Star Wars Character Fails
This is not a SW blog, and I make a conscious effort not to write about the Star Wars Universe here. But it has been on my mind lately and I thought I’d share a few musings here…not that I expect SW or anything coming from the Disney Metaverse to be close to perfect. You won’t see me rant about Jar Jar Binks, about the prequels generally (I’m one of the rare breed who actually like Episodes I-III), or about how The Last Jedi didn’t advance any of the storylines one bit. No, I have a whole new and probably more ridiculous group of rants to share! Spoiler Alerts if you haven’t yet seen the 9 SW Saga films, or Rogue One, or Solo…but if that’s the case, why would you care about spoilers?
First. The characters who did NOT get enough attention/screen time:
Darth Maul–he has like 3 lines in The Phantom Menace, kills Qui-Gon, and gets cut in half by Obi-Wan. Why would they not spend more time on this bad guy who arguably looks scarier than Darth Vader? Yes, I know they did a lot with Maul in the animated series The Clone Wars…but that just underscores my point because he got relegated to a cartoon.
The Tusken Raiders (aka Sandpeople) generally–they are portrayed as primitive, unspeaking brutes in A New Hope and Revenge of the Sith, but we learn in the series The Mandalorian that they are not only fair, communicative, and living harmoniously with the deserts of Tattooine, but they are also the original inhabitants of the desert getting encroached on by off-planet settlers…if you detect parallels with Native American history, you are getting it. I would have liked SW to explore and reveal more about Tusken culture.
Lando Calrissian–Yes, he gets a fair amount of screen time in The Empire Strikes Back, and some in Return of the Jedi, but I was really looking forward to seeing more of young Lando in Solo than they actually presented. To me, Lando is more interesting than Han Solo because Lando consciously chooses to abandon his good life to help the Rebellion…he isn’t a low-life with nothing to lose fleeing creditors like Solo, so the choice to put everything on the line to try and help this struggling movement his old acquaintance bumbled into, must have been an emotional and difficult choice for him. But we never see any of this.
Second. Plot elements the Star Wars saga MISSED OUT on (apparently there has to be a gigantic superweapon in every single movie, no exceptions):
Infighting and dissent among Rebellion/Resistance fighters–we get a little bit of this in The Last Jedi, where Leia is out of commission so there is a bit of a leadership void and an ensuing conflict. But it isn’t much and it isn’t very satisfying in how it works out. In real life, this is probably one of the biggest problems in running an insurgency; everyone thinks they should be the boss and when they aren’t made the boss they break away to form a splinter rebellion (where naturally they are the boss). Also, we saw coming from a light-year away the whole “broadcast an emergency message to people who previously didn’t care but now somehow care and will miraculously appear to save us at the end” plot device…it’s ham-handed and overused and I was sad to see it in The Rise of Skywalker.
The changing of the ancient Jedi Order with the times–the ways of the Jedi are powerful, time-tested, and infallible…except that the whole thing was pretty much taken out in a day and a half by one scheming Sith Lord (Darth Sidious/Chancellor Palpatine) and his weak-willed accomplice (Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker). On top of this, both the prequels (Ep. I-III) and the sequels (Ep. VII-IX) contain a lot of dialogue stating more or less outright that the Jedi Order has gotten soft, short-sighted, and arrogant in its old age. So, especially in the sequels where you are left with Luke Skywalker, Ben Solo, and Rey as the only individuals with Jedi-like abilities, wouldn’t this be a great time to start with something new, maybe based on the old Jedi but not as celibate/hermitlike/creepy? But no, they have to stick with preserving the old ways no matter how disturbingly ineffective and outdated they are, and no matter how much they exclude Leia.
Speaking of which–Leia’s backstory and ongoing legacy–I was very glad to see General Leia as the leader of the Resistance in the sequels. I was glad her style of leadership, which was compassionate as well as fierce, was glorified in these films. I wasn’t so glad, though, to see her all but cut out of the Jedi half of the storyline. Aside from the confusing and disappointing flashback where she (someone well known for never quitting even when the odds are against her) gives up completely on Jedi training after one failure during an exercise with Luke, Leia is all but excluded from the Force Club, her only real role being the mother of Ben Solo. I would have liked to see a Leia with developed Jedi abilities…they wouldn’t necessarily have to be combat abilities…the old Jedi Mind Trick comes to mind. Don’t get me wrong; I think Leia emerges as a hero and a legend regardless. But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to think she has the same parentage as Luke (not to mention 1,000x more thinking and people skills) but is still sort of regarded as less-than-Luke because she doesn’t swing a lightsaber around.
Here endeth the lesson on Star Wars Character Fails.
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