"Of course, your perspective changes when you
          get older and as you get battered by life."
                  --George Lucas, in 1997, when asked
                    about the difficulties of going back to
                    work on Star Wars (1)


During the summer of 1983, the Star Wars saga was ending, and George Lucas' life was falling apart. Three weeks after the May premiere of Return of the Jedi, the final Star Wars episode, Lucas announced through his publicist that he was divorcing Marcia Griffin, his wife of fourteen years. The split came shortly after Griffin revealed to Lucas that she had an affair while Lucas was overseas producing Jedi. "My life was a shambles," said Lucas in 2002, "the only thing I really had left was Amanda." (2)

Lucas and Griffin had adopted Amanda, their baby daughter, in 1981. He had always intended to spend more time with his wife and child after he finished Return of the Jedi, and he wasn't going to let the divorce completely derail those plans. He maintained custody of Amanda, stepped back from moviemaking and concentrated on the executive duties of Lucasfilm -- jobs which, he explained, were "more conducive to raising kids." (3) And while he never remarried, he did adopt another daughter, Katie, and a son, Jett.

Even before he had children, though, fatherhood seemed to weigh heavily on Lucas. Growing up, he had a tumultuous relationship with his father (4), an experience which influenced the storyline of Star Wars: Lucas' young hero, the eponymous Luke Skywalker, faces his greatest crisis when he learns that he is the son of villainous Darth Vader. But by Return of the Jedi, George Lucas was already in the process of becoming a father himself, and he began to identify more with Vader than Luke. Like Vader, his priorities shifted from the personal to the parental. And over a decade later, when he returned to the Star Wars galaxy to tell Vader's origin in a set of three "prequel" films, his work clearly reflected this new perspective. (5)


The first prequel, Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), focuses on nine year-old Anakin Skywalker, years before he becomes Vader. Anakin, as it turns out, literally has no father. His mother, Shmi, was impregnated by the mystical Force, which resulted in the virgin birth of a child with extraordinary powers. The plot of The Phantom Menace focuses on a paternal Jedi Knight named Qui-Gon Jinn who recognizes the boy's abilities and takes him away to train as a Jedi. But Qui-Gon is soon slain, and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, vows to continue teaching young Anakin.

Fast-forward ten years later, to Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002), and we see the arrangement clearly isn't working. The teenage Anakin regards Obi-Wan as "the closest thing I have to a father," but he also considers himself a superior Jedi and resents being a mere trainee. Whenever Obi-Wan chastises Anakin (a pretty common occurrence), Anakin arrogantly deflects the criticism, even going so far as to claim that he's more skilled than the grandmaster of all Jedi, Yoda.

Attack of the Clones also reveals Yoda's role among the Jedi: he teaches the youngest students, before they are paired with senior Knights for individual mentoring. That position, combined with his revered wisdom and apparent agelessness, places Yoda as the spiritual patriarch of the Jedi order. Only Anakin, who never studied under Yoda, could imagine himself superior to the diminutive Jedi Master. (All this harkens back to a scene from Return of the Jedi, in which Obi-Wan admits that his crucial mistake was thinking that he could train Anakin just as well as Yoda.) Evidently, Anakin's galling character flaws are a consequence of lacking a proper father figure.

The middle prequel then provides a contrasting case of father-son dynamics: Jango Fett, a bounty hunter who's cloned himself and raises the clone as a son (6) named Boba. It's a strange choice for someone in such an amoral profession (even Jango's alien employers regard the situation as "curious"), made even stranger because the bounty hunter appears to be an ideal dad. He not only protects and disciplines Boba, but he's also surprisingly honest with the child. (7) In return, Boba both loves and respects his father. And Jango's brand of decisive parenting yields results. In later Star Wars episodes, Boba Fett also becomes a bounty hunter -- in fact, he's the only character from the entire saga who directly follows in his father's footsteps.

George Lucas also seemed to emulate Jango Fett, at least while making the prequels. Unlike when he produced Return of the Jedi, Lucas made sure this time around that his day job never overshadowed his responsibilities as a father. He took on full directing duties for all three prequels (his first time behind the lens since adopting Amanda), yet he was determined to maintain a normal family life. "I brought them with me when I made the movie," Lucas told 60 Minutes in 1999, "They hung around on my set. Katie was in the wardrobe department. Amanda was in the makeup department. Jett rode the camera dolly every day." He even put the kids in costume and gave them small speaking roles. Like Jango, George didn't let an unconventional, all-encompassing profession prevent him from being an involved dad.

The functionality of the Fett (and Lucas) family is starkly different than that of Obi-Wan and Anakin, whose bond continues to deteriorate. By the final prequel, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005), their relationship has become decidedly fraternal. More than once, Obi-Wan refers to Anakin as a brother, unaware that his apprentice still needs the guidance of a father. To fill that void, Anakin falls under the influence of Palpatine, the saga's archvillian. Palpatine is one of the titular Sith, the ancient enemy of the Jedi who have covertly survived through a system of institutionalized patricide. As Palpatine tells Anakin, the Sith limit their numbers to only two at a time, with the junior member expected to eventually outsmart and kill the mentor. (8) This makes them the ideological opposites of the Jedi, who nobly infuse their youngest initiates with respect for their elders.

But Anakin never trained under Yoda, and never learned that respect -- which made him the perfect candidate to fall from grace. Fittingly, Anakin's first act as a Sith is to lead an assault on the Jedi, culminating with the horrifying scene in which he personally massacres a roomful of Yoda's baby-faced students. His destruction of the Jedi paternity system serves as his initiation into evil.

Continued in Part II: Good and Bad Mothers


Notes:
(1) Quoted in John Seabrook, "Why is the Force Still with Us?" The New Yorker (6 January 1997), p. 46.
(2) Quoted from Biography: George Lucas: Creating an Empire, A&E, January 27, 2002.
(3) Quoted in Richard Corliss and Jess Cagle, "Dark Victory," Time (29 April 2002).
(4) For analyses of Lucas' relationship with his father, see Bernard Weinraub, "Luke Skywalker Goes Home," Playboy (July 1997), pp.118-126, as well as Anthony Breznican, "George Lucas' father issues unfold on film," USA TODAY (May 22, 2008)
(5) In addition to Star Wars, the Indiana Jones series also became preoccupied with fatherhood. In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), the title character cares for a young ward and rescues a tribe of children; in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), we meet his father, played by Sean Connery; the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-96) portrays the adventurer as a child with a largely absent father; and in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), the hero must grapple with becoming a father himself.
(6) Throughout the film, Boba calls Jango "Dad."
(7) Though Jango shields Boba from a fight with Obi-Wan Kenobi, the younger Fett knows how to operate his father's high-tech armor, weaponry, starship, etc. He later cheers Jango on as he tries to dispose of Obi-Wan. Clearly, Boba is well aware of what his father does for a living.
(8) The patricide of the Sith is hinted at in both The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Attack of the Clones, in which Sith Lords Darth Vader and Count Dooku (respectively) try to recruit younger Jedi to help destroy their master, Palpatine.