Author : Sean Gilbert
Release : 2017-12-24
Genre :
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 477/5 ( reviews)
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Book Synopsis The Myth Awakens by : Sean Gilbert
Download or read book The Myth Awakens written by Sean Gilbert. This book was released on 2017-12-24. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the first STAR WARS trilogy, George Lucas successfully translated the classic hero's journey from ancient myth into the mainstream understanding of modern popular culture. We witness young Luke Skywalker, a humble farm boy, receive a Heaven-sent message with a call to adventure which leads him to a kindly old wizard who gives him a magic sword and takes him beyond the limits of the world as he has always known it. From there he storms a fortress, saves a beautiful princess, travels through the belly of the beast to discover his true nature in a celestial temple, and comes into contact with a spiritual power that allows him to face off against a black knight and destroy a near-indestructible monstrosity capable of devouring entire worlds. It is a story resonant with the classic mythological motifs that Joseph Campbell identified in the first part of his book, THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES. George Lucas followed up on Luke's adventure by outlining the history of Luke's father Anakin Skywalker, the hero fated to doom the galaxy to the evils Luke would later be tasked with undoing. In Anakin we find a more primordial archetype of the hero. His fate is not defined by moral pretext, but rather by a mandate to uncreate the world he is born into and recreate it in his own image. This echoes the second part of THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, where the young hero does not assume the role of the World Redeemer, but instead becomes the pitiless embodiment of the Cosmogonic Cycle. He is the inevitable dissolution of one generation and its ideals as it is being succeeded by the next.So we have two trilogies of films covering the spectrum of classic hero stories and archetypes. This also represents George Lucas' complete contribution to the STAR WARS saga in film. Is there anything left to say? When Lucas sold the franchise to Disney in 2012, it certainly seemed that the core story was over. Even when Disney announced that they were planning a third trilogy of films that would continue the story in EPISODE VII, the question remained as to whether there was anything new that could be introduced to the overall mythology of STAR WARS.In order to address that question, it's worthwhile to analyze the latest addition to the saga as its own story, as a continuation of the original films, and as a return to the mythic themes the movies have always so successfully explored.This book contains a number of theories crafted during the interim between EPISODE VII and EPISODE VIII. This edition has been annotated to score just how poorly I did with those predictions. Considering that EPISODE VIII is largely an indictment of the rampant form of free association that fandom has developed such a fondness for indulging, the new film offers very little vindication for those efforts. Regardless, the apocryphal embellishments we ascribe to the stories we love are themselves a product of the myth-building process and that process is a self-serving sort of creative exercise all its own. The questions are more fun than their answers, as long we aren't overly invested in seeing our personal version of the story represented in someone else's telling. Benchmarking the output of my own creative process against the actual story will require comparing my ideas with information revealed in STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI, so be forewarned that this edition of the book will contain EPISODE VIII spoilers. But for the most part, we'll be talking about EPISODE VII.
