Star Wars Radical Origins - by The Peaceful Revolutionary
Not so long ago in our little corner of the galaxy not so far away, a film director named George Lucas wrote a screenplay titled Star Wars and changed movie history forever. It spawned sequels, prequel, side-quels and became the one of the most successful franchise of all time. 1
But this wasn't just a simple story of a whiny moisture farmer who got caught up in a galactic rebellion against an evil empire ran by his deadbeat dad 2 , it was an allegory for the Vietnam war, with Nixon leading the bad guys, and Luke on the side of the Viet Cong. 3 It used the imagery associated with the Nazis to represent the Empire's soldiers, and based the rebellion's noble Jedi order on ancient Chivalric knights.
The connection between Star Wars and the Vietnam war may sound far-fetched, but we have a very reliable source for it. In 2005, Lucas articulated that Star Wars ‘was truly about the Vietnam War, and that was the era when Richard Nixon was seeking re-election for a second term, which prompted me to ponder historically about the process of democracies transitioning into dictatorships. Because democracies aren't forcibly overthrown; they are willingly relinquished.’ 4 And just in case someone suspects this was a later reinterpretation there is support for this view in the 1973 draft for the film, where Lucas explicitly referenced an autonomous planet likened to North Vietnam, and portrayed the Empire as ‘America 10 years from now.’ 5
Star Wars in all of it’s manifestations has been about rebellion against an empire (even when it featured cuddly Ewoks). In the first of the Star Wars trilogy 6 the rebellion has got their hands on some plans to the evil empire's combo mega-weapon and shopping mall: the Death Star. 7
