The TV-tropes of the Saga

We've on these boards discussed the qualities of the Saga quite extensively. When thinking about Star Wars in terms of its groundbreaking and artistic properties it perhaps can be helpful to situate it in a larger, more comparative context. Most of us are not professional critics of film, and thus lack the tools, the analytical frameworks, to make the kind of analysis those professionals could, we do have other tools at our disposal. A very accesible one is TV tropes. For those not familiar with it, this wiki lists common storytelling devices in pop culture, both on TV, but on the big screen and in books, comics books and so on as well. Identifying which tropes listed in this wiki that we can recognize in the Saga could help us further our understanding of its uniqueness. Or lack of uniqueness, as some might want to argue.

I'll start with a few off the top of my head:

Red Oni Blue Oni: Colours are important in Star Wars, like in so many other modern myths. I'd peg Anakin as a Red Oni, given how driven he is by his passions - and, of course, he does wind up with a red lightsaber. Padme is a Red Oni in Ep 1, driven by a passionate commitment to her people. Palpatine is also a Red Oni (being a Sith), but his red is more subdued and only comes out in the red accents in the environments around him. Obi-Wan is a Blue Oni, but starts out less than entirely blue, given his impulsive behaviour in Ep 2.

Jedi Truth, and Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy are devices of prominence, present in ANH, of course.

And then, there is the Xanatos Gambit, which Palpatine is the grand master of, it seems, since the entire PT is one long such, but it is also present in ROTJ.

What more tropes can we come up with? There must be legions...

 

Interesting topic.

While there is certainly a level of conveniently bad shooting in Star Wars, the whole escape from the Death Star sequence in ANH is actually a situation where the Storm Troopers have been instructed to let the heroes escape, so they would lead them to the Rebel Base.

Another misconception about the marksmanship of the Stormtroopers comes from the line Ben utters when they discover the smoldering Sand Crawler: "These blast points, too accurate for sand people, only imperial Storm Troopers are so precise." Many people assume he's talking about the Storm Troopers having impeccable marksmanship abilities, but he's actually referring to the areas on the Sandcrawler that were targeted. Sandpeople would have blasted every which way, Storm Troopers knew just where to hit it.

 

Interesting perspective - I've never thought about that. But then, the impression of marksmanship is dimmed by their incapacity to hit anything of significance for the rest of the OT and get beaten by stone-age level teddy-bears

It's, of course, all part of the genre. The heroes are Excetional people and the stormtroopers are Mooks. And frankly, I've seen much worse presentations of the this trope than the one Star Wars manifests, so it doesn't really disturb me at all.

Here's a list of the tropes in Star Wars as spotted by tropers.

 

Yeah, the Death Star escape aside, most of the enemies were extremely bad shots while most of the heroes were above average. I think a while back, someone determined that Leia never missed a shot.

But it is a misconception that the Storm Troopers were bested by the Ewoks. They provided a diversion, but if you pay attention, they are really getting their asses handed to them the whole time, with a few lucky shots in here and there.

I don't mean to be contrary, but there is always another point of view isn't there?

 

No, that's not how it plays out. While the stormtroopers do gain the upper hand after a while, the battle contains several tactical victories by the Ewoks, including pummeling them with big rocks, hitting them with arrow fire (yes, there is actually an arrow sticking out of the stormtrooper armour), using bolas to good effect. Then the battle turns against the Ewoks (which parallells what goes on on DS2 and in space - in all battles, the heroes are confronted with adversity, this is part of the pacing of the movie, of course). And then the battle turns after Chewie takes a hold of that AT-ST, a victory, btw, which is won by Ewoks. Chewie just drives and fires it. Then comes the logs that explodes an AT-ST, the logs that causes an AT-ST to wobble and fall, the two tricks to defeat the biker troopers. One Ewok stands up triumphantly wielding a blaster. These might seem like a few lucky shots to you, but the composition of these shots clearly indicate that the battle is turning against the Empire. Using shots together to present an overall impression is called a montage.

And Leia, of course, is an Action Girl. So is Padme.

 

Padme actually suffers a huge amount of Badass Decay in ROTS. In the rest of Star Wars lore, we're presented with Pregnant Badasses, but Padme becomes a crying, co-dependent wreck in ROTS, in stark, stark contrast to her character in TPM and AOTC. I think it even qualifies as Character Derailment.

 

There's also Rebel troopers that we don't see much of, but who are still around. I think the chapter title is "the Ewoks turn the tide".

 

I see your points. I just think a lot of people make it out like the Ewoks kicked the crap out of the overly inept troopers, but it certainly wasn't like the Ewoks just walked all over them.

