Lit Books Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker novelization by Rae Carson

There was a great article on Eleven Thirty-Eight a while back which theorized that TLJ’s themes of giving power back to the disenfranchised people of the galaxy—and generally forming a more truly democratic society that did not repeat the injustices of the Republic (e.g., slavery allowance, abusive capitalism, etc.)—could lead in Episode IX to the establishment of a new system of government that was truly different from the Republic.

Some of this does manifest in TROS in that it’s essentially a people’s revolution that fights against and defeats the First and Final Orders. But the movie obviously doesn’t make any direct references to any wider societal changes. Which is why I wish we’d gotten a more explicit stormtrooper’s rebellion led by Finn. How great would it have been to see the First Order defeated by the children who had suffered most under them?

This does survive symbolically in that the raid against Pryde’s Destroyer is led by former stormtroopers, so the EU can still work from this premise. But it’s a shame the movie didn’t focus on it at all, not even briefly the way TLJ had done.

Update: I found the 1138 article I referenced. Great read! It made me appreciate the Canto Bight scenes in TLJ much more. And it makes me wonder whether that was also Johnson’s main take on the First Order, with Snoke indulging so much in his wealth that it almost seems like the FO is actually run by economic elites who decided to play with the dark side to increase their power. I still like to think that’s somewhat true, and that Canto Bight is strongly connected with the Sith Eternal cult.

 

There's actually a lot of difficulties with making democracy work in sci-fi, and particularly in Star Wars. Yet strangely enough none of the movies and even a lot of the old/new EU address it, instead addressing the failure of democracy from an Earth-style historical standpoint (which is still extremely important) rather than a sci-fi one that takes into account long lived species and genetically advantaged Force users.

There's simply put a huge power imbalance between various segments of society and another. The Force using groups have telepathic and telekinetic abilities, can talk to the dead, and in both EU and Canon can even return from the dead, the latter of which isn't ever addressed head on or given attempts at recreation it seems even in this novelization. The EU just swept the widely known resurrection of Palpatine under the rug without even a discussion on trying to recreate his method (which is mind-boggling in the face of the large fatalities of the Vong wars just years later).

That's not even getting into Star Wars' many species like Wookiees and little green friends having lifespans that are much, much longer than humans'. These long lived species will be voting and getting elected long after their human rivals are gone. There will be arguments whether the term limits applicable to humans should also be applied to longer lived species, etc. Even if the term limits remain, the individual can still be in political power just by being alive and pulling strings behind the scenes (in some countries they just shuffle offices, pretend to leave office, etc.). A little green friend or Wookiee could in theory do this for centuries.

Other sci-fi/fantasy works just gloss over this. Tolkien solved it by having the dwarves, elves, and humans have practically nothing to do with each other. Over at Star Trek, the only founding Federation species to conclusively shown to live much longer than humans, Vulcans, go through extreme emotional suppression since birth to supposedly eliminate corrupt/overly emotional greed for power etc. (that's not necessarily the case, but the few greedy, power-hungry Vulcans we've seen are always shown to be the exception rather than an example of what an average Vulcan might be like).

Obviously the Rise of Skywalker novel didn't go over this stuff. But historically power imbalances between groups lead to prejudice from one group against the other. The X-Men franchise basically deals with this head on, to the point in the comics now that the mutants realized they just couldn't live in the same democracy as humans and formed their own nation for the gazillionth time (except this time it wasn't just Magneto, but Xavier himself who came to this conclusion, albeit with less cruelty and condescending arrogance towards humans than Magneto does).

Any follow-up Disney Canon works that seriously want to break away from the Jedi/Sith repetitive struggle that plagued even the EU should think about moving forward by addressing these ideas head on. Even X-Men is handling head-on issue of genetically advantaged individuals being able to resurrect that I wish post-Dark Empire or post Rise of Skywalker works did (Xavier finally realized he can mentally "back up" people's minds and restore them into clone bodies, but so far he's only providing this service for mutants. Humans don't know about it yet, but the implication is that once they find out mutants have been keeping this ability to themselves they won't be happy about it. And it puts the X-Men in a shaky light and makes their claims of wanting to live with and share things with humans seem hypocritical).

These are the hard questions that Star Wars could use to shake things up moving forward. What if Broomboy resurrects people (Snap Wexley for example, bringing Wedge to tears of joy) into clone bodies without doing anything evil or being a Sith? Would Rey object? Would she have the right to? On what basis would her objection be other than a "will of the Force" that she can't even prove exists?

 

I would love a thread dedicated to the topic with, "Space Fascists and the Archaeologists who punch them"

It would be a good compromise I think.

Mind you, it would need some clear rules.

 

@sidv88

What you brought up at the end is a crucial element that I think differentiates Star Wars politics from other science fiction stories: the Force.

The Jedi aren’t just more powerful beings, they’re intimately connected with what is essentially God/the gods in that universe. With the exception of the Sith, the Jedi are technically supposed to be the reason why the Republic could work. They’re there to serve the people, to ensure justice, to connect human beings (in a non-species sense) to divine truths that, technically, should allow them to co-exist in harmony and balance.

There are indeed issues of inequality when it comes to different species’ natural abilities and different levels of technology. But realistically, a galactic government would likely not exist, and it would be more similar to Tolkien’s universe, where every species sort of does their own thing with some exceptions. In fact, I’m pretty sure when Star Wars first came out the implication was that the Republic, like the Empire, was a human government. And the Rebellion was equally a human organization. The story was about humans in space, who did encounter alien races but were not necessarily too involved with them outside of in the outer borders of their society (e.g., Tatooine). That changed by the time of ROTJ and it became a bit more inclusive, with the full cosmopolitanism of the Republic displayed in the prequels. But like you mentioned, the problems that cosmopolitanism might bring to democracy aren’t really addressed. But I’m guessing we can essentially read aliens in Star Wars as being generally very like human beings.

