Back To Where It All Began
I n reference to John Ford’s films and his fascination with family dynamics, Fordian scholar Walter Hill once remarked that “Family is the protection against the world”. This is also a sentiment that echoes throughout the saga and Star Wars.
At the end of The Rise of Skywalker, the battle is won, the celebrations are done, and Rey makes her pilgrimage to the Lars homestead on Tatooine with her first friend in the story, BB-8. She takes a look around the old moisture farm before burying the Skywalker sabers. Some wonder if she shouldn’t have visited Naboo instead, but while Naboo is the first planet visited in the saga, and Padme’s home, it’s not where the Skywalker family originated. In Episode I, when the heroes travel to Tatoonie, it’s only then that we meet Anakin and his mother, Shmi.
And considering that Palpatine was (supposedly) from Naboo as well, it would be counter-intuitive to go there considering her refusal to accept the Palpatine legacy, and the fact that she’s been following in the Skywalker footsteps since TFA. We don’t know much about Shmi’s backstory, but Anakin’s birth is apparently the will of the Force. He leaves with Qui-Gon & we don’t see his mother again until she dies tragically in her son’s arms years later, but she had married into the Lars family and begun living at the homestead. After the rise of Vader and death of Padme, the Skywalker twins are separated. Luke is obviously taken to the homestead and is brought up by his uncle Owen and aunt Beru, with Obi-Wan Kenobi watching on from a distance.
John Ford’s The Searchers is one of the chief inspirations behind the Lars’ Homestead and Tatooine itself. Both dwellings are isolated in the desert, both come under attack and are burnt out in the course of their respective stories. Even in the middle chapter of the PT, Shmi’s capture at the hands of the Tusken raiders is similar to Debbie Edwards in Ford’s film being kidnapped and then violently rescued by the bigoted Ethan, just as Anakin tries with Shmi. The former scalps, the latter beheads.
It’s a harsh, nasty, not-so-heroic tale, and ends with Ethan delivering the child back to her real home. As the family take her inside, a lonely Ethan walks away into the desert and the door slams behind him, while Anakin returns his mother and they bury her near the homestead.
People always reference pulp serials like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon as inspirations for Star Wars, but without Ford, the franchises either wouldn’t exist or would be a much lesser affair. His influence on filmmakers across the globe can’t be understated; even Kurosawa adored his movies. The same Kurosawa whose work also casts an enourmous shadow over Star Wars.
A 15-year-old Steven Spielberg once met Ford in his office. Ford made him study paintings of the horizon around the room. “When you’re able to appreciate why it goes at the top or bottom, you might make it as a pretty good picture maker some day. Now get out!” he snapped. Spielberg, like George Lucas, was a big Ford fan, and both would have been influences on directors like JJ Abrams; so the cinematic DNA of the great Western director has been in Star Wars from the first film in the saga in 1977 to the last in 2019.
But Ford didn’t invent the long shot, and he himself was following in the footsteps of those who came before, too, so his influence doesn’t just revolve around aesthetics. One of the things that Ford quietly added to his films was a sort of folksy ritualism. While American, he embraced his Irish heritage, and included language, tradition, song and dance ‘between the lines’ of a script to bring some extra humanity and life to the characters. And as an Irish American, a recurrent aspect of his culture is the act of going ‘home’ to where the family originated. For John Ford (real surname Feeney), one such “homestead” was a tiny cottage in Galway. He once visited in 1921 while traveling alone through Europe.
The ‘Feeney’ homestead was humble, and much of his experiences as someone returning home i.e. the conflict, the contradictions, the old-fashioned ways clashing with the new were captured in his love letter to (a highly romanticised/parodised) 1920s Ireland, The Quiet Man. But why would anyone — no matter their background — feel the need to go ‘home’? Is it to make sure the past doesn’t, in fact, die? As a mark of respect for those who came before so their hardships won’t be forgotten? To understand fully where you belong and fit in the grand scheme of things?
