So the Messiah in Star Wars is supposed “to bring balance to The Force,” but I never understood what it meant.
Star Wars is extremely dualistic–there is a good side and an evil side, a light side and a dark side, the Jedi and the Sith. Every plotline is based around a manichean struggle where only one side can win by annihilating the other.
The “good side”, the Jedi, are explicitly looking a savior to provide “balance” while at the same time imposing all sorts of restrictions on which force powers are allowed and which aren’t. For an order whose messiah is based on Taoist equilibrium, they are positively Christian in their obsession with purity.
I think there is an implicit subtextual critique of the Jedi Order in the prequels that they incompetent, as you might expect from the leaders of a theocracy, but that’s about as far as it goes.
I think the closest we get to ANY real discussion of balance is Luke’s vision on Degobah, where he must see himself as potentially Darth Vader, which can be interpreted as an attempt towards wholeness OR as a warning to not stray into evil.
Can anyone square this circle?
Edit: It’s funny to me that there are more comments than upvotes. People want to share. I love it.
I think perhaps the original Star Wars just being kind of a cool sci-fi/fantasy setting with more of a vague outline and nothing super concrete actually is what let it thrive in the way it did. I don’t know if it was intentional by any means, Lucas just wanted to make a neat space fantasy story and didn’t put a whole lot of thought into it. Nerds love to debate, nerds love sci-fi, nerds love fantasy. It’s almost a perfect breeding ground for what happened. Lucas and then Disney saw a rabid fan base and thought “I can use this” then tried to enforce more meaning into something that was vague and fun to speculate on and it ended up going very poorly until you look at the success of the sales. Cause some people just like space/fantasy stories.
You know, I will give SW credit for this: Luke’s decision to not fight his father at the climax of the trilogy is really quite amazing given the western pop film canon’s enshrinement of violence as the ultimate means to defeat evil. This was a culture that had grown up on Westerns and war films. The good guy always kills the bad guy in the end.
He was trying to make a Kurosawa-esque, classical hero story set in space. He definitely had more than a vague idea but the Jedi magic stuff really seems like a kind of hand waving magic MacGuffin.
Hidden Fortress
@LordMayor @Vedlt I amused my sweetheart the other night by explaining the Lucas/Kurasawa influence, and pointing out that a katana is not a broadsword but is instead a type of saber, not heavy.
And the only reason those Samurais movies were made was because Japan had prohibitions on showing guns in movies since, well, you know, they were probably a little bit embarassed by how nuts they’d gone in dubyadubyatwo. Most of Kurosawa movies are really inspired by Westerns more than anything else.
I love the circular nature of culture.
I just realized now that “Dubya” means W.
And now I understand why that US president is given that strange nickname.
Totally agree. Star Wars was just a cool movie and something new for its time. I even liked the first one but personally, I think the cliffhanger ending of the second movie was a disgusting cash grab that should have ended the entire experiment and it go only worse from there.
@ExLisper @Vedlt The cliffhanger in the second movie was legit homage to the old Saturday morning serials ,Buster Crabbe style. Not that I liked it, but I think it’s legit. However, there is no forgiving the Ewoks, the yub yub dance, Jar Jar Binks, or a thousand and one other crass marketing grabs. And by the way, Han fucking shot first, mother-fucker.
Han didn’t shoot first. He was the only one who shot.