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By Root 5320 0

`Final Ordeal' of the story, as a small team of space pilots, including Luke, who has now captivated the Princess as surely as she had entranced him, set off for a final showdown with the Dark Empire, on which the whole future of the universe will rest. Thanks to Artoo having programmed himself with the entire layout of the Death Star, they have learned its vital secret. There is just one tiny aperture on the entire face of that immense, impregnable structure where a perfectly-aimed missile might penetrate to the central reactor which is its heart. After a deadly prolonged aerial battle between two groups of small spacecraft, more reminiscent of a World War Two dogfight than anything belonging to the space age, Luke and Darth Vader, hero and monster, finally come face to face. Just when it seems all is lost for the hero, he is miraculously saved. Han Solo, after refusing to risk his life in the battle because his only interest was money, has decided after all to intervene, arriving in the nick of time to blast Vader's craft helplessly out into space. Simultaneously, even more miraculously, Luke has become at one with Kenobi's supernatural `force, unconsciously managing to launch his missiles at just the right split-second to hit the mark. Scarcely have Luke and Solo withdrawn to a safe distance than the whole artificial planet explodes into a trillion fragments, in a sunburst which lights up that corner of the cosmos for days.

The monster has been overthrown. The victorious heroes return to a tumultuous welcome at the Alliance headquarters. In a vast temple hall, before a delirious crowd representing peoples from all over the universe, they walk up to a dais to be presented with gold medals by a radiant figure dressed in flowing white. As Luke receives his prize, he can scarcely hear the cheers. His thoughts are solely occupied by the smiling face of the Princess before him.3

The thrilling escape from death

Again and again in all these expressions of the Overcoming the Monster plot we see a moment which is of fundamental significance to storytelling: one which, like the characteristics of the monster itself, is relevant to stories of many kinds other than just those shaped by this particular plot.

To the huge relief of the hero (and of ourselves as the audience, identifying with his fate), just when it seems all is lost and that his destruction is inevitable, he makes a miraculous escape. Always it is only in the nick of time, just when all seems lost, that Luke Skywalker escapes from the final deadly assault by Darth Vader; that Quatermass saves mankind from the extra-terrestrials; that the tiny band of survivors escape the clutches of the triffids; that James Bond escapes from the clutches of his villains; that Wells's invading Martians are killed by bacteria; that the guns of Navarone are blown up; that Gary Cooper in High Noon is saved by the unexpected shot fired by his wife; that Jack manages to scramble back down the beanstalk; that the forester bursts in to save Red Riding Hood from the devouring wolf; that Goldilocks scrambles out of the window to escape the three bears. From the constricting sense of imminent death, often physically represented by some dark, enclosing space in which the hero or heroine is trapped, they, and we the audience, are suddenly liberated.

So familiar is this moment of liberation, `the thrilling escape from death', that in certain kinds of popular storytelling it has become a cliche, almost a joke: `saved in the last reel by the US Cavalry, we say; or think of the hero of the old silent films galloping in to snatch away the heroine who has been tied down by the villain in the path of the oncoming train. Cartoon films like Tom and Jerry are made up of little else except one `thrilling escape from death' after another, as cat and mouse are ironed out flat, or blow each other up in remorseless succession. Another famous instance was that legendary hero of a newspaper serial who was finally trapped by so many impossible dangers that not even his creator could think of a way to extricate