How Epic is Star Wars?
Although Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens has mostly received positive reviews, critics have noted a lack of creativity in the new film, which draws heavily on material from the original Star Wars trilogy (Episodes IV, V, and VI). In his review for The Atlantic, Christopher Orr described the movie as “less sequel than remix, a loving mashup of familiar scenes, characters, themes, and dialogue.”
But Joseph A. Howley, Assistant Professor of Classics at Columbia University, has defended The Force Awakens as an innovative work along the model of the Aeneid. He calls the new Star Wars movie a “classical epic,” and argues that it stands in the same relation to the original trilogy as Virgil’s poem does to the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Howley’s analogy between the Star Wars movie franchise and the classical epic tradition raises several questions. What in particular defines a “classical epic,” and how might The Force Awakens or the other Star Wars films fit into this category? And what exactly is the Aeneid’s relationship with its Homeric precedents, and is the new Star Wars movie really responding to the earlier movies in a similar way? Answering these questions is less straightforward than Howley would have us believe.
The term “epic” derives from the Greek epos, which is an unmarked expression meaning “word” or “speech” in the Homeric poems themselves. Later the Greeks used the plural epea or the related term epopoiia to describe long narrative poetry that was composed in dactylic hexameter. Aristotle identifies Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as exemplars of this epic genre (Poetics 1459a-1461b).
Beyond early Greek poetry, however, epic is notoriously difficult to define. Cultures from all over the world and throughout recorded history have produced what scholars call “epics.” These works are highly diverse in content and form. Some come from flexible and anonymous oral traditions, whereas others are fixed literary products, written by a single, identifiable author. Most broadly, epics may be described as lengthy stories of heroes and gods. Both traditional epic and successful literary epic speak to their audiences and readers, bringing pleasure and expressing important shared cultural narratives and values.
In her new book on film and classical epic, Joanna Paul argues that distancing is the salient feature of epic films. Thus she allows for science-fiction epics, and even gives the Star Wars series, which is set “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” as her prime example. In addition to this epic distance, the Star Wars movies do in fact evoke Roman history. Martin M. Winkler has observed how the evil Galactic Empire’s takeover of the Republic recalls the Roman Empire’s replacement of the Roman Republic. In addition, Michael Charles has recently shown that the clone wars and rise of Palpatine in the prequel trilogy (Episodes I, II, and III) paint the picture of a corrupted Republic that parallels the late Roman Republic, in which civil wars and concentration of power led to the rise of Caesar and the establishment of empire.
The Star Wars trilogies — each set of three films conceived as a whole work, with The Force Awakens representing the first part of the promised sequel trilogy — satisfy the broad definitions of ancient epic. Each trilogy tells at significant length the story of its chosen heroes and includes divinity in the form of the mystical Force and the sporadically appearing Jedi ghosts.
The franchise’s tremendous success reflects and confirms its cultural significance, another important aspect of epic. The trilogies, taken together, express key American principles: rejection of fascism and totalitarianism; the resilience and ultimate triumph of the oppressed; the efficacy of religious belief (in the Force); the potential for every individual to achieve greatness; strength in diversity (of species, at least); and, finally, the power of fraternity in tandem with the personal right to the pursuit of happiness and property.
The Star Wars films also articulate the norms and prejudices of the culture that produced and consumes them. These values are easiest to observe and critique in the original trilogy, which mirrors the mores of its time and already seems out of sync with contemporary American society. In A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, every actor is male except for Princess Leia, the token female and feminist, who has a seat at the table only because of her membership in the (white) aristocracy. The apparent power and autonomy of her character are progressively undermined or corrected by her willing acquiescence to the aggressive and at first unwanted sexual advances of pilot and gun-slinger Han Solo. He and Jedi knight Luke Skywalker are the true heroes of these androcentric films, while Leia is relegated to the relatively passive role of helper, at best. (Admittedly, in the third film, Return of the Jedi, Leia takes a slightly more active role and is joined by one other speaking female character, an anonymous Rebel Alliance leader.)
In its gender dynamics and patriarchal ideology, the original Star Wars trilogy is rather like the Homeric epics, especially the Odyssey. As Lillian Doherty has argued, the Odyssey features female characters (such as Penelope) with powerful subjectivities, but their agency is channeled towards the service and welfare of the male hero, Odysseus. Both the ancient and modern epics seduce female audiences with apparently strong and independent female characters who disappoint on careful inspection. Penelope and Leia are both ultimately non-threatening to male audiences.
