None of that is on-brand for Star Wars in any way. Yes, yes, “it’s a setting,” but it’s also a style and a tone. Andor was pushing it a little, but fundamentally it was about finding hope and meaning, and being something better than your darkest temptations want you to be. Or, barring that, about sacrifice. I can handle some nuance, but there is nothing interesting to me about the hows and whys of an awful person’s efforts to do awful things, or just being scared and seeing death for its own sake.
To the first point, I’d argue that resources spent on a particular franchise are not a zero sum. In fact, it’s more likely that the more rich and flexible the themes of a franchise can be, the more resources will be allocated to the franchise (if successful). It can be argued that some of the successful Star Wars spin offs already take a lot of tonal liberties (even if they might do so in different ways as how you might be referring) while contributing to the success (and increasing resource allocation) of the entire franchise. Repeating the same tone over and over might in fact not be necessarily a good thing in the long run.
To the second point, I’d argue that the morals/message of a story is ultimately up to interpretation… one could easily interpret the tale of the ridding hood as a cute cautionary tale against stranger danger with a happy ending… but some might think up about symbolism with menstruation and associate it with darker issues (and there’s even some recent new feminist takes on it…) and depending on how you think of it quickly stops being “cute” or the ending stops being really that happy when you think of what was sacrificed…
If you just watch the OT in isolation and start thinking about it you might as well end up realizing the rebels might in fact be the bad guys. The Empire only actually uses their weapons when they need to fight the rebellion and/or punish criminals/traitors, we are not really shown in the OT how the Empire is evil, only told from the point of view of the rebels. Or how are the rebels good. What’s the republic’s tax policy? how do they deal with corruption/crime? did people actually have better lives under the republic or could it be that life under the Empire the life of the average law-abiding citizen was actually safer, more prosperous and comfortable? If one has only watched the OT movies it might as well be the tale of a lesser evil being replaced by an even bigger one. It wouldn’t be the first time someone has come up with a similar interpretation.
Also, I don’t see the problem if, for example, the Skywalker saga had a particular tone and theme, and another hypothetical saga could have another. Just the same way as how the life in one country can have a different tone than the life in another one, despite being part of the same planet and overarching history. The OT will still be there and your interpretation for it doesn’t have to change regardless of how many sequels and spin offs they make.
That interpretation relies on the assumption that every single man, woman, child, alien, animal, plant, etc on Alderaan is a criminal deserving death and that is… let’s just call it a very generous interpretation.
Other than that, Andor for example was a rather noticeable departure from classic Star Wars fare and one might argue that that specifically was what brought it such general praise and acclaim, so mixing up the formula every now and then can really be an injection of fresh life and into the franchise bringing in fans that would not normally get into Star Wars.
What I said is that they only used their weapons when they needed to fight rebels, not that the rebels were the only ones affected by the attack.
Was every cleaner, cook, clerk and technician (+ their families) working inside the death star a criminal deserving death when the rebels blew it up? The death star had the population of a big metropolis, so it had to host an entire urban ecosystem, including recreation areas and entertainment.
Sure, the station was also a military base containing a very powerful weapon, but the Empire had very little reason to believe Leia when she told them Alderaan had no weapons or that it wasn’t a threat, she might have even lied about Tatooine. Alderaan might as well have been an important Rebel base. In fact, we know it played an important role in establishing the Rebel Alliance.
But all this was an example. I’m not really saying that the destruction of Alderaan was deserved, or that it was an adequate response (although there’s people who have actually argued that it was justified), what I’m saying is that things are always open to interpretation, so wanting to keep the same “tone” can mean different things for different people. For some perhaps the main topic is the odyssey of the main character who started from humble beginnings, and fights against seemingly impossible odds. One might be able to keep that same “tone” in either side of the force, or with darker undertones.
You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this… (taps his heart) not his wallet.
If an act is wrong, the act is wrong regardless whether or not those affected by it knew the risks.
If someone kills a policeman who happens to have put their life on the line, the killer shouldn’t just be let free under the pretense that the policeman knew the risks…
Also, I feel the empire probably didn’t expect the rebels would actually end up being able to blow up the station. Sure, they were very concerned and seriously tried to get the schematics back / supress the rebels, but I don’t think everyone there was fully aware of the risks.
