Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the last film in the last Star Wars trilogy, opens in theaters today.
I remember my first Star Wars film as if it were last week. I had never seen such technology on a movie screen. And when Luke destroyed the Death Star, the cheers shook the theater.
We’ve been cheering for the Skywalkers for forty-two years since.
As the Wall Street Journal notes, the Star Wars business has been good business for Disney. The Force Awakens grossed $937 million domestically, the most of any movie in box-office history. Disney’s new streaming service launched with a Star Wars spinoff called The Mandalorian; Disney reported that ten million users signed up a day after the service launched.
An immersive Star Wars-themed attraction called Galaxy’s Edge opened this year at Disney parks in Orlando and Anaheim. The attraction sells $20 Blu-rays, $84 Darth Vader gold rings, $32 Chewbacca kitchen aprons, and $199 lightsabers as well.
“A fundamental experience that everyone has to undergo”
What explains the remarkable generational popularity of the Star Wars franchise?
Dr. Travis Langley is a professor of psychology and lead writer of Star Wars Psychology: Dark Side of the Mind. He explains that Star Wars creator George Lucas “deliberately wove the most successful elements of heroic epics from throughout history into his story.”
Dr. Langley points to Lucas’ use of Joseph Campbell’s work on the “Hero’s Journey,” which Campbell based on Carl Jung’s writings about the power of archetypes and myth.
According to Campbell, the hero takes twelve steps:
- Living in the ordinary world
- Hearing the call to adventure
- Refusing the call
- Meeting with the mentor
- Crossing the threshold to leave the ordinary world
- Testing allies and enemies
- Approaching a challenge
- Facing the ordeal of death or a great fear
- Gaining the reward but facing the risk of losing it again
- Taking the road back to complete…
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