He is alluding to the iconic scene from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back where Luke Skywalker, urged by Yoda, enters a cavern (“In you must go!”), encounters a dream-like version of Darth Vader, and, with a whoosh of his light saber, cracks open Vader’s helmet-mask to reveal… Luke himself! Lucas is manifesting—in his movie and his museum—a core archetype of mythologist Joseph Campbell. In this case, the confronting of one’s Jungian “shadow.” Joseph Campbell, the author of A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, is Lucas’s Yoda of ideas.
The museum, which opened in September, is their shrine, holding a substantial collection of Lucas and his and partner Mellody Hobson’s 40,000 artworks. From murals and manga to props and costumes, the museum stages its massive cache of storytelling art in a place where half the buzz is the architectural experience. In Exposition Park just south of Downtown Los Angeles—and across the street from Lucas’s USC alma mater—the 300,000-square-foot structure is a blorpy, biomorphic mound designed by Ma Yansong of MAD architects.
All edges are rounded in a futurefied Deco. Its mothership shape holds portals and flight decks. It flows and floats over a 13-acre campus of green space, where even the roof is landscaped with native grasses and wildflowers.
Glass pneumatic elevator tubes zoom you up to the fourth-floor galleries. The staff wear snappy uniforms, their ticket scanners emitting “blaster” sounds. Its two theaters are wide wombs.
Sleek and chic, the view from the museum’s Skywalker Grill soars over the city. All told, it’s as close to a thrill ride as a building can be. And the whole thing cost some $1 billion, all funded by Lucas and Hobson.
I share Lucas’ archetype fetish. It’s what first led me, back in the 1980s, to the Star Wars saga in all its epic hokeyness. (I’ve seen each one, including the cringe-maxed prequel trilogy, all the offshoots, plus pretty much every other movie the now-82-year-old Lucas has directed or concepted). And still, he sees deep meaning in mythic pop.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
