Ben Domenech gets right to the heart of what we see in the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer:
[I]t rejects the core narrative assumption of the entire original trilogy and the prequels—that is, the assumption of the viewer that this is a story about the Skywalker family drama, within the context of the broader battle over the Galactic future and the dying old ways of cockamamie religious beliefs (Gretchen, stop trying to make midichlorians happen, it’s not going to happen)—as an entirely false frame of what really matters. . . .
Here is the thing you need to understand: No one cares about the Skywalkers. The vast people and species spread out across the universe did not see the story you saw. They do not know or care to know their story—not the Faustian bargain of the father, not the death of the mother, not the betrayal by the mentor, not the grudging acceptance of destiny and fate of the twins, and certainly not anything at all about the reluctance to “hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo.” . . .
This is the problem with thinking every story is about you. The universe has forgotten the Jedi, forgotten the Dark Side, forgotten the old stories—because they were not important. What do such minor family dramas matter in the grand scheme of things?
Only you think of yourself as the protagonist of reality. The galaxy does not care about you.
Here is the thing you need to understand: No one cares about the Skywalkers. The vast people and species spread out across the universe did not see the story you saw. They do not know or care to know their story—not the Faustian bargain of the father, not the death of the mother, not the betrayal by the mentor, not the grudging acceptance of destiny and fate of the twins, and certainly not anything at all about the reluctance to “hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo.” . . .
This is the problem with thinking every story is about you. The universe has forgotten the Jedi, forgotten the Dark Side, forgotten the old stories—because they were not important. What do such minor family dramas matter in the grand scheme of things?
Only you think of yourself as the protagonist of reality. The galaxy does not care about you.
And once you start going down this road, it’s impossible to avoid the idea that (1) Star Wars is really about the Empire. (2) The Empire was a much more complicated than Lucas let on. And (3) Life after the fall of the Empire was probably worse than life under the Empire. Here’s Domenech again:
Imagine the troopers in the far-flung outposts of the Galactic Empire, an institution designed to bring order and law to a lawless galaxy—an entity built on the political and military assumption that those with the power to do so should not stand idly by as the universe descends toward chaos, but will instead intervene, at times brutally, to bring civilization to the uncivilized.
If you have no idea that Vader turned, that he carried out a final act of redemptive courage in the face of destructive evil, what do you think happened on the second Death Star? You basically think the Rebel Alliance, a group of anarchist terrorists led by believers in an inhuman cult, destroyed the lives of millions, murdered your supreme emperor, and to add insult to injury, defiled Darth Vader’s corpse. It’s like Pearl Harbor II, and this time they killed FDR too.
If you have no idea that Vader turned, that he carried out a final act of redemptive courage in the face of destructive evil, what do you think happened on the second Death Star? You basically think the Rebel Alliance, a group of anarchist terrorists led by believers in an inhuman cult, destroyed the lives of millions, murdered your supreme emperor, and to add insult to injury, defiled Darth Vader’s corpse. It’s like Pearl Harbor II, and this time they killed FDR too.
And that’s where we stand at the start of The Force Awakens.
* * *
It’s interesting to note that over the last decade or so, all of the intellectual energy in Star Wars has been on the side of the Empire. There’s the explication of the Tarkin Doctrine, for instance:
He thinks that Palpatine should rule through fear of force rather than force itself. Tarkin understands deterrence. This is a man that recognizes that the Empire cannot kill its way to victory, but it can intimidate. This is counterinsurgency and stability through deterrence, based on a credible, overwhelming threat. That credible, overwhelming threat is the Death Star. Palpatine’s promotion of Moff Tarkin to Grand Moff, an entirely new rank, is evidence that 1) Palpatine recognized that Tarkin had a strategic vision and 2) the Empire heretofore lacked a military strategic vision. Palpatine rose to power through Machievellian politics and deception rather than military force. He didn’t defeat the Jedi clone army, he co-opted it. He defeated the Jedi through betrayal and deception, a skill set that may not work in the face of a galaxy-wide insurgency.
And then there’s the Tao of Sith. In his seminal Darth Vader blog, Chester Burton Brown explored the metaphysics of the “dark” side of the force, and his conclusions are convincing. Here’s his Vader ruminating on the difference between the Jedi and the Sith:
It must be understood that the Force is, above all, singular. The so-called “sides” arise from differing matters of perspective. (If you study the way of the Sith you will find that many of the truths we cling to depend entirely on one’s point of view.)
The opposite of the singular Force is the all-encompassing void of death. Time began with the Force, and will end in desolation. This is the way of things, and an inevitable consequence of the flow of events from the past into the future.