 

This is true. Sometimes the discussion on Ewoks get hyperbolic to the extent that it overemphasizes their successes, completely disregarding the tides of battle we are actually presented with. What we actually see on film is a situation of crisis on three fronts, where Luke, the Rebel fleet, and the Ewok army are all hard pressed, and indeed seem to be on the brink of defeat. It's significant that the only rebel side casualty we are presented on from the ground battle is a dead Ewok, a moment that really underscores the significant challenge this tribal culture is confronted with, and the sacrifices it makes, to achieve final victory at the end.

Btw, there's gotta be a trope for that. In Star Wars, we're never quite presented with a It's Been an Honour-moment, but the desperation befalling the rebels at that stage of the story...is it all part of the It's a Trap-trope? Which, btw, was named after this very battle-sequence, of course..

 

Twincest: You should know this already.
Tropes Are Not Bad: George Lucas gave us Luke Skywalker. Gary Stu? Possibly. Awesome? KRIFF YEAH!
Author Appeal: Lucas likes amputation.
Aerith And Bob: Qui-Gon Jinn and Luke.
Badass Normal: Han
Tsundere: Leia
Yandere: Anakin takes it Up To Eleven
Bromantic Foil / Sensitive Guy And Manly Man: Luke and Han (To quote Dean Winchester, "Han's more macho.")
Chekhov's Gun: Han's debt to Jabba
Colour Coded For Your Convenience
Complete Monster: Palpatine. And Tarkin.
Moral Event Horizon: Subverted: Anakin is redeemed in the end.
Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Force, especially the Chosen One prophecy
Death Of The Author: Most fans don't give a kriff what Lucas says.
The Starscream: Vader
Chastity Couple: Hopefully Luke and Leia
Ensemble Darkhorse: Boba Fett and Wedge
Fantastic Racism: Anakin to the Sand People

 

One Man Army: Yoda, Mace Windu, Anakin, Obi-Wan.
Conservation of Ninjitsu: Kicks in HARD for the Geonosis Strike Team
Dark Messiah: Anakin, to the core.
Messianic Archetype: Guess who? Anakin's case is why you want this trope to be paired with The Messiah
Troperiffic: The saga
Ace Pilot: Anakin, Luke, Wedge
Cliffs of Insanity: Utapau sinkholes
Yamato Nadeshiko: Padme and Shmi; possibly Breha Organa
Commander Contrarian: Panaka's entire existence is to fulfill this trope.
Ominous Sanskrit Chanting: Duel of the Fates
Three Faces of Adam: Anakin and Luke start out as the Hunter, they both transition to the Lord. Only Luke becomes the Prophet, in the EU.
Thirty Xanatos Pileup: Some of the Sith's plans had been in motion for centuries, and only undone by Luke's Xanatos Gambit in ROTJ.
Stealth Mentor: "You are unwise to lower your DEFENSES!" *whack* Vader has elements of this. Luke arguably learns more from his own father than Yoda and Obi-Wan combined when it comes to combat.
Wangst: Anakin. AND HOW.
World of Ham / World of Badass: sometimes one or the other
Ho Yay: There's a lot of Obi-Wan/Anakin subtext in the ROTS novel, especially the elevator shaft scene where it describes Obi-Wan staring at Anakin's butt...yeah.
Broken Base: Since 1997

 

The ROTS novel also has some Obi-Wan/Padmé subtext, so...OT3?

 

A million fangirls would have squeed in unison had that been included in the film.

 

COOL THREAD !!

There's a lot of this red-blue dialectic in the saga. Consider the first movie: the classic lightsaber configuration, for example, is red and blue. Some other cool examples: in TESB, the lights from Luke's X-Wing as it leaves Dagobah wash over Yoda's face in red and blue waves, which is later revisited in the duel between Anakin and Dooku in AOTC; and in TPM, Watoo's chance cube has faces composed of red and blue spots ("Blue, the boy. Red, his mother"). Interesting, no?

 

Black Shirts: Anakin, COMPOR (later COMPNOR), the Clone Army
Idiot Ball: Everyone grabs it for the sake of the plot.
Why do Ya Just Shoot Him: This kicks in at the beginning of Obi-Wan vs Grievous. Also at the end of Windu vs Palpatine.
Space is an Ocean: Republic Star Destroyers firing broadsides at Confederate ships, old-school style, above Coruscant.

 

Good catch on the chance cube, I hadn't reflected on that before. Would that imply Anakin being a blue oni in relation to his mother? It think a case can be made for that in TPM: he is fairly level headed, doesn't get rattled easily at all, etc. While Schmi is the more emotional one. A more obvious one is how Anakin's clothes is different from most other Jedi in Ep 2 and 3, clearly symbolizing his slide towards darkness. In AOTC I find them particularly Red Oni-ish, a warm, dark brown colour, reflective of his very passionate and impulsive nature, and makes it stand out clearly against Obi-Wan's classic Blue Oni Jedi robes.

