2) why does he look like mustacheod Mads Mikkelson
III) what is happen
?) ARE THEY BOYFRIENDS?????
AHEM! *dons his lore cape*
This is Biggs Darklighter, Luke’s best buddy growing up on Tatooine. There was a big chunk of story cut from A New Hope where Luke looks up at the sky, sees the Star Destroyer and Princess Leia’s ship shooting at each other in orbit, and jumps in his landspeeder to tell his friends like an excited puppy.
He arrives at Tosche Station (from the infamous line “But I was gonna go to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!”) and is surprised to find Biggs there, who had just gotten his certification from the Imperial Academy (mentioned in the line “That’s what you said when Biggs and Tank left” when Luke was trying to coax Uncle Owen into applying). Luke drags everyone outside to look but by that time the two ships have stopped shooting, so they write it off as Excitable Dumbass Luke getting his dumb hopes up again and go back inside.
It’s worth noting that Biggs takes the first look through Luke’s binoculars and says it’s probably just a freighter refueling. Having been to the Imperial Academy he’d know damn well what a Star Destroyer looks like and that having one in orbit over Tatooine means Srs Bsns is afoot. But he doesn’t mention this and lies, probably in an effort to keep Luke from going “ZOMG ADVENTURE!” and trying to get involved.
When everyone else inside, Biggs and Luke go for a walk and Biggs lets Luke in on a secret: he and a bunch of other Academy grads are going to mutiny and defect to the Rebel Alliance the first chance they get. Luke basically goes “GEE WHIZ!” and Biggs shuts him up. He explains that this is stupidly dangerous and is going to make him a wanted man if he survives, so this is the last time the two are probably ever going to see each other. Luke still doesn’t Get It yet and is mostly envious of all the excitement and adventure Biggs is about to embark on.
Fast forward past: Luke discovering real and innocent people get murdered by the Empire (courtesy of Uncle Owen & Aunt Beru’s smoking remains), finding out that dashing rogues can really just be selfish, trigger-happy assholes thanks to Han Solo, and watching the man who opened his eyes to a bigger universe get killed by the monster who Luke thinks murdered his father. His boyish naivety has taken quite the beating. But as he gears up to help attack the Death Star, who should he run into but his best buddy Biggs! How bad can war be when your best friend is at your side?
… oh.
Biggs gave his life to protect Luke, physically blocking Vader from shooting his best friend for as long as he possibly could. Between that, the reassuring words of Obi-Wan, and the timely return of Han (who Chewie threatened to tear the arms off of if they didn’t go back), Luke learned a critical truth: the universe was a lot darker than he ever realized, but no matter what there is always hope.
Wow, that actually adds a TON of emotional depth to that sacrifice, too. I never knew that.
One thing I love about Star Wars is how physically affectionate everyone is. You’d expect it from Luke, maybe, but you wouldn’t expect it from Han, nor Leia, and yet. Most of what comes out
of Han’s mouth is sarcastic comments or flirty remarks or complaints, but then you see him hug Leia or Luke or casually pat Chewie on the head or lean into him, and that’s far more genuine. Same goes for Leia, really.
It’s such a trope-defying thing, too, if you think about it. Snarky mercenary who only cares about himself… likes to hug people he’s only just met when he’s happy because he just can’t help himself. Snarky, haughty princess who is absolutely in charge… will absolutely hug the insufferable smuggler, and his giant furry sidekick, even though she’s pretty much done nothing but insult them both since she met them. Two guys who just blew up the Death Star and saved the day… hugs all around, nary a manly nod in sight.
And that’s not even mentioning the giant fluff ball of affection that Han turns into once he knows Leia is actually into him.
No one holds grudges about any of what’s been said because that’s just words. They all know they care about each other and no one’s scared to show some affection.
AND also, by the way – never once is it used against anyone, or interpreted as something it isn’t. It doesn’t come up when Han is trying to goad Leia into admitting that she likes him. Nor when Leia wants Han to admit that he cares. The fact that Leia hugged Han doesn’t mean she can’t yell at him two minutes later when he does something stupid again, and it doesn’t mean she likes him, and it doesn’t occur to Han (nor Leia, nor anyone else) to even try to interpret it that way.
The Phantom Menace is the best movie ever because the entire premise is essentially “Amazon has obtained its own private army and now two future samurai have to stop it from forcing Natalie Portman’s planet to use its services by cutting through Jeff Bezos’s army of robots and attempting to convince Congress to do something about it SPOILER WARNING Congress doesn’t do jack so Natalie Portman has to take matters into her own hands also the day is saved by a redneck kid the samurai picked up when the car broke down”.
It’s amazing how the SW Villain Discourse gleefully embraces the extent to which the Imperials are Space Nazis, and completely ignores the much greater extent to which they’re Space Americans.
Watch the Jedha market battle in Rogue One.
Space Iraq under American occupation.
Palpatine’s power grabs and his justifications behind them during the last days of the Republic were a pretty clear send up of the George W. Bush administration’s terrorism and national security policies.
