"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" is taking over the world.
Critics are saying that it's the movie fans have been waiting for.
But let's think about why the franchise resonates so deeply with people at such a huge scale.
I'm a Star Wars fan. Growing up, when people would say that they had never seen the movies, I'd look at them with a mixture of disgust and nonunderstanding. A snooty professor in college said that her generation didn't have Episodes IV through VI while she was growing up, and her misunderstanding of the chronology was devastatingly disappointing.
But now that I've been writing about social science for a couple years, I have a hunch as to why people are so obsessed with the franchise — myself included. Basically, Star Wars fills a huge gap in our culture.
In tribal and modern cultures, initiations and other rituals create experiences shared by individuals, and each person folds them into their identity. The myths provide a sense of the good of the tribe, and provide a larger contextual meaning for living life.
Myths are where cultural values are communicated, through the ancient technology called story. The ancient Greeks valued individualism and excellence, and you can see that in Odysseus; medieval Britons valued chivalry and self-sacrifice, and you learn that through King Arthur.
But today, the myths are gone. We lionize Elon Musk and LeBron James, since they embody the status and wealth that our society values, yet neither of them give us the intense experiences that bond us together as a community.
That's why, I think, Star Wars speaks to us so deeply: The story is a mythic one, and seeing the films is a transcendent, bonding experience.
George Lucas was influenced by the mythologist Joseph Campbell when creating the original trilogy. Campbell pioneered the idea of the "Hero's journey" of departure, initiation, and return. That's why Luke leaves Tattooine, is initiated by Yoda, tempted by the Dark Side, and eventually comes to defeat Darth Vader and bring order back to the Force.
That story structure is common — perhaps the most common — narrative humanity has. It turns up on every inhabited continent. Star Wars incorporates themes from Buddhism, Hinduism, and Stoicism. It communicates values.
The movies are awesome, in the old and new sense of the world. Seeing Star Wars is a transcendent experience, and doing so initiates you into an order of nerds and enthusiasts all over the world. Star Wars creates community, in the sociological sense, in a way probably no other series of stories over the past 50 years has.
In a mythless, consumerist, status-driven society, Star Wars gives us a myth that we're desperate to hear about — not just one of material "success" but of self-realization. And when we watch these movies, we're connected with each other.
So when the force awakens, it's international news.
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