“So anyway, I orchestrated that apprentice’s death and built an empire fuelled by greed and corruption.”
- Darth Sidious
A french YouTuber (Bolchegeek) calls that the Magneto syndrome : the writers make the bad guys make actually good points when criticizing the supposed “good guys”, but then proceed to completely discredit their character by making them do something obviously evil. He argued that it’s a way to pretend like you’re making a progressive movie that questions society, while still reinforcing the status quo, and to basically say “Don’t be fooled by those radicals, they may seem convincing but they’re actually just out for blood”
“Don’t be fooled by those radicals, they may seem convincing but they’re actually just out for blood”
I think this is the entire underlying propoganda in Batman villains and that only the rich good guy by choice can save us!
#PoisonIvyDidNothingWrong
Capeshit in general is inherently right wing, though, if you stop to think about it. The foundational premise is the notion that if only this Great Man™ steps up to punch problems away the world will be a better place for it.
like say, when captain america punched hitler? or was hitler just a villain because the writers made him kill so we can keep the status quo
Depends on the target age demographic and how organized the Heroes are. In the MCU, the Avengers were operating investigation and acting in foreign countries without consent. I was in agreement that Sokovia Accords were reasonable and if a hero had an issues with “taking an order they disagreed with”, they thought they would be forced to compile when every civilized military has a conscientious objector clause. In Justice League Unlimited, I pissed off a lot of fans when I said that Waller was right to be concerned that the JL were operating a space laser that could be used on the earth. I don’t like how writers always give her really bad plans though.
Justice Gang stopping an invasion? Now that was cathartic to see.
Some writers understand the rightwing problem with superhereos and either avoid it or address it. Some people give Batman some billionaires to fight. Other times, they reinforce the rightwing problem with whatever the fuck Frank Miller was doing.
Ever read Worm?
Worm is too dark for me. Couldn’t bring myself to power through it. Like, the world’s already going to hell as it is, I don’t need my escapist fiction to also be going to hell with cosmic horror thrown on top.
xmen97 played this well. Magneto was angry but otherwise good. And then he snapped. But it wasn’t a long con, he was reformed. And then someone tried to genocide his adopted nation and he snapped. Can’t really blame him for that.
Those true evils often hide their motivation behind a “justifiable evil”. It’s basically modern politics. Most often in display in the US, but infects many, if not most, governments around the world.
Just because someone presents a supposedly logical and rational argument, doesn’t necessarily mean either that they believe it, or that the argument is actually based in factual analysis.
Pop-Culture detective also has a good video essay about this too: Marvel: Defenders of the Status Quo (based on work by David Graeber, I believe)
That’s also how the real world works. Trump is often quite good at identifying real problems with society, but all of his “solutions” are some combination of evil, stupid and/or insane.
Just because someone is good at criticizing doesn’t mean they have good intentions or the wherewithal to architect a better society.
Trump just regurgitates what his base wants to hear. I doubt there’s a single independent thought in his head anymore.
What? I’ve only heard Trump say shit like crime is out of control when statistically it’s the opposite.
I rarely if ever hear him address real problems.
It’s kind of a broken clock / twice per day situation. He says so much shit that some of it inevitably ends up being right. Some years ago he said something along the lines of quarterly business reporting requirements being a major cause of short sightedness in publicly traded companies. But then he never did anything with that, and he said like 10 other fucked up things that day.
I think I heard of a similar cirque of Avatar’s Amon.
Kay and skittles has a good leftist breakdown of each of the Korra villains, for those that are into that sort of thing 😳
Yeah, this has always felt like propaganda to me. Present really solid arguments and then attach it to the character that murders toddlers or something to discredit the concept.
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Let’s not forget the empire vaporizing multiple inhabited planets
There were rebels there using the rest of the population as human shields.
I think that makes this even more accurate. Authoritarians can only take over a democracy due to just how angry people are with the current establishment. MAGA is the same way, it’s fueled by people who can FEEL that something is terribly wrong with the world, but aren’t smart enough to know why. Hate and anger is a large part of it, but the weakness and complacency of the current establishment isn’t making it any harder for them. I remember a lot of people voted for trump in 2024 just cause he sounded a lot different than the usual guys. More disruptive and up-front about his thoughts. In actuality that’s because he has no respect love for anything except money, but they were too delusional to know that.
