Comparison Of Star Wars And The Real World
Throughout this essay I will be giving you the similarities and differences between some of the Star Wars movies against the real world as stated in the title. All of the Star Wars facts will go against historical facts. One example being how Han Solo resembles the Gunfighters of the American West but I will get into that later on. When you hear the name Jar Jar Binks you think of star wars right. Well you are correct to do that but besides being one of the characters in the movie Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace but he is also very similar to the 19th century African American Slaves. 19th century African American Slaves are African Americans that were put to work picking cotton. Now you ask why my mind relates these two things together, well because of the way they were treated and how they dressed them in the movies. Not only did George Lucas do this but he also hired an African American to play Jar Jar voice
As I mentioned before Han Solo quite obviously relates to the Gunfighters of the American West. The gunfighters of the American West are your typical bad boys cowboys who are thieves and killers. Considering that George Lucas probably pitched the entire idea initially as “Space Cowboys,” including a character like Han Solo, the smuggler with a heart of gold, makes sense, since it’s practically a stereotype of Western cinema. Watching A New Hope, it almost looks like Luke and Obi-Wan Kenobi have run directly into a space-age Lone Ranger and Tonto. “A price on his head” is also the rallying cry in many westerns, as are bounty hunters looking for gold from the highest payer. It’s actually quite surprising that they never actually show a poster that says “Wanted: Dead of Alive” with a smirking picture of Harrison Ford, but the inference certainly exists throughout the movies.
The Empire was almost certainly copied from the Nazis as George Lucas was born into a generation that was personally tied to World War II. The Nazis are who were under the leadership of Adolf Hitler 1889-1945, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and ruled Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945. Founded in 1919 as the German Workers’ Party, the group promoted German pride and anti-Semitism, and expressed dissatisfaction with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the 1919 peace settlement that ended World War I 1914-1918 and required Germany to make many fixes. Hitler joined the party the year it was founded and became its leader in 1921. In 1933, he became chancellor of Germany and his Nazi government soon assumed dictatorial powers. After Germany’s defeat in World War II 1939-45, the Nazi Party was banned and many of its top officials were convicted of war crimes related to the murder of some 6 million European Jews during the Nazis reign. If you watch the movies straight through from I-VI, you can also make correlations to different wars and movements within the 19th and 20th centuries. In this particular movie though, the Empire were a bunch of straight-up Nazis; they didn’t even go out of their way to differentiate between the uniform of a Nazi officer and the uniform of an Imperial Officer at all.
George Lucas has an acknowledged love with World War II and history. When special effects workers were trying to get the blueprints of space firefights down, Lucas showed them authentic footage from World War II dogfights, and pretty much told them to copy them. Some of the scenes from the assault on the first Death Star were directly lifted, shot-for-shot, from World War II. Showing how much Star Wars relates to the real world. Probably due to the ensuing Cold War, the fight of the Soviets, and their sacrifice to stop the Nazi movement, was under-reported, and certainly under-celebrated, in the West. However, The Empire Strikes Back offered a rare glimpse into the conditions on the Eastern front of World War II. The Hoth Rebels seem to look exactly like the Russian troops.
Having established Imperial Officers as thinly-veiled Nazis, then the Hoth Rebels fall more quickly into the role of heroic Soviet troops defending the last grounds that they have. Much of the fighting in the Eastern side was done during the winter. Also, the Germans did roll their tanks in the harshest of winter conditions, which was ultimately just plain stupid of them. Proving yet again how much this movie franchise resembles the real world.
My conclusion is that George Lucas is a big copycat. Most of all of his ideas can be related to real World History. One of the most referenced things is WWII. I think he used this as a cheat sheet to make his movies but no complaints here, I am a big star wars fan.
