Podcast

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Connect Care Commit: Star Wars

Why it might be hard to identify with Luke:
  • We don’t meet him until 16 minutes in! (because his early scenes were deleted.) Then, when we do meet him, he’s whiny and petulant (though James Kennedy disagrees: 1, 2, 3)
Connect
  • The first 16 minutes are all about creating a thoroughly convincing world with its own bizarre logic and a wealth of detail. The grime and focus on economic activity is convincing (Wait, should the first C be Convince?? That’s worth thinking about!)
Care
  • We bristle for him when his uncle tells him, “You can waste time with your friends when your chores are done, now get to it.” We feel for him when he says, “If there’s a bright center on the universe, you’re on the planet it’s farthest from.” We agree with his aunt when she tries to tell his uncle that he should be a fighter pilot and not a farmer. Ultimately, we care the most when he looks off into the distance at the two suns with yearning on his face. That’s really a CCC moment.
Commit
  • In the deleted scenes he was the only one on the planet monitoring the action above (Knowledge of above and below is always likeable), but that’s gone. In what we see, he knows what’s wrong with the red robot. He does a good job taking care of the droids. We admire his wiliness in negotiating with his uncle.
Five Es
  • Eat: Blue milk!
  • Exercise: Not really. He jogs a bit back and forth to the robots.
  • Economic Activity: Tons of it.
  • Enjoy: In the deleted scenes, we got to see him hang out with his friends
  • Emulate: He plays with a toy plane.
Rise above
  • Subconsciously, he knows he's putting his job at risk by removing the inhibitor bolt to see more of the princess. He ditches out on his job to chase after R2, but that’s still just to keep his boss/uncle happy. He doesn’t really rise above his job until everybody’s dead.
High five a black guy
  • Nope
Kind
  • He shows empathy toward the robots.

3 comments:

Friday said...

Never realized that Luke showed up so late in the timeline before. I wonder how much BCI/CCC applies when there's a protagonist switch, such as in Psycho? Or is the audience's investment, once received, transferable without qualification?

Also, hadn't made it back that many years in the blog yet. Absolutely epic analysis by James.

Matt Bird said...

I would say it's definitely not transferable. Whenever there's a protagonist switch, the writer has to start over from scratch. I've always loved how thoroughly we switch in Psycho. When the car goes into the swamp and then bobs out again, we don't think, "Oh good, the bad guy who killed my hero is going to get caught," we think, "Oh no, my new hero may get caught!"

And I forgot to post my response to James: http://www.secretsofstory.com/2014/10/my-response-to-james-kennedy-why-do-we.html

Anonymous said...

Luke played with a toy plane, that's good. I forgot that. That's the easiest way to foreshadow his x-wing piloting later. W