Chapter 866: Space Balls or So I've Been Reduced to Complaining About the Prequel Trilogy

I’ll fully own up to being a complete nerd when it comes to the original Star Wars trilogy. The Empire Strikes Back is the second movie I remember seeing (the first being Bambi), the first I actually enjoyed, and remains my favorite movie of all time. I learned to read with the old Marvel Star Wars comics. I first became a pack rat collecting Star Wars figures. It really did shape my childhood. So it was only a matter of time before this blog turned toward talking shit about the prequel trilogy.

When The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, I went in with big expectations, and walked out of the theatre bewildered. Beyond the immediate issues of over-reliance on CGI special effects, cute kids and offensively stupid step-and-fetchit sidekicks, there was something deeply troubling that I couldn’t pinpoint. The movie left me feeling spiritually unfulfilled for reasons I couldn’t explain.

The same thing happened with Episodes II and III, even after they aged Anakin Skywalker past the point of physically being a cloying child and marginalized Jar-Jar Binks.

Recently, while re-reading the now non-cannon Marvel series, I realized that the problem is the Jedi.

In my youth, I was told that the Jedi were the last bastion of order and good in the galaxy. They were built up into these mythic space samurai who we were told were the most awesome beings the galaxy has ever seen. In the original trilogy, a single, partially trained Jedi seemingly brings the Galactic Empire to its knees (note that I said seemingly). Then I was left to imagine what the entire Jedi order could have accomplished for fourteen years.

And after fourteen years of waiting to see them in action, the prequel trilogy Jedi order served as cannon fodder for shitty robots and then clone troopers – the same troopers Luke and the poorly funded, non-force-sensitive rebel soldiers easily defeated.

Meanwhile, by the second movie, we stop seeing any regular, volunteer soldiers from the republic. Jedi become the sole, human focus of the storyline and merchandising. Everyone doing the fighting is either a Jedi or a clone trooper. This solves the marketing problem of kinder, gentler parents of the new millennium finding actual soldiers killing each other and dying for their cause too violent because Jedi deaths are super heroic and noble, while clone and robot deaths are impersonal. However, this focus fails to make Jedi especially interesting because all they do is overthink the ramifications of their actions, then get cut down by an army of soulless droids or by an army of clones with gentic predisposition for hitting their heads as they come through the door.

Now look back at the original trilogy - specifically the end of Return of the Jedi. Wait a minute. Luke doesn’t kill the Emperor. Darth Vader kills the Emperor. Luke surrenders to the Empire to protect his friends because his force sensitivity makes him a liability, and then a geriatric Sith Lord kicks his ass. Sith Lord Darth Vader, mortally wounded, sees his Jedi son begging for help, steps in, and kills the Emperor because his Jedi son can’t quite do it. Let me reiterate that Darth Vader was mortally wounded and still managed to actually accomplish his goals.

So it turns out that the Jedi sucked at everything.

And, as an added bonus, because the Jedi suck, the whole saga turns out to be the story of Darth Vader’s balls.

No, really.

The entire scope of the story is expanded by the prequel trilogy, and it changes the whole meaning. The overall focus of the storyline shifts from being the story of Luke Skywalker saving the galaxy by becoming the last of a line of great holy warriors to the story of Darth Vader and, symbolically, Darth Vader’s virility. Darth Vader’s story is that the Jedi were a bunch of impotent, ineffectual stiffs who never actually accomplished anything because their beliefs ultimately castrated them. Even when Luke has made it all the way to Emperor’s throne room, Darth Vader is the one that actually throws the Emperor into the center of the giant, round space egg, thus bringing order to the galaxy and ending the Jedi/Sith tradition of indoctrinating children into their neutered mindfuck cult.

Happy Easter.