hile fans prepare for the launching of a new epic with Star Wars Episode 1, the thinking behind the first trilogy is being explored in the real and online worlds by the National Air and Space Museum's exhibit, Star Wars: The Magic of Myth. Anyone watching the Star Wars Trilogy can see that it includes certain aspects of age-old myths and legends. The idea of a young hero who encounters mystical teachers, fierce beasts and daunting challenges is an ancient concept, and it's one that George Lucas carefully wove into his science fiction classic.
Star Wars: The Magic of Myth breaks the trilogy down into a dozen different nodes, each of representing an important point in the building of the overall mythology. It starts with the Call to Adventure, the sometimes mystical force that gets the hero caught up in the story. In Luke Skywalker's case, it begins with the arrival of R2D2 and his urgent message from Princess Leia. The exhibit quickly moves through other nodes: the Wise and Helpful Guide (Obi-Wan Kenobi), The Threshold (Mos Eisley spaceport), Into the Labyrinth (the rescue of Princess Leia from the Death Star), and so on.
The Web site comes in two flavors: low- and high-bandwidth. The low-end version is a no-nonsense endeavor that provides visitors with pictures of various artifacts, costumes and models from the trilogy, as well as shots of sketches and artwork used in creating the movies. The high-end version uses the virtual reality plug-in Live Picture Viewer for navigation, providing more features, including the ability to zoom in on various aspects of the exhibit. Both the low- and high-bandwidth versions include RealAudio snippets of James Earl Jones' audio tour, an extra that visitors to the actual exhibit can pick up.
You came here in that?
Like the Millennium Falcon, the Magic of the Myth Web site can be clunky, difficult to use, and not much to look at, but it's still very, very cool. While the low-end version is fairly vanilla in nature, it also won't crash browsers and provides easy access to most of the same things as its high-powered brother.
The high-bandwidth version takes longer to load, but patience, young Jedi...it's worth the wait. The Live Picture plug-in allows visitors to explore the exhibit as though they were in control of their very own R2 unit. They can drag the view around with their mouse, exploring with 360 degrees of freedom. They can also look up and down, and they can zoom in or out on any part of the exhibit. Zooming in should be used carefully though--going in too far results in pixilated images. Clicking on the costumes and drawings in the exhibit reveals descriptive text and the occasional RealAudio clip.
The low-end version of Star Wars: The Magic of Myth provides many of the same features, including the ability to zoom in on artwork and costumes, but the freedom of motion provided by Live Picture simply blasts the straight HTML version into stardust. The site provides a frequently-asked-questions list about navigating the high-end version, and it's crucial that visitors read it. The high-bandwidth version can be difficult to navigate, and even those who read the directions may find themselves accidentally jumping ahead on the tour--but that happens in real life as well. The audio clips are nice but are too short; it would be better to have either more, or longer, snippets.
The exhibit itself is intriguing, and it provides an excellent opportunity to see some of the behind-the-scenes thinking that went into the trilogy. The online version isn't quite the same as being there, but it's a good alternative for those who can't make it to the Air and Spaces' home in Washington, D.C., before the exhibit ends in January 1999.