There is a motif in Young Mr. Lincoln for his first love, Ann Rutledge. It plays when Lincoln visits her grave to change the flowers. Ford often uses it, including 23 years later in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance when Hallie visits Tom Doniphon’s burnt-out homestead while attending his funeral. This is the type of poetry that is woven into much of his work, and, by extension, American cinema. Taking the quirks, flaws, habits, and customs that make us human, that don’t always necessarily appear on screen, and emphasizing them again and again.
In Gladiator, Juba buries the figurines of Maximus’ wife and child around the spot where he died in the Colosseum, no doubt feeling that it was the least he could do as he said goodbye to a friend, informing him that they’d meet again, but “Not yet”. Rey’s bond with the Skywalkers obviously goes beyond friendship and becomes familial as they effectively took her in, trained her, and protected her from the darkness as best they could, even at the cost of their own lives.
One of the points to remember about the ST is that the main characters know the stories of the previous generations. People like Rey and Finn are ‘fans’ of Luke, Han, and Leia, and know a lot the folklore, stories, adventures, etc. They’d know that Tatoonie is the closest thing to an ancestral home that the Skywalkers have. It’s where Anakin was born, and where Luke grew up. It’s where the remains of the matriarch of the whole family reside, and where the Lars clan are also buried. It’s the closet thing to a family plot. And while, chronologically, The Phantom Menace comes first, to preserve the Vader reveal and much of the story afterwards, A New Hope is often seen as the true first film in the saga, beginning as it does over Tatooine itself with Leia sending a message that her own brother intercepts.
Decades filled with highs and lows follow, before Rey arrives from her own desert planet of Jakku. Like Shmi, she too was at the beck and call of a master, and then, drawn to the saber — practically a family heirloom — her life become intertwined with the Skywalkers before the last in the bloodline saves her. And just as Anakin was given life by the Force, Ben Solo channels it to bring her back before he himself disappears. In this moment, Rey effectively dies a Palpatine and is reborn a Skywalker; while the family that partly came from the Force returns to it. Supposedly given the name ‘Rey’ by her slain parents, and carrying the surname ‘Skywalker’ to honour her found family, she now protects the memory of both in return.
When she completes her pilgrimage to the old homestead, ritualistically buries the sabers in the plot, pays her respects to generations past, and then turns and walks away to greet new suns and her own future, we get a fittingly human, Fordian, and Star Warsian end to one of America’s greatest film sagas.
Again, the focus in the Skywalker saga is specifically upon the relationship between young people and their mentors/parental figures. This holy trinity of the franchise begins with the father, Anakin, in the prequels, and then continues with the son, Luke, in the originals, before finishing up with the spiritual Skywalker, Rey, in the sequels; with each being shaped by their journey in becoming a Jedi and their bonds (or lack thereof at times) with those around them.
Anakin Skywalker misses his mother, Shmi, when he is taken away to Coruscant to face the Jedi council to see whether he really is the ‘Chosen One’ of the ancient prophecy. He like many younglings before him is now alone and separated from his family, but takes comfort in the fact that Qui-Gonn Jinn is there with him; the aging knight becoming something of a surrogate father to him. But disaster strikes, and Jinn is killed in battle by Darth Maul, leaving Anakin in the hands of the younger Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi, to mentor. The council is reluctant to train an older child who has developed such a strong attachment to a parent that he now has to leave behind, yet they bend their own rules to allow him into the club. But Anakin can’t ‘let go’, and his thoughts still linger on his mother as the years roll by.
When Shmi later dies in his arms, he is enraged and massacres a village of Tusken Raiders, realizing in that moment that things can never be the same again. He now wants power over life and death itself, and a lot his feelings towards his mother are then projected onto Padme Amidala. Possessive of her, he endeavours to learn a new special power to stop her from dying. She, however, tells him that all she wanted was his love; but, as Anakin replies, love won’t save them.
