Episode VI Return of the Jedi

I was doomscrolling through twitter this morning, as one does, when I ran into one of those engagement farming tweets that goes like:

“What’s everyone’s lowkey controversial SW take??”

And the quote tweet said something along the lines of… “there shouldn’t be any green lightsabers in the prequels”, mostly because that’s what made Luke special and shit like that, it’s a dumb argument, someone even went on to say that old Jedi should not have lightsabers, that takes away from Obi, Anakin and Yoda which were masters and special, overall dumb fucking arguments.

Anyway, I obviously fell for the farming trick and engaged… Somebody was arguing that the use of lightsabers in the prequels made no sense and ruined the whole mystique and power they had on the originals, which quickly prompted a response that I will now quote since this is what I addressed.

“In the prequels, the Jedi are the warrior monks that keep the galaxy in check. In the original trilogy, its an extinct organization which many don’t even remember, and someone [sic] don’t believe even existed at all. The real issue is they shouldn’t have been only 30 years between”

This is an interesting premise, however, it is absolutely possible, no need for any suspension of disbelief, this is not only feasible, we know it happens, it happens in real life, it’s a pretty common thing. Throughout time, history has been written by the victors, and the Empire won. Even after Luke blew up the Death Star, the empire remained, actually, he blew up two death stars and the empire did not ceased to exist.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s go back to that day, the day order 66 was given, which marked every Jedi as a traitor, an exile, worthy of execution on sight, even the kids, every force user was hunted, the Empire’s propaganda machine convinced everyone that the Jedi were false prophets, dissidents, and that the force was a bunch of witchcraft and parlor tricks. That, that’s how empires work, that’s how fascism grows, the Empire had a huge propaganda machine, Emperor Palpatine was, by all measures, a beloved leader, and the Jedi attempted to usurp his power, a coup, they grew too greedy, wanted too much power. This shit sounds so familiar… why wouldn’t there be people out there in a galaxy far far away that didn’t believe that Jedi existed? or that they weren’t real? why would they not be considered a myth? some story passed down from resistance to resistance in search of hope? on the other hand, why wouldn’t they be the bad guys? why wouldn’t their legacy be erased from consciousness, that’s how the empire wanted it, that’s how revolutions get squashed.

And why would that be irrational? we see it all the time, there’s people who refuse to believe we went to the moon, or that the holocaust happened, or believe that the native americans or the original tribes were uncultured savages… There’s fucking pyramids guys, there was technology over here. Or even more recent history, there’s mountains of evidence of war crimes being committed, in Afghanistan or Iraq by Tier one teams that are basically a myth. It hasn’t been 30 years and there’s a bunch of people out there that believe that two planes hitting the towers did not cause them to go down. Misinformation is the greatest currency a rising empire has. And more importantly, the greatest weapon a dying one relies on. Coruscant is no different.

And so in a galaxy far far away, with thousands of planets, and millions of people in each planet, it stands to reason that one might encounter someone who has never seen a Jedi, or witnessed the balance of the force, to whom those are just stories, after all, if such powerful warriors existed, why do they allow injustice to happen, for more than a generation. After all the empire won, and they, they at least try to keep us safe.

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This post was written while listening to Medley: Star Wars (12” version) by Meco, an incredible funky take on the OST.