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That’s not how this works. If the rebels break the law and the empire punishes Alderaan, that is so-called “collective punishment” - punishing someone who has not committed the crime for someone else’s crime. Under pretty much every body of international law hereabouts, this is forbidden. It’s like if I punched you in the face because someone somewhere jaywalked. Neither fair, nor legal. Now, of course, one could argue that under imperial law, it would be legal, but that would mean to just bend over and believe that every whim of the emperor’s is legal and then the empire could do no harm because it would simply always declare itself blameless and in the right. (Nazi Germany did just that, which is why we have human rights now around here btw.) So if we go by international law or just a general sense of justice, then self defense against the rebellion could potentially be justified, but “self defense” against the children of Alderaan is just bullshit, that’s just not an argument, that is the kind of excuse that every bully ranging from domestic abusers to actual dictators like to use - be it “look at what you made me do, little kid - you made me beat you because you broke some arbitrary rule I just made up, this is all your fault” or bombing civilians under the pretense of defending the own country from some nebulous weapons of mass destruction or other fake flimsy pretenses.
Just like any “punishment” against the civilians of Alderaan for something they did not do is not an argument that will get anybody anywhere. It’s just collective punishment: hardcore war-crimey. No way around that.
A criminal? No, but the rebellion did not blow up the death star as punishment for e.g. Alderaan. The death star was blown up in self defense against a current attack. Would any lesser means have been sufficient to end this attack? I cannot think of anything that would have dissuaded the death star, so the attacking military installation death star had to be destroyed to end this attack. Allowing the argument that nothing any opponents of the empire do can ever be legal because the empire makes the laws would just mean rolling over in front of injustice which is not acceptable in the face of absolute totalitarian arbitrary despotism. If one were to seriously consider that line of reasoning, then any and all military actions against Nazi Germany were crimes. I will not entertain such lines of thought. Unlike Alderaan, the death star had already fired up its planet-killing lasers and just turned out to pull the short straw in this fight its commanders started.
In every war, I keep hearing both sides talk about self defense, sometimes about fighting to seek “peace”, doing “preventive war”… or some other ideal that always moves them to commit murder. One could argue that destroying Rebel bases that could potentially be host of Jedi Masters who train dangerous assassins, or important schematics that could help blow up entire moon-like stations and could end up being the vane of the empire (which is actually what ended up happening) was also self defense…
Mahatma Gandhi would have disagreed with the approach, for example.
Yes, but my issue here is less making the decision which side was rightfully defending themselves here. My issue lies with the existence of an empire that claims to be able to declare even the worst atrocities it commits legal and any resistance illegal. If we give the empire the purview to declare what is legal based on the emperor’s capriciousness, then they can never be the bad guys, because they would only ever be the bad guys if the emperor said “I am the bad guy”, which totalitarian dictators tend to not do. Still, atrocities as seen in the movie which we are shown, must be judged by SOME standard and I refuse it to be exclusively the standard which the totalitarian dictator sets.
I do understand that totalitarian dictators would generally like me to consider their point of view more valid. In this case study, I do not.
I do not like totalitarianism, I’m a democrat. But that’s not the same thing as saying that totalitarianism = evil.
My support for democracy is mainly pragmatic, rather than an absolute belief in the goodness of whatever the majority decides. If a democracy makes decisions I consider evil, then I would criticize it, same as I would criticize a dictatorship that does evil. And yet when it does good, I would praise that, same as I would praise it when it’s a dictatorship the one doing a good deed.
The reason I prefer democracy, is because it gives certain guarantees that there will be a way for people (me & others like me) to voice their dissent in a way that might have some impact. But that doesn’t mean that it’s ok to do evil whenever it’s done in the name of democracy.
The Republic (by whichever governance method it uses… which is not completely clear, at least in the OT) can commit evil acts in the same way as the Empire can. And based on that, they can be the evil ones, just as much as the Empire can.
The difference is that totalitarianism gives evil people the power to commit atrocities unchallenged while democracies tend to implement measures that hold people who commit evil act responsible. So naturally evil tends to gravitate towards the system where they can set the rules while democracy tends to have rule sets that are intended to protect the majority from one-sided evil acts.
So the emperor is balls-to-the-wall unhindered evil and does not allow resistance even to unquestionably evil acts of his, while the republic on the other hand has systems in place that would punish genocides, optimally, but at the very least it could and would raise questions.
It would be great if the movies had shown that.
We are not shown any of those systems the resistance has in place that would “optimally” prevent evil acts, and how are those superior / more efficient to the ones from the Empire. Instead, they present a case for how the Empire can, in fact, be challenged. Whether that challenge ultimally results in an improvement for the galaxy is not shown, we are left guessing.
But the whole point I was making was that all of this is open to interpretation. You don’t have to agree with any one particular interpretation of it. Just as long as we acknowledge that such interpretation would be a valid one.