But Howley’s argument depends on more than the three Star Wars films (the original trilogy, prequel trilogy, and sequel trilogy) themselves being “epic” — it relies on an understanding of the classical epic tradition as a whole. This tradition begins with the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, sometimes called “primary” epic, since they were the first Greek epics to be preserved for posterity and represent paradigms for subsequent classical epics. The Homeric poems as we have them date from sometime between 700 and 520 B.C.E. They are unique artifacts of a long oral tradition; they select and retell episodes from familiar Trojan War myth — Achilles’ wrath and Odysseus’ homecoming — reshaping and expanding them in their own way using an established poetic language and meter.
In the same period, there were additional epics in a similar style circulating orally, which treated the mythical events before, between, and after the Homeric narratives. These poems were eventually written down in single versions and collected together with the Iliad and Odyssey into an Epic Cycle that told the complete story of the Trojan War and its aftermath. But these other cyclic epics — now surviving only in fragments — never achieved the status or success of the Homeric poems, which became the models for later Greek and Roman epic poets.
Classical epics written after the fifth century B.C.E. may be described as “secondary” or “literary” epics because they were self-consciously crafted in reference to the Homeric “primary” epics and the genre that they initiated. Whether in Greek or Latin, they all copy the Homeric verse form, dactylic hexameter, and repeat stock features, like the invocation of the Muse and divine councils. Although they move away from Trojan War myth to tell different stories, many of these “secondary” classical epics return to the structure, themes, character types, and settings of the Homeric poems — and other subsequent epics — even as they innovate them in significant ways (I will return to this later).
In the scheme of classical epic, the original Star Wars trilogy corresponds to the Iliad and Odyssey as “primary” epic. Just as the Homeric epics became the most famous and admired poems in Greek literature and culture, and inspired a robust literary tradition in their wake, the original trilogy remains one of the most widely-known and popular (if not prestigious) creative products in the United States and has spawned two subsequent film epics. In its own tradition, the trilogy is in fact even more “primary” than the Homeric poems because its story is new — invented by George Lucas and his co-writers — rather than traditional (although Lucas employed age-old story patterns, worked within the established science-fiction genre, and was inspired by other film genres, like Westerns, as well as by ancient and modern history).
The subsequent Star Wars epic tradition arguably begins not with the prequel trilogy, but with the Star Wars expanded universe (EU). The EU consists of engagements with the world of Star Wars beyond feature films, in literature, television, computer and video games, comics, and toys. The first “secondary” Star Wars epics may be the continuation novels, such as Timothy Zahn’s Thawn trilogy from the early ’90s. Although books rather than movies, they employ a cultural idiom similar to the original films.
Some of these novels appear in a series and are definitely epic in theme and scope. The groups of novels with unified plots correspond to the model of “secondary” classical epics like the Aeneid, while those that are more episodic or disconnected, such as the X-Wing series, resemble the cyclic epics or Ovid’s Metamorphoses. There are also single novels or short stories, which are comparable to the epyllion (mini-epic) developed in the Hellenistic period (3rd-1st centuries B.C.E.). The esoteric characters, settings, and plots of many Star Wars novels are analogous to Hellenistic epic’s exotic peoples and locales (as in Apollonius’ Argonautica), and obscure myths (as in Callimachus’ epyllion Hecale). Many of the Star Wars epic novels were New York Times Bestsellers.
Not all parts of the expanded universe belong to the epic genre. Instead they treat the mythology of Star Wars in other ways, just as the ancients represented Greek and Roman mythology in a variety of literary and artistic media. As a mimetic experience, Star Wars computer and video games are like Greek tragedy, which often dramatized Trojan War stories. Star Wars comics could be compared to Greek narrative vase painting, although it might be taking it too far to liken Star Wars action figures to Greek mythological sculpture, which was usually public and architectural, rather than made for private play.
The prequel movie trilogy is a “secondary” Star Wars film epic. In its relation to the original Star Wars trilogy, the prequel epic corresponds to the model of Silver Latin classical epic (1st century C.E.). Lucan’s Civil War and Statius’ Thebaid belong to the epic genre, but their aesthetic and affect, as well as story and themes are very different from the Homeric “primary” epics. They are lurid and pessimistic; Lucan’s epic subject is Roman history, while Statius’ epic takes on Theban mythology (rather than Trojan); both works are concerned with bloody civil or familial strife.
