Star Wars and the Death of the American Fascist Empire
Star Wars is dead. Star Wars remains dead. And we have nothing to do with this because the franchise died ages ago, it has been kept in a zombified state for several decades, the harsh reality that we have refused to admit is that the franchise has never been very good to begin with. The whole charade has only been possible thanks to the massive success of the original trilogy, with the first Star Wars movie being one of the most influential films of all time, and also because The Empire Strikes Back is one of the best sequels ever made.
The problem with the franchise were apparent in Return of the Jedi, a structurally broken film that relied way too much on repetition of elements from the previous movies, such as a new Death Star, alongside the use of unnecessary characters like Han Solo. That film was celebrated thanks to its imaginative visuals and set pieces, alongside some very memorable scenes, such as Luke’s confrontation with the Emperor. But I think that the third film remained so iconic mostly because of its thematic underpinnings.
George Lucas never tried to make the hidden messages of his films too blatant, but by looking closer it’s kinda obvious what’s going on. The final showdown between the Empire and the Rebels is an obvious allegory for the invasion and occupation of Vietnam, as we see a group of rebels with vastly inferior weaponry defeating a fascist empire that posses a huge military, and weapons of mass destruction. The parallels are even more clear if we consider the fact that Lucas modeled the Emperor on Richard Nixon.
No, he was a politician. Richard M. Nixon was his name. He subverted the senate and finally took over and became an imperial guy and he was really evil. But he pretended to be a really nice guy.
The simple fact is that the Galactic Empire is a stand-in for the American Empire, although a much more twisted version of it, as Lucas was imagining an even more evil version of America in which the forces of fascism and white supremacy had completely crushed democracy, as it had happened in the Weimar Republic and the ancient Roman Republic.
Return of the Jedi ends in such celebratory note probably because the American Empire had been defeated many times and seemed to be retreating, with the defeats in Vietnam and Cuba being particularly notable. And despite Reagan’s reputation for funding fascist death squads in Central America, and supporting religious extremists in the Middle East, he didn’t actually started any major wars comparable with Vietnam.
However the Star Wars franchise was kept alive due to the fact that those three movies were so damn popular and the toys were extremely profitable. But the heart of the franchise weren’t just the toys or the cool special effects, it was those anti-imperialist and anti-fascist themes that resonated with people from all over the world. Themes that remained relevant back in the 90s when the Special Editions were released for a whole new generation to enjoy.
The end of the Cold War meant that the decaying empire saw an opportunity to reassert itself at the global stage since the inner darkness at the heart of America was still there, waiting for the right moment to strike back. This was the plot of The Phantom Menace, but is also the story the War on Terror which saw an increase in authoritarianism and interventionism on the part of the United States, alongside a massive surge in the persecution of minorities thanks to the powers granted by the Patriot Act and the creation of ICE.
American fascism has never fully died, it existed way before the Nazis were even a thing, and it became an integral part of the Republican party after Nixon deployed the Southern strategy, and it also exists in a vestigial form in the paleoconservative and neoconservative movements, and sometimes in more blatant ways such as the current Trump administration that’s constantly looking for ways to subvert democracy, curtail freedom of speech, erode civil rights, and increase the persecution and neglect of minorities.
That’s without mentioning how the war machine that George Lucas attacked in his films never stopped running, as military spending increased even during so-called Democratic administrations, as the establishment Democrats not only continued the politics of interventionism, in some cases they escalated it themselves as seen in the wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen. Although those wars have yet to become as terrible as the endless occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which have become comparable with the atrocious war in South Vietnam that directly inspired the first film in the franchise.
Either way, this is the reason why the Star Wars prequels remained so relevant and powerful despite being kinda garbage, because they touched themes that felt extremely important to people not only in the United States but also all over the world. The story of the prequels is the story of the decadence of American democracy and destruction of human rights all over the world due to the fascistic influence of the War on Terror and the War on Drugs.
The Star Wars franchise has managed to stay alive in the popular imagination thanks to the enormous creativity and quality of the original films, but also because it has never fully abandoned its core themes, especially because the last two prequel films commented heavily on the ongoing wars in the Middle East and the decrease of civil liberties during the Bush’s administration.
But the franchise remained in an undead state as it continued moving forward with expanded universe material of questionable quality, mediocre video games that mostly copied other popular franchises (with some exceptions like Knights of the Old Republic), and animated television shows that mostly try to fix the broken continuity that the films left behind with their endless retcons.
However everything changed when Disney purchased Star Wars, mainly because Bob Iger was scammed by George Lucas into purchasing a mostly worthless franchise for four billion dollars, at which point the corporation had to find a way to make their money back, and so they decided to start producing films right away while abandoning the ideas of the old creator, instead choosing to heavily rely on nostalgia for the original trilogy.
Which worked at first, but this also meant that The Force Awakens didn’t seem to line up thematically with the rest of the franchise, the First Order were depicted as fascists, and Kylo Ren was clearly modeled on radicalized teens, but the allusions to weapons of mass destruction and fascist empires seemed rather vague. I think the film managed to accidentally hit a nerve at the time of its release thanks to events such as the rise of the Islamic State, which had all the elements of an fascistic regime.
Although J. J. Abrams’ film did something accidentally interesting by soft rebooting the old conflict between the Galactic Empire and the Rebels, as it pointed out that the war between fascism and democracy never truly ended, the remnants of the old empire remained somewhere else and managed to return to power and recreate the old war machine in order to continue their endless wars of aggression.
Which opened the door for Rian Johnson to point out the absurdity of this eternal conflict between the forces of good and evil, and The Last Jedi also exposed the farce at the heart of the Star Wars franchise by showing that there was no real continuity or plans for it, the corporation was just hiring directors randomly and letting them do whatever they wanted. Ultimately franchises are just empty names with no true meaning behind them.
This was probably unintended, but the farcical endless wars of the Star Wars sequels mirror the farcical endless wars of the seemingly never-ending American Empire, held together by nothing but an empty neoliberal ideology, alongside the questionable profit motive of a few massive corporations such as Disney and Raytheon.
I think that Abrams realized his mistake when he forgot to have a central theme for the sequel trilogy, which allowed Johnson to just do metatextual deconstruction with seemingly no clear goal other than saying that war is kinda bad. So for the final film in the franchise Abrams decided to go back to the core themes that George Lucas had previously explored, establishing the rebels/resistance as guerrilla fighters against American imperialism, which is something Oscar Isaac made extremely clear in an interview from last year.
[The Resistance] are guerrilla fighters, adhering closer to something like the Revolutionary War fighters or even the guerrillas in Cuba with Che and Fidel and all these guys living in the mountains, coming down to do some attacks, and going back and trying to hide from the ’empire’ of the United States.
The core theme at the heart of The Rise of Skywalker is this conflict between the forces of populism/democracy against the forces of Eternal Fascism, an ancient conflict that has always been at the very center of American history and much of the world. The conflict raging inside the hearts of Ben Solo and Rey Skywalker is this seemingly endless war between the light and the dark sides of America.
In the end the Star Wars saga argues that this is a war that can end, that it’s possible to inspire people all over the galaxy to rise up and destroy this heartless war machine that has brought senseless death and destruction, no matter how hopeless it might seem.
