The Star Wars saga is often described as a modern myth, but it's also a great series of movies.

It’s certainly true that it has gone beyond the films to carve out a space in global culture. George Lucas had Joe Campbell’s analysis of the hero of legend in mind, and Luke Skywalker’s journey from whiny farmboy to galaxy-saving Jedi Knight fits the universal path Campbell mapped from tales of scores of different cultures.

Enough mythology. How do these things work in the movies?

In films aimed at a mass audience, the good guys almost always have some little advantage. Mostly, the hero just seems to be a little luckier. Sometimes, it’s sheer determination, heart or even suaveness

In creating the setting for Star Wars, George Lucas let the Force fill the role of Hollywood filmmaker. When something incredibly unlikely happens, it’s the will of the Force. When a major character cuts a swathe through nameless minor characters with the greatest of ease, it’s not just because he has a bigger part in the film, it’s because he’s got the Force on his side and they don’t.

Another Hollywood tradition ensures that, for dramatic purposes, the hero is never truly tested until he comes up against the main villain, the only person who poses a significant challenge.

Look at Mission: Impossible 2. Up until Tom Cruise takes on Dougray Scott on the beach, neither has had much trouble dispatching minor characters, even though there’s no real reason why Dougray Scott (trained as an infiltrator) should have risen to the top of his evil operation through his fighting skills.

He’s that good simply because he's the arch-villain, and so the filmmaker allows him to operate on the same high level as the hero until the hero beats him. Drama is the highest law.

Needless to say, in the Star Wars saga this always take the form of a Jedi hero confronting a Sith villain. These two are the only ones up to each other’s level, because they both have the Force on their side.

This Force-as-filmmaker model also helps explain why the Force gives characters superhuman powers -- a common enough theme in myth, granted, but also a recipe for a fun movie.

Throughout the Saga, Jedi and Sith battle it out with lightsabers at breakneck pace, and if the film looks speeded up, it’s because they’re using the Force to move more quickly.

And why is the lightsaber the preferred weapon of characters the Force (filmmaker) favors?

Guns are awful from a cinematic point of view. You can’t defend against a gunshot, and because gunshots are almost always serious, the combatants have to either keep missing each other to string it out (in which case they both end up looking useless), or they have to accidentally drop their guns and switch to their kung-fu skills.

George Lucas solved this problem by bringing in the sword, long surpassed in the real world but still superior for cinematic purposes, and changing the rules so this archaic device was back at the cutting edge.

In the saga, the lightsaber is both the badge of Force favor -- it takes great skill and Force ability to wield -- and the most immediate benefit of having the Force with you. Hapless minor characters are forced to rely on blasters, which a lightsaber can easily reflect back.

And the action scenes are better. Lightsabers allow both combatants to be incredibly skilful and still not kill each other instantly -- as they would if they were armed with guns -- and the Force presses this advantage by bestowing multiple cool techniques on those it favors, Force-throws, jumps, flips, outright telekinesis.

The Force-as-filmmaker rewards Jedi and Sith in subtle ways as well.

Important characters have great luck, pushing the odds (and the suspension of disbelief) again and again, so long as the Force is smiling on them.

Even non-Jedi benefit from this. Leia might kiss Luke "for luck," but luck seems to be a trait of the Force -- in Obi-Wan's experience, "there’s no such thing as luck."

Two comments commonly made about the Star Wars universe are "it's only a movie," and "it doesn't have to follow scientific principles."

Because Star Wars accepts that it's a series of movies, and not a part of reality, it works better as film. By not even claiming his saga is set in the real world, Lucas gains the freedom to embody film tradition -- as the Force -- and put it to work.

Once you suspend your disbelief enough to accept the basic ground rules, everything makes sense. This is the work of a film director. George Lucas set out to make movies -- films with mythical aspects, but films nonetheless.