Star Wars needs more moral ambiguity

Star Wars has a steady stream of new material and merchandising opportunities that are profitable, such as the Star Wars merchandise.Video games,Novels,ComicsPlease see the following:Animations. But the film and TV side of Star Wars feels like it’s struggling. Disney repeatedly has been praised for its Star Wars films over the last five years.Plans announcedPlease see the following:New moviesThen,They were unceremoniously cancelledYou can keep them, or give them away.Still, silently backburnered. Disney Plus’ recent Star Wars live-action shows keepPromising new directionsFor the franchisePulling backMixing messages. There’s no clear vision or coherent narrative direction for the screen versions of the franchise, even though they’re the most visible and mainstream part of Star Wars. It seems that everyone wants something unique from this vast, complex story.

So Polygon is gathering some thoughts about the franchise’s future under the loose banner of What We Want From Star Wars. These opinion essays lay out what we love about the Star Wars universe, and where we hope it’ll go in the future … or a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

Star Wars’s story is full of people who suffer loss but then pick up their pieces and fight for what they believe in. From Luke standing in front of the smoldering wreckage of his family’s Tatooine homestead to Rose losing her sister in the opening minutes of The Last Jedi, the franchise is built on the backs of people who righteously refuse to give up in the face of tragedy — or even really take a beat to process what just happened. Star Wars films suggest that times are difficult now. However, you can still go to the Resistance recruitment office to sign up and turn your pain into something greater.

But after literal decades of watching the Star Wars universe, there is exactly one vibe I want from future outings into The Galaxy Far Far Away, and it isn’t about noble suffering. It’s Benicio del Toro’s vibe in The Last Jedi. His master hacker (or in Star Wars lingo, “slicer”) DJ is magnetic as he deals with the film’s earnest protagonists. As if a snake, he lays in wait to his moment. In DJ’s brief foray onscreen, he captures the future Star Wars needs — namely, moral ambiguity.

DJ’s arc makes good use of quick time: After Rose and Finn fail to make contact with the codebreaker recommended to them, they run into DJ In jail, looking like he’s just wandered off an intergalactic Dickensian production. He’s more impressed with their droid BB-8 than he is with them, and though he eventually comes to their aid, he constantly presses them to see the bigger picture. “Good guys, bad guys … made-up words,” he lectures Finn. “It’s all a machine, partner. Live free, don’t join.”

Image: Disney

We’ve seen this act before. DJ wouldn’t be the first hard-scrapping swindler out for his paycheck, only to get sucked into the orbit of the Rebellion. When he takes Rose’s necklace, then returns it to her (he only wanted it for its conducting powers!He is almost blinded by his gold heart and suddenly a new star appears in the series. Then Captain Phasma appears, Finn and Rose’s slapdash plan crumbles, and DJ is offered his reward for betraying them.

In a movie full of broad, simple, noble hoping and nefarious villainy, he’s slippery, sliding out of any clear categorization. We get very little explanation for DJ’s actions, which is the best thing about DJ. Finn is told by DJ that he hopes the Resistance will continue to wage war. Then he’s gone with his bounty. There’s no third-act karmic retribution, or worse, a triple-cross where he veers back to the good side. He’s allowed to stay self-serving and sneaky, rather than joining Team Black Robes or Team White Robes.

Characters like DJ are the mortar between the building blocks of the Star Wars universe, the real people who can’t do much of anything to shift the balance in a perpetual galactic war that mostly happens far above their pay grade. DJ may not be the best the universe has to offer as he assures Finn, “They blow you up today, you blow them up tomorrow.” But he’s also a far cry from “blowing up an entire planet to prove a point.” The problem for the Rebellion isn’t that he’s evil, it’s that he’s cynical.

To a specific Star Wars interpretation, this nuance is sacrilege. Star Wars has been a straightforward franchise in good-vs..evil storytelling. Star Wars has a lot to lose in the war for who Star Wars should be. It is, there’s always been a glut of gradation in terms of the kinds of characters and stories people are interested in. Star Wars storytellers should be able to take advantage of this.

DJ is one example of morally grey characters. There are many ways to be in. Rogue One, Saw Gerrera does not only fight for the right guys; he will torture anyone who isn’t willing to trust him. His militia continues to cover their insurgency against Jedha with civilians. Admiral Ackbar, the ever-stoic yet intrepid admiral takes a break after destroying an Empire ship. The Return of the Jedi, knowing that he’s just killed everyone on board, and that it can’t fully be processed as a simple act of heroism. He takes a moment to reflect on his war philosophy. Treating Star Wars characters’ actions as unequivocally simple and good makes their choice to fight seem easy, even as the writers clearly want to remind you that it isn’t.

