The confused morality of Star Wars

I realized midway through Rogue One that I was actually watching a terrorist hagiography, so let's talk about that. (This post should not be taken anywhere near as seriously as my other rants, but I do intend it to be more serious than the "Alderaan had it coming" mentality some corners of the internet have. I may veer into r/EmpireDidNothingWrong territory here occasionally, and I hope you will take it as inoffensively as possible.)

So. Good and evil. Day and night. God and man. Son of Krypton and Bat of oh hell no.

George Lucas, despite being a film student in California in the late 60s, which seems like he should have been Patient Zero for the hippie infestation of our great nation, apparently understood this whole "good versus evil" thing. It's a shame he never told anyone else who directed a Star Wars film about this.

Evil is aggressive and malevolent. It torments the innocent. It spreads misery where it goes for all those not allied with it (and for some who are). Without these factors, evil is just a side in a conflict, and all that matters is whether you're wearing a red jersey or a blue one. It is not enough that evil torment good, because that is no different from red tormenting blue. Evil must torment the innocent, the neutral, the third party, as well. If evil is not aggressive then there is no threat that must be countered. It is simply there, for the hero to deal with, or not, on his own time. There would be no need for Frodo to go to Mount Doom if Sauron was not actively trying to reconquer the world. Evil must spread misery in its wake, because otherwise the audience is left to wonder whether things would be so bad if Evil won. If Hitler's greatest legacy was the autobahn instead of the Holocaust, I'm going to just leave that thought there because I think you see my point already.

On the subject of Hilter, let's discuss one thing that Evil is not. Evil is not putting on the Reich, by itself. Simply adopting Nazi imagery does not make one Evil, otherwise, well.

Part I: "Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil!"

Okay so. In the prequel trilogy, Palpatine (evil) corrupts both a Republic (ostensibly good but actually inefficient at best) and a hero named Anakin (ostensibly good but actually kind of monstrous) and makes them twisted and evil parodies of their former selves. Opposing him on the political front are the inept Chancellor Valium and the virtuous existing Senator Amygdala, and opposing him on the philosophical front are the inept Masters Window, Yoda, and Kendo. We see throughout this that Palpatine is evil, because he engineers the blockade of Taboo and the overthrow of a duly-elected Chancellor. He engineers a destructive conflict that erodes civil liberties and inures everyone to the concept of a supreme dictator, and then he overthrows the Republic and murders all the Jedi. We see his evil acts in each of the prequels, even if it's not obvious (to small children and "wise" Jedi) that he's pulling the strings. So we see Palpatine's aggression. We see the torment and misery he intends to inflict on the galaxy - albeit very briefly - when the Space Dogs are being enslaved during Yoda's cowardly retreat from their planet.

Every other villain in the prequels is just Palpatine's tools. They're all discarded at the end except for Vader, so we might want to see Vader doing evil things, oh good here's a scene of him slaughtering awful child actors, glad we got that squared away.

In Episode IV, the Empire is aggressive, building its Death Star and chasing down Princess Leia's stolen death star plans. It torments the innocent, slaughtering Jawas, the Larses, and the "peaceful" planet Alderaan, which has "no weapons" (don't surrender your Second Amendment rights, folks). It spreads misery (I'm sure those Jawas had families). Tarkin exists to be the human face of the Empire, he's really there so that Carrie Fisher can act against someone while the Empire turns Alderaan into the galaxy's most epic fireworks display, so we don't need to look at his evil acts specifically, but again: Alderaan fireworks.

Part II: "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!"

After A New Hope, though, the Galaxy becomes smaller, and the only people the Empire and the First Order swat around are their sworn enemies. Seriously. In Empire, the Empire, um, tortures some terrorists and stations a garrison in a port that terrorists are known to have attempted to use as a safe haven. Yeah the torture is a bit of a touchy subject in this day and age, but for 99.999% of human history it was pretty much expected. So that's the Empire dealing with its enemies. It doesn't seem to spread misery wherever it goes, and there are no wholesale massacres this time around.

In Return of the Jedi, the Empire's building another Death Star to replace the one the terrorists wrecked in A New Hope. Great. They're building it on a forest world with cute fuzzy inhabitants who have to be convinced by terrorist propaganda to side with the terrorists. We don't see any instances of the Empire killing any Ewoks until the Ewoks start fighting the Empire. We don't even see the Empire chopping down the forest to feed its industrial war machine. Oh, and if torture's so bad, how do you feel about cannibalism? Remember, the Ewoks were going to eat Luke and Han. Hey, you see those Stormtrooper helmets at the victory feast? I wonder what happened to them...

The Force Awakens attempts to have the First Order be evil, but it fails. We see one raid on a village harboring a known terrorist sympathizer. It goes poorly for the inhabitants, but no more poorly than it went for the civilian contractors on the Death Stars. The First Order then nukes New Coruscant, the seat of the government at war with it. We are told that they kidnap babies and turn them into Stormtroopers, and that's bad. Okay, one point given for effort. Unfortunately, as I discussed elsewhere, the villains themselves suck, especially Kylo, so one point taken off for execution.

This brings us to Rogue One, the final Star Wars movie made before Disney suffered a total existence failure. This film is a terrorist hagiography, there is no other way of putting it. There are a grand total of three "evil" things the Empire does in this film. One, they shoot Jyn's mother, who was holding a gun on them. That's what we call justifiable homicide. Two, they conscript Galen Erso, and I'll talk about that in the next paragraph. Three, the Death Star destroys Jedha City, a hotbed of insurrection so foul that they needed to park a Star Destroyer directly above it to get it to even pretend to behave. Meanwhile the Rebels feed men to octopi and sanction assassinations, and stage convoy ambushes in public spaces that lead to civilian casualties (see the bawling Rose Tico Jyn has to save).

Well at least we have the conscription issue, right? Yes, because I'm sure that under the Old Republic, that beacon of light and morality, clone troopers got vacation time. Furthermore, it is obvious that Galen used to work for the Empire and attempted to breach his contract and run away. This is not acceptable because, as Obi-Wan (a hero) told Anakin back during the whole "spy on the Chancellor" kerfuffle, "we're at war." So clearly this is morally justified using the sainted Old Republic as a signpost.

In conclusion, I really don't see why I should be rooting for the Alliance. Cheerio.