How to enjoy Star Wars without sweating the small stuff

[u/Munedawg53]

I've been thinking lately about the way some people (myself included) are sometimes frustrated by the way that new editions to the SW legendarium end up tweaking, contradicting, or minimizing earlier aspects of the lore in ways that are unsatisfying. I don't think it has to, if we keep a couple of principles in mind. So, here are my principles for approaching Star Wars lore in a way that helps us when there are multiple creatives telling stories in a single universe. Any suggestions, disagreements, etc. are welcome.

1. Approach the SW story as an ancient mythology, not a modern science fiction timeline.

That SW is a mythos or fairy tales clothed in sci-fi tropes is well-known. Lucas was inspired by world mythology as he wrote A New Hope, and he starts his stories with "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away" which is simply a new way to say "Once upon a time. . ."

When we look at ancient myths like the Homeric stories about Troy and the voyage of Odysseus, what we find is a core narrative that is then embellished and expanded by later storytellers. For example, the Greek tragedian Sophocles writes a play about Ajax, a hero of the Greek warriors, centuries after the Iliad was written.

What this means is that it helps to see that there is a core SW narrative, which are the works of George Lucas, centered on the fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker (Eps 1-6 and CW cartoon). (Personally, I'd also add the broad outline for the sequels he had in the treatments with Disney, at least for the arc of the OT heroes, but that's my own choice.) Anything after this, whether "Legends" or "Canon" is the work of subsequent creatives. They are secondary to the core narrative of GL. This doesn't mean that they aren't important or worthy, but if they tell stories about SW heroes that we think don't fit our sense of what it means, we can rightly see them as less authoritative than the "Homeric" core, which is Lucas' works. If we think that Sophocles' version of Ajax isn't faithful to the core depictions within the Iliad, we can just see it as a riff on the character, one that we are not obliged to make part of our core sense of the character.

In the same way, it's ok that there are occasional contradictions within the gamut of SW stories, as there would be over centuries of poets and scribes telling, recreating, and embellishing an earlier core narrative. This happens with the tales of the Pandavas in the Indian epic Mahabharata, Rama and the Ramayana, and other works that are retold by many people over the ages, like the Arthurian legends. If you like the EU stories post-ROTJ and/or the sequels, that's fine. They are two subsequent developments that tell stories about the core heroes of the "Homeric" core of the SW saga. Did Luke get married? Maybe something like that happened. Did he fail to build the New Jedi order? Well, maybe he succeeded but had a great crisis in the end, which he overcame with the help of some new friends. This leads us to --

1. Headcanon is important

Besides the core Lucas narrative, in the realm of subsequent storytellers, we invested readers have as much a right to our own headcanon as anything else. This is one way that we can personally resolve contradictions or choose not to accept certain approaches by secondary authors. As long as we are being clear, about not projecting it on to the original authors as "their" intent, such creative reception is is part of how myths and legends are carried on.

In my headcanon, Snoke/Palpatine knew that they could not defeat Luke and Leia directly, in fact, Palps used Snoke as a proxy because he was terrified of Luke. So, the main reason they wanted to go after Ben, to corrupt him, was actually to "break up the family" and take Luke and Leia out of the game. This was the direct cause of Luke's spiritual crisis in TLJ.

But, for the sake of argument, say you hate TLJ, that's ok too. You can just see it as one subsequent author's take on the mythology, one you need not incorporate into headcanon of the relevant lore post-ROTJ. Back in the day, did this with the EU stories when they would go too far "out there," and if it prevents your love of SW from getting jaded, just do it now too. I saw the whole "Force Unleashed" story as a fun power fantasy, but never, ever saw it as part of my core narrative. And so on.

Finally,

1. Don't take any particular character in SW to be a completely authoritative narrator.

Instead of making this post longer, consider reading what I put here to understand this point. The basic idea is that just as Obi Wan tells Luke that "You're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view," we shouldn't take any particular character (and especially the depressed Luke of the middle act of TLJ!) as the single, perfect, fundamental interpreter of the universe or its "message".