Star Wars Annoys Me

I know.

I'm a bad person.  I should love Star Wars.  I should adore Luke and Leia and their family drama.  I should be excited about Anakin and his pod racing self.   I should be thrilled over Han and Chewie and C-3PO.

And I am.  Mostly.  There isn't a woman alive who doesn't find Han Solo just plain irresistible, with his swagger and cocky smile.  He may not always make the best choices, but he is witty and decisive.  And Luke is the quintessential white knight on a quest to rescue the princess.  It's a timeless tale for a reason.  Good is good, and evil is evil, and really, there is no in between.

And Darth Vader is one of the greatest villains ever.  Really.  Tall, dark, with just enough under that hood to make you wonder what's underneath that mask. That guy just looks at a person and they pee their pants.  And then they had to go and make those other movies.  George Lucas must have been high that day.

Why did they have to muddy the waters?  Anakin is an angry, whiny, entitled brat. He becomes an angry, whiny, entitled adult. He's rescued from slavery, but he leaves his mother behind.  For years, he can't be bothered to go and visit her, then he's mad that when he does decide to visit, she inconveniently dies on him. This is supposed to be the reason that he starts turning to the dark side.   He doesn't want to follow the rules of the Jedi, so he breaks them when he feels like it, such as secretly marrying Padme and fathering twins.  But then he gets angry when the Jedi don't promote him to master because he doesn't follow the freakin' rules of their order.

How am I supposed to have empathy for that?  How am I supposed to like that guy?  Why am I supposed to care that he becomes Darth Vader?  I get it--the road to the dark side is paved with good intentions.  I'm supposed to feel sorry for poor Anakin.  He meant well, after all.  He just wanted to keep his loved ones safe.  That's why he killed all those people.  Anakin is just misunderstood.

I hate that crap.  Even if Vader is ultimately redeemed by his final act, he is still a Big Bad. There's no reason to feel sorry for him.  He made his own choices, even if he was manipulated into choosing poorly.  To make him the dupe, doing the wrong things for the "right" reasons, cheapens the story and makes an excellent villain somehow less than he should be.

And it's annoying.  Stop it.

Even Darth Vader Listened to his Mama

This is one of my favorite commercials. Not only is it adorable, it's hilarious. Zane is often seen dressed in only his Lego underpants, wearing his own Darth helmet. He likes to press the button that makes the *whoosh* sound of Darth breathing. He also likes to press the button to hear Darth say:

"You don't know the power of the Dark Side."

I think that the breathing sound is a little creepy(it reminds of of ICU), but there are worse things in the world than listening to James Earl Jones' voice.

Zane REALLY likes that quote about the Dark Side. Right now he walks around muttering it under his breath like a mantra. His teacher has not said a word about it, but I wonder if he mutters about Darth at school. Kids will latch onto quotes or song lyrics because they like how the words flow; I assume that is what Zane is doing here. Still, it's been difficult not to laugh when Zane gets in trouble. He wanders off, muttering, "You don't know the power of the Dark Side," in his best Darth imitation.

But if you laugh at the things that your child says when you are trying to discipline them, it kind of kills the point you are trying to make. It's sort of like a game of Chicken. If you laugh or show any emotion when you are supposed to be stern, they 'win'. It's the equivalent of blinking first.

I am determined not to laugh. Even Darth Vader listened to his mother, and I am certain that she did not laugh at his hijinks, either.

Darth Vader is the Good Guy?

My son and his father have been watching various Star Wars movies and television shows. They have not seen the newer movies, episodes 1-3, because my husband has a very real fear that Zane will decide that Jar Jar is totally awesome, and Larry loathes Jar Jar with the passion of a thousand white-hot suns. The two of them have also been watching The Clone Wars, and occasionally I catch part of the show.

The Star Wars movies, and the animated series The Clone Wars, are directly marketed to kids. Anakin Skywalker is the hero of the animated show, as far as I can tell. For those who are not acquainted with the story(or those who think that George Lucas should have stopped after the first three movies), Anakin Skywalker, Luke's daddy, becomes...Darth Vader. One of the archetypes of evil.

Yep. The biggest, baddest, evil-est dude in that galaxy far, far, away...is a hero to millions of kids out there. Kids who haven't made the connection between the name Anakin and Darth Vader. What happens when they do make that connection?
This is a super-heavy concept, this idea of a holy warrior ultimately throwing everything away and killing everything in his path to embrace evil, aka the dark side. There is no true happy ending for Anakin. Even if he was ultimately redeemed by his son, Darth Vader spent his life doing many evil things, and he never had a second thought about it, at least not before Luke showed up.

The first three Star Wars movies delineated good and evil perfectly. Everyone knew who was on 'the Dark Side', and there was no doubt. The boundaries were clear--this was good, and this was bad. Darth Vader was very obviously on the bad side, and his very being exuded his evilness, even from the rows of a darkened movie theater.

We had moral certainty. Darth Vader=Evil

But that second trio of movies threw a hitch in there: it turns out that Darth Vader hadn't always been evil. No, Darth had started life as an adorable little blonde kid who grew up to be a Jedi, a hero. He wasn't really bad; he just became that way, at least as far as the movies were concerned.

Our moral certainty went out the window. It went out the window and made a horrific sound as it hit the pavement.

Yet, at some level, we understood the meaning, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Anakin's journey to the Dark Side began with his intentions of doing good things. Many of us out there have been faced with similar choices, minus the light sabers. Does that mean that we are evil? If so, can we be forgiven?

At some point, my son is going to make the connection, that Anakin=Darth Vader=Evil?. It may be a traumatic realization for him. Of course, I hope that my sweet boy doesn't have his epiphany until he is much, much older. I really don't know how I will answer his future questions; I haven't answered those questions satisfactorily for my self. I would like a little more time to find some answers that make sense.