The Star Wars prequel trilogy departs from the original trilogy’s epic paradigm in similar ways. The heavy use of computer animation and insipid dialogue give these movies a radically different feel from the originals: they come across as unnaturalistic and even cartoonish. In this epic, Lucas creates a whole new Galactic history — back-story to the originals and more — and his theme, like Lucan’s, is civil war, demise of a republic, and moral corruption. Silver Latin epic has never achieved the popularity of the epics of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid, and, likewise, the prequel trilogy has made less money than the other Star Wars epics and faced significant criticism, although the final film, Revenge of the Sith, received more positive reviews.
Now that I’ve established how the Star Wars films function as a new ‘epic cycle’, the question remains: what is the role in this cycle of the sequel trilogy and its first film, The Force Awakens? This movie represents the beginning of another film epic within the Star Wars tradition, and in this way it is like a “secondary” classical epic. But is The Force Awakens truly comparable to the Aeneid, as Joseph Howley has claimed?
More than any other classical epic, Virgil’s Aeneid stands in an intimate allusive or “intertexual” relation with the Iliad and Odyssey, as well as with Apollonius’ Argonautica. Virgil’s hero, the Trojan prince Aeneas, is a character from the Iliad. In the first half of the epic, he leads Trojan survivors on a sea voyage to Italy that parallels Odysseus’ adventures in the Odyssey. For example, Aeneas is delayed by erotic involvement with the beautiful female Dido, just as Odysseus is detained by the goddesses Circe and Calypso. The Dido episode also draws heavily on Jason’s encounter with the powerful princess Medea in Apollonius’ Argonautica. In the second half of the Aeneid, the Trojans fight a war with the native inhabitants of Latium that echoes the Iliad’s Trojan War narrative.
Yet, despite these many borrowings, Virgil innovates upon his Homeric paradigms, creating a truly new and great work. If the Iliad is an epic of war, and the Odyssey an epic of homecoming, the Aeneid is an epic of foundation and national destiny. Aeneas must resist the temptation of remaining at ruined Troy or searching for another version of his home city; instead, he is obligated to go elsewhere and establish a new Roman civilization. For this mission, Virgil must invent a different kind of hero: Aeneas is, first and foremost, a “dutiful” (pius) colonizer, rather than a wrathful warrior or a wily traveler. Virgil’s narrative is also original in its generic mixing of mythology, history, and panegyric (for his emperor, Augustus — Aeneas’ alter ego).
Like the Aeneid, The Force Awakens obsessively copies its epic model, but it fails to achieve a similar degree of re-invention. Aeneas, although he encounters some similar challenges to his epic predecessors, has a different heroic goal. The new Star Wars heroes, however, seem to be repeating not only the experiences but also the teleology of A New Hope. Rey and Finn reluctantly get caught up in a galactic conflict between rebels and evil empire — the “First Order” — in order to destroy a super weapon; Rey embarks on a mission to find the person she thinks can save the universe from being overrun by the forces of the Dark Side, only to begin to realize that she herself will have to become the Jedi savior. In a mash-up of scenes from A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, estranged father and son confront each other on a narrow bridge in an imperial vessel with devastating outcome. Unlike Virgil, J.J. Abrams and company do not even change the specifics: the desert world of Jakku, and the Resistance base, ships, and many characters as well as the First Order with star destroyers and Nazi-like villains appear to be taken right out of the original trilogy, and the super weapon is yet another Death Star, just bigger.
Abrams also fails to deliver something new with his epic heroes and their antagonists. Rey and Finn are little more than poorly disguised replacements for Luke/Leia Skywalker and Han Solo (who even reappear in propria persona as supporting actors), with very similar characters, abilities, and personal narratives. Dark lord Kylo Ren is a self-concious reboot of Darth Vader, whose pouty anguished persona directly recalls the warped Anakin Skywalker from the prequel film, Revenge of the Sith. Supreme Leader Snoke looks and acts a lot like Senator/Emperor Palpatine, and even appears again via hologram.
The Force Awakens may be like a classical epic, but it is no Aeneid. The next two movies in this sequel trilogy will have to be significantly more creative for this new Star Wars film epic to achieve greatness. Since Rey seems to be Finn’s love interest, perhaps we will see an interracial kiss — Star Wars may finally dare to go in 2017 where Star Trek has gone before almost fifty years ago. I predict other developments along familiar lines: Rey will be trained in the Force by Luke Skywalker, who will turn out to be her father and then sacrifice himself for the cause; she will ultimately convert her cousin, Kylo Ren, from the Dark Side; the Empire/First Order will be destroyed once and for all.
I just hope it’s good.
Rachel Lesser is a Faculty Fellow in Classics at Colby College, with a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on Homeric epic, gender and sexuality in the ancient world, and critical theory.
