What Makes A Star Wars Story A Star Wars Story?

6) Looking To The Past To Inform The Future

One of the greatest gifts that Star Wars gives us is the theme of looking to the past to inform the future. Closely tied with the element of trans-generational trauma, this element takes that character theme and repeatedly makes a statement about the way in which history repeats itself when we don’t pay close enough attention.

When we look at the franchise as a whole, we can see the ebb and flow of victory and tragedy passing between the Rebel Alliance and The Empire. The Empire is a shape-shifting foe – once called The Sith, then called the Empire, then called the First Order – but is always the manifestation of the Dark Side. Whatever outer form it takes – whoever is pulling the strings and calling the shots – it retains, at its core, the desire for bloodthirsty dictatorship.

The Rebel Alliance repeatedly defeats this enemy, but this enemy is never destroyed. Rather, it’s simply driven underground, where it lies dormant – waiting for its opportunity to rise again, cloaked in its new garb. Each of those opportunities is arguably avoidable in some way, but each successive generation stubbornly fails to learn the lessons of the past – and so the conflict between light and dark continues. We can see now – with a new global threat to our own freedom and liberty – that this ebb and flow of tragedy and victory is actually all too real, and that we must participate in the battle to defeat the darkness, just as the generations before us did so valiantly.

If we foolishly refuse to look to our own past to inform our own future, we should at least learn from Star Wars – because it’s been telling us the uncomfortable, terrible truth about ourselves for over 40 years.