“Resistance fighters, humans, sent back from the future by John. And what? Are they manning some kind of apocalyptic paramilitary convenience store filled with fake IDs and guns and money?” – Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
That also explains why I have a piano player who is only a foot tall in the house. Stupid genie.
Back in 2015, like a few hundred million other people, I was excited to see The Force Awakens®. This was the first movie since Disney© had purchased Star Wars©. Since Disney™ had done a good job with Marvel©, I hoped they’d turn the Star Wars™ universe into a compelling and entertaining set of movies. I got The Boy and Pugsley and we headed off to the theater. They don’t allow us to bring in outside food, but that’s okay. We Wilder’s have a few Twix® up our sleeves.
I’m not going to turn this into a complete review of a movie that I feel is fatally flawed and ultimately stupid in many ways. The plot of The Force Awakens® was an inferior remake of the first Star Wars® movie. This was a flaw, and perhaps a fatal one – how many Star Wars© movies would end up being about blowing up yet another Death Star© – I’m beginning to think that Death Stars® might be hard to get insurance for. And does a Death Star™ require homeowner insurance or vehicle insurance?
Regardless, The Force Awakens was as unsatisfactory as Joe Biden’s hair plugs. But I did notice one thing that bothered me:
After destroying the largest weapon ever created and killing the Emperor™, the Rebels® had failed. The ending of Return of the Jedi™, with fireworks and celebrations on world after world seemed to indicate that the Rebel Alliance© won, that the Empire® was finished.
I find the best alarm clock are the rumble strips.
Yet, here, in the first sequel after Return of the Jedi®, we find Princess Leia© at the head of the Resistance™. What, exactly, is she resisting? The new government that was set up after the defeat of the Empire™? Bad scriptwriting? No. It’s the Empire™, but I assume we can’t call it that because otherwise Disney© has to pay George Lucas ten percent.
There are thousands of great plots that could be made about the Force™, the New Republic©. Lots of these are of big ideas worthy of an entire galaxy and the fun derived in the first Star Wars© movies; great ideas worthy of a cast of heroes that we knew from previous episodes. Heck, The Mrs. and I when discussing this post came up with a plot idea good enough to give me chills – Stormtroopers™ in bikinis, of Kini-troopers©, if you will, learning to use the Force™ at a summer camp in the 1980’s.
And did the Stormtroopers think they were the good guys, working on a thing called the Death Star?
But why the Resistance©? After reflection of several years and several other movies, it has become clear – the producers of Star Wars® are leftists. The ideology of Star Wars© becoming Leftist ideology was more important than the story. It was more important than the money. Star Wars™ had to be made to fit the narrative of the Left.
The narrative of the Left has always been of a smaller force fighting a larger opposing force. The story of the Vietcong, the story of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and the story of Antifa© are all the stories of resistance to larger powers. This is the myth that the Leftist leaders use for propaganda when they want to explain to the peasants why they don’t have any food, why they are poorer this year than last.
There’s a reason he’s called Darth™. All the Stormtroopers laughed when he went by “Master Vader©”.
The Resistance© is the narrative of the Left, and so Star Wars™ had to portray the good guys as the underdog no matter what. The Resistance® is how they see themselves – at the mercy of large systems that will destroy them – it’s in the mythos of all of the Left’s literature and entertainment. Thus, this curious choice: taking the victors and making them the victim. The only reason I can see this is because it was written about the Left, for the Left. Plot? Entertainment? Nah.
Stormtroopers© get cash from an AT-ATM.
The Mrs. and I talked for a while about why this was. My theory was that the Left’s power was ultimately derived from being a victim – that’s why the language of the Left is the language of victimhood, and the conversations of the Left are about creating division based on that victimhood.
Hence, the Resistance™.
