The saga is as deep as we want it to be. For example, let's look at the grim case of Obi-Wan Kenobi, one-time teacher of jedi knights.

While Anakin Skywalker is as tragic a figure as any, Kenobi is the leading candidate to walk in the footsteps of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and other tragic heroes in the classical sense.

Wandering in the desert

We'll have to wait for future installments to watch horrified as Kenobi's fatal error plunges the galaxy into 20 years of fascist terror at the hands of Palpatine. Yet his hubris and the nature of his self-inflicted punishment are already evident in the original trilogy.

His pride is such that he assumes responsibility for Anakin Skywalker's fall and feels that the least he can do to make things up to Padmé – and the entire galaxy.

"I thought I could train him as well as Master Yoda," laments the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi in The Return of the Jedi, referring to his ill-fated apprentice. In the novelization, he continues: "My pride had terrible consequences for the galaxy." Sophocles himself could have written the lines to describe the scene when Oedipus discovers the terrible truth behind the plagues that beset his kingdom.

Obi-Wan's penance, thankfully not involving mutilation, is 20 dusty years alone in the desert of Tatooine.

The great sacrifice

Ultimately, he gives his life to save Luke, the child in whom all hope resides.

So why didn't he raise Luke himself, training him from infancy in the Jedi tradition? Perhaps he's lost confidence in his teaching skills since his first and only pedagogical experience, his abysmal failure with Anakin. Perhaps keeping Luke too close by would be a danger to the boy if Vader ever caught up with him.

And perhaps he feels he really deserves to live all alone as a crazy old hermit in a tiny hovel in the middle of the scorching Jundland wastes.

Ironically, Obi-Wan's hubris doesn't die with him. Even as a Force Ghost he continues to entertain the notion that everything dreadful that happened in the galaxy was his own fault. You'd think that by the time he sloughed off his material form and fused with the Force he would understand that he has only been a pawn in the Force's quest for balance.

Puppets of the Force

As of The Phantom Menace, the Force is more than a vague, mysterious telekinetic potential. When Qui-Gon Jinn suggests that "the will of the Force" led him to Anakin in the course of his adventures, he adds a new dimension to the diffuse, mystic logos of the original trilogy, that Force that surrounded and bound us.

Now, suddenly, the Force possesses conscious will, providence; it can even immaculately produce children. It's a deity.

The question then arises, as in all Greek tragedy, why the Force would punish its humble servant Kenobi for the unwitting errors it predestined him to make. This is the source of all pathos, the profound tragedy of humanoid existence, the current of injustice that drags us all to our deaths, and the irony that binds every spectator to the tragic hero. Kenobi, like everyone in the saga, is a slave to destiny.

Master, it is too much for me

In fact, it is still unclear why the Jedi Council agrees to let him train the Chosen One.

Even though Yoda expresses misgivings about training Anakin at all, no one seems to question the appropriateness of assigning young, headstrong, reckless Obi-Wan Kenobi to the kid with the biggest midichlorian count in history.

When a Jedi gives his word, as Obi-Wan does when the dying Qui-Gon exhorts him to train the boy, is it so sacred that not even the Council's better judgment can override it? Is this part of the "Jedi Code," unspecified in the film, that Yoda refers to?

In the novelization, Terry Brooks offers the explanation that Yoda himself disagrees with the assignment, but the Council is so impressed at Kenobi's defeat of a Sith lord that they think he's ready for anything. It's a little feeble.

In fact, the Council is as helpless as Kenobi before the will of the Force. Kenobi's personal hubris may only be a reflection of the appalling arrogance of the entire Jedi order, and while the rest of them apparently perish, he alone remains alive to tell the tale -- and suffer the brunt of the Force's avenging fury.

So why does Yoda dissent?

We mustn't forget that even if the Force is a providential deity, it still has a dark side. It seeks balance, and many lives will be lost in that process; the dark side, as we know, will have the upper hand for twenty-odd years during the Emperor's reign.

Perhaps Yoda sees alternate paths to balance that require less suffering.

Campbell and the Greeks

Many have argued that Anakin Skywalker is a tragic figure.

Yet Anakin's journey is, in the terms employed by George Lucas' mythic teacher Joseph Campbell, not that of the tragic hero but that of the "eternal hero." We are likely to see Anakin die when he purportedly falls into a "molten pit" while battling Obi-Wan and then descend into hell, spending 20 years behind Vader's mask as a slave to the dark side.

We have already seen his resurrection in the triumph over the Emperor and his ascension as a Force Ghost at the end of The Return of the Jedi.

Obi-Wan's story follows the alternate, pathos-ridden pattern of the tragic hero in the classical Greek sense, and this makes it easier for us to shed a sympathetic tear for poor old Ben while we revere and fear Anakin as the "Chosen One," the "Son of Suns" and, in the first trilogy, as the Dark Lord of the Sith.

Lucas probably does not intend for us to identify with Anakin except on a very figurative level -- a hallmark of the Campbellian eternal hero -- whereas Obi-Wan fully participates in the daily human condition we are all familiar with.

Flaws tragic in retrospect

However, it may not be that easy to identify with Kenobi as a young man.

Some might protest that his character is far from appealing in The Phantom Menace. Bullying Jar Jar with threats of being "blahsted into oblivion", derisive comments such as the infamous "pathetic life form" line, sulking when Qui-Gon Jinn gives him the boot in favor of young Anakin, all render him somewhat antipathetic.

True to character, these lines reverberate with the familiar "wretched hive of scum and villainy" from A New Hope. Perhaps these are hints of hubris.

Or perhaps Lucas wanted to portray him – possibly heavy-handedly – as all too human in order to make him more endearing. He's a contrast to the wise, if cavalier, Qui-Gon, and his imperfections may be an attempt to heighten the pathos when his doom finally takes center stage.

Like Hollywood filmmakers, Greek tragedians found it essential to make their stories grandiose (on a galactic scale even, with respect to Lucas) yet accessible enough for spectators to recognize themselves in the stories of heroic struggle. The better we relate to Kenobi as grandiose everyman, the more effective the tragedy.

The end of the story

If we can agree that George Lucas -- notorious for his concern with the forms and patterns of ancient and mythic drama -- is conscious of these parallels, then Greek tragedy gives fans an enjoyable new platform for speculation on what to expect in Episodes II and III.

Will we see Kenobi make some explicitly fatal error with Anakin, misjudging the young Jedi's weaknesses and precipitating the downfall of all?

What sort of ominous foreshadowing will Lucas insinuate into Episode II? A training battle between Master and Padawan, a seemingly insignificant argument that will lead to Vader's sinister "I am the Master now"?

Will we hear from a "blind prophet" character -- perhaps Plo Koon or some other weird Jedi -- to play the part of the Greek Tiresias and foresee catastrophe?

Will the Force visit Kenobi with vengeful "furies" (bounty hunters? Sith acolytes?) that pursue him into exile in the wastes of Tatooine?

I'll be among the hoi polloi camped out in front of a movie theater to find out.

"Phantom Heresies" will run on SPACE.com until May 11, the first anniversary of Episode One's gala premiere. The goal of the series is to refresh some fans and surprise others through pointing out the film's hidden complexities, culminating in a full appreciation of The Phantom Menace as ritual theatre.

Next: "Trash and Power on The Cutting Edge of the Old Republic".