Hitler subverted a brand new and very weak democracy of questionable legitimacy in the eyes of the German people, formed after the fall of an empire in a cataclysmic war, using his personal paramilitary as much as the ballot box to gain power, a situation that has more in common with the First Order than with Palpatine.
Palpatine subverted a venerable, complacent republic fractured by powerful moneyed interersts, by claiming to be protecting the freedom and security of the people, using the pretext of war to amass ever greater power, preparing carefully for the final overthrow of the regime that brought him to power.
In short, while the Empire uses the asthetics of the Nazis and also to a lesser extent the Soviet Union, those are all just trappings. The First Order are space Nazis, but the Empire are space Totalitarian Americans.
LOL more like Space Regular Americans, given that the Ewoks are the Viet Cong, Leia’s cinnamon buns were always based on that of a Sandinista revolutionary, and the only country to use a superweapon in the real world is the USA.
THIS. This this this this THIS.
As an American who came of age post-9/11 (I was 11 when it happened, and just shy of 13 when the buildup for the Iraq War was announced), it’s downright uncomfortable – in the best possible way, the way that renders art so piercing and so powerful – to watch the Jedha scenes in Rogue One. “The Holy City,” mined for resources by a foreign power. The clear Middle Eastern influence stamped on every inch of the design. Riz-Ahmed-who-once-played-Shafiq-Rasul stumbling through the desert with a bag over his head. Urban warfare between insurgents and an occupying army, simmering tension in the streets, civilians caught in the crossfire. It’s scarcely even subtext; remove the aliens, and you’re watching a news broadcast from my teenage years. I am frankly gobsmacked that anyone can view those scenes and NOT have their brain jump straight to Iraq, which I guess is a testament to how good human beings are at seeing what they want to see.
My own impression of the prequels (though I’d have to watch them again to be sure) was always that they were drawing more conscious inspiration from the late Roman Republic than from the Bush years…but then, the late 20th/early 21st century United States bears some striking historical resemblance to the late Roman Republic. Far more so in many ways than to 1930s Germany, as noted above. In fact I’ve long said that I suspect part of the problem with the prequels stems from this strange sort of…narrative shyness they seem to have, about looking their critique of empire in the eye. The central plot is basically a political intrigue. It’s a much twistier one than the fairly straightforward bildungsroman of the originals. And yet, for movies in which the systemic corruption and ultimate collapse of a representative government plays a huge role, they’re really eager to represent the Republic as the good guys and the Separatists as cartoon villains, in a way that allows them to toss out nuanced politics for battle scenes. Maybe that’s what they thought their audience wanted to see. But it leaves the viewer with a story that is fascinating and moving and complex if they care to look even a centimeter below the surface – and a narrative that seems to have almost zero willingness to engage with the complexities of that subtext. And it screws the pacing and characterization all to hell, because they try to cram a politically and morally complicated story into the archetypal Good-vs-Evil Pure-Farmboy-vs-the-Death-Star structure of the originals.
Like I said, maybe that’s more about what they thought their audience wanted to see than it is about subconscious discomfort with the Empire’s resemblance to Space America, but I’ve always thought there’s a bit of tension in Star Wars (and quite a lot of other American movies, actually) between the young-scrappy-and-hungry rebels – which American culture tends to celebrate and identify with (I mean, just check out who’s sporting a British accent in the originals, and who isn’t) – and the imperial reality that’s closer to America’s actual role in the world over the past century or so. It was great to see Rogue One make that so explicit.
Since I’ve decided to make a tiny R2D2 for my robotics class I spent the morning finding .wav files of the different sounds he makes but the original file names I knew would get confusing
so here I am sitting here psychoanalyzing and personifying as many of them as I can because okay yeah he’s beeping and chirping but what was he feeling
I dreamt that I enrolled in a psychology class but the professor spent the first lecture doing nothing but clicking through a slideshow of photos of beautiful landscapes with C-3PO edited into them, then explaining that adding C-3PO to otherwise serious situations ruined humans’ ability to take them seriously. When we all started laughing at what a pointless lecture this was, she glared at us and announced that our laughter had proved her point.
Then she assigned us our homework – go to funerals and show people sad pictures of the deceased with C-3PO photoshopped in. If they laughed, it meant their ability to feel humor was stronger than their ability to feel grief.
I thought, ‘oh my god my professor is a robot with absolutely no idea how human psychology works’ so I decided to stay in the class and help her figure it out by writing explanations in my essays that would offer nuance and context.
“And now class, I want you to examine the following image.”
“Beautiful, isn’t it? This shot of the Bolivian salt flats is absolutely breathtaking and meets all human standards of ‘beauty’. The warm hues of the clouds contrast pleasantly with the deep azure of the sky, and the perfect mirroring in the water suggests an almost mystical purity. The human brain is nearly overcome with wonder at the natural optical illusion. However, I have photoshopped C-3PO into the image, replacing the boat in the original photo. You all laugh! It is no longer a beautiful photo, but a comical one, because no one respects C-3PO. You see him as a fool, and thus the picture becomes comical! Human brains prioritize humor to the exclusion of all else. Now, I want you all to go out and absolutely ruin some funerals tomorrow.”
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 