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.
They especially won't, since 2024 generative-AI panic will make everyone root against the droids.
I'm not saying there aren't valid concerns, but people act as if ChatGPT's existence suddenly made the Terminator movies into a fucking documentary.
Motherfuckers remind me of the weirdos hunting down robots to kill in that redneck carnival, in the second act of Steven Spielberg's A.I. : Artificial Intelligence.
Are you seriously criticizing the use of droids in a galaxy where slavery and clone armies are a thing? Also, in-universe, the use of droids isn't quite as bad as it seems - we get confirmation from multiple sources that Droids do not develop a personality and sense of self unless they're left on for too long. That's why I'd consider C3PO, R2-D2 and most B1 battle droids to be sentient individuals, but most Droidekas to be no more than tools/weapons.
Oh wait until you meet the Starship Troopers / Helldivers communities...
Oh, I have... I have...
Warhammer 40k anyone?
The weird thing about Starship Troopers is that it's not entirely clear whether the author of the original book was criticising. of the fascistic society he describes or not. On the one hand the book takes these ideals to an extreme even for many supporters of these ideals, but on the other hand it seems to be providing a lot of merit to the militaristic society it describes.
I personally think the book is an exploration of what a militaristic society would look like if faced by a external threat, and that it should be taken at face value, but there are plenty of critics who have read more books than I have with much less favourable interpretations.
The movie is definitely not trying to defend these ideals, but I think that's a choice by the movie's director and writers rather than a representation of the source material.
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.
There are also strong messages about trauma and how being cloistered can lead people to become the very evil their isolation was intended to prevent. Luke is a walking billboard saying "even evil people can realise the gravity of their mistakes", as well.
And the Vietcong are the good guys
History is written by the victors /j
But they're all white in this adaptation for some reason.
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 not political
The Landsraad: am I a joke to you?
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.
"is has" about captures it
Ah, dang :(
Edit: thanks for proofreading the β version of the meme :)
No, it's perfect. I didn't even notice that but it's funnier now that I see it
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 !
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.
When I advocate for a world government, everyone loses their minds.
But when Star Trek portrayed the Earth with a global government, somehow that isn't political and everyone applause?!
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.
Immediately relatable to whom?
Some one once asked "what is a politic"
To the people that complain about things being political what they mean "i dissagree, why are you being devisive".
The problem with Star Trek politics is that they are not stereotypical enough.
I'm obviously referring to TNG, the only true Star Trek.
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.
The Wikipedia article you linked says that the book is based on the screenplay for the movie.
which Star Wars is based upon
Why would you come here just to lie?
At the end of the novel, in addition to Han Solo and Luke receiving medals, Leia also gives Chewbacca a medal, though she must strain to do so
Objectively better than the movie.
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.
Picard totally makes the heads explode of some admirals that had been taken over.
Oh, right. That scene...
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
I would argue with the implication that the degree to which a story is political is gauged by how violent (in the broad sense) the political actions are. Something can be extremely pacifistic or extremely democratic for example. In star trek you have a tremendous numer of stories where non-violent political actions like diplomacy, legislation, or legal argument are the main focus of the story and hugely consequential, for an entire people, an entire species, or the entire galaxy.
Can we just drop it? These kinds of posts get old after a while
I legitimately see more people complain about people who complain about politics in Star Trek than actual people complaining about politics in Star Trek.
So who's complaining?