As Dave Filoni has pointed out, what Anakin really needed growing up was a protective father figure he could confide in like Qui-Gon, but having lost him and only finding a brother in Obi-Wan and not much support in the Jedi, he struggles to cope with loss, is unable to let go, is unprotected from and manipulated by Palpatine, and falls to the dark. He loses both a foster and blood parent, and pushes everyone else away in the end before becoming Darth Vader; spending twenty years hunting down what’s left of the Jedi without a second thought.
But unbeknownst to him, his children Luke and Leia are taken away and brought up by two different sets of foster parents who treat them as their own. Soo much of what’s good in the twins comes from uncle Owen and aunt Beru, as well Bail and Breha Organa. But both sets of foster parents are quickly killed off in A New Hope and are barely mentioned again. Their contribution to the fate of the Skywalkers and the galaxy is vital, yet little to no time is spared to mourn or celebrate them. Alderaan is blown up, and we don’t even see whether Luke bothers to bury Owen and Beru as he leaves the desert planet of Tatooine to finally begin the adventure he’d always craved.
When Luke finds out that Vader is, indeed, his father, he becomes strangely obsessed with him, and immediately starts to consider turning to the dark side. It’s the same when Vader later threatens to turn his sister Leia, it triggers him into a frenzy. It’s interesting that, in this story of mentors, families and parental figures, that Luke never seeks revenge for what happened to Owen and Beru, nor even brings up his uncle when this stranger, Vader, tries to claim him as his own, despite the fact that the former is the closet thing Luke had to a father growing up.
But when Luke confronts him in Return of the Jedi, it re-orients his view of himself. Anakin is now the father figure, and senses his son’s need when he reaches out to him. If there was a feeling Anakin could relate to, it was certainly that one. He subsequently throws Palpatine into the reactor shaft, saving his son and daughter, before passing away himself. Thus, in the original trilogy, we can see that blood family is viewed as something powerful, and is emphasized over the found variety, which feels more throwaway.
But when we get to The Force Awakens, something interesting occurs. We meet someone whose story goes in the opposite direction of Luke’s. Rey, unlike him, refuses to leave her desert planet as she is obsessed with her real parents. Deep down, she also wants to go on a hundred adventures, but again, unlike Luke, doesn’t allow the absence of her family to justify escaping Jakku. Her inability to let go of her blood family follows her throughout the trilogy, even as the Skywalkers are clearly being offered as surrogates via Anakin’s saber, through Luke and Leia’s guidance, and even by way of her dyad with Ben Solo.
When she learns of her parents sacrifice, and of her connection to Palpatine, it sends her into a tailspin; but when she finally understands and accepts that they’re gone, she goes to Exegol to exact justice and not vengeance upon her grandfather. In their battle against the Emperor, the endings of both Revenge of the Sith and Return of the Jedi are recontextualized. Ben Solo keeps his promise and finishes what his grandfather started. Rey, meanwhile, does the opposite to Luke in the throne room in Return of the Jedi, siding with her surrogate family against her own blood in order to do what’s right, and brings balance to the Force as Anakin Skywalker once did.
Therefore it’s fitting that she goes back to the Lars’ homestead at the end, as it’s the former abode of Luke’s foster parents; where they brought him up, and where they perished unceremoniously decades before. Indeed, when Luke and Leia appear hovering above the sand, there’s something of uncle Owen and aunt Beru there. Bail and Breha, too. Maybe even Qui-Gon. And as Rey buries the sabers of Leia and Luke (and Anakin) not far from even Shmi’s grave, there is also a sense of the foster families of years past finally being honoured and properly laid to rest.
And while it may have started with a kid running away from the homestead and the idea of a foster family, it ends with a kid visiting the homestead and embracing said idea, with the trilogy still acknowledging the sacrifice of Rey and Ben Solo’s real parents in their respective arcs. So instead of a repudiation, the OT and ST actually compliment each other; and if Episodes I-VI were about the importance of selfless attachment to one another, of family, then Episodes VI-IX form their own mini saga within the nine film epic that defines what family actually means, or what it can mean to different individuals. Sometimes, it’s about blood, but other times, the bond can be stronger than blood. Again, family is the thing that protects you against the world.