Without the inertia of the fall toward the abyss, the Force would have nowhere to go.
For in the chaotic tumble toward doom the stuff of the worlds enact loops of complexity that change the grade from life to death, introducing valleys, peaks and cycles. Between creation and destruction comes a flutter of improbability, a brief sonnet of meaning against the noise of time. Life!
It is the causal contagion that ties every ounce of us together through the network of the Force, our actions resonating against our almost-actions and our non-actions in a web of fleeting possibility that spans this galaxy and beyond. The beat of a child’s heart detonates supernovae, the beat of a bug’s wing tilts the orbit of worlds.
We are all connected.
Anyone who awakens to the Force knows this. The divisive issue is what to do with this knowledge.
When you can run the mechanism of the universe forward or backward, scrubbing through possible histories with a thought, a theme develops. You cannot escape it. Death, death, death. It is the final destiny of all things, great or small, matter or idea. But there is astounding beauty in the arts of the not-death, the filigree dances of life’s loops as it spins from light to void. If you are human, it moves you.
It should move you. But this is what the Jedi Order denies. They preach that the heart of a beast cannot judge the destiny of a galaxy. They preach dispassion and detachment, a condescending compassion for the damned. They stand by the sidelines and watch history happen, intervening only in trivia that offends their effete sensibilities.
Every Jedi knew the cycles of civilization, and every Jedi knew an age of barbarism was nigh. And yet they did nothing.
In contrast, the way of the Sith is predicated on a love for man. We have inherited the godhead of the galaxy by colonizing its every world. Though lesser species might have flourished given infinite time, it was our kind who got there first. We have won this galaxy with thousands of generations of our blood and our dreams. We call the others “primitives” because we are their kings.
And we will not sit idly by as it all careens toward a morbid interregnum. Inspired by our passions we will act to bridge the gulf between civilizations, shortening the period of disorder by decisively maintaining connections between societies from one side of the galaxy to the other. We will weather the storm.
Hate! Love! Misery! Joy! These are paths to the dark side, for to invest in the emotional life of civilization is to care about its fate. To care is to suffer, and suffering is real.
The Jedi were mere spectators.
The opposite of the singular Force is the all-encompassing void of death. Time began with the Force, and will end in desolation. This is the way of things, and an inevitable consequence of the flow of events from the past into the future.
Without the inertia of the fall toward the abyss, the Force would have nowhere to go.
For in the chaotic tumble toward doom the stuff of the worlds enact loops of complexity that change the grade from life to death, introducing valleys, peaks and cycles. Between creation and destruction comes a flutter of improbability, a brief sonnet of meaning against the noise of time. Life!
It is the causal contagion that ties every ounce of us together through the network of the Force, our actions resonating against our almost-actions and our non-actions in a web of fleeting possibility that spans this galaxy and beyond. The beat of a child’s heart detonates supernovae, the beat of a bug’s wing tilts the orbit of worlds.
We are all connected.
Anyone who awakens to the Force knows this. The divisive issue is what to do with this knowledge.
When you can run the mechanism of the universe forward or backward, scrubbing through possible histories with a thought, a theme develops. You cannot escape it. Death, death, death. It is the final destiny of all things, great or small, matter or idea. But there is astounding beauty in the arts of the not-death, the filigree dances of life’s loops as it spins from light to void. If you are human, it moves you.
It should move you. But this is what the Jedi Order denies. They preach that the heart of a beast cannot judge the destiny of a galaxy. They preach dispassion and detachment, a condescending compassion for the damned. They stand by the sidelines and watch history happen, intervening only in trivia that offends their effete sensibilities.
Every Jedi knew the cycles of civilization, and every Jedi knew an age of barbarism was nigh. And yet they did nothing.
In contrast, the way of the Sith is predicated on a love for man. We have inherited the godhead of the galaxy by colonizing its every world. Though lesser species might have flourished given infinite time, it was our kind who got there first. We have won this galaxy with thousands of generations of our blood and our dreams. We call the others “primitives” because we are their kings.
And we will not sit idly by as it all careens toward a morbid interregnum. Inspired by our passions we will act to bridge the gulf between civilizations, shortening the period of disorder by decisively maintaining connections between societies from one side of the galaxy to the other. We will weather the storm.
Hate! Love! Misery! Joy! These are paths to the dark side, for to invest in the emotional life of civilization is to care about its fate. To care is to suffer, and suffering is real.
The Jedi were mere spectators.
Yes, my friends: The Empire is good. Now, more than ever.
Jonathan V. Last is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
