Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny released a week ago, and director James Mangold has done plenty of interviews promoting the film (and, of course, he’s talked Star Wars too).
One interview in particular really stood out to me, as he spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the movie, including some spoilers and the ending, so be warned before you read the article. At one point the interviewer, Brian Davids, mentioned his appreciation for stories that show the heroes having ups and downs, and asked why some fans want characters like Indy to be infallible. The question was obviously specifically about Indiana Jones, and Dial of Destiny in particular, but I think it extends far beyond this franchise – especially with Star Wars. We’ve seen a segment of the fanbase revolt against stories that deal with personal struggles, failures, or pain for the main heroes. Why do some fans resist that so much?
Mangold’s answer is, I think, absolutely perfect. Here’s what he said:
Well, there’s a point where these characters become symbols more than characters, and so there becomes this anxiety that if you examine the humanity of a hero, you somehow weaken them. And honestly, I can’t speak for how fans relate and wrestle with these questions in relation to other movies, but certainly in relation to mine, I think your question almost has my answer built into it. I mean, I think you’re in a sense already addressing it. Good drama gives a hero a problem. If a movie is about a beautiful hero who is capable of anything and is virtually indestructible and is without any personal issues or concerns, then you just have a fashion video with action. I am a fan of starting a character in one place to go to another. Movies are a continuum. By definition, in drama, a character starts in one place and ends up in another. So, if people want to be divisive [in the age of social media], they can focus on where a character starts, as opposed to where they end, or they can focus on where they end, as opposed to where they start. In reality, for Harrison who’s playing this character, he’s tracing an arc and he’s changing through the whole picture. So it all depends on where you’re landing and where you’re pointing your finger on that timeline.
Let me point out just three components of Mangold’s answer that I think are worth focusing on.
First, there’s the idea of the character itself. I think Mangold is incredibly perceptive when he summarizes why fans struggle with this kind of portrayal of their heroes: “there’s a point where these characters become symbols more than characters, and so there becomes this anxiety that if you examine the humanity of a hero, you somehow weaken them.” That’s exactly what has happened, and let’s use the most notable Star Wars instance as an example: Luke Skywalker. For the segment of fans who hated Luke’s treatment in The Last Jedi, a great many of the complaints were about how it “ruined my childhood” or how it “wasn’t my Luke”. Which makes sense when we consider that for these fans, they don’t view Luke mainly as a character in a story but as a symbol, including for their own lives. This isn’t a bad thing. These stories are meant to inspire us. And, ironically, that’s the very theme that The Last Jedi plays on, as Luke became such a legend – a symbol – in the galaxy that he believed it too. He stopped thinking of himself as human and started thinking of himself as a symbol. Fans can do the same thing.
Second, there’s the nature of storytelling. Fans aren’t wrong for viewing beloved heroes as symbols, but the problem comes when those same fans try to “analyze” a new story with those heroes (and analyze is probably the wrong word, as that’s not the best approach to consuming movies). Any compelling story will include difficulties. Any true hero will face great challenges, often internal. It is one of the undeniable and unavoidable hallmarks of storytelling, and George Lucas as much as anyone picked up on that hero’s journey concept with Luke Skywalker. So anytime you have a story focus on a hero, in order for that story to have any sort of emotional weight or drama you’re going to need to see that character grow. Mangold speaks to this too: “Good drama gives a hero a problem. If a movie is about a beautiful hero who is capable of anything and is virtually indestructible and is without any personal issues or concerns, then you just have a fashion video with action.” Movies are telling a story, and that requires more than just an infallible hero. If you pull up some exciting action clips on Youtube you’ll be entertained, and you don’t need a plot to keep your attention. But this is where there’s a disconnect with what storytelling is really trying to accomplish, and how movies are to be consumed. If the hero never grows, it almost always makes for a pretty boring story.
Third, there’s the folly of internet discourse. In saying all of this I’m not meaning that everybody has to like every story of growth, or that the decisions a filmmaker arrives at are inherently the right ones. But I am saying that people owe it to those filmmakers to evaluate these decisions by understanding them in the context of storytelling, not symbolic standouts. And a crucial part of that is to understand the entire story that’s being told, something that is the Achilles’ Heel of much of the internet discussion around these heroes. Take Luke again, for example: how much of the talk focuses on the first act of The Last Jedi without interacting with the final act? When I see such analysis, I immediately write it off as disingenuous, symptoms of a social media world that thrives on controversy and negativity. If you’re going to criticize Luke’s character in that movie, you cannot do so unless you take the full arc in view – seeing that where he’s at in the beginning is a far cry from where he’s at by the end. The same is true of Indiana Jones in Dial of Destiny, or Obi-Wan Kenobi in his spinoff series, or any number of other examples. Mangold speaks to this reality too: “So, if people want to be divisive [in the age of social media], they can focus on where a character starts, as opposed to where they end, or they can focus on where they end, as opposed to where they start.” He might as well just be pointing a finger right at a certain segment of the Star Wars online fandom.
Star Wars Thoughts 