Star Wars: Episode I - The Chosen One/The Hero's Journey

Star Wars: Episode I - The Chosen One is a Star Wars fan fiction novel currently being written by Brandon Rhea. This page overviews in-depth information about how the novel fits into the Hero's Journey as described by Joseph Campbell, as well as how the characters of the novel adhere to the archetypes of such a story structure. This page will be expanded upon as more content from the novel is released and more information can be provided.

The Journey Begins: Michael’s Ordinary World
In Frank Herbert’s Dune, the great desert epic from which I have taken some inspiration for The Chosen One, he says that “A beginning is a very delicate time.” I could not agree more. Beginnings are important in a novel, especially one that I have hyped as much as this one. Some of the hype wasn’t directly of my doing, at least in terms of purposeful hype. The idea of this novel has been met with enthusiasm by a number of people just by virtue of its anticipated scope and the number of rewrites that it has undergone. Given everything that’s been said about it and how long it’s been worked on, it must be good, right? That’s the question, and it’s why I had to be very careful and work very hard in creating the beginning of this story.

The Hero’s Journey is broken into a number of parts, the idea being that this structure is the underlying skeleton of most myths throughout history. It can be debated as to whether or not that is true, but what cannot be debated is the impact that Joseph Campbell’s A Hero With a Thousand Faces, which laid out the Hero’s Journey, has had on the new myths of the twenty and twenty-first centuries. Most prominent among them, perhaps, is Star Wars. Campbell himself once said that he had no greater student than George Lucas.

In The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler, which goes in depth with Campbell's structure, he lays out a number of questions facing any author before the beginning of the story: “What’s the first thing your audience will experience? The title? The first line of dialogue? The first image? Where in the lives of your characters will the story actually begin? Do you need a prologue or introduction, or should you jump right into the middle of the action?”

These were all questions I faced. The first thing the reader sees after the acknowledgements and other introductory pages is the iconic statement, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...” There’s a familiarity there, a comfortable one, that tells you that while this may be a re-imagining of Star Wars, this is still Star Wars. Yet then, after that, you get a brief introduction, another iconic element of Star Wars in the form of an opening crawl, but it lays out clearly that this isn’t Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. It shows that this is a galaxy that is decaying and suffering, and it’s suffering because of these monstrously large forces like politics and economics and corruption. Those won’t be explored until Star Wars: Episode II - The Princess of Ondos, but the ending of the crawl where it speaks of the desert and the one person who can change it lays the groundwork for the entire saga and shows that the events of this novel will actually be a small speck on the galactic radar&mdash;until later, of course.

That ending of the opening crawl is also connected to the title: The Chosen One. You know very clearly going into this story who it will be about. There is a central, important hero, a messianic figure who will define the galaxy for good or ill. This title uses the word “chosen,” and choices, as you will find out, are an important part of this story.

Then comes the first thing the reader readers, the “opening image,” so to speak. I had to choose something that I hoped would hook you instantly. I took this inspiration for the scene from one of my editors, Constantine on TheStarWarsRP.Com. It starts off with the desert but you soon find a figure darting across the landscape being chased by a large band of savages. What does this evoke? What is this analogous to. Quite simply, the original Star Wars. Whereas that had a tiny ship being chased by a massive behemoth of a warship, The Chosen One has one person being chased by a large horde of warriors. It’s the same concept, just on a smaller scale. I gave you that sense of familiarity, yet different enough to still reel you in.

The entrance of the hero in this story is not just one that’s meant to evoke A New Hope, but shows you clearly who this person is just by what you can visualize. Here we have a hero who is introduced gripped by fear, running for his life towards the convenient safety of a tyrant’s walls. He is someone who needs rescuing, as he is someone who can’t, or won’t, help himself. Not yet, at any rate. This speaks to the inner problem, something any compelling hero needs in order to be relatable and to have a flaw to overcome. Michael’s is fear. His life is completely paralyzed by it, and, because of that, he can’t confront his outer problem&mdash;the conditions of his world.

That’s the dramatic question of this story: will he overcome his fear, and will he be able to take on the bad guys? Or, will he let himself continue to be paralyzed by fear and never move forward in life? This is set within the context of oppression and in the backdrop of suffering on a galactic scale, but it is not dissimilar to what most twenty-somethings face in their lives. This is how he is relatable. He is someone who questions his worth, wonders what his life is, and is too afraid to move forward and must overcome that. Plus, like many other people his age, he wants to change the world, but lacks the courage and will to do so.

With that, you have the hero’s personality. What you also need to know him fully is his backstory. You start to learn about him specifically. You know he had a tragic event, something involving piloting a craft that crashed. You know he is the adoptive son of a Rim Wars veteran, one who has become jaded and who the people of their area of the planet do not look kindly upon. You also know he is the nephew of a colonel, though no one outside of their family knows that.

All of this shows where he’s come from. This is his Ordinary World, the first stage of the Hero's Journey. This is who he is before he becomes anything special. I’ve said before that Michael will eventually take the name Annikin Skywalker. If everything Michael wants to be is represented by the iconic idea of Annikin Skywalker, then you can get a sense pretty easily of who Michael Lars is now.

You are also introduced to the theme: interpretation is the key. What this means in the story is that our futures depend on how we view ourselves and the world around us. How Michael evolves throughout the story will depend on that, especially now that he is about to hear the Call to Adventure.