Why is it About Star Wars That Makes People So Passionate About It?

[Winter]

This is made as a response to Linkara posing this very question over on Twitter as while I don't know if he's here on the forums it's still a question I found compelled to answer. It's not because Star Wars originally came out at a time when people NEEDED a good lighthearted story about good vs. evil, that played a part but that's not what keeps everyone coming back to it almost 50 years later. It's not because it helped get people to take speculative fiction serious, sure, there's no doubt that Star Wars played a part in that but people don't keep going back to The Godfather because it's a great gangster movie.

It's not because it had a major impact on how stories are told thanks to the Trilogy's unintentionally finding a overall solid Trilogy structure that other films, TV shows, comics, novels and games have attempted to emulate. It's not because it's had a major critical successful story that have been game changers in every media whether it's a novel like the Thrawn Trilogy (which helped revitalized Star Wars' popularity) games like Knights of the Old Republic (which put BioWare on the map in the mainstream) comic series like the X-Wing comics (which is still talked about to this day) or TV with The Clone Wars and the Mandalorian (both of which helped to show how much can be done with Star Wars on the small screen).

No, the reason Star Wars makes people so passionate, the thing that helped it stand the test of time for close to 50 years and will continue to be part of our children, children, CHILDREN lives is this


youtu.be/lg_FoEy8T_A

Like, I don't know. I think this speaks for itself.

[phantom000]

I talked about how a lot of fiction is basically the same story told in different ways and SW told it in a way that, at the time at least, was so different to make it almost unique but its more than a story. Like Tolkien and Roddenberry, Lucas did not just tell audience a compelling story he created an entire setting that is still compelling with imaginative possibilities.

[Beastro]

Lucas did not just tell audience a compelling story he created an entire setting that is still compelling with imaginative possibilities.

He created the appearance of one of which each segment captivated different people.

Some like the Jedi stuff, others like the actually star wars space battle stuff, still others like the county hunter/crime angle. The problem is it has the depth of a puddle and all we keep getting is slices of of same bits in every movie. The work cannot seem to expand beyond what was established in the first film. The Empire Strikes Back tried and succeeded, but then it fell back and never recovered.

[Winter]

Lucas did not just tell audience a compelling story he created an entire setting that is still compelling with imaginative possibilities.

He created the appearance of one of which each segment captivated different people.

Some like the Jedi stuff, others like the actually star wars space battle stuff, still others like the county hunter/crime angle. The problem is it has the depth of a puddle and all we keep getting is slices of of same bits in every movie. The work cannot seem to expand beyond what was established in the first film. The Empire Strikes Back tried and succeeded, but then it fell back and never recovered.

What's funny is that I made this post as a JOKE to the questioned raised. Star Wars is the single most successful series in pop-culture, sure it doesn't always hit the mark but the fact it has one or two landmark stories in EVERY Media is something no other series can boast. Batman and Spider-Man, and by extension DC and Marvel, come close with major hits in film, TV, games and of course comics but how many land mark NOVELS of these stories do you know. That's not to diminish the other medias but rather to show that there is no other series that can claim to have so many great stories in every media that everyone has either heard of or knows of on some level.

Star Trek, great hits in TV and film but not really any games, novels or comics that are as well known as TOS or TNG. Lord of the Rings, Film, Novels and Games but not TV or comics. League of Legends and Pokeman, games and TV but not film, comics or novels.

But the real point of this post, is that people tend to get a little to wrapped up in the hype that it's easy to forget that what makes this series works is just the fact that it can be anything. That's why I added that little bit of Kinect Star Wars "I'm Han Solo". A GLORIOUSLY Cheesy and catchy song from a game most people haven't even played and yet just about everyone knows THIS song.

This is Star Wars in a nutshell, for all the talk about depth, lack there of and if the stories are actually any good in the end what makes Star Wars work is that it can be a series that has a Shakespearean like Tragedy, a galactic opera, a standard fairy tale and a tale of redemption and still just have a silly scene where Han Solo and Lando Calrissian dance to a song named after Han for a dumb game.

Long story short, it's okay to be silly and to except that maybe the answer to the question is a silly one. Star Wars, can be anything.

[Beastro]

Long story short, it's okay to be silly and to except that maybe the answer to the question is a silly one. Star Wars, can be anything.

But that isn't what resonates with people and why a friend of mine to this day keeps writing short stories about himself and those in his life being in Rogue Squadron while others try to make a religion out of Jedi-ism.

It isn't silly to them, it is serious.

To see storytelling as just fun is to fundamentally misunderstand what storytelling is and to see it from the perspective of school boy level philosophizing, as CS Lewis once said of it. Worse is to think stories are only for entertainment rather than to express meaning and value by which we frame and act out our world view. That is the reason why so many cosplay, to embody those figures in the stories they love that they seek to manifest in the world.

Star Wars came along in a period where there was a severe dearth of mythological fantasy and something of a dip in sci-fi if only for some rooted in the genre's mythological roots (which alongside Star Wars, Alien also revived by being a "space Chaoskampf") for most people. That is what people connected with, either the fantasy angle or tapping into the WWII inspiration of the space combat.