All they needed to say was “We are different and we will govern stronger” and people were tricked into thinking that meant they were better.
But the Republic was also fueled by greed and corruption … so just new management?
(… not even that new actually?)
Didn’t know we had a CIS apologist in the comments.
(It’s super funny to me when I say something about the other side & immediately get folk arguing I’m simping for the side I didn’t even mention. No sides are ever just good or bad, my friend. Not to mention it’s fiction in this case.)
Hehe, you telling me you liked Palpatine before he was cool, when he was still Supreme Chancellor of the Republic?
The leader that Lucas said was inspired my Nixon?(it’s a joke my dude)
My allegiance is to the Republic; to democracy!
(Oh, I’m so sorry, forum life changed me, I assumed against my instincts! I actually love play-fighting on fictional shit & taking comically one-sided stances for the duration of the debate, whatever side is less represented atm.)
To democracy?
But we had the democratic senate (except the leader) for several months into our glorious Empire!We ofc had to dismantle it bcs the floating podiums burned through too much electricity & we stand for efficiency.
Just look at our newest high efficiency orbital battle station (Death Star), it obliterated Alderans unemployment rate in seconds!
(We should built more tho, they have a super sensitive g-spot.)
The Empire was around for nearly twenty years before they abolished the Senate.
Oh, forgot about that - democracy!!
I don’t know how you can run a functioning government if you build huge, wasteful battle stations so that you can blow up some of your wealthiest taxpaying planets.
That’s because you’re buying into the Imperial propaganda that the intended result is, in fact, a functioning government. The entire edifice is actually a scheme designed to maximize suffering, because that’s what the crazy cult that the Emperor’s secretly in charge of calls for. Rahm Kota’s got a series of holovids talking all about it on the darknet!
They were just super wealthy, but offshored their profits & basically paid less in taxes than your average endorian ewok living on a tax exempt planet.
After the end of Alderaan other economies were freed from it’s influence & prospered.And the leaders were like super posh, like you wouldn’t believe how annoying.
And the battle stations arent wasteful, at least not if terrorists wouldn’t help blowing them up.
hE sUpPoRtS gEnOcIdE! I aM vOtInG fOr PaLpAtInE…
Yoda is like an establishment neoliberal
Yoda is Chuck’e’Cheese.
I mean, it’s pretty on the nose. Blue lightsabers vs red lightsabers. Meanwhile the more esoteric, wiser jedi wield green lightsabers.
So, you know, maybe institute term limits instead of going full fascism. Star Wars is so unrealis…oh.
The Jedi council are unelected folk (from a religious sect) just doing things bcs they can. Like kidnapping all force-sensitive children.
They are like the Church in the middle ages with a private army, public funding, more powerful than most state officials, not subject to state laws, and not disclosing their affairs or motives publicly.I think the word kidnapping is doing some heavy lifting here. Aren’t the kids there by choice?
Whose choice? The kids? Because we all know kids aren’t easily tricked. By their parents? If Anikin’s mom is any indicator, she was effectively lied to and filled with unverifiable promises by a stranger she just met who certainly wasn’t using their current situation as a means to appeal to her emotions about her wanting a better life for her son.
For more evidence to your point, this is a major plot point of The Acolyte.
The Jedi going after the twins because they’re force sensitive while they keep saying it’s the right thing to do!
Not really. And this isn’t something “Disney canon” either, as this was established well before Disney, when Lucas still had creative control:
The Jedi, in their archives, keep a list of force-sensitive children. The extra-powerful ones, ones that can already manipulate the force at an infant stage, are kept on a well guarded holochron in the deepest part of their archives.
Jedi observe these infants. They visit the family’s of these infants. The parents are told there will be a day that they’ll come for their kids. Then, when they’re old enough (but not too old) the kids get taken away from their parents and start training at the nearest temple (or the main one).
