Star Wars: Is it History?
Star Wars is a giant movie franchise depicting events happening in a galaxy far away from us. You are probably aware of it. Before they were movies, they were scripts; before that, they were ideas. As the ideas became the evidence, and the screenwriting took on its best form in a flurry of movies, something apocryphal hangs back in the evidence locker in the original scripts.
History was made when George Lucas penned the idea for a mega-movie franchise trilogy of trilogies. But since his last sci-fi movie had little fanfare, investors were mindful the first Star Wars film might not perform as well as, say, Star Trek, which was paralleling the future of science fiction finance. Star Wars came with a 'caution' against investing, and the cast received royalty promises instead of cash. Everything was done on the cheap, and the 1977 opening is another day in Star Wars history as it kicked off a limitless future of movies and spinoffs that half of humanity would watch.
The scripts sit in a basement on shelves in their original binders. Each script, each idea put down on paper, each direction of how a character acts, and every inch of dialogue that gets spoken - all this sitting there in the final edition blue paged scripts. They are history. They are the kindling for a raging bonfire. You can search for Star Wars and endlessly be sent to a part of the web where some people never return. Star Wars is a force to be reckoned with, and it exists.
The scripts tell a different story; a different director would have directed it differently from the same script. And we would have had another "Star Wars" creation as we know it. It'd be very similar to a parallel universe. Alas, it might have failed as a film.
Did Star Wars actually happen? Did it? Was there a violent saga of Altruistic Good Guys versus the Dark Side that occurred long ago? There is no way we can know that these events, or similar actions, have happened in distant galaxies - but then we humans don't even know that aliens exist. And Luke Skywalker would be an alien, despite looking like co-earthling Mark Hamill.
But for all earthlings, Star Wars is a huge empire; it has spawned a religion (the Jedis), divided families, and had a cultural shift in how we think about the universe. Watching Star Wars may be as close to astronomy as the viewer may get. If so, science fiction has a profound influence on stupid people.
Every year ComiCon and other such events hold look-alike contests from people acting as characters in the film. People walk around role-playing with other people dressed in costume. This avoidance of reality is fascinating - we went from some ideas to scripts and then on to the big screen, and now partake in the entertainment! Now we have a delusional multi-generational circus running around playing out characters that came from mere imagination, not a scrap of fact. And this is from a population that wishes to be visited by real aliens when they can't even govern themselves rightly with fellow alien humans within human rights grounds. What legal hope would visiting aliens really have on Earth?
Another director would have made us an entirely different Star Wars from the same script. So the cold, hard scripts - the very code for the movie itself, are the common ancestors to your entertainment. They are indicted in the historical claims that Star Wars is true!
Star Wars did happen; it is a documentary - we have the receipts. We have the scripts. We have the crumpled bar napkins with the first scribbles of what Darth Vader should look like. The movies aren't true documentaries. They are the visual evidence in a film empire that is a documentary. Star Wars is so much bigger than just the movies. It's a hair away from a mental illness. We are a delusional audience.
In fact, due to the time lengths involved, Earth could be sweeping through the detritus from the former empirical time zones. Our planet could see remnants of this intergalactic war in our shooting stars and meteors. The odds are %0.0005991 against such an event happening in a galaxy long ago. But if I convince one stupid person, I'll command the imaginations of millions. George Lucas bet his life on it.
The universe of Star Wars had its Big Bang in the 1970s, and it has grown, evolved, expanded, and been treated with kinder technology, Blu-rayed, spinoffs and cartoons, books, and Lego Millenium Falcons. And it all happened. Again, you cannot deny the proof.
Some ask if it matters if Jesus Christ was a real person. But there is far more evidence believed by a large crowd of beta males that the events they've seen in the Star Wars multi-movie franchise are "truth."
In today's world, we risk knowing truths can turn on us. We know the truth can deteriorate based on the number of believers. It may BE the "truth," - but somehow, that's not good enough for us today. No more peer reviews, no more criticisms, not even SCIENCE gets a foothold in the imagination of truth-seekers. Nothing is needed for a truth to be "true" other than enough people believing in it.
Now I'm speaking over the 70-95% of people who don't even know the recipe for scientific inquiry, the scientific method, and where true hard science inevitably leaves us - standing in the cold limelight of a naked truth alone. We've gone to wars with less information, so I submit that much of the population will adopt a previously untrue truth. Or even downright wrong.
Likewise, in today's climate, a boy can be a girl, and a girl can be a boy. In the face of biological proof, people are willing to die to save the rights of non-biological transgender individuals. And stopping people from dying is the greatest job any human can do, right? Except for abortion, that's an entirely different "truth." And of course, euthanasia is another kind of "truth". And capital punishment is another kind of "truth." Nonsense has become weaponized.
Star Wars is history. It has millions of witnesses, many of whom can quote it directly with an impeccable accent. More than the War in Ukraine, Star Wars has a justified audience who subscribe decidedly to one man's ideas. If a new Star Wars movie came out tomorrow, generations would go and see it, whereas Ukraine has waffled as a watchable war for even war enthusiasts. Vladimir Zelenskyy is Luke Skywalker, and Vladimir Putin is Darth Vader. That is the view from the privileged West. It is the "We love the Underdog" Syndrome.
And there's a ton of information on every moment of each film than there is any information from an asteroid belt that used to be Alderaan or a Death Star. Nothing exists of them.
Star Wars is our history. It is a film about our history. They are an all-white cast with, notably, our gravitational pull. Thank you, Mr. Lucas, for spawning this immense imagination upon us. The Force was with us all along...