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I wrote last week on Revenge of the Sith, and how it benefited from the ambiguity between the "good" side and the bad. As Padme said, "[what if] the Republic has become the very evil we have been fighting to destroy?" @SubstantialFrivolity responded that, despite its flaws, Revenge of the Sith was the best of the Star Wars movies due to this complexity, and mildly criticized the original Star Wars for being a derivative "hero's journey".
Since I first watched Star Wars at age 7 (just before the abominable Special Editions came out, in its unadulterated form) it has been my favorite movie.
It is not a derivative "hero's journey". It is a distilled "hero's journey". A restless youth is trapped in a backwater. One day he seizes the opportunity to do something greater, and is suddenly thrust into confrontations of galactic import. He rescues a literal princess, with the help of a ragtag band of comrades. And while he doesn't "get the girl", that is not actually a critical component of a hero's story: rather what distinguishes the Journey is the acceptance and subsequential overcoming of an offered challenge.
A key part of a hero's journey is that the morality of the conquest is never in doubt. In Star Wars, evil is evil and good is good. From the first moment of the movie, where a gigantic, sharp, wedge shaped ship fires on a smaller, fleeing vessel; to the black, masked villain stepping into the pristine white interior; to the almost flippant destruction of an entire planet, the Evil Empire is clearly evil. The princess is being held captive, and it is a moral imperative to rescue her. The Death Star is threatening to kill all the characters we have met throughout the movie, and it is obviously a moral good to destroy it.
It is a common modern trope for a Hero to self-doubt and self-incriminate following the successful completion of the quest. (We see this writ large in our society's embarrassment over "colonialization"; which, at the time, was a manifestation of an "ascendent" society). Yet Star Wars had such clear Heroes and Villains that it carried through three sequels unexamined. It wasn't until the second movie of the sequel Trilogy that this narrative began to be subverted (and explains the audience backlash against The Last Jedi).
In short, Star Wars is pure. It is purified in its distillation of the Hero's Journey. It is pure in its depiction of Good and Evil. It is pure in its innocence. From the humble beginnings on a desert planet to the triumphant return of the motif in the Throne Room, Star Wars perfectly embodies something elemental and essential, untainted by cynicism or doubt.
The self-doubt in Empire Strikes Back and The Last Jedi always felt really weird to me. Like, Luke is never actually tempted by the dark side. There is nothing the dark side ever has to offer him that he wants, he never struggles with his darker tendencies. It's just people warning him "Darth Vader used to be on our side, then he turned evil, and you remind me of him". There's never actually any reason for him to turn, and never any threat that the audience could take seriously of it happening, even without plot armor. Even if he did obey the Emperor and strike down Darth Vader in anger, there's no plausible reason he would switch sides, he'd just strike down the Emperor too.
I think it's mostly just there to make it more cathartic when he does it the other way around and converts Darth Vader. But it's still weird how everyone in universe takes it so seriously.
First there’s the Dagobah cave. It’s the payoff for a scene where Yoda explains the Dark Side: it’s the quick and easy route to power, and it’s born of haste and emotion. We immediately get a demonstration as Luke encounters a vision of Vader. He lashes out in response to fear. Since this isn’t the Jedi way, he harms only himself.
The first real temptation is Vader’s trap. Should Luke keep training or rush to the rescue? He takes the bait because he’s still not a Jedi. It’s not enough to want the right thing. You can’t be ruled by fear and anger.
Then we get the payoff. “Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son.” How’s that for a recruitment pitch? The offer of power is universal. The offer of belonging is personalized to Luke, who spent his youth dreaming of a destiny in the stars. Vader holds all the cards. We’ve seen Luke give in to his feelings before. That makes it all the sweeter when he defies Vader.
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