I haven’t heard of Jedi forcibly taking children away, but Jedi can be very… convincing, so “on paper” these kids are there by choice. These stories were explored in The Clone Wars. One of the earlier seasons. Though it didn’t go into specifics.
Isn’t the new show just canon saying they forced them/the jedi had to bring them in bcs of the threat they would become sith?
Also nobody went & rescue Vaders parents, they just bought a child slave (if he would work for them that is), and neither the planetary royalty nor the galactic Jedi order didn’t have the funds to buy two parent slaves (or help the planet for that matter).
Those 3-4 year olds making those heavy decisions…
Their parents willingly give the children into their care not unlike Catholic or Buddhist monasteries raising children given to them.
Only the kids are guaranteed to have a good life, the best education in the galaxy, have all their physical needs met, get to learn FUCKING SPACE MAGIC, and serve as important guardians of a galactic republic who don’t even have to do cop stuff, unlike what the kind of idiot that accuses them of kidnapping children might say despite A CORE PLOT POINT of Phantom Menace being that the MOST REBELLIOUS JEDI MASTER WON’T EVEN STEAL A SLAVE CHILD
Not all the time, no.
Yes, literally all the time. Reddit shit takes are not canon.
Who the fuck mentioned reddit
Still no.
A child cannot consent to be taken away from their family like that.
Its abduction, the Jedi suck shit and abduct child to be children soldiers and enslave sentient robots.
This is why literally all adopted children are victims of human trafficking
But Dooku didn’t help the slaves…
Not uncommon for sith to get into it for theoretically noble reasons they fail to live up to; it’s easy to talk about the good you’d do with that power when you don’t have it
Username checks out.
Or, hear me out: He’s a liar and manipulator
I’ve heard this take before, but my head canon includes this as why Yoda went into exile. He knew he fucked up, and couldn’t really face it for a while.
When accountability knocks, flee…
Does the Republic have any actual power in the Outer Rim where the slavery was happening? I thought that was Hutt space and the Hutts are not part of the Republic. It’s why Mos Eisley is a haven for pirates and other criminals looking to evade the law; the Republic has no authority or jurisdiction there. It’s why Republic credits are no good there.
Star Wars government makes a lot more sense if you’ve read Foundation. The Republic was not in good health when Palps took over (very much according to his designs.)
Unless using Republic credits gets you shot, there should at least be a privately run currency exchange somewhere, even if the rates are terrible. It doesn’t make sense that there’s no currency exchange anywhere on the planet.
Am retired pirate with big booty, have bright idea to open currency exchange in Mos Eisley.
Find discreet junk shop, shoot owner dead, set up shop.
Opening day: nothing.
Days 2 to 5: nothing.
Day 6: sick looking alien stumbles into shop, vomits everywhere, dies.
Days 7 to 12: nothing.
Day 13: dude looking like a poorly disguised Republic citizen walks in the door (finally, a client!), gets shot in the back, dies. I pilfer his belongings, finally some profit.
Days 14 to 27: nothing.
Day 28: shady looking droid walks in, asks for all my money; I ask for the equivalent amount of Republic credits in exchange; it produces a gun and shoots me in the tentacle, and asks again for all my money. I give it the money.
Am broke, and bleeding.
Day 29: tentacle falls off.
Day 30: bunch of official looking Gamorreans show up demanding tax, tribute, bribe, and gratuity. Have nothing to give them. They grab me and throw me into a sarlacc, where I’ll be digested for a thousand years.
Maybe it wasn’t such a bright idea.
you mean like what they did to the Gungans?
When were the Gungans shown to be slaves? Nobody even seemed to know they existed except Amidala.
I’m not famiar with any EU content tho, so maybe I’m jist ignorant of some details found outside the movies.
i think i am mistaken. i was going for them being coerced via the force to fight for Naboo where they otherwise would have been neutral, but my memory of the event is wrong
Some propaganda:
Tho OPs pic’s point remains - SW is a space western & can’t give us the full picture of how the average world lived under either of systems, but going from widespread and generational corruption (not just the Jedi, but starting there) to a single point of power (dictatorship) initially lowers the corruption & dethrones (or recruits in diminished way) various mini-powers/leaders/mobsters bcs if nothing else they are simply a threat to the image.
