The recent passing of Carrie Fisher reminds us of the power stories have on our collective imagination, and the impact their characters have on our lives.
And they do it best when they capture something familiar.
I saw the first three Star Wars movies in reverse.
Return of The Jedi was released in 1983, so I was at least conscious (not the case for the first two films). But I was still too young for the mild PG rating attached to it. Even assuming I would have been let in the door, I was under firm parental control. And my mother had more sense than to sit through a 2 hours 16 minute film with an attention-deficient primary schooler.
Instead, I saw it a few years later, when I was about nine or ten. A prolific young reader of sci fi and fantasy, my mental world was rich and colourful. In my head, the books I read became a kaleidoscope of impossibly weird creatures and landscapes. Films had to compete with this vivid imagery, and Return of The Jedi succeeded on every level, making real a brilliant world that more than matched my dreams. I was mesmerised.
Three things stuck with me above the rest: Jabba, in his awful rubber obesity; Boba Fett, with his perfect bad-guy armour and cool weapons; and... Princess Leia.
It was a transforming moment. There she was on screen, a vision in crisp white, then golden space bikini… and suddenly girls were a different thing. I liked them. And specifically, I liked her. A cosmic beauty with her sparkling eyes and jaunty hair buns. Carrie Fisher was my first screen crush.
This wasn’t a foregone conclusion. I’d seen other beautiful women on screen. There was a specific reason Fisher’s (and Leia’s) beauty reached me... she was an interstellar girl-next-door. Round faced, brown eyed, classic, friendly.
The long brunette hair is one example of how the look moved me. Minus the buns, the cut wasn't miles away from the girls I saw every day at my local primary school. If had been some other star, with a long flowing mane of Marilyn Munro blonde hair, the spell would have been incomplete. That would have been alien, too far off in the adult world.
Critically, Princess Leia sat between the realms of sexy and familiar, in a universe that I related to. This trifecta achieved, my heart took a small step toward adulthood.
The crush wasn't unique of course. Fisher was a sex symbol of her era, and the poster girl for sci-fi geeks across the world. I was one of thousands. But that didn’t make it any less magic.
The film had another meaningful impact on me, in that Return of The Jedi was my first exposure to the magic behind the movies. I was enthralled by the set and prop techniques used in the films. I vividly remember hours spent poring over plans for the Imperial Walkers, and endlessly re-read a book that detailed the greenscreen effects used to create the speeder bike races on Endor. I was hooked.
I wasn’t the only one there either. The Star Wars trilogy had re-written the rules, powered by Lucas’ vision and the groundbreaking effects of Industrial Light and Magic. Everyone loved it… kids and adults, geek and chic.
“Leia moved me personally, and Star Wars moved the collective imagination, where other characters and films had not.”
Leia moved me personally, and Star Wars moved the collective imagination, where other characters and films had not. And it's worth remembering there were plenty of schlock sci-fis being made in the period. Why was it different?
The great American designer Raymond Loewy (creator of the Lucky Strike packet) had a theory called MAYA: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. In short, it says that we like things that are different, but not too different. If a product is known, it should embed an unexpected twist… conversely, if a product is new, it should embed something familiar.
The approach is widely used across the creative spectrum. Loewy used it to create cigarette packets and trains, but it's also present in great film and TV. Nicole Clemens, the director of series development at FX Channel, said of their hit show Sons of Anarchy “you think it’s this super-über-macho motorcycle show, but it’s also a soap with handsome guys, and the plot is basically Hamlet”.
Star Wars trod this path with perfect balance. The universes were brand new, the visual effects like nothing before them... but the plot was space opera, the characters classic templates of good against evil. This combination of visual freshness with familiar themes was a feast. We left cinemas inspired and satisfied.
Like the passings of Bowie, Prince and Michael, Carrie Fisher's death reminds us of the uplifting power of art to create shared stories.
Great films open an outward panorama in the mind... the equivalent of looking out a plane window at a majestic view. For me, that external vision fires up a powerful creative impulse. A desire to craft, shape, and build things that exist outside my envelope... things that will live on beyond me, that will speak to others.
Shared stories form the touchstone of each age, carrying a payload of universal truths from one to the next, made new each time.
Familiarity helps us connect with those stories. Simple tales of love and adventure, the triumph of plucky good guys over the powers that be, ring true in every era. They bind us closer together as a collective.
Shared stories also spark transitions in individual lives. From her galaxy far far away, to young boy half a world away, Leia did just that.