I have been reminded of this classic piece from 2002, making the case for the Empire.
STAR WARS RETURNS today with its fifth installment, “Attack of the Clones.” There will be talk of the Force and the Dark Side and the epic morality of George Lucas’s series. But the truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good.
It’s a difficult leap to make–embracing Darth Vader and the Emperor over the plucky and attractive Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia–but a careful examination of the facts, sorted apart from Lucas’s off-the-shelf moral cues, makes a quite convincing case.
Since then, of course, George Lucas came out with a sixth movie, which undoubtedly went over the top in its portrayal of the nascent Empire purely to counteract the growing consensus that the director wanted us to root for the wrong team. …I actually don’t know if that’s true, but hoo, boy: the way the Old Republic was run absolutely did suck. George Lucas should have given up writing his own stuff decades ago.
Blowing up Alderan was a moral event horizon like no other.
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But Lucas’ statement that the original trilogy was about the redemption of Anikin Skywalker remains ridiculous. Protecting your son from an attack does not undo mass murder or make you a good or admirable person.
nothing was ever going to make Anakin a good or admirable person again. Thats why he had to die. But, in the end he did turn away from the darkness for his son. Who will go on to do good because of it.
Well, when a revolution is a major part of the story, and you have hard leftists as a significant part of the story telling team, how are you supposed to avoid screwing up the mechanics of what you are trying to show?
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I bought the soundtrack and novel to Revenge before the movie opened. IIRC, there were some anachronistic bits which didn’t make sense, that I took to be poorly disguised Bush derangement. I think I never watched the movie. That may have been the start of my disenchantment with Star Wars.
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As for Disney, there are good things and bad things I could say about them.
after reading the article, is it possible it was meant as satire? It seems difficult to defend the destruction of an entire planet.
I’m one of those irredeemable fans whose favorite movie is Jedi, not Empire. (the whole Jabba The Hutt sequence is my favorite part of the entire saga and I love the Luke Vs Vader duel at the end.) My best friend also puts Jedi as his favorite, but its because of the big space battle. I Also love the Preq trilogy as well because of things like lightsabre fights, chase scenes and cool visuals. Mind you, I wish Qui-Gon had slit open Jar Jar Binks the moment he met him and “Midiclorians” (however you spell that) should be on every list of banned words.
Oh, dang, it’s as if that guy decided to embody, for one day, all of the negative stereotypes about “neocons” and then place it in an article. Kristol must’ve been thrilled *sarcasm*
“Blowing up a planet isn’t that bad….”
There was another part (in addition to justifying Alderaan’s destruction) that I disagree with.
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Poor Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen reach a grisly end, but only after they aid the rebellion by hiding Luke and harboring two fugitive droids. They aren’t given due process, but they are traitors.
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OK, first point: Luke was not wanted by the Empire for anything. Now if his identity had been broadcasted back to the Empire (Say he showed up at the farm while the Stormtroopers were there), it might have drawn Vader’s attention and he would have been detained. But as far as the galaxy knew, he was just some farmboy.
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They purchased the droids in good faith from the Jawa dealers. They had no way of knowing that R2 and 3PO were fugitives. The droids certainly didn’t volunteer the information.
I think you folks will appreciate another humorous look at things.
That was pretty funny. Thanks!
I’m man enough to admit that the artist’s observations didn’t occur to me. 🙂
One thing I found confusing in Return of the Jedi was that Luke would go over to darkside if he dares to raise is lightsabre against the Emperor. Come on! He blew up the Death Star and almost everyone on it and became the better person for it. What was Lucas implying, some Divine Right of Emperors doctrine?
The key was acting in anger. Everyone on the Deathstar was complicit in the deaths of everyone on Alderan and every world the death star would have gone one to destroy. Luke acted to save lives, and he acted from a state of calm deliberation. Killing the emperor while he sat defenseless out of rage and anger would have tilted him to the darkness.