On May 25, the Star Wars series turns 30. For an entire generation, the series is much more than just a set of six films. And for some executives, it even offers ways to take decisions at the workplace, deal with people, and live life
It happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but the Force, as Star Wars faithfuls will tell you, is still with them. George Lucas’ Star Wars (later renamed Episode IV: A New Hope) was released on May 25, 1977 in only 32 theatres around the US of A, but within days it had seized a generation's imagination like never before and exploded across the world as the highest-grossing film of all time till then. On one level, it was high adventure in space, complete with never-seen-before special effects, on another it was simply a story about life —good and evil, right and wrong, power and politics, courage and conscience. Thirty years on, Star Wars endures—on different levels.
In one sentence, Star Wars is a monumental epic spanning two generations and hundreds of planetary systems, about the descent of talented Jedi knight Anakin Skywalker into evil, his transformation into the fearsome warlord Darth Vader and finally his redemption at the hands of his son Luke Skywalker. But the series has hundreds of other characters from various species and dozens of subplot that make it a dense work that creates a wholly original universe.
For some, it’s like a “Bible—a ready-reckoner on life,” for others the phantasmagoric spectacle is still the big draw. Some watch the two trilogies—as all Star Wars fans know, the second trilogy (about Luke Skywalker) was filmed first—through the eyes of their children, having successfully implanted the Star Wars gene into the progeny. For instance, a top executive with an MNC, who has seen the series at least 10 times, is delighted that his two kids, one 10 and the other seven years old, are both huge Star Wars fans. “I have bought them the lightsaber swords which gripped our imagination in Episode IV.” A young boy when he watched his first Star Wars film, he recalls sleeping with a torch in the absence of the real thing.
“What I remember of Star Wars is that it was spectacular. We hadn’t seen anything like it before,” says Naval Bir Kumar, CEO, Standard Chartered Mutual Fund. For R Balakrishnan, or Balki, national creative director of Lowe, “Star Wars signaled the arrival of sci-fi films.” (Think Serenity, Alien, The Matrix, to name just three). “It wasn’t that Star Wars was the best-made film. But it had cult characters and we fell in love with them.” That said, Balki feels Indians feel closer to “Indiana Jones than Star Wars.”
But even those who “regret not being bitten by the Lucas bug” like Vikram Sakhuja, COO, South Asia, GroupM, admits that “the learning is that there is a fine line between the yin and yang of good and evil—and you see that in corporate life everyday.” Agrees Soubir Bose, director, applications development, Oracle: “We can learn many lessons from Star Wars for the workplace. First of all, we must find, listen to and trust the Force. It exists in all of us—the inner voice that tells us things beyond our conventional sphere of knowledge or reason. Within every great personality is a kernel of the Dark Side. No battle is a continuous upward line; instead, it’s a great circle of the Best and the Worst.”
That’s the reason why a top executive (he didn’t want to be named) says his favourite character is Darth Vader—”he was seduced by the Dark Side and then got pulled into the Force… this happens in life all the time, the pull between good and evil. The great thing about Vader is that he had the strength to make a difference.”
“The story has endured because it connects with people’s lives,” says Harish Pai, head, web technologies, CoE, Infinite Computer Solutions. “Star Wars also brings in the concept of multi-culturalism. At Infinite, I see this aspect strongly, as you will find multi-cultural teams with varied and sometimes diametrically opposing ideas, listening to, as well as respecting each other’s views.” Pai has watched the entire series multiple times, owns all the DVDs, has the theme song as his ringtone and has even bought a Star Wars Monopoly Game, “where all the playing tokens are the characters and you can buy properties from Star Wars movies and you have settlements and cities in place of houses and hotels.”
For Bose, the story has passed the test of time “because every member of the audience can recognise a part of their life across the episodes. The true Jedi walks swirling his imaginary cape, unsheathes his imaginary saber in the dark of his room, consults a Yoda in his darkest moment, and is forever a Obi-Wan Kenobi in his heart,” says Bose. Clearly, Lucas created much more than just a film series. He created a philosophy and lifeview.
It happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but the Force, as Star Wars faithfuls will tell you, is still with them. George Lucas’ Star Wars (later renamed Episode IV: A New Hope) was released on May 25, 1977 in only 32 theatres around the US of A, but within days it had seized a generation's imagination like never before and exploded across the world as the highest-grossing film of all time till then. On one level, it was high adventure in space, complete with never-seen-before special effects, on another it was simply a story about life —good and evil, right and wrong, power and politics, courage and conscience. Thirty years on, Star Wars endures—on different levels.
In one sentence, Star Wars is a monumental epic spanning two generations and hundreds of planetary systems, about the descent of talented Jedi knight Anakin Skywalker into evil, his transformation into the fearsome warlord Darth Vader and finally his redemption at the hands of his son Luke Skywalker. But the series has hundreds of other characters from various species and dozens of subplot that make it a dense work that creates a wholly original universe.
For some, it’s like a “Bible—a ready-reckoner on life,” for others the phantasmagoric spectacle is still the big draw. Some watch the two trilogies—as all Star Wars fans know, the second trilogy (about Luke Skywalker) was filmed first—through the eyes of their children, having successfully implanted the Star Wars gene into the progeny. For instance, a top executive with an MNC, who has seen the series at least 10 times, is delighted that his two kids, one 10 and the other seven years old, are both huge Star Wars fans. “I have bought them the lightsaber swords which gripped our imagination in Episode IV.” A young boy when he watched his first Star Wars film, he recalls sleeping with a torch in the absence of the real thing.
“What I remember of Star Wars is that it was spectacular. We hadn’t seen anything like it before,” says Naval Bir Kumar, CEO, Standard Chartered Mutual Fund. For R Balakrishnan, or Balki, national creative director of Lowe, “Star Wars signaled the arrival of sci-fi films.” (Think Serenity, Alien, The Matrix, to name just three). “It wasn’t that Star Wars was the best-made film. But it had cult characters and we fell in love with them.” That said, Balki feels Indians feel closer to “Indiana Jones than Star Wars.”
But even those who “regret not being bitten by the Lucas bug” like Vikram Sakhuja, COO, South Asia, GroupM, admits that “the learning is that there is a fine line between the yin and yang of good and evil—and you see that in corporate life everyday.” Agrees Soubir Bose, director, applications development, Oracle: “We can learn many lessons from Star Wars for the workplace. First of all, we must find, listen to and trust the Force. It exists in all of us—the inner voice that tells us things beyond our conventional sphere of knowledge or reason. Within every great personality is a kernel of the Dark Side. No battle is a continuous upward line; instead, it’s a great circle of the Best and the Worst.”
That’s the reason why a top executive (he didn’t want to be named) says his favourite character is Darth Vader—”he was seduced by the Dark Side and then got pulled into the Force… this happens in life all the time, the pull between good and evil. The great thing about Vader is that he had the strength to make a difference.”
“The story has endured because it connects with people’s lives,” says Harish Pai, head, web technologies, CoE, Infinite Computer Solutions. “Star Wars also brings in the concept of multi-culturalism. At Infinite, I see this aspect strongly, as you will find multi-cultural teams with varied and sometimes diametrically opposing ideas, listening to, as well as respecting each other’s views.” Pai has watched the entire series multiple times, owns all the DVDs, has the theme song as his ringtone and has even bought a Star Wars Monopoly Game, “where all the playing tokens are the characters and you can buy properties from Star Wars movies and you have settlements and cities in place of houses and hotels.”
For Bose, the story has passed the test of time “because every member of the audience can recognise a part of their life across the episodes. The true Jedi walks swirling his imaginary cape, unsheathes his imaginary saber in the dark of his room, consults a Yoda in his darkest moment, and is forever a Obi-Wan Kenobi in his heart,” says Bose. Clearly, Lucas created much more than just a film series. He created a philosophy and lifeview.