Genre Wars

Last night I watched the latest in the American Film Institute’s Greatest Ever Count-Down shows. It seems like every five minutes we get a new countdown in which the AFI manages to cover the exact same material they did last Oscar season, but repackaged under the title of the New and Best Ever Count-Down. Last night had something do with the 10 Best Movies in 10 Different Genres. The AFI has a very big problem with genre, in that they don’t really know the hallmark characteristics of each genre. So as soon as they started on the Science Fiction genre, I expected trouble. I called #1 correctly—2001: A Space Odyssey—and I also correctly called that the AFI would put a movie on the list that clearly does not belong: Star Wars.
Star Wars is NOT science fiction. It is fantasy. Let me explain why.
The whole space thing tends to throw people off. Just because Star Wars is set in space does not mean it has anything to do with science fiction. For whatever reason, possibly because of truly science fiction movies like 2001, or The Day the Earth Stood Still, or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, we automatically associate space, space ships, and aliens with science fiction. But try for a moment to imagine Star Wars without the space—that may sound like a weird command, but just try it. Ignore the space ships and focus on the characters, the dialogue, the themes, and the costumes. And what do you get? You get Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and King Arthur. Everybody’s wearing cloaks and robes, we’ve got a princess in need of rescue, we’ve got a “wizard,” we’ve got “knights,” and for heaven’s sakes, we’ve got SWORDS. They may be laser swords, but they’re still swords.
The very first words we ever get from Star Wars suggest that it belongs to the fantasy genre: “A long time ago…” Fantasy tends to take place in the past or present, while science fiction tends to take place in the future or present. In such science fiction films like Blade Runner, Terminator, or the Matrix, we get the clear sense of events in the future; we often even get an exact year. Science fiction often takes place in a carefully designed future because it ultimately takes place in our world—that is to say, Earth. Science fiction imagines an alternate or future Earth. Fantasy, on the other hand, imagines a completely alternate world. That world may of course have contact with Earth, as in Chronicles of Narnia. But Star Wars never claims any knowledge of Earth. It imagines a completely different, self-enclosed universe more akin to Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
2001: A Space Odyssey, all of the fine adaptations of Phillip K. Dick stories—Blade Runner, Total Recall, I, Robot—and the Matrix movies deal with the dangers of artificial intelligence. The dangers of computers and A.I. is a hugely prevalent theme in science fiction, and yet in the Star Wars galaxy, R2D2 and C3PO run around providing comic relief instead of paranoia. Star Wars does have armies of droids, and the characters do worry about these droid armies, but they worry about the armies as armies, not as dangerous droids. Whereas Phillip K. Dick would have a field day with the collective hive brain of the Storm Troopers, George Lucas simply used them as effectively faceless henchmen. And while Darth Vader at first does seem like a robot, we learn in a series of big reveals that he is of course human.
The conflict in science fiction often becomes man vs. machine/technology (see Terminator, 2001, Jurassic Park, and even Frankenstein). In Star Wars the central conflict has nothing to do with man vs. technology. It is purely man vs. man. We see the expression of this in the ultimate form of man vs. man combat: the sword fight. Han Solo prefers the modern blaster, but the Jedi respect the sanctity of low-tech, hand-to-hand combat.
As its name tends to imply, science fiction usually includes some discussion of science. Jules Verne, one of the fathers of the genre, had impeccable scientific knowledge in From the Earth to the Moon and 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Other parents like H.G. Wells and Mary Shelley glossed over the science, but Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein at least quotes some well-known scientific names. Michael Crichton always gives you the idea that he has scrupulously researched his scientific issues. Jurassic Park’s science is completely plausible—Crichton just takes it one further step to make it fiction. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan actually did scientific research in addition to writing fiction and had copious knowledge of really hardcore scientific areas.
Star Wars, on the other hand, completely ignores its scientific questions. How can our heroes cover such vast swaths of the galaxy in no time at all, never having to resort to spaceship hibernation? How can our heroes disembark on any planet and breathe comfortably without any adaptive equipment? How do our heroes always manage to speak the same language and understand each other (at least Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy addressed this question)? If they have technology to give Luke a new hand, why can’t the Storm Troopers shoot straight? What, exactly, are “proton torpedoes,” and why will they make the Death Star explode?
And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we have the Force. I’ve heard Harrison Ford describe the Force as “religion’s greatest hits.” Some sci-fi writers like Asimov and Sagan did have a spiritual side and tried to explore the impacts that science and technology have on spirituality (especially in Sagan’s Contact). But most science fiction has done away with religion, replacing God with technology, or in the case of Brave New World, replacing Lord with Ford. Science fiction is a world of cynicism. Science fiction challenges the audience to question—what if the world happened this way? Can I trust technology? What does it mean to be “human?” What place do morals, right and wrong, and good and evil have in this world? Fantasy, on the other hand, is a world of faith. Fantasy challenges the audience to believe—in things like heroism, friendship, unambiguous definitions of good and evil, resurrection, and magic. So you have to ask yourself, how does Star Wars challenge its viewers? Star Wars makes us believe in a mystical thing called the Force that turns ordinary farm boys into heroes and makes us believe that good will always win out over evil.
Fantastic as an idea? That’s your choice. Fantastic as a genre? Definitely.