“You know what would be really interesting to do? Don’t denounce me as a Stalinist but, for example – it’s my old temptation – to rewrote Star Wars… presenting Palpatine and Darth Vader as good progressive egalitarian centralist fighting reactionary feudalist, all the Jedi bullshit. It would tell a completely different story, from the others point. What do they [Jedi] stand for? All that, ‘Republic’, what strange of Republic is when you have a Princess Leila, knights, kings and so on? No, Palpatine the Emperor and Darth Vader, they are - my god - progressive Bonapartist revolutionaries trying to get rid of the old world.”

From: Žižek on Reshooting Star Wars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_DroaGggbc

But tbh I think that if we take the original trilogy, the Rebels are cleary fighting a reactionary imperialist power, ie. an analogy to the Vietnam war

Too bad the person he’s talking to is far more corrupt than Yoda.

This is why I will always argue that world-building-wise, the prequels and BBY are generally more interesting, because they create a more nuanced view of the politics of the Galactic Republic.

The actual plots of episodes 1,2&3 leave much to be desired, but to me, there’s a reason why Andor is so compelling compared to the Mandalorian, it’s the politics.

Anyone who thinks politics don’t belong in a Star Wars movie isn’t really into fantasy, which Star Wars most certainly is.

Nek Minit they’ll say game of thrones, lord of the rings, the expanse, Avatar the Last Airbender etc (in my opinion some of the greatest fantasy/sci-fi of all time) shouldn’t have so much politics.

Like… that’s what fantasy is. Politics, human relationships and how people live and struggle against each other for their interests, in a fictional world with different rules/physics/history.

The Star Wars Sequels are trash because they neither have a good plot, nor good world building.

The Jedi were complicit in the corruption and injustice of the Galactic Republic, no doubt, and is great world-building, if you ask me.

A valid criticism. Coming from the mouth of something trying to replace it with something worse. A classic villain move.

I did enjoy the old EU Luke being a more reformist and grounded iteration of Jedi teachings. He started by rejecting Yoda’s warnings not to try and save his friends. He put friends over the high minded ideals of Jedi enlightenment right there in Empire Strikes Back. Then in ROTJ he spent the entire movie rejecting the obvious approach of simply killing Vader, instead trying to reach Anakin. Over and over Luke put people he cared about over esoteric codes.

(Remember when the original trilogy and much of the EU establishing Luke was written, the prequels and Clone Wars hadn’t been fleshed out, and Jedi were implied to be even more high minded and classical than they were shown in the prequels).

Putting the right guy in power never worked historically since power corrupts. The power structure is the problem. That’s one of the core ideas of anarchism

The Sith and the Empire didn’t help anyone either though, they made existence considerably worse for everyone other than a select few. They weren’t saviours or good guys, they were evil despots who sought to use lies to overthrow the existing power structure so they could fill the void with their totalitarianism.

This is why Dooku made a shitty Sith. His underlying reasons were just, but didn’t stop to think about who he was hooking up with. He’s ultimately a tragic figure of someone who meant well and fucked it up.

Sith ethos doesn’t work like that. It’s a self-centered philosophy; you gain power for the sake of doing what you please. Palatine was never going to have Dooku as an apprentice long term.

Anakin’s reasons were selfish. His relationship with Padme was always toxic, immature, and selfish. Him wanting to save her was fundamentally selfish. It wasn’t for her sake as a person apart from Anakin. That’s exactly the kind of behavior the Sith philosophy encourages.

To me, the scene that most defined what the Jedi order had become and why it needed to end was at the big fight scene at the end of Attack of the Clones where Yoda and Dooku were dueling. When Dooku pulled a pillar down with the Force and then Yoda used the Force to catch it to prevent it from falling on to Obi-wan. He then made a spectacle of it by spinning it around before throwing it back at Dooku. What he should have done was just use the Force to move Obi-wan and Anakin to a safe position and continued to pursue Dooku. That scene just demonstrated how full of himself Yoda had become. And it took until his duel with Palpatine before he realized that he was a large part of what had gone wrong with the Jedi order. I also always felt that he intentionally withheld a lot of information about the Jedi order from Luke in order to prevent him from rebuilding a similar system.