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.
Yes, of course you’re right but even ignoring all the fantasy bits and just focusing on the science and vision of the future it’s mediocre. Let’s take AI as an example. Star Trek has state of AI solidly defined: there’s one truly intelligent android, it’s state of the art and no one really knows how it works so it’s not copied yet but it’s recognized as a person and granted all rights. Computers are intelligent but not real AI. Dune doesn’t have AI and there’s an explanation for it. But Star Wars? C3P0 was build from junk, is completely useless but is kept around for decades as some sort of a pet or companion. At the same time robot soldiers are just weapons. AI is granted personhood or treated as appliance without any sense or logic behind it. Nothing besides robots has any intelligence for some reason. Star Wars used basic concepts from sci-fi but it’s clear the writers didn’t understand any of them.
Yeah, it’s a little hilarious to me that Star Wars occasionally tries to get serious about politics or economics and the droids are just kind of sitting there, completely unexamined in any way.
You can just spin up a consciousness that has to obey your orders and can be housed inside any kind of machinery and it has no impact on society?