The Mrs. thought that it was interesting that the Left also chooses to characterize its enemies in terms of the two wars – the Left is fighting Germany in World War II. The Left is fighting the South in the Civil War. Why? The Left views these wars as moral wars, simple wars complete with cartoon villains so it can remove complexity. This allows the Left to feel good about itself while teaching and preaching hate. It’s clear the Left is moving further left, while the Right retains roughly the same values as it did 40 years ago, which is intolerable to the Left. In the view of the Left, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama aren’t on the Left – no. Clinton and Obama are considered center-right, if not farther right.
But back to the Resistance©. As I listed in a previous post (American Civil War: Four Fates, From Freedom to Soviet Tyranny), the Left controls:
- The K-12 educational system.
- Colleges and Universities.
- Most Protestant religious organizations.
- Most Catholic organizations.
- The psychological establishment.
- The American Medical Association.
- All mainstream news media.
- All mainstream entertainment media.
- Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
- The general officer corps of the armed services.
- The courts.
- Silicon Valley tech companies.
- Many (but not all) Fortune® 500™ companies.
It should be clear from the above list that the Left is marching through American institutions quickly. When Donald Trump was elected president, immediately, however, the Left returned to its normal nomenclature, it advertised itself as “The Resistance®” even though it had quietly amassed major power throughout nearly every phase of American life.
The real crime is noticing.
You and I know that the Left isn’t the Resistance, it’s in control. Why doesn’t the Right protest in hats made to look like genitals? Because we have jobs and families. But if you stand against the goal of state control, against the goal of only the “correct” thoughts being allowed, against being put at the mercy of the confederacy of victims?
You are the real resistance. And they’re afraid of you.
Ben&Jerry’s Pecan Resist – because nothing says “peaceful resistance” like fists and flames. At least they got the non-whites correct.
Remember – the Left hates you, and wants you dead.
They have moved to Stage 2. Stage 3 will be . . . unpleasant.
Star Wars is the brainchild of a sixties era movie maker and screenwriter and it is not illogical that the main theme is anti-establishment. Lucas was 20 in 1964 and saw first hand the rise of the anti war movement and the youth who populated that movement. The rebellion is primarily comprised of youthful people whereas the empire is the tried and true old fashioned way of doing things and dealing with outside the box thinking which is they don’t.
You can add that the rebellion appeals to the emotions of the viewer and draws them into supporting them as the classic ‘underdog’ which again, is the same as the anti war movement of the 60’s. If you compare the imagery of the ‘meetings’ to discuss strategy of the two sides, the empire comes across as a board meeting of a giant corporation (not all that different than it is in today’s US government) and the rebels a team meeting before the game against the larger ‘arch rival’ team.
To see the replay of the same battle that was the theme for the first 6 movies rise again is rather straightforward. Just because the emperor and the death star were destroyed does not mean that the primary mission of the empire has stopped or that the organization that comprised the empire: a.k.a. the Imperial Senate, has completely ceased to exist. With the emperor dead along with Darth, the senate reconvenes and picks up where it left off where politics reigns supreme and there has never been, not will ever truly be, an honest politician. The terms honest and politician are inherently exclusive of each other.
I guess I am trying to say that both sides remain true to their forms and do not change appreciably. The rebellion was fighting the empire for survival and still is. The empire sees the rebellion as an impediment to its goal of dominating and controlling trade so the rebellion must go. That is what the conflict started from in the first prequel; the empire controlling trade.
The moral is that every organized and controlled system will have its outliers who rebel against it purely based on the fact it exists. This is the human equivalent of the chicken and the egg argument.
One last notion: The theme of socialism is a juvenile concept in that only a child would desire that everything be ‘fair and equal’ because they do not value their own efforts mostly because none of them actually earn a living. The same is true with all of the space opera, marvel universe movies where all of these entities appear to be supported miraculously since none of them work for a living. What exactly does star fleet do for revenue to support its 5 year missions? Who pays for the rebellion’s costs of operation? Pretty much all of the Marvel heroes do not work with a couple of exceptions. They all have shelter, food and a role to play but where does the money come from?
