The Biggest Missed Opportunity of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”
Or, Space Nazis Just Ain’t What They Used to Be.
There’s this neat shot from “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” that you’ve probably seen, even if you’ve only caught the trailer:
What’s happening in the story around this shot, though, is the source of my biggest gripe with a movie that is otherwise generally likable and fun. And I’m going to explain what that means, with spoilers, starting in the next paragraph. You have been warned.
Oh snap, the Empire is back? Well, not really. Officially, we’re told that this Nazi Germany-evoking picture is of a group called The First Order. Okay, sure.
And what are they looking at? A giant laser blowin’ up planets, including the planet on which the entire galactic government is meeting.
Throughout the new movie, The First Order behaves just like the Empire: It maintains a large army, has intimate connections to the Dark Side, and builds a new Death Star, complete with an easily-diagnosed weak point at the end of a trench, because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Meanwhile, Leia Organa has graduated from “Princess” to “General.” But, we’re told, she’s not a general of the army of the new Republic that replaced the Empire after “Return of the Jedi.” Instead, she’s the leader of a splinter group within the Republic called The Resistance.
This is precisely bass-ackwards.
I understand why the new filmmakers wanted to, in essence, reset the clock back to the start of “A New Hope.” Then, the Rebels were underdogs, a tiny but virtuous group perpetually outmatched by the Empire. Before we saw a single human face, we were primed to root for them.
Plus, after the prequels, was anyone clamoring for more expository scenes showing a large, initially-peaceful government in action?
The aftermath of the new Death Star’s debut (yes, I know it’s technically called Starkiller Base, but come on) is that Leia’s Resistance is once again under the shadow of a fascistic military force.
Which is not to say she wasn’t already an underdog. Drawing on some of the extended-universe lore, this story from Slashfilm suggests that prior to things going boom, the Resistance was a private force created when the demilitarizing Republic failed to take action against the First Order. When we rejoin the story in “Force Awakens,” Leia was already a political pariah.
But what if? What if she was a high-ranking official in the new Republic? What if that Republic was a large, active and competent military force in the galaxy? What if, in the course of trying to do what it thought was right, the Republic made mistakes and pissed off a lot of people? What if the First Order was not a rehash of the Original Trilogy’s bureaucratic space nazis? What if it was a tiny but dangerous group of fanatics that sowed fear and chaos by rejecting once off-limits forms of warfare?
What if it was, instead, a radicalized insurgency?
Science fiction and fantasy films have a long track record of providing both escapism from and commentary on the contemporary world. George Lucas is on record comparing Palpatine/Darth Sidious/the Emperor to Richard Nixon. And it’s hard not to see parallels between the Empire’s boondoggle on Endor and the Vietnam War, with native intelligence trumping military might.
Yes, I just compared Ewoks to the Viet Cong. Stay with me here.
In our world, even with a fascist vying for President of the United States in 2016, Nazi symbolism is not as immediately intimidating as it once was. We’ve seen the Axis and its pop culture offspring defeated over and over and over again, and the modern world is scary in entirely different ways. Pearl Harbor-style state-sponsored warfare against one’s home country is, for Americans under age 70, something you hear about in history class and not on CNN.
At a certain point, the moral clarity of World War II becomes a crutch rather than a compelling source of entertainment.
Using a cultural phenomenon like “Star Wars” to confront those more modern terrors, and maybe give us hope of defeating them, would be a bold and refreshing creative choice. And using “Star Wars” to critique the supposed “good guys,” as Lucas did in both of his trilogies to mixed results, is a tradition worth upholding.
The good news, for those wanting a more creative villain than what “The Force Awakens” had to offer, is that Disney plans to make Star Wars movies until the end of recorded history. In time, there will be many more trials for our heroes, and us, to overcome.
