Binary Sunset, Star Wars, Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith (2005)

George Lucas

SPUC’s Dr Daniel Frampton encounters six compelling artworks spanning 900 years of art history, including film, and examines each work from an openly pro-life perspective in a unique cycle of short essays that aim to be educational and contemplative – revealing, too, the powerful role art can play in advocating for a true culture of life that speaks truth to power in a world that has lost its moral centre.

This week, Daniel concludes the series with a reflection on George Lucas’s “Star Wars”.

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Motherhood has increasingly come under assault in the modern world, most of all from abortion. We see this everywhere, including in the culture. But fatherhood, as an idea and as an aspiration, has also suffered, as well as fathers who have lost children to abortion against their will.

While the manner of this diminution of fatherhood differs from the attack on motherhood, the result has been just as tragic. Even within the pro-life movement, fatherhood has to a great extent been sidelined, I believe. This week’s pro-life encounter, the concluding selection for this series, is intended to redress this glaring omission.

My final choice (which might surprise some) is the closing scene of Star Wars, Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith (2005) when the Jedi warrior Obi-Wan Kenobi safely delivers the infant Luke Skywalker to the Lars family on the planet of Tatooine.

While this scene takes place in a galaxy far, far away, its context is firmly rooted in the here and now, especially when we consider the idea of fathers.  

In the final scene of the film, Obi-Wan gently hands Luke Skywalker over to Beru, the wife of Owen Lars (part of Luke’s extended family), who takes the infant Luke to her husband, a moisture farmer, standing against the classic backdrop of Tatooine’s twin suns setting over the horizon. Composer John William’s stirring theme, “Binary Sunset” (or “Force Theme”), climaxes in the background as the couple, with Luke, look to the horizon.

Concealed from their fallen father, Anakin Skywalker (now turned into Darth Vader), Luke and his sister, Leia, are separated at birth after the death of their mother. Having lost two parents, Luke gains a new father, Owen, who consents to adopt Luke and raise him as his own.

This scene mirrors the director’s own life since George Lucas is a foster parent himself. Like Owen, Lucas was unable to have children with his first wife. For this reason, they adopted a daughter. Lucas recalls “walking through the hospital with her, she was a couple of hours old, and it was like lightning struck me. I’ve never had an experience like that ever, and the magic of it hit me.”

Lucas would go on to adopt two more children as a primary caregiver. After completing the original Star Wars trilogy in the 1980s, Lucas took a break from directing because his “main focus was really raising my kids... I knew I couldn’t direct and raise these kids at the same time.”

The final scene of The Revenge of the Sith had special significance for Lucas as a father, then, when he finally returned to direct his Star Wars sequel trilogy.

And personally, every time I watch those two setting suns, in any of the films, I see the vision of two parents, a man and a woman, an unbroken family, beautifully symbolised in the image and soundtrack of the Binary Sunset. Perhaps Lucas sees this too.

As a pro-life image, forwarded in the primary mode of artistic expression in the modern world, on screen, this final scene provides us with an apt conclusion to this pro-life series in which we encounter the best that fatherhood has to offer society today; what the American radical feminist Camille Paglia has described as the idea of the “tenderness of men towards babies… not just children but babies”, a tenderness that, far from compromising masculine strength, affirms it in the most progressive way.

At a time when good fathers are sometimes denied the right to fatherhood because of abortion – while other men, not willing to take responsibility for fathering a child, are accordingly rewarded, leading to more abortion – the final scene of The Revenge of the Sith gains especial power, and even takes on something of a pro-life invocation: that more good men are necessary in this fight.

This idea, should it ever be fully realised, may have the power to remake the pro-life movement into a genuinely inclusive effort, I believe, on the part of both men and women, bringing the best of themselves to protect the unborn, and save fathers as well as mothers.

After all, in Star Wars, it is the son, Luke, who goes on to save the father, and in doing so, the whole galaxy, only because other men, the warrior and the farmer, men of gentleness and great strength, took it upon themselves to save the infant son when he was incapable of saving himself. As a man, I find this profoundly moving, thought-provoking and, I daresay, considering the pro-life movement more broadly, even prophetic.

And that, my friends, is what is meant by a true encounter with art. I hope that this series has been as enjoyable for you to follow as it has been as joyful for me to ponder and write. Thank you for joining me in these pro-life encounters with art.

Read last week's article by Dr Daniel Frampton here.