 

Mary Tzu: This is subjective, but Palpatine. No other characters possess even a fraction of his intelligence and he somehow manages to keep three decades worth of schemes running in good order. If Padme or any of the Jedi had a whit of common sense, he would have been sunk. But he needed to win, so every other character needed to be a vehicle, to facilitate his rise. This is where prequels in general start to fall apart, but this is a different discussion entirely.

Narm: So, so, so much. The liberal use of the "Big No" qualifies. Also, when Anakin is bowing to Sidious and he groans "THE FORCE IS S-S-S-STROOONNNNNNNG WITH YOU!!" in that harsh, wavering voice. It sounded like he said the line mid-orgasm (with the obvious Ho Yay, of course). It detracts from the fact that Anakin is selling his soul; it makes the scene funny.

The High Queen / Woman Wearing the Queenly Mask: Mon Mothma, and in the EU, Leia.

Cool Vs Awesome: ROTS was filled with these types of matchups. Obi-Wan and Anakin in their prime. Mace vs Sidious. Obi-Wan vs his opposite number in the CIS, Grievous, etc. The execution may have fallen below this trope, but your mileage may vary.

God Save Us From the Queen (or Emperor): A lot of people were happy to hear about Palpatines' death.

The Caligula: Palpatine is this when he is not the Chessmaster. The man lured Alderaanian survivors to Byss to drain their energy using the Force. Taken up to eleven in Dark Empire, where his A God Am I complex reaches colossal levels. There, he truly is out of his gourd.

A Child Shall Lead Them: Amidala. One wonders why the Naboo place leadership roles on 14 year olds.

Luke Nounverber: Tatooine natives like these names, but it isn't exclusive to them.

 

...and Anakin's pod racer is...*drumroll*...blue!

Btw, Falor, keep'em coming. Reading them with great delight!

 

Those Wacky Nazis: The Empire. The gray uniforms, the stark use of black and white color themes. The emphasis on cutting-edge weapons development programs over conventional arms (the myriad superweapons, etc. vs. a conventional navy). Institutionalized racism and sexism. Hitler Youth-type organizations. The Republic's head is Chancellor

Space Romans: The Empire as well. So many bureaucratic titles are ripped from history books. Not all of them are of Roman origin, but the idea remains. Foreign titles sound cooler. Examples: Imperial Prefects, the Procurator of Justice, Praetors, etc. Sate Pestage is the Grand Vizier. The Republic/Emire has Imperator (later Imperial), Venator, and Lictor-class ships, all of which are Latin words.

Crystal Spires and Togas: Coruscant, upper levels, to the core. The combination of high-level technology plus people donned hooded robes and all sorts of finery drips of this trope.

Used Future: Pretty much everywhere besides the places where the filthy rich live. See: Tatooine.

Flynning: The lightsaber duels.

Four Star Badass: Obi-Wan. Grievous is a mixed bag. He utterly kicks ass at Duro, and the ground portion of Coruscant, but he grabs the idiot ball on Utapau.

Ambadassador: Obi-Wan, Padme (in AOTC)

Ass in Ambassador: Lott Dod. In the EU, Nil Spaar, Borsk Fey'lya, and Nom Anor take this trope to new heights of asshattery.

 

Also add Han Solo and Lando Calrissian (as of ROTJ), and later, Luke and Wedge.

Badass Cape: Darth Vader!

Death Equals Redemption: Also Darth Vader!

 

Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Along with Those Wacky Nazis, the Empire has elements of this. Their Weapons R%D tends to be focused on superweapons, while the rebels and New Republic focus on conventional arms.

 

Space Jews: Watto. Trope Namer, perhaps?

A trope I'm thinking of adding, Tabrising (deliberately throwing a fight out of attachment), describes Luke in ROTJ.

 

Jar Jar Binks has the odd and rather dubious distinction of being a Scrappy, an Alien Scrappy, and an Ethnic Scrappy.

 

Oh god this thread is hilarious. I enjoy Tv tropes a lot, and I noticed they had some character alignment scores for the major players, as well as more general tropes:

Lawful Evil: Darth Vader
Chaotic Good: Anakin
True Neutral: Han Solo, Boba Fett
Proud Warrior Race Guy: Mandalorians
Lawful Stupid: KOTOR era jedi
For the Evulz: Sith
Chewing the Scenery: Ian Mcdiarmid is just there to have fun

 

I dunno, I just watched The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly last week and Watto is a dead ringer for Tuco.