Texas senator Ted Cruz said the Rebel Alliance in George Lucas’s Star Wars films are “unequivocally” the good guys. The Republican presidential candidate told THE WEEKLY STANDARD Tuesday evening the question over which side in the original three movies, the Rebels and the all-powerful Galactic Empire, was good and bad, was “not even close.”
“And Han Solo remains the coolest movie character in the history of cinema,” Cruz added.
Cruz’s stance goes against strong evidence that the Empire helped solve a crisis of security and order following the fall of the Old Republic sometime long ago in a galaxy far, far away. The Tea Party favorite also dismissed arguments that the Empire’s destruction of Alderaan, as depicted in the 1977 movie A New Hope, was justified given the planet was the home of the terrorist insurgency known as the Rebel Alliance.
“Of course not,” Cruz said to the question of whether the planet should have been destroyed by the Death Star. “It was an act of oppressive totalitarianism.”
Cruz also likened the Rebels, led by Princess Leia Organa, her brother Luke Skywalker, and Mon Mothma, to the patriots of the American Revolution. “I am particularly fond of some rebels in 1776 who were a destabilizing, chaotic force, and they fought for human liberty against the oppressions of the crown,” he said. “And [Darth] Vader didn’t even work for King George.”
Cruz said the argument from conservative pundits that the Empire was, in fact, in the right was “deeply troubling.”
