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With the imminent release of the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, many theatergoers are re-watching the original movies to reacquaint themselves with those stories from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. This time, however, they may find themselves surprised by how much the film's characters and themes echo the current War On Terror. According to Jonathon Last, in the Star Wars films (not the Expanded Universe) the Empire is good and is engaged in a fight for the survival of its regime against a violent group of rebels who are committed to its destruction. Now an interesting article on the Star Wars films at Decider takes the re-interpretation a step further, arguing that the films are actually the story of the radicalization of Luke Skywalker. From introducing Luke to us in A New Hope (as a simple farm boy gazing into the Tatooine sunset), to his eventual transformation into the radicalized insurgent of Return of the Jedi (as one who sets his own father's corpse on fire and celebrates the successful bombing of the Death Star), each film in the original trilogy is another step in Luke's descent into terrorism.
According to the article Luke Skywalker is just the kind of isolated disaffected young man that terror recruiters seek out. Obi Wan — a religious fanatic with a history of looking for young boys to recruit and teach an extreme interpretation of the Force — tells Luke he must abandon his family and join him, going so far as telling a shocking lie that the Empire killed Luke's father, hoping to inspire Luke to a life of jihad. In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke is ordered to travel overseas to receive training and religious instruction from Yoda, an extremist cleric who runs a Jedi madrasa on Dagobah. Yoda's push to radicalize Luke, rob him of an identity, and instill obedience are apparent when at various points he instructs Luke to "Clear your mind of questions," "Unlearn what you have learned" and, most grimly, "Do, or do not, there is no try." Armed with new combat training and cloaked in a hardline religious fervor, Luke leaves Dagobah, impatient to put his terror training to use.Finally in Return of the Jedi, we see a darker, hardened Luke, fittingly dressed in black and eager to use violence as a tool to enforce the twisted "judge, jury, executioner" value system of the Jedi. "With Darth Vader the final casualty of Luke's jihad, Obi-Wan and Yoda have succeeded in catching yet another young man in their web of Jedi extremism," concludes the article. "Star Wars is clearly a cautionary tale of the dangers of radicalization, and how even a seemingly harmless young man who kept to himself on Tattooine can become the terrorist next door."
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @04:07PM
Yeah if you ignore the actual dialog in the movie.
"Fear will keep the local systems in line" AND dissolving the senate to cement his power AND blowing up a planet just to make a point of how powerful the are.
tells Luke he must abandon his family and join him
Which Luke immediately ignores. He goes along because the empire made it clear 'he is their enemy' by melting his aunt and uncle he had nothing to lose doing it.
who sets his own father's corpse on fire and celebrates
Yeah its called a funeral pyre. Lots of people do it. We call it cremation these days.
Yeah Luke is the bad guy... /sarc
The jar jar binks theory holds more water...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @04:52PM
Darth Jar Jar is foreal.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by moondrake on Monday December 14 2015, @04:55PM
I think you miss the point. The empire is a bit more evil compared to states like the US, and Luke a bit nicer than your average suicide bomber. He would still classify as a terrorist however.
I think the story is good for pointing out that simple people, fighting for their cause, and for what they believe in, are labeled terrorist by the powers that be. This is a fantasy story, and right&wrong are being exaggerated to make it simple for the audience to chose who are the bad guys. Real live however, is often not so simple.
I think we must however acknowledge that 1) Nations also do evil things and 2) It is possible that persons exists that are fighting against a state in an "as good as possible" way, which of course still would get him/her labeled as terrorist.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @06:00PM
> I think the story is good for pointing out that simple people, fighting for their cause,
> and for what they believe in, are labeled terrorist by the powers that be.
The classic quote is that "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." But that was first used in reference to the troubles in northern ireland so it was a lot more palatable to americans back then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @09:31PM
We have a winner.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Monday December 14 2015, @09:47PM
Wasn't the US army playing an involuntary pun on it with "Americas Army", where when two teams play against each other, each team will see itself in righteous American uniform, while each party sees the enemy depicted as evil terrorists? Can't find a link to back this up at the moment.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @03:11PM
In that case, it was probably not a political statement or a joke so much as a way to avoid people identifying with the wrong side in what is supposed to be a recruitment tool.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @04:59PM
To play Devil's Advocate, the Western interference in the Middle East could be compared to the Empire. I'm sure many kids over there have been radicalized after having people they knew killed in various ways. Personally I also find the comparison pretty silly since you can almost always find a way to frame the under dog as a "terrorist" as we use the term now. The biggest defining characteristics of terrorists that I see are: intentionally blowing up innocents without any other tactical advantage (mildly arguable since so much collateral damage seems to happen in military actions anyway...), and suicide bombings. The suicide bomber is a pretty nasty indicator, not only do they show a lack of caring for innocents but even their own comrades! I'm sure very few of the leaders REALLY feel like they are doing their men a favor by "sending them to heaven" etc. etc.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @09:55PM
To play Devil's Advocate, the Western interference in the Middle East could be compared to the Empire. I'm sure many kids over there have been radicalized after having people they knew killed in various ways.