Socialism is a near sighted view of the universe and its followers are never encouraged to look farther than their own needs and the needs of their peers. The ‘system’ (interchangeable with the empire or star fleet) takes care of the nitty gritty details and this is where big time influence peddlers like Soros come in.
There may have been a time when movies were made for artistic and entertainment purposes. Not anymore. The new Charlie’s Angels reboot was a dismal flop at the box office, apparently no one is interested in seeing sexually confused Kirsten Stewart as a sex symbol. Whoda thunk it? The new Terminator featuring a new and improved scrawny androgynous terminatrix that looks like she plays softball and wears a lot of bib overalls was an even bigger flop and is going to lose a ton of money. On and on, commercial “woke” reboots flop. It doesn’t matter. They make these movies, even at a loss, to push an agenda. They know they can always bank on superhero movies and animated films to refill their bank accounts.
Hollywood has, for a very long time, been nothing but a propaganda organ of global Marxism pretending to be entertainment. That is also true of the major sports leagues and media channels and, perhaps most ironically, of most of corporate America. I was at my dad’s on Saturday and he was watching a football game. I don’t watch TV, at all, and don’t have cable/satellite. When you don’t watch it all the time, it is startling how much over propaganda there is in commercials. They aren’t selling a product, they are virtue signaling to consumers that it is OK to buy their cheap crap made by children in sweatshops overseas because their commercials feature sufficient numbers of mixed race and same sex couples.
If you pay for cable or buy movie tickets or subsidize professional sports, you are directly funding the people that hate you. You might as well be going to Ticketmaster to get a good seat on the train to the gulag.
Great comment Arthur. But what if they had VIP seats . . . you know, for the experience.
Just one question: how long did it take you to enter all the ©, ™, and ® symbols?
I’d still be typing if I started 12 hours ago.
I type in Word, so it’s nearly an auto-insert (TM) is ™. Dang – I didn’t spoil the magic, did I?
I reluctantly accepted the PC rerun reboot mess that was Force Awakens.
I was even able to tamp down that little bit of vomit that spontaneously welled up in me when they turned the PC up to 11 in Last Jedi.
But That Ain’t My Luke.
I will not be going to Rise of Skywalker.
Speaking of classic movies, that ongoing cliffhanger Jerome Powell and the Snowball Of Doom keeps rolling down the mountainside, picking up terrifying speed….
http://thegreatrecession.info/blog/repocalypse/
https://www.peakprosperity.com/the-federal-reserve-is-directly-monetizing-us-debt/
“…the entire monetary regime of the United States has shifted in two months time into a scale of combat never seen in the history of the US repo market — a central bank directly financing the US federal debt with ever larger rounds of new money, “printed” (an anachronism in that it is done, of course, with the click of computer keys in this age) and deposited in the government’s bank account THE VERY SAME DAY that government treasuries are actually issued!’
“The Federal Reserve is breaking the law, and Congress couldn’t care less. Congress didn’t even bother to ask Powell at last week’s congressional hearing how it is that the Fed claims it is not monetizing the debt….”
“…it’s not terribly difficult to predict what’s going to happen next: the Federal Reserve will drop the secrecy and start buying US debt openly. At a time, mind you, when US fiscal deficits are exploding and foreign buyers are heading for the exits.”
It is a little befuddling that foreign buyers are still buying/holding U.S. government backed securities at all. U.S. treasury securities aren’t my idea of a safe haven these days.
Yup. It will be interesting. But I’m betting they’ll keep it in check for another year or five.
If it wasn’t Star Wars, it was an average movie for today’s norms.
But it was Star Wars – which demands a comparison to the past.
To foreign buyers, US Treasuries have the singular advantage of positive interest rates, not negative ones. For now.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/value-of-debt-with-negative-yields-nears-12-trillion-2019-06-18
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Back to Luke…sigh.
WTF?
