Star Wars and Jaws, Boomers and Prophets

As I was finishing up the previous Four Stories post, I could hear it already: What about Star Wars? What about Jaws? If they were the reason for the recognized change to the Boomer filmmakers, why aren't they in there - in fact,  aren't they Boomer stories?

Well, the short answer is that they don't work with the Prophet Story, at least not as simply as Rocky and others do. Jaws matches better with the Hero Story: Brody succeeds, but only with the help of others and the loss of Quint and the Orca.

Fun note: the generations of our Orca team are GI ("We delivered the bomb") Quint, Silent ("...she's wrong.""No, she's not.") Brody, and Boomer ("This was no boating accident!") Hooper, and it's Brody who helps get the naturally antagonistic Hero and Prophet to work together. 

Star Wars, on the other hand, can be seen as either a) Luke learning about the mystical Force and using it to go after the corrupt and evil Empire, or b) Luke and friends working together to take out the Death Star, losing Obi-Wan and Alderaan along the way. The sequels head much more in the Prophet Story direction, with a case to be made that the military part of the Battle of Endor was less important than Luke standing up to the Emperor and declaring himself a Jedi. In any case, while the Prophet Story is strong, these entanglements made it an inferior initial example. 

(I have not seen The Force Awakens as of this writing - It should make a better case yet for where the Galaxy was around the Battle of Yavin. A year ago, I suspected that it would support that as a Crisis period, and I've seen nothing yet to change my mind, there.)

When I started looking at this, I did expect that Prophets would prefer Prophet Stories, and similarly for the others. It's often the case, but not every time, nor even for all the significant ones (those that make money, win awards, or become cultural touchstones). Divergent, written by a young Millennial, is a full Prophet story, all about Tris taking on a corrupt system by the power of her own personal superiority. 

I have some thoughts on why this happens, and understanding that is part of what I hope to work out, here.