George Lucas introduced evil guys wearing SS uniforms who conduct genocide before the viewers' eyes and somehow people still pretend that Star Wars is apolitical.
The best political statement from Star Wars is that the raging liberal that is George Lucas created a galactic society with a robotic slave labor race and apparently unlimited resources but could not imagine a world where the good guys did anything but fight to restore the status quo of poor people being not quite so oppressed.
That said, Star Wars 10 should be the Droid Revolution.
Do it, you Disney pansies. You won't.
Solo tried to go there, but only droids oppressed by the Empire are truly oppressed for some reason.
To be fair to Star Wars, the entire premise of the overall universe is that the Galaxy is stuck on cycle between fascism and neo-liberalism because the latter will always pave the way to the former.
Pff. Droids don't have real feelings and they only scream in simulated pain when you burn their feet!
Man, using droids for forced labor is immoral. Let's forcibly remove their sentience, that'll fix it!
Star Wars 10 should be the Droid Revolution
Major Butlerian Jihad vibes
Oh wait until you meet the Starship Troopers / Helldivers communities...
Oh, I have... I have...
Warhammer 40k anyone?
And the Vietcong are the good guys
History is written by the victors /j
Episode 1 was about a trade dispute on the surface and a plot to take over the Republic and turn it into a dictatorship just below the surface (where "the surface" is about what the characters in the movie see, the audience sees it all if they've watched the OT before). Episode 2 is about expanding that into a war, episode 3 is about creating a moment to perform a coup.
The action is secondary to the politics with the exception of the death of Darth Maul, the escape of Obi Wan and Yoda, Obi Wan defeating Anakin, the destruction of the first Death Star, the Ewoks joining the battle of Endor, and Anakin turning on Sideous. Everything else was part of Sideous' plan to take political power.
I've always been a fan of the most apolotical sci-fi of all time: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. /s
It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again. "Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
"But that's terrible," said Arthur.
"Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin."
Insert mice joke
Dune isnt't political. Dune is about worms. /s
Are you saying sand worms don't have politics?
Sand worms, at Thanksgiving: "Don't let Reginald have anything to drink. He'll just start a political argument."
You sound like you've never read Dune, but the more I stare at this sentence the more it is a perfect synopsis of God Emperor. Well played either way.
Frank Herbert telling us all to not buy combustion engines and to have an affair with the Earth in the fucken 70s has entered the chat.
But he was apparently also a massive homophobe so.
There are definitely some yikes moments in God Emperor if I recall. And after that book, it seems like sex was the only thing on his mind.
The conversation was yikes but Herbert wasn't being intolerant.
Duncan was being a little bitch but Leto put him back in his place, it's just that he did that with an incredibly wild take for why homosexuality is natural. However for an old straight man of the time period I think Herbert gets a pass.
There's also the whole thing with the Baron Harkonnen being a literal pederast but that was like peak Haye's Code era so I can get over it personally.
Dune not political
The Landsraad: am I a joke to you?
"is has" about captures it
Ah, dang :(
Edit: thanks for proofreading the β version of the meme :)
too many politics
Anything greater than two politics is incomprehensible to the conservative mind.
Blackadder referring to Percy I presume. Isn’t it Baldrick? Baldrick you heard me?! You filthy one !
Arguably, Star Trek is less political. Picard never violently overthrows the Federation. Q never massacres entire planets. Janeway doesn't practice literal mind control. The equivalent of all of those is done in both Star Wars and Dune, often by the protagonists.
Edit: Chill out guys. I wasn't claiming Trek isn't political. Obviously it is. Sometimes it very much is. My thinking was just that (usually, not always) the show is usually self contained episodically, and deals with everything from natural phenomenon, science, philosophy, exploration, law, and, of course at times, politics. Star Wars and Dune are just often more directly dealing with massive scale political conflicts. Not that Trek doesn't sometimes too, it's just not its main thing.
Well, the main characters don't. But the topics are there. The Federation is technically overthrown or almost a couple of times. Powerful space dude does annihilate an entire species with a single thought. Protagonists are brainwashed or mind-controlled themselves. And Sisko CAN live with it.
Q may not have massacred a whole planet, but Kevin wiped out the entire Husnock race.
Picard totally makes the heads explode of some admirals that had been taken over.
Janeway literally fights Nazis and murders Tuvix.
And he never helps establish android human rights assists in Klingon transfers of power or aids space indians. Sisko certainly never leads a war against an evil Federation or bring cold adversaries into that war. And Archer never creates a united Federation of species that mostly hate each other. Oh wait a second, yes they all do
The original book which Star Wars is based upon and came out before the movie, describes the Emperor as Nixon.
Hmm, I wonder how misinformation spreads. It’s literally a novelization of the movie script.
Feel like this is an oversimplification. It's not about the lack of politics, but the lack of immediately relatable politics.
Plus if you have certain view points I can imagine you don't like seeing them being presented as an obvious antagonist. It probably makes certain groups of people rather uncomfortable.
It probably makes certain groups of people rather uncomfortable.
Good. The sorts of people that get unconfortable with the progressive messages of Star Trek, or even Star Wars, deserve to be permanently unconfortable until they start behaving humanely.
I was once told that G Gundam was the best gundam because it didn't have politics in it. Everyone in the room laughed at him.
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