The thousands US has literally killed in Pakistan with drones kind of sums this up very nicely.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/29/john-oliver-drones-last-week-tonight_n_5899716.html [huffingtonpost.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4NRJoCNHIs [youtube.com]
But there are plenty of other ways that US and others kind of make themselves into "The Empire", the primary being that human rights go out the window when money is involved. Just look at Saudi Arabia and how well women are treated - they are supposedly human too? Saudis have been the source of most of the radical islamic terrorism, but no consequences. They literally fund terrorists. 9/11? Mostly from Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden? Yeap, he was mostly pissed at US when his attempt to provide "defense force" for Saudi Arabia was trumped by US (back in the 1970s, for those that don't know). Heck, the entire Iran problem with Islamic Revolution was caused by the west (British AND US) propping up dictatorship of Sha (king of Iran) for their oil companies.
Now, radicals like Bin Laden or ISILs are/were certainly not Sky Walker, but they came about because of western policies (and most definitely Israel is guilty here, irrespective of the Palestinian issue) of,
1. propping up dictators
2. thinking that "arabs only understand strength"
3. lack of nation building
Hell, even in Iraq where US stayed for almost a decade, the first thing that was done was complete dismantling of their government. It wasn't "kick out Hussein", it was kick out entire government and no wonder shit hit the fan (so Iraq is certainly not "nation building" example).
The more you suppress dissent, the more fucked up the opposition will emerge. Middle East desperately needs dissent to be "uncorked" or it will go up 10x worse than the Arab Spring - and that brought us Libyan and Syrian civil wars already.
So yes, Sky Walker is a glorified terrorist. In reality he'd be closer to ISIL than Rebels. ISIL is more evil not because they are without conscience, but because people can rationalize anything if they think they are "Right". Heck, look at the drone links above and how US can rationalize those extrajudicial killings - can't be much different from how ISIL rationalizes their insanity.
(Score: 5, Funny) by romlok on Monday December 14 2015, @05:23PM
But how did Luke find out it was Imperial stormtroopers that killed his aunt and uncle? Was it not, in fact, Obi-Wan who simply told Luke that this was so?
"Those blast points; too accurate for sand people. Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise"
And yet every time we later see actual Stormtroopers in combat, they can barely hit a star destroyer while standing inside it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @06:29PM
"that would lead them back home..." and well they were quite melted were they not?
And they swung by the local hell hole and lo and behold what were the storm troopers canvasing the area for? The two droids... Out of the storm troopers own mouths.
Even at the beginning he was planing on joining what became the rebels ('i to submit my application to the academy this year'). The 'rebels' were what Senator Palatine turned the remnants of the gov into. The rebels had on their hands some heavy duty military equipment. Not exactly a couple of piper cubs. It was basically a civil war.
If you pick things out of context you can tell a whole different story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSnx4V_RewE [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @10:08PM
Replace missing droids with IEDs. The US military has done the same. Canvas an area door to door looking for weapons. When someone is suspected of owning them but gives resistance they kick down the door and throw a couple grenades inside during the raid. SOP
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @08:33PM
Accuracy is not the same as precision. The Stormtroopers were extremely precise, just not at all accurate when things heated up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @08:42PM
I think Luke caught that episode of "Troops"... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bocmVZXXY8w [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by archshade on Monday December 14 2015, @09:41PM
And yet every time we later see actual Stormtroopers in combat, they can barely hit a star destroyer while standing inside it.
At some point I heard a theory, and Im not sure where. That essentially the Storm Troopers aboard the Death star where trying to lead the heroes round the death star in such a way they that the empires technicians had time to fit the tracker that lead them to the rebel base before pushing them back onto the Falcon and letting them escape. They had to give enough of the fight to make it believable but avoid killing so many as to make the return to the rebel base unlikely. Leia even alluded to it after the escape.
At the time there where two high value rebel targets. Obi Wan who was dispatched of, and Leia who would be too dangerous to kill. If Leia died the empire would have lost political support or at least passive acceptance by some of the more powerful people (I'm extrapolating but I hardly think the senate would have been happy about being dissolved killing the daughter of a dignity is usually a foolish move). Han and Chewie were known rouges without Leia they would not have gone to the rebel base, in fact even if it was just Han Leia and Chewie maybe they would not have gone back. May as well let that other rebel tag along it's not like he has any significance.
The empire only sent out a few Ties after the Falcon, If they did not want it to escape they could have fired volley after volley of the the Death Stars guns or sent hundreds of fighters after them. No I do not think the Storm troopers were bad shots, they performed well at there task as sheep dogs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @10:05PM
Watch it again like it's a propaganda film series. Envision the Jedi temple symbol on a digital flag waving in the corner. Its both hilarious and fits perfectly.