Star Wars hot takes no one asked for

Padme: To be angry is to be human.

Anakin: I’m a Jedi. I know I’m better than this.

— Star Wars: Episode II, Attack of the Clones (2002)

Frankly, the Star Wars film franchise is a mess. A mess that definitely isn’t over because in 15 years’ time Disney will somehow wring another trilogy out of it so they can keep reissuing action figures etc etc etc (i.e. MONEY). It’s a mess that I love and am going to talk about, damn it. Here goes.

So, like, Jedi good, Sith bad, yes?

How does someone “bring balance to the Force” and why is it something that the Force can’t do itself?

For the love of all that is supernatural can Anakin please have little an emotional maturity modeled for him, as a treat?

What is the Force?

I like The Last Jedi’s definition (I was one of the people who really loved most of The Last Jedi): the Force is what flows between all living things. It has a light side and a dark side. The dark side is seen as the deepest evil possible, whereas the light side is kiiiinda centrist. Anakin, Luke, Ben, and Rey all end up having really intense personal relationships with the dark side despite ultimately being won over by the light.

I have a few issues with this. Balance doesn’t necessarily mean “good wins”. In fact, I’d argue that the Force has been out of balance partly because the Jedi outnumber the Sith by a LOT at the beginning of the prequels. And, frankly, the whole “there are only ever two Sith, no more, no less” doesn’t make a ton of sense. Like, how are you going to wipe out the Sith if there are always two of them? Why would you want to wipe out the Sith? They balance you out, come on. If you didn’t have anyone to fight you’d be bored out of your minds.

The prequel Jedi (especially prequel Yoda) largely come across as arrogant, emotionally immature, and complacent. Obi-Wan was definitely not emotionally prepared to watch his master die and was also super not ready IMMEDIATELY AFTER THAT to take on a padawan learner of his own, especially one as volatile and powerful as Anakin. Yet the Jedi Council ignored what would have been best for both Obi-Wan and Anakin just because they didn’t find Anakin when he was super little. Whose fault is that?

Most people hate the prequels because of the clunky direction, awkward dialogue, and — I forget why else people hate them. In that I dislike the prequels, I do so because it’s so painful to watch Anakin, an extremely emotional teenager, struggling to repress his feelings because the Jedi have told him that’s what he has to do. It’s so painful to watch him latch onto Padme because she’s basically the only person who doesn’t constantly chastise him for expressing himself. People who criticize the acting in the prequels tend to do so because they think Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen are trying to convince us that they’re kids in love and that’s all they are. They’re not! Anakin was a slave who knew he was destined for something greater; he had to leave his mother behind to follow his destiny, and the next time he saw her, she died in his arms. Like, I don’t know about you, but I think a psychoanalyst would have a FIELD DAY with that alone, and that’s not all.

Anakin feels that he’s more powerful than his master — being told you’re the Chosen One will do that — but whenever he tries to have that conversation with Obi-Wan, he’s shut down. I really want to give Obi-Wan the benefit of the doubt on this because I like the guy so I’m just gonna say that the Jedi Order brainwashing works extremely well on him. He was young and vulnerable when he took Anakin as his padawan; he leaned into what he already knew and focused on that to the exclusion of actually listening to the younger man. That’s something that the Jedi are very good at: not listening. (“The Dark Side clouds everything” my ass, you just don’t let yourself feel any emotions.)

Until Palpatine, Padme is the only person who allows Anakin to feel in control of himself while still feeling emotions. Have I made the Jedi-Order-toxic-masculinity comparison yet? I have now. You’re Not Supposed To Feel Things And If You Do, That Automatically Puts You On An Irreversible Path To The Dark Side! There’s no nuance. There’s no compassion. There’s very little similarity between the prequel Jedi and Luke Skywalker (who I would unquestionably die for). Yoda is basically a different character in each trilogy.

AH and what The Rise of Skywalker ruined about Palpatine (in addition to Everything Else It Fucked Up) is that it reduced him from a complex, nuanced villain who was manipulative in an eerily attractive way to just . . . a caricature. It cheapened the rest of his character. In the prequels, he’s such! a good! liar! and he bides his time and he makes Anakin feel heard and understood and accepted for who he is. Anakin doesn’t turn to the Dark Side because of any inherent flaws or even because the Jedi don’t let him feel things (although that is a big part of it); he turns because Sheev Palpatine gives him a reason to. He promises him that he’ll be able to save Padme. He makes the young Jedi feel loved (in a twisted, abusive way, but that’s often what “love” ends up looking like anyway). The Jedi Order is not a loving institution and that’s ultimately its downfall because Anakin, unable to accept affection from his wife because he’s terrified for her safety, takes any affection he’s given, and the Jedi could and would never offer that. Yoda literally tells him not to mourn her death.

Also. hmm. can we talk about the explicit statement that darkness = evil and how that directly correlates to racism? how so many of the words we use for value judgements have racist and/or colourist connotations (and in some cases EXPLICIT MEANINGS)? Black people have almost definitely already made this point, but most white people only listen when another white person says it, so I'm saying it. To be perfectly honest, it's lazy worldbuilding.

This brings me to another point: the sequel trilogy messed up big time with its treatment of Finn. All the marketing screamed that he would become a Jedi. “Stormtrooper to Jedi” would have been a powerful, innovative arc. Instead we got a rehash of episode IV followed by some really fucking weird retconning to make Rey the granddaughter of the prequels’ big bad. So the new trilogy didn't even have its own BBEG. How original.

In addition to that, both Finn and Poe are characterised in incredibly inconsistent ways (I mean, so is Rey, but) and we really don't get to understand them in the way that we understood Han, Leia, and even Lando in the original trilogy and Padme and Obi-Wan in the prequels. The three main characters of the sequel trilogy — a white woman, a Black man, and a Latine man — are not treated equally by the writers, and it's not misogynistic of me to point out that race is a factor here. Whiteness has been central to a lot of women's rights movements and to a lot of forms of feminism since the beginning.

This is a lot so I'm going to stop here for now.