Epics Are Not Supposed to Be Real

A long time ago, in this galaxy, I reread Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire Star Wars trilogy, which were really the first post-Return of the Jedi novels that were (until 2012) considered canon.  They were still great stories, but I did feel that much of it lacked the opera part of a space opera.  And by that I mean the epic twists:  I am your father.  Leia is your sister!  You know, that sort of thing.  But at the end it did have a clone of Luke Skywalker, so that was pretty neat.

When I watched The Last Jedi I felt somewhat the same about it.  This was more to do with Rian Johnson's trolling the audience than anything.  Rey's parents are...nobody!  The Rebellion is...a handful of people in one old ship!  Snoke is...who cares, he's dead already?!  The scummy thief betrays them...and remains a scummy thief!  Luke Skywalker is dead for...reasons!

Some people hailed this as genius because it's more "real."  But the simple fact is that epic stories do not have to be real, nor should they be.  For proof we can go all the way back to the first recorded stories.  Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are anything but real.  Unless you think there really were gods throwing down thunderbolts and turning into swans to fuck maidens or whatever.  Gilgamesh, King Arthur, and even the Bible are not especially "real" though the latter many would disagree with because talking snakes and people turning to salt and so forth isn't like the stuff in those ancient Greek stories at all.  (Uh-huh.)

All of those stories feature magic and monsters and bunch of shit that isn't real at all.  And yet people don't give a shit about that.  In fact, the reason those stories have endured so long might just be because they aren't real in the slightest.  The magic and monsters and such stuff give it a grandeur that makes it...epic.  And epics remain in our consciousness for centuries because they're so big.

Or think of it another way:  who are the people we remember in history?  It's not the baker or the butcher or the accountant who lives a nice, normal life with a wife/husband and two kids and a dog and all that shit.  It's the people who did something big, both positive and negative.  The presidents are remembered, the bureaucrats are not.  The generals are remembered, the privates are not--most of the time.  The tycoon is remembered, not the middle manager.

If A New Hope had taken place entirely on Tatooine, it might have been an OK movie, but not one people remembered for the next 40 years.  Instead it starts out with a big ship stretching across the screen, firing on a littler ship.  And then a big dude all in black armor coming out of the smoke.  And then we go to the surface of a planet that's pretty much all desert with a big-ass Sandcrawler driving around, piloted by tiny aliens.  And swords that aren't just swords--they're made of lasers!  And what could be bigger than the Death Star?  A space station the size of a moon that blows up whole planets!

And people loved it.  Not because it was "real" but the opposite.  It was so big and bold that it was almost pure fantasy, which also meant pure escapism.  Then Empire kicked it up a notch with giant robot camels!  A bad guy ship like three times bigger than the ships in the last movie!  And the operatic twist that not only is Vader a big dude in black armor--he's our hero's father!  And then Return of the Jedi and Force Awakens tried to pretty much ape that formula.  And the prequels...well, I guess they tried.

The point being that Star Wars is definitely not about realism.  Even Rogue One, the grittiest Star Wars movie to date, was not all that real.  And what was the best part?  When Vader stomps into the frigate with his laser sword and uses the Force to throw people like rag dolls and choke them to death. Epic!

If you think about what books from this era could live on like The Iliad or Odyssey what would you choose?  Harry Potter?  Lord of the Rings?  Something by Stephen King?  None of those really scream realism either.  And the way things are going I think it's more likely that the Star Wars movies would last as our epic tale.  Only instead of gods we have Jedi and Sith and instead of monsters we have aliens, AT-ATs, and the Death Star.

I think future writers would do well to remember that like any great epic, Star Wars is not supposed to be "real."  Save the grit for the next shitty Ridley Scott sequel/prequel.

And to a lesser degree this can apply to Star Trek.  It doesn't have the operatic touches but still it's about big ships in a big galaxy full of aliens and sometimes even what seems like magic.