James Cameron’s high-tech magnum opus Avatar is now a trilogy. The sequels The Way of Water and Fire and Ash have turned the story of ex-soldier and alien convert Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) into a decade-spanning epic with a litany of related characters. With any modern sci-fi trilogy comes inevitable comparisons to Star Wars, and one longtime rap against Avatar movies in general is that their characters lack the immediate iconography, recognizability, and overall cultural impact of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Princess Leia, and so on. The Avatar series does, however, have the whole of Star Wars beat on one specific, important ground: It’s a much better story about family.

The whole concept of Star Wars being a family-driven story — “the Skywalker Saga,” as the main nine “episode” movies were rebranded toward the end of the sequel trilogy — has always been a little more tenuous than filmmakers let on. Yes, the twist revealed at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, that Luke Skywalker is actually the son of much-feared galactic fascist Darth Vader, shifts that trilogy into a story about a son redeeming his father, rather than the tale of a plucky orphan (or a child suffering for his father’s sins).

There’s a neat thematic counterpoint, too, in Vader’s origins, with Anakin Skywalker corrupted in part by his fear and anger over his mother’s death, then redeemed by his own son’s compassion. The sequel trilogy attempts to build out another reversal, with Vader’s grandchild, Leia and Han's son Kylo Ren, serving as the conflicted bad guy.

But most of the best-drawn relationships in the Star Wars movies are pointedly not about family, or at least not about blood ties. Luke’s true father-figures in the original trilogy are his mentors Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda, who he learns from and, in Yoda’s

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