Star Wars doesn’t always get moral ambiguity right, even when it’s ostensibly making space for it. However, the distinction between Mandalorian’s success and Boba Fett’s abject failure to tell a coherent story is that the former show is interested in wrestling with its character’s duality, and the latter squirms at the mere thought of it. MandalorianDin Djarin, the protagonist of The Phantom Menace has evolved into a more refined version of Master Chief and Boba Fett because his soft-spoken gunlinger is openly optimistic without sounding pessimistic. His people are a bunch of heavily armed religious extremists, and he’s a sincere believer in their code. From the glimpse we get in “The Prisoner,” Din has not done inspiring work up to meeting Grogu.

But after deciding the moral line he isn’t willing to cross is “selling a baby to people who want to dissect him,” the story lets him actually reconcile where he does fall on the continuum of good and evil. He doesn’t always play nice, but he isn’t a villain. He’s complicated, as he should be. Seven episodes of “The Simpsons” are in contrast. Book of Boba Fett undid decades of lore, opting to give us a Fett who’s mostly interested in being a feudal lord, but without any of the thorny menace or power to give his story heft.

Image: Lucasfilm/Disney

Lucasfilm Ltd.

Image: Lucasfilm/Disney

If Star Wars indulged the messy ambiguity it’s already sowed the seeds of, it could redeem its biggest missed opportunity yet: dealing with the legacy of an army of stormtroopers, and what it means when a faceless army starts to develop faces.

Though George Lucas originally proclaimed that he built the Empire around anonymous, interchangeable adversaries so he could have a “nonviolent movie” while also “having all the fun of people getting shot,” the stormtroopers took on a menace of their own in their spooky white space armor. Although our heroes were often beaten up (sometimes literally in the instance of Ewoks throwing rocks), they still made a strong appearance in movies. The canonical first appearance of the stormtroopers was in Attack of the Clones is equal parts ominous and suggestive, visually twisting our built-up hostility to them and foreshadowing the Republic’s doom.

And yet, for all that Lucas and the prequel trilogies wanted us to think of them as indistinguishable, the Star Wars universe repeatedly underscores their dubious complicity with the Empire’s fascism. It is Rogue One, Jyn tells Cassian that following orders “when you know they’re wrong” makes him indistinguishable from a stormtrooper, emphasizing that within the world, at least, they see each soldier’s action as a choice. We know that stormtroopers have been conscripted somewhat forcibly in various ways throughout the series, first as clones literally created for the job, then later as child soldiers, in Finn’s case.

This suggests that they were subject to more dangerous indoctrination during their enlistment. Other than a few humors here and there, they are not very serious. MandalorianYou may also include strays of dialog A New Hope, Star Wars never really wrestles with what stormtroopers’ sentience actually means, for them or the Resistance that calls them the enemy. It was a good thing, too. Rise of the Skywalker gets to its stormtrooper rebellion, the potential for stormtroopers’ moral ambiguity is such a half-assed undercurrent that it doesn’t even merit mentioning in the film’s Wikipedia plot description.

Though the humanity of the First Order’s army may seem like a small thread — particularly in a franchise where at least three of the films actively want us to think of stormtroopers as no more than a faceless horde — it’s representative of Star Wars’ increasing unwillingness to engage with the values of empathy, humanity, and connections between “all living things” that it’s constantly peddling. If the stormtroopers’ complicity with fascism is the heart of their story, they mirror the principles that brought about Han Solo’s climatic return to the fight against the Empire in A New HopeAnakin saves his son Luke from Anakin in the final trilogy.

The same could be said for stormtroopers, who may offer the same redemption. The Rebellion’s gift (and curse) is that they always want to believe they’re dealing with a Finn who wants to do the right thing and doesn’t know how, rather than facing a Phasma, who fanatically doubles down on the First Order’s belief system. The Force’s redemptive belief is in always aiming for a better tomorrow. Part of that might be acknowledging the messy truth that a lot of the people we’ve seen getting mowed down by the heroes weren’t pure evil.

But you can’t have that if you don’t risk anything. Like so much of Disney’s live-action oeuvre, Star Wars too often flirts with complexity and depth, then doesn’t actually engage with it. Staying on the extremes makes it easier to explain who’s a space fascist and who isn’t. As we know all, a Sith is able to deal with absolutes.

That’s why characters like DJ provide promise to the future of the franchise. They’re an actual middle range of morality to ground the stories in and grow the universe from. DJ represents everyone who’s been worn down by the constant battle for the heart of the universe, and he challenges both the audience and the characters around him to reflect on what makes them so different from him. In the battle between light and dark, he’s called it a wash, and let the colors turn to gray. And as he points out, he isn’t the only one like him out there. Rose and Finn may see DJ as part of the problem, but they (and we) might be better off asking why he isn’t part of the solution.

Previously:

Star Wars has been better without any new films.
Star Wars needs more alien heroes
Star Wars! Please forget Tatooine
Star Wars has a lot more to offer than the endlessly re-used characters.
Gundam is the future for Star Wars