Is jailing people the only possible solution to slow drivers? Couldn’t you just go around? Are you responsible for nothing?
How can you obey the law if the minimum speed is 40 MPH and there is a blizzard?
You know what would have made fifty years of good Star Wars movies? All the books that came out that were set in the post-Return of the Jedi world. Luke renewing the Jedi order, Leia and Han having children, one of whom did, in fact, turn to the dark side, the building of the Republic while the Imperial Remnant, what was left of the Empire, established itself under Grand Admiral Thrawn. Throw in Mara Jade, the Hand of Thrawn who eventually marries Luke, add in the invasion of the known galactic space by a race called the Yuzhan Vong whose technology is biological and who have animals that suppress the power of the force. Hundreds of excellent stories, all waiting to be filmed, but no, they are non-canon because Disney wanted grrrl power.
Absolutely AMEN to everything above. SW Extended Universe (SWEU) was such a good and rich mythic world – and absolutely what the original fans, including me, wanted to see on the screen. Instead of Mara, a 1990s beloved and well developed literary character that allowed Luke to grow into a family man, we get Rey, a 21st Century PC poster child created by the same clueless producers that decreed the strong males of New Hope must be destroyed…but only after making Han an absent dad that his kid hates first.
Sigh.
Thrawn was a very compelling character and he made sense, had a plausible backstory and everything but like you said, they instead went with the perpetually angry looking girl because apparently movie directors don’t know how to portray strength in women in any way other than looking super mad at the world. No one doubted that Leia was a strong woman and she wasn’t relegated to being a clutzy Mary Sue character, almost as if women can be strong in their own way.
See, that sounds perfect. Far better than the crap that they’ve spent a billion dollars filming.
FTR, Mauschwitz did not spend $1B filming the latest StarBores send-ups. Not even combined.
They might have squandered something almost that much, all in, if we count PR and various other nonsense that had nothing to do with making the movies.
They did spend – squandered with both fists, actually – well over $1B on the twin flops at MouseLand and MouseWorld called Galaxy’s Retch.
It has created the smallest crowds and shortest waits for rides at both parks in decades.
It’s so bad, even the lamestream media has started to catch on.
When you’re Bob Iger, and your spirit animal is Dopey the Dwarf, being CEO means never having to say you screwed the pooch so hard it died.
But unlike Spielberg (“she was a lousy assistant, but a nice person, so I made her an assistant producer”), he at least finally found the guts to fire talentless hack Kathleen Kennedy after she flew the franchise into the ground.
And yet they now endeavor to merkel the Marvelverse the exact same way, now that Stan Lee is dead.
You can’t teach people who don’t care that they’re blisteringly stupid.
And btw, Han shot first.
“And btw, Han shot first.”
And nobody I know has any problem with that. When Han says “over my dead body” and Greedo responds “that’s the idea” that is a direct threat. I don’t understand the controversy. If you wait for someone to shoot first after they have just announced that their plan is to kill you, you are dead about 99.9999999999999% of the time. Maybe more.
Go watch any edition you can obtain of Star Wars, ever since Lucas merkeled them and retitled it “Episode IV”.
Watch that scene.
Get back to us.
I can think of at least one person who had a problem with that. 😉
If you are saying that the controversy surrounds Lucas’ decision to edit, I agree. If you are saying that Han is the bad guy for shooting first, the ostensible reason for the edit, to make him seem less bad, I still disagree. Perhaps I was just unclear as to the rationale behind your OP.
PS I have the Despecialized Edition of A New Hope. It is awesome but large (18GB). Pieced together from various sources to undo the travesty that was Lucas.
They have killed the brand. Lucas (with the prequels) made Star Wars boring, but these last few movies have made Star Wars repugnant.
I had read reviews of the park, and these were from “Disney-Friendly” sources, and even they couldn’t come up with much excitement. Not very likely that we’ll ever go see it.
Yup. Han shot first.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_Jade#/media/File:Maralukeben.jpg