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.
Solo tried to go there, but only droids oppressed by the Empire are truly oppressed for some reason.
The Republic: umm actually they're indentured servants
To be fair to Star Wars, the entire premise of the overall universe is that the Galaxy is stuck on cycle between fascism and neo-liberalism because the latter will always pave the way to the former.
Pff. Droids don't have real feelings and they only scream in simulated pain when you burn their feet!
Man, using droids for forced labor is immoral. Let's forcibly remove their sentience, that'll fix it!
Star Wars 10 should be the Droid Revolution
Major Butlerian Jihad vibes
Oh wait until you meet the Starship Troopers / Helldivers communities...
Oh, I have... I have...
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.
The beauty of the book is that you’re basically reading a future soldier’s diary. Heinlein is letting the story speak for itself, the reader has to decide what to think of such a life, such a future without being nudged into any direction whatsoever. I love it.
I think Heinlein did that a lot. I think stranger and a strange land is him looking at the hippie culture and taking it to a sci-fi extreme. I don't think he was trying to advocate for anything. In particular, a lot of his books was about trying to protect the future and see how that would affect people.
Oh, Heinlein was definitely not writing satire.
Then you read the next book, and it's about space being a Libertarian utopia. And then the next one is about a free love cult.
He might not be writing satire, but if he wasn't, then I don't know how to make anything coherent out of his writing. The only commonality is a very obvious self insert mouthpiece character.
There's a line of criticism on Heinlein's work that tries to defang the unsavory themes in his stories by pretty much declaring them all satire. Fascist themes in Starship Troopers? Satire. Racist themes in Farnham’s Freehold? Fourth-dimensional chess level satire, you can see it if you look real carefully. Incest in To Sail Beyond the Sunset? A big joke!
And maybe it's true? He definitely became more libertarian over time -- but he was a professional writer, so his output is bound to be a combination of what he believed and what he thought would sell. Personally, I have no idea what the mix is. Would be nice if the people who enjoyed his stories didn't also feel obligated to puff up his moral bone fides though. So much bending over backwards isn't really good for a person.
Wait until you hear about The Iron Dream. It's definitely satire, but Nazis recommend it anyway.
Warhammer 40k anyone?
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.
And the Vietcong are the good guys
History is written by the victors /j
Sure, but he also ripped off Triumph of the Will for the ending scene with the good guys. Lucas just really likes Nazi imagery.
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 isnt't political. Dune is about worms. /s
Are you saying sand worms don't have politics?
Sand worms, at Thanksgiving: "Don't let Reginald have anything to drink. He'll just start a political argument."
You sound like you've never read Dune, but the more I stare at this sentence the more it is a perfect synopsis of God Emperor. Well played either way.
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.
Dune not political
The Landsraad: am I a joke to you?
"is has" about captures it
Ah, dang :(
Edit: thanks for proofreading the β version of the meme :)
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.
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