Considering 'Star Wars'
With upcoming release of new 'Star Wars' film, UD experts discuss the original
12:07 p.m., Dec. 14, 2015--As Star Wars fans eagerly await the Dec. 18 release of the series’ seventh installment, The Force Awakens, film critics, science fiction fans and astronomers are among those remembering the original movie and its impact on popular culture.
Here are a few thoughts from the perspective of four individuals associated with the University of Delaware.
Campus Stories
From graduates, faculty
Doctoral hooding
Astronomy
John Gizis, professor of physics and astronomy, who notes that many astronomers loved science fiction films while growing up and were influenced by them in their decision to study space. “Certainly this is true for me,” said Gizis, who now studies stars that are much smaller than the sun and also “brown dwarfs,” a type of failed star that has similarities to both stars and planets.
Q: What did the Star Wars films get surprisingly right in terms of science?
A: The makers of the Star Wars films imagined exotic worlds like Tatooine, a desert planet with two suns; the Fourth Moon of Yavin, a moon covered in jungle; the Forest Moon of Endor; and the ice planet Hoth. Since the original trilogy, astronomers have found evidence of many planets unlike those in our Solar System, including planets with two suns and gas giants whose moons might be inhabitable, and geologists have found evidence that Earth may have once been completely covered in ice. Although we don't actually yet know of any worlds other than the Earth that are habitable, the idea of extraordinarily diverse worlds seems to be right.
Q: What did they get wrong?
A: Obviously, large parts of films are impossible by scientific standards. It's not really possible to travel faster than light, sound can't travel in space, the X-Wing fighters wouldn't bank as if they were planes, giant monsters surely can't live in asteroids, and asteroids aren't actually so close together that they would be hard to dodge. It's not meant to be realistic, so none of that bothers me.
Q: How important is science in the plots?
A: [One] interesting thing about Star Wars is the complete lack of science. In Star Trek, many characters are scientists and engineers, and exploration, the discovery of knowledge and problem solving are important activities. Star Wars is a fantasy. … The science fiction technology is just a veneer, and the story doesn't involve anything or anyone scientific.
Q. How excited are you about the release of the new movie?
A. I am very excited about it, but not as excited as in 1999 when I flew across the country to see The Phantom Menace on opening weekend in the best theatre in Hollywood.
Q. What was is about the first Star Wars movies that got you hooked on space science?
A. I loved the adventure most of all, but the idea of seeing other stars, planets, moons and asteroids really did stick with me. Using a NASA telescope (the K2 Kepler) in space to look at distant stars is not quite as exciting as traveling through space in the Millennium Falcon, but it is still amazing and I’m very luck to be able to work as an astronomer.
Q. What new space adventures await the world in the next year or two? Any Snowtroopers or Wookiees out there?
A. I'm hoping to discover some new planets but they'd probably be too cold for people to live on. It's very possible that in the next year NASA will announce the most Earth-like planet yet, a world warm enough to have liquid water, but I think it'd still be many years until we know if anyone or anything actually lives on it.
Science fiction
Siobhan Carroll, associate professor of English who teaches courses in science fiction and who has fond memories of taking part in playground games that featured lightsabers and Jedi knights.
Q: Do you discuss Star Wars in your classes?
A: Definitely. Star Wars and Star Trek are the two big franchises that have shaped most people’s views today of science fiction. In class, we talk about the impact of Star Wars and the way in which it set the tone for other space operas. And we talk about the way in which George Lucas used The Hero with a Thousand Faces [Joseph Campbell’s 1949 book about mythology] as a model for the transcendent hero in his story.
Q: Have all your students seen the films?
A: Not the original. It’s very easy for people who saw it in the ’70s to forget that most students today haven’t been able to see it; the original hasn’t been available. When I’ve taught it in my classes, I’ve shown it on VHS tape. It remains very entertaining and also innocent. While you’re watching it, you’re in its own world—a world of good and evil and people having adventures.
Q: But will today’s students go to see The Force Awakens?
A: My students are curious about it, because it’s such a part of popular culture, and I’m sure they’ll see it. But I’m not sure it means as much to them today or that it will have the kind of impact that the original one had at the time. I think this new film is a kind of reboot for the series, a way of redeeming the franchise from the three awful prequels.
Film studies
Thomas Leitch, professor of English specializing in film studies, who turned down a chance to see the original Star Wars when it was released in 1977, telling a friend who wanted to go, “You must be kidding. I can’t believe grownups will want to see this.” He saw it years later when his young son insisted and includes it today when he teaches about special effects.
Q: How has the film influenced the culture?
A: I often think about how people from my generation ask each other, “Where were you when you learned that JFK was killed?” And then, almost 40 years later, we had the 9/11 attacks, and this generation asks where someone was when that happened. But in between, I think the most bonding event might be: When did you first see Star Wars?
Q: What was the impact of the original Star Wars on filmmaking and the culture?
A: I think that Star Wars, more than any other film, put paid to the American Western, which used to be extremely popular. The story that Star Wars told, of adventure and good vs. evil, is the kind of story that once would have been told in the Western genre. But after Star Wars, those stories were told in outer space. The popularity of Star Wars really has very little to do with science fiction. It could have been set anywhere; it just happened to be set in outer space.
Art conservation
Mary Coughlin, who graduated from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation (WUDPAC) with a master’s degree in 2005, was a third-year student intern in the program when she got the chance to work on an iconic Star Wars droid costume that led to a visit to George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch. Today she is an assistant professor of conservation at George Washington University.
Q: How did you happen to work on the costume for C-3PO?
A: I was in my full-year [WUDPAC] internship in objects conservation, working at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and we were in a somewhat quiet period, without a lot of new work coming in. So we took a look at some items that were already in the collection to see if any of them needed conservation work. When we saw C-3PO, which had come to the museum in 1984 after it was used in Return of the Jedi, we realized that it had been made from a material that wasn’t overly stable.
Q: Was it difficult to work on?
A: There were some issues. It had come to us with the dressing instructions that were used by the actor, so we followed them in reverse to take it apart, but it was still harder than we anticipated. The internal support system was difficult to remove, but we managed to do that. Then we looked at the original film, and we realized that some of the color [on the shiny gold C-3PO costume] had changed over the years. We wanted to be very careful to maintain the artistic integrity while doing our conservation work. We ended up talking with the archivist at Lucasfilm, and she invited us out to Skywalker Ranch, where I got to see other pieces that were made in similar ways to C-3PO. It’s a process called vacuum metalizing, which is also used in making trophies, that puts very fragile, thin layers on an object.
Q: How long did the conservation work take?
A: He was in the lab for months, although we worked on other projects during that time, too. It was definitely a fun project and a highlight of my internship. People from other parts of the museum would come down to see him, which didn’t happen with most other things we worked on.
Article by Ann Manser
Photo by Jon Cox