Strictly in form can it be anything as it can be twisted to anything from a franchise to a meme, but Star Wars can't seem to expand beyond what was established in the first film.

What has been inspired by Tolkien falls into the same trap. D&D is a good example where it took the superficial elements of the story, namely the dungeon crawling of Moria and races, and threw away most of the rest reducing fantasy to to the simplistic stereotype we keep seeing today. D&D wasn't the first that did this, but it's the largest in recent memory save for what it then inspired.

About the only thing intriguing about D&D has nothing to do with Tolkien and that is its cosmology, alignment system and deities which are an insight into how many moderns conceive of religion and diety-hood.

Seeing only entertainment value in story-telling says a lot of our Modernist mindset and the gaps forming in our culture.

[Winter]

Long story short, it's okay to be silly and to except that maybe the answer to the question is a silly one. Star Wars, can be anything.

But that isn't what resonates with people and why a friend of mine to this day keeps writing short stories about himself and those in his life being in Rogue Squadron while others try to make a religion out of Jedi-ism.

It isn't silly to them, it is serious.

To see storytelling as just fun is to fundamentally misunderstand what storytelling is and to see it from the perspective of school boy level philosophizing, as CS Lewis once said of it. Worse is to think stories are only for entertainment rather than to express meaning and value by which we frame and act out our world view. That is the reason why so many cosplay, to embody those figures in the stories they love that they seek to manifest in the world.

Star Wars came along in a period where there was a severe dearth of mythological fantasy and something of a dip in sci-fi if only for some rooted in the genre's mythological roots (which alongside Star Wars, Alien also revived by being a "space Chaoskampf") for most people. That is what people connected with, either the fantasy angle or tapping into the WWII inspiration of the space combat.

Strictly in form can it be anything as it can be twisted to anything from a franchise to a meme, but Star Wars can't seem to expand beyond what was established in the first film.

What has been inspired by Tolkien falls into the same trap. D&D is a good example where it took the superficial elements of the story, namely the dungeon crawling of Moria and races, and threw away most of the rest reducing fantasy to to the simplistic stereotype we keep seeing today. D&D wasn't the first that did this, but it's the largest in recent memory save for what it then inspired.

About the only thing intriguing about D&D has nothing to do with Tolkien and that is its cosmology, alignment system and deities which are an insight into how many moderns conceive of religion and diety-hood.

Seeing only entertainment value in story-telling says a lot of our Modernist mindset and the gaps forming in our culture.

"Children believe what we tell them. They have complete faith in us. They believe that a rose plucked from a garden can plunge a family into conflict. They believe that the hands of a human beast will smoke when he slays a victim, and that this will cause the beast shame when a young maiden takes up residence in his home. They believe a thousand other simple things. I ask you a little of this childlike simplicity, and, to bring us luck, let me speak four truly magic words, childhood's 'Open Sesame': 'Once Upon a Time...'"-Jean Cocteau in the opening crawl for Beauty and the Beast.

Star Wars: Once Upon a Time, in a Galaxy, Far, Far Away...

[clearspira]

To answer this you would need to answer why people are passionate about any fandom at all. Generally I would say: good memories from childhood of watching it with friends or parents, something that triggered your imagination in a good way, there is a hot guy or woman in it that put you through puberty.
All three applies to the OT for me.

[Frustration]

It shows a battle between good and evil, in which good faces serious obstacles and setbacks, yet triumphs over what seems like the overpowering strength of evil.

In that sense, it offers hope. And as such, people like Star Wars for the same reason they like The Lord of the Rings.

Star Wars also offers visions of strange vistas, limitless novelty, and alien mysteries. The cantina scene from the first film captivated people more than almost anything else in it.

[McAvoy]

Lightsabers. They are awesome.

[stryke]

See I think it's more about the setting than the stories.

In Star Wars you have this universe that felt alive, run down, lived in, and filled with endless potential for other stories. That, especially the catina scene as Frustration mentioned, sparked the imagination of kids to tell their own stories with the action figures, and as they get older leads to all sorts of fanworks, memes, theories, etc. Also as an excuse for so, so many expanded universe books that gave full extensive stories to every single random person to appear on the screen, no matter how minor.

What actually happens in the films is less important than where they take place. It's part of why you'll often see the refrain of not wanting to see Jedi in new Star Wars stuff because people just want to see outlaws in space, as that was the parts those people gravitated to despite it being such a relatively minor element of the films.

DC, Marvel, Lord of the Rings, Trek, Warhammer, and so on, they all have that similar element of that escapist 'I want to be there in my head more than I do here where my actual body happens to be'. That kind of thing creates powerful feelings of not just enjoying as a passive viewer, but ownership and that gets people waaay more invested.

The other factor is at that old adage goes about hate and love not being opposite but one side of the same coin, where the other is indifference. You can't truly hate something, really invested, make it a lifestyle hatedom, without loving it first, and Star Wars has had some really loved and then seriously hated films which sparks very noticables amounts of vocal passion to put it lightly.