The media-hype around Star Wars is really gigantic these days, you could almost think there is a new film in the making!
Anyway, I stumbled on a quite interesting essay the other day, called RING THEORY: The Hidden Artistry of the Star Wars Prequels and its a quite sound theory. That doesn't means the prequels are suddenly to be seen as pretty good films. They certainly aren't. For numerous reasons. But George Lucas obviously put a lot of effort and ambition into the storytelling and I did quite enjoy the read and the quite scientific approach of analysing the films.
So what is the ring theory about? According to the author Mike Klimo, the currently six films are structured in a way to make them one coherent, ring-shaped narrative, in the structure of A, B, C, C, B, A. This means that Episode 1 and Episode 6, 2 & 5 and 3 & 4 are pairs, mirroring each others story elements and their composition, often scene by scene (though sometimes in reverse!).
This sounds like quite a stretch first, but the author made a very solid job in analysing the films and - most importantly: the conclusions don't come out of thin air. He proves his points scene by scene, which is the proper scientific way of working.
Ok, the ending is quite metaphysical, dealing with the nature of the force in the light (or darkness, haha) of the Yin & Yang dualism, but there again: nothing in the essay comes out of thin air.
If you ask me, the ring theory totally makes sense and it would mean quite a lot of coincidence if Lucas had written in all these parallels in his storytelling by accident.
Its clear that Lucas was quite ambitious doing the prequels, this makes them failing the more tragic. Sadly Star Wars isn't a modern version of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen/The Ring of the Nibelung. The elaborated plotting, the structure, the symbolism (hello C. G. Jung!) and his message sadly get lost under a huge pile of sterile CGI and often too childlike elements (no link to Jar Jar Binks here!), diluting the actual intention of the film-maker. Pity, it could have been such an amazing, epic story of rise and fall and eventual salvation, of outer and inner conflicts and last but not least of the rise and fall of whole societies.
