Star Wars takes place a very long time ago in a fantastical galaxy far, far away. It's full of magic, aliens species, advanced technology, war and conflict, robots, and all type of drama. It's a fantasy land so far away from the ordinary lives that many of us lead.
Which is exactly why I'll be talking about how the characters do their laundry.
I'm kidding. But also, like, not really. See, something that I've always gotten excited by in Star Wars is the little ways that everyday things from our own lives show up among all the crazy stuff. For whatever reason, I just think it's really neat, and I think more than anything it adds to the depth of the Star Wars galaxy. It reminds us that while the heroes that we follow are doing amazing things, most of the people- often, the people that they're working to protect- are living lives not too far off from ours. Besides you know... the lasers and aliens and space travel.
There's a lot of great examples of mundane things popping up in Star Wars, like Rafa's laundromat above. And I'll probably mention quite a few of them, but first I'd like to go back to the original in A New Hope.
In the early part of A New Hope, we see Luke sitting down for dinner with his aunt and uncle, and later Aunt Beru doing some cooking. The scene where Luke sits with Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen for dinner is really important. In part for his hero's journey- this is Luke's "ordinary world" that the call to adventure pulls him from- but also for establishing this new galaxy to the audience.
When A New Hope starts, we're thrown into a battle of ships and lasers, of people in strange armor, of advanced robots. So when we get introduced to Luke and his life on Tatooine, it's a nice break from all of that. The scene where Luke, Beru and Owen sitting down for dinner is extremely familiar to the normal world that we leave in, and helps us to relate to Luke's character. It also provides a baseline for what his life is like before we see it get turned totally upside down throughout the film.
These "mundane" things help bring a little comfort and familiarity to our perception of the galaxy, and make it a bit more relatable for us when we watch. Seeing characters do or use things that we normally do, or at least things that we know about, helps us connect with them and put ourselves in their shoes more easily. It also humanizes them to us too. Sure, Qui-Gon Jinn is a great, wise and powerful Jedi Knight, but he still sits down for dinner with a family when he's a guest in their home. Yeah, the Ghost Crew may be a highly skilled and incredible group of people who work together to accomplish great things, but they have to go grocery shopping for space waffles too.
Though these little things may not be as exciting to everyone as the big plots and lore reveals, they make me really happy. To me, it's a reminder that in some ways, the Star Wars galaxy isn't actually so far from our own, and although we don't have lightsabers or spaceships, we can make our own adventures just like they do (though hopefully less violent ones). And like they do, we all have the opportunity to do the right thing and play our part in helping others in our own galaxy. The fact that we also have to do the dishes doesn't change that.