At any rate, never be ok being governed by a 900 year old unelected frog that can’t spot a Sith Lord if they shared a urinal at his visit to the senate (and the frogs religious zealotism is centred around genociding said Siths).
Billions of beings? China and India are not far off of billions. It should at least(!) be trillions.
There’s 8 billion humans on earth, and if you assume that’s the average planet population in the empire, you’re only maybe a trillion of there’s over 100 planetary civilizations under imperial rule.
I’m not a big enough nerd to know how many there really are, but thinking back to how many reps were in the republic senate scenes, it’s probably around a trillion (they generally rep a planet, right?). But that’s being generous, plenty of those planets are noticably smaller than Earth and I don’t think they all end up imperial.
From what we’ve seen in the movies, there’s six planets, maybe ten, in the empire. The others are most likely imperial propaganda.
Coruscant’s entire surface is covered with a single city with a population density like Tokyo
If we’ve got an estimated surface size, could be an interesting math problem.
Coruscant has a radius of 6120km, negligible surface water, and 5127 levels, though the lowest ones aren’t really habitable or inhabited. Population as of 132 BBY was 2,981,780,000,000
I’m not a fan of when writers let the baddies point out plot holes and inconsistencies brought about by other writers. At that point it’s really just the writers undermining each other.
Reboot Star Wars but the Sith are anti-slavery freedom fighters against the Jedi liberal empire
“We came here to chew bubblegum and free slaves. And we are all out of bubblegum.”
Darth John Brown
And keep religion from state, especially ones that take children from their parents to indoctrinate at a young age.
This has to be peak Lemmy.
Relating to the sith and thinking they are the “good guys”.
This has to be peak Lemmy.
“It’s just me and my world of enemies…”
Before it was hurr hurr reddit, now it’s hurr hurr lemmy.
When are you not in the attacked righteous minority?
“It’s just me and my world of enemies…”
Nail on head. This is 90 percent of all posts on Lemmy. Atleast the ones that get upvoted.
I’m pretty sick of the postmodernistic schtic of irony mixed with self-righteoussness.
I’m not sympathising with you; I’m saying you’re acting like an idiot.
I didn’t think you were. But it doesn’t change my point. If you can’t see how obnoxious the average Lemmy post is, then i guess you’re an idiot too.
Case in point
And by joining you make yourself the same.
Lol I like villains, always have
ACAB includes Jedi 🤓☝️
Wanna hear what it sounds like when the blood pressure of 1000 nerds spikes all at once?
Ahem, “Grey Jedi are how you fix Star Wars”
Interesting that you have willingly opted out of the social contracts known as human rights over this but okay
Malgus did nothing wrong.
Technically something similar already exists in EU. Aing-Tii monks do not see the force as black or white, but as a rainbow. They mostly stayed to themselves except to fuck up some slavers from time to time, but they have taught at least 1 human their method of using the force.
Star Wars needs more Jolee Bindos
Just another point on the laundry list of reasons the prequels fucked everything up.
I mean they certainly fuck up a lot, but I think they, in larger narative strokes, do a good job of touching on how the failures of neoliberalism decay into fascism as complacent systems fail.
I’m just not sure Lucas meant to do it
Idk, there was that interview he said the rebels were the viet cong, that the soviets had more freedom in what sorts of films they could get greenlit because you didn’t have to pitch it on how much money it would make, and I believe in it said that he was trying to show the decay into fascism under GHW Bush. The dude is not a good director, and can’t write dialog or people for shit, but I think he’s knows what he’s doing generally.
In a good way. The prequels felt like they are a part of a different era of history. While the sequels where just the originals but more.
Isn’t this the kind of thinking that got Trump elected? Kamala ignored the war in Gaza, so the other side is better? Doesn’t say the dark side isn’t exactly the same… so it must not be?
