“Star Wars deals with the essential problem: Is the machine going to control humanity, or is the machine going to serve humanity? Darth Vader is a man taken over by a machine, he becomes a machine, and the state itself is a machine. There is no humanity in the state. What runs the world is economics and politics, and they have nothing to do with the spiritual life. So we are left with this void. It’s the job of the artists to create the new myths. Myths come from the artists.” - Joseph Campbell, interviewed by Chris Goodrich, Publisher’s Weekly (1985)
Darth Vader can be included in the same breed as the classic literature characters like Frankenstein and Terminator where the machines have taken over humanity, used as a precautionary of the potential danger if their use got out of control.
Interestingly, one of the main reasons why the first three Star Wars movies were so successful is because George Lucas was heavily inspired by 'Hero Of The Thousand Faces' which was written by Joseph Campbell too.
In the book, it's "an exploration of the common elements found in myths and stories from around the world. It proposes that all hero stories follow a similar pattern and that by understanding this pattern we can better understand ourselves and our place in the world." - Blinkist.com
Back then Lucas said, "If it hadn't been for him, it's possible I would still be trying to write Star Wars."
According to Lucas Seastrom in a 2015 article for starwars.com, George Lucas only met with Joseph Campbell after the release of all the first three Star Wars movies. And the latter have not watched even one of it. So a screening was planned where Joseph Campbell insisted that he watch all three in one go. And apart from the intro quote by him at the start of this article, in an interview with Bill Moyers a few months before Campbell's death, which was also filmed at the Skywalker Ranch, he also said that Star Wars does the cycle (the Hero's Journey cycle) perfectly. That includes the journey that Luke Skywalker took from the 'Ordinary World', which is his home in Tatooine to the start of the 'Special Word' which started from the alien bar scene.
"I think that George Lucas was using standard mythological figures. The old man (Obi-Wan) as the adviser, specifically what he made me think of is the Japanese swordmaster."
And he speaks of the character Darth Vader,
"You see, this thing up here, (points to the head) this consciousness, thinks it’s running the shop. It’s a secondary organ; it’s a secondary organ of a total human being, and it must not put itself in control. It must submit and serve the humanity of the body."
"He isn’t thinking, or living in terms of humanity, he’s living in terms of a system. And this is a threat to our lives; we all face it, we all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now, is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity, or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes?"
So the choice really is for us to make. To bow to the 'Darth Vader' machine system in us or to transcend spiritually and become a 'Jedi'.
What has been going on is purely about milking the franchise dry. Whilst I think George Lucas's intent back then was to tell a great story. Those two things sit on the extreme opposite.
Plus, the recent push to use AI in writing for TV and films by putting aside manpower in the name of 'cost-saving' and 'following the trend' shows that the current breed of people in the industry do not understand what writing is.
‘Embrace it or risk obsolescence’. Doesn't that sound a little bit pushy and arrogant? I always wonder what this rush and haste to machinise everything is. To a point when doubters are looked down upon and demonized for merely questioning and taking precautions further testing everything before applying them to our species and especially to our kids.
Have humans become totally incapable? Machines were supposed to assist us but now we are rolling out the red carpet for them to take over the things that made us human? AI do their stuff based on whatever it is in their AI databases and almost all of it comes from what has already been created. Isn't it taking from it, apart from an act of theft, Kitsch and failed Pastiche? Do you not know what those two words mean? Ask Vader. I mean ChatGPT.
Capitalism and Commercialism have made the seven sins to be mainstreamed and normalized. We all are the living Stormtroopers obeying orders from the system and also wearing the masks (and constantly missing the shots)
"It’s the job of the artists to create the new myths. Myths come from the artists.” - Joseph Campbell
From the artists. Not from the A.I. prompt generator.
And finally,
“We’ve arranged a society on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces.” - Carl Sagan.
