Weekly Standard editor projects pro-totalitarian argument on Star Wars?

(What's double scary is that you can extend this argument to our world and get a pretty adequate caricature of the Weekly Standard's general political line.)

Yeah, it was a very strange article, read it earlier today and concluded that somebody had been sucking back one too many whipped cream bottle hits. As elaborate satire it would have been brilliant, but there's not enough "Modest Proposal" insanity in it to lead me to conclude that satire was the full goal.

That said, I actually think the portrayal of the Jedi organization as being elite and out of touch is to one extent or another intentional on Lucas' part -- ie, 'time for you guys to learn some humility the hard way.'

As an interesting point of reference, consider David Brin's notorious article that surfaced after Phantom Menace came out. He raises a number of parallel points (am I surprised to learn Brin's a libertarian? not really) while avoiding the distasteful pitfalls of the Weekly Standard piece in terms of the points N*tsuh raises re: trying to draw real-world parallels. Though his general political standpoint is clear, Brin is more interested in differing styles of story as reflecting a certain mindset rather than reaching for justifications for extremely dubious political conclusions, however satiric or supposedly so.

Interestingly, the Lucas quote Brin foregrounds at the start of the piece gets implicitly undermined in AOTC, during a conversation where Anakin makes an argument to Padme that a good dictatorship is the best solution to the Republic's problems and then seems to brush it off as a joke once he realizes she's not going to go along with it, though it's clear it's no joke. The context and presentation of Anakin's belief is clearly meant to be negative. A direct response by Lucas to this piece? Highly doubtful, but still intriguing.

Just read the Brin article, which is confused and meandering and pointless and sort of conveniently ignores the whole Christiany redemption aspect of Vader's death. But at least his sole real-world parallel (Vader = Hitler) recognizes that, like, totalitarianism is generally not-so-cool.

This article is drivel. It is based on strained readings of parts of a storyline and not paying attention properly. I could refute several of the points, and I've only seen two of these silly films (SW and its first sequel).

Anyway he starts talking about "There will be talk of the Force and the Dark Side" and I think of how Lucas ripped off Jack Kirby, and barely bothered changing things. Jack had The Source and Darkseid. Jack had Mark Moonrider as opposed to Luke Skywalker. Jack's main hero turned out to be (you guessed it) the son of Darkseid, ruler of the evil forces. There's a character called Highfather who acts as our hero's father, and teaches him how to tap into the power of The Source. This was a bunch of superhero comics in the early '70s. Lucas was a comicbook fan.

Of course, they were only comics, hacked out at a ludicrous rate (Kirby was writing and drawing four titles at the time), as opposed to big budget major motion pictures. They nonetheless had/have infinitely more substance, weight and thematic seriousness, as well as more excitement and better characters, and it's all less simple- minded. And you don't have to put up with the rotten acting (though Jack's dialogue here is, it must be admitted, not popular with everyone). (I am aware that a lot of the plot of episode 1 is pinched straight from The Hidden Fortress, by my favourite director, Kurosawa, but the Kirby steals annoy me more.)