Opinion: Star Wars: The Last Jedi taps into childlike wonder

STAR Warsisn’t just for children – or just for the middle-aged nerds who grew up with it – but it taps into our childlike wonder, writes lifetime fan Baz McAlister.

GEORGE Lucas insists he made Star Wars for 12-year-olds. With respect to the innovative writer-director, it’s not for him to say.

Star Wars has become more powerful than Lucas could have possibly imagined, and that galactic empire wasn’t built on empty pockets of 12-year-olds alone.

An artist has no control over their art after they put it out into the world, and the cinema queues around the block in 1977 – when Lucas’s first film became a surprise smash hit with all ages – were testament to the fact that it wasn’t just pre-teens who loved this stirring space opera.

Even Jedi knight Luke Skywalker needs setting straight on the issue. Actor Mark Hamill, 66, returned to the role after a three-decade hiatus in the final seconds of 2015’s The Force Awakens, and he will take centre stage in its follow-up, The Last Jedi, to be released on Thursday.

On a publicity blitz for the new film, directed by indie cinema wunderkind Rian Johnson, Hamill and his castmates went on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last week where he asserted: “These movies were made for children.”

“No,” Kimmel countered as the rest of the cast shouted Hamill down. “They’re made for middle-aged nerds now.”

Star Wars isn’t just for children – or just for middle-aged nerds – but it taps into our childlike wonder. It’s engineered to appeal to something pulsating deep within our shared DNA – the heart of our own human story.

Stories like Star Wars are our modern-day mythology. It’s our cultural equivalent of what sagas were to the Vikings, or what Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were to the Ancient Greeks.

In a time when we are short on heroes and bold leaders, we rely on storytellers to invent them for us.

The island of Skellig Michael is the perfect mythical setting for Ahch-To, a planet to which an ageing Luke Skywalker, pictured in with Rey in a scene from The Last Jedi, has fled in exile. Picture: Lucasfilm

Lucas wanted to tell a pulpy Saturday-morning cinematic serial, but he did his homework. A keen student of US academic Joseph Campbell’s 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Lucas understood that every mythic hero went on the same basic journey – the theory of the monomyth.

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won,” Campbell wrote in his book. From Odysseus to Frodo Baggins, from Siegfried to Harry Potter, from Simba to Skywalker, and to Daisy Ridley’s hero-in-waiting Rey (pictured bottom) in the newest Star Wars films, they all follow the same path.

Many westerns, fantasy epics, fairytales and war films adhere to the monomyth – and Star Wars weaves together thematic elements from all those genres. It’s fiction, yes, but it can tell us a lot about who we are, and who we should be.

And the story goes on, with no end in sight. Before he’s even released The Last Jedi into the universe, Johnson was appointed custodian of a new trilogy of films, with carte blanche to take the story where he wishes. The possibilities are endless.

It’s just days now until the new film, and I’m less nervous but more excited than I’ve ever been for a Star Wars release. One of my earliest memories is seeing Star Wars in a small rural Irish cinema in 1978, aged five. I remember getting my first Star Wars action figure, and 40 years later, it’s still with me – one of 1000 that line the walls of my study. They have become talismans on my own hero’s journey, and the morality and messages of Star Wars continue to inform my life.

There are two reasons I’m particularly invested in this latest instalment. As an Irishman, I’m delighted that much of the action will unfold in my homeland. The island of Skellig Michael and Donegal’s Malin Head both double as Ahch-To, a planet to which an ageing Luke Skywalker has fled in exile. Ireland, a beautiful country rich with its own yarns, is a perfect mythical setting.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the final instalment for Carrie Fisher – pictured here as General Leia – who died a year ago. Picture: Lucasfilm

And I’m quietly preparing myself for an emotional real-world sucker-punch: this will be the last time we’ll see Carrie Fisher as Leia. But we can take heart that she and her beloved character will forever have earned a place in this extraordinary story that has captured so many hearts and minds.

Baz McAlister co-hosts a podcast about the secrets and source material of Star Wars at Force Material

Originally published as Opinion: Star Wars: The Last Jedi taps into childlike wonder