, one of the world’s leading
experts on Comparative Mythology, who wrote The
Hero with a Thousand Faces. Drawing on the term “monomyth”, an idea
invented by James Joyce, Campbell theorized that all stories had the same basic
structure, and that in order to retain our Humanity in an age of exceedingly
depersonalizing machinery we would have to apply these archetypal forms in the
realm of Science Fiction.
Unfortunately, the
message was muddled over time. Lucas’ Taurus tendencies became misinterpreted
by the public as “greed”, and that cast doubt on the Spiritual Authenticity of
the trilogy, reducing it to an entertainment franchise.
Yet I do not need to
use statistics to prove that Star Wars remains a player in the Collective
Imagination. Personally, I seldom dream in Star Wars colours, though that
serves to prove that I have little bias more than it disproves my point; in
fact, it demonstrates the clarity with which I can confirm my claim with the
evidence that follows. The story is retold in Ratchet and Clank, an immensely
popular game that recently celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of its release.
Clank is a robot that is produced by a computer defect in a Plant that produces
Warbots**** for Chairman Drek, a megalomaniacal C.E.O. who is building a new
planet “for his people” (really for “cash, and lots of it.” Pardon the
spoiler.) by destroying old ones. Clank, who intercepts an Infobot containing a
formal warning, by Drek, of his plans, escapes his mindless siblings by
commandeering a spaceship. He is shot down by his pursuants on the desert
planet known as Veldin, where a struggling mechanic named Ratchet is trying to
build a spaceship of his own, but discovers that he is missing a “crucial
component”. When Ratchet witnesses the crash, he goes to investigate, finding
Clank and pilfering him. Clank startles Ratchet by announcing his own presence,
offering to help Ratchet in exchange for Ratchet’s help; Clank is able to start
any ship he chooses, and Ratchet’s ship is just what Clank needs in order to
head off Drek, since Drek’s Infobot contains coordinates to a planet that Drek
was intending to threaten shortly prior to (if not during, or even after the
fact of the) invasion. Just as Ratchet is presented with these two robots and
the opportunity to avail themselves of their programming, a sort of modern
equivalent of a “magical property” that “Animal Guides” possessed in ancient
human lore, Clank’s pursuants land on Veldin, and a deal is made as Clank
requested. Throughout the remainder of the game, Ratchet struggles to regard
Clank as an equal and not as merely a means towards an end, owing to Ratchet’s mechanical
eye. Meanwhile, Clank, who is in many ways more “human” than Ratchet (who also
happens to be an anthropomorphic catlike thing called a Lombax*****, though
that remains beside the point) tries to win Ratchet’s heart in saving the Solar
System. Clank, like C3PO and R2D2, (the aforementioned android and trash can
duo from Star Wars) is a machine that is a fluke, serving human purposes
instead of simply carrying out mechanical functions.
And yes: the movie
and the reboot, which molest this touching plot, completely destroy the story
in all its nuance and character development. Though they still weren’t TOO bad;
I guess that the creators decided they could mess it up as much as they wanted
since you can’t beat the original any way.
Dm.A.A.
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