Richard: Star Wars: A New Hope

George Lucas's “Star Wars: A New Hope” fits Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces.  One main step for completing a journey is the departure.  Campbell discusses this as being a crucial step to the beginning of a journey that any hero must face.  During the departure phase, the hero goes through a series of events that kind of foresee where the hero may end up.  The departure is also where a lot of the hero’s motivation comes from, and they also face some fear during this phase. 

The scenes that most helped Luke on his departure phase were scenes that involved death.  The scene where he and Ben Kenobi go back to his uncle and aunt’s house to find them dead is significant to the departure.  Seeing his family killed by the empire motivates Luke even more to join the rebels. 

Another scene that involved death was when he saw Ben Kenobi get killed by Darth Vader.  This scene greatly impacted him and probably ignited more desire in him to want to defeat the enemies. 

The next scene dealing with death that relates to the departure phase is when some of the fighter pilots on his team were killed.  It gave him extra strength to keep going because he knew it was about something bigger than just himself.  He was also hearing Kenobi’s voice in his head while attempting to defeat the empire. 

Ford’s motivation during his departure stage was that he finally found something to live for, similar to his character in “Hanover Street.”  Han Solo was simply living for money, but he looked at Luke’s life and saw his drive.  He knew that something was worth fighting for, and that is why he came back to help in the last fighting scene of the movie. 

His character basically fit a model of a hero that took a total transformation.  Han Solo did not come off as the type to just lay his life down for anyone but himself.  The text said, “He was convinced that he was not in the running for the Solo role and was merely wasting time paving the way for other actors.  Ironically, it was his crankiness that Ford was beginning to show that increased Lucas’s conviction that he was Han Solo!” (Pfeiffer 69).  This is significant because it brought out that same type of frustration in the actual Han Solo character.  We saw that he was frustrated in life and not doing much to make an impact.  His departure makes him realize that he can take that energy of frustration and use it for good.  It brought the character to life and gave a more profound meaning to his transformation.  The journey for Han Solo and Luke was only the departure phase during this first movie.