So more than the disparity between different species, I’d be curious to actually see just how the Jedi Knights are supposed to help maintain a Republic. The High Republic series seems like a good candidate to show us this golden age of the Jedi. But we’ll see just how different they might be from the arguably more fallen Jedi of the prequels. Or I should say, the Jedi of AOTC and ROTS. They’re still pretty aloof in TPM.

 

I guess that I'm just coming from an entirely different perspective and franchise style. Over at the Marvel universe, lots of mutants come back from the dead and have powers, but don't claim to be divine. The Avengers are personal friends with a god, Thor, but don't claim the religious privileges the Jedi do yet still are heroes.

Also, we've never even seen a Star Wars "god". Not a single Force ghost talks about them or says what the afterlife is like, and literally no one asks them. Very strange.

Even in the real world, people tend to listen more to people who hold religious office than listen to those who had near death experiences and have claimed to see the afterlife. I personally would be more interested in what the latter has to say rather than the former who, with all due respect, got their info from the same books that any of us can read already.

 

My rebuttal is a much simpler:

"The Republic didn't fall because democracy failed, the Republic fell because democracy was murdered."

You don't want to argue the murderer was right.

To be fair, that's because the Force is best described as a pantheist religion. God doesn't exist because God is everyone and everything.

There's no Zeus, just the rocks and the trees and the energy that binds them.

 

I don't think that addressing failures in a democratic government's system is absolving the dictator any more than identifying and fixing errors in computer security absolves the hacker who takes advantage of them.

 

Unfortunately, Aftermath implied Mon Mothma tried to do this.

That backfired.

 

Just because one person messed up trying to fix things doesn't mean that people should stop trying ever. If that was the case, democracy would have been over once the ancient Roman Republic fell. US democracy was founded on the horrible evil of enslaving an entire race. When the 16th president tried to correct that horrific wrong, a war happened that killed countless lives. Does that mean he was wrong to try to free slaves? Of course not.

Lando or whoever shouldn't let Mothma's failures stop them from improving the, uh, New New Republic.

 

One line in the novelization piqued my interest. At the end when Rey is deflecting Palpatine’s lightning back at him, her action is described as merciless. Is this really a Jedi trait, to be merciless? She is not murdering Palpatine here, he is basically destroying himself, she is just reflecting his own power back at him to defend herself and the forces above in the battle which is the Jedi way but why merciless?

 

It's not a Jedi trait to be merciless. And as far as I can tell (going by what you say, not having read the novel), it means she was purposely redirecting the energy at him rather than at the ground or something.

To be fair, this is probably a need to kill for self defense situation for Rey with Palpatine, but it sounds like Rey was redirecting the energy at him to give him a more painful death rather than a clean kill with a lightsaber.

 

Something I always find interesting about the Novelizations of the movies (Espeically of the Abrams films) is how some of the threads set up in the Novelizations will pan out.

Like I wonder if Clone Sheev and Clone son Sheev Jr was a Story Group decision because that's the direction Lucasfilm proper want to give even if JJ literally thinks in his mind Palpatine did um...Have a lover.

And all the other lore and world building tips I wonder come more from Story Group as a way to integrate the ST into the wider narrative moving forward when they start mining these parts of the Saga and beyond.

 

Now there's an understatement.

 

I love this stuff though because it ties into ideas that Lucas was trying to imbue Star Wars with since the Prequels, in that in the end you simply can't rely on your government to do everything for you all the time. Sometimes you truly have to be independent and do things yourself. This is reflected in Amidala's resistance coup at the end of The Phantom Menace, Jyn Erso's quantum reblion at the end of Rogue One against the wishes of the Rebellion proper in the Scarif attack, and even reflected far into the future with Leia's Resistance in general until the gigantic payoff in TROS with the people's fleet.

Sometimes all it takes to create change is a microcosmic resistance in one's heart against systems of oppression. Then that ripples out into wholesale destruction and liberation of the oppressed stamped under the feet of a bunch of elites using space horses.

 

I'm always a bit iffy on those kind of messages. Right from the very start Star Wars has been about challenging wrong-headed authority, but if the theme is always "we need to break the rules to get things done", you go down a path of people taking justice into their own hands and valuing their individual judgement over the rule of law.

There's a good counterargument presented in Anakin and Padmé's conversation about politics in AotC - when Anakin expresses his belief that individuals should be imbued with the power to take decisive action, Padmé rightly points out that that would be a dictatorship.

 

Star Wars is about politics...But lets face it, it's NEVER been good at it.

That's not just a ST things it's just a across the board thing.

Like even Ep 1 Padme goes outside the Rule of Law (Republic Law) Mandalorian all the characters are somewhat outside the rule of Law. Rogue One it's about the group going outside Rebel chain of command. Resistance, it's about regular folk not the organization fighting the FO.

So I think we've passed the point of Star Wars being about "Rule of Law" in any era.

Bloodline, Leia is a senator and she goes outside the rule of law to catch the culprit

 

At the risk of pointing out the obvious....it's a story about rebellion against an evil government.

HOW would it be about the Rule of Law?

 

I mean I guess you tell a story were the Republic is functioning but I don't think we're gonna get that for a while not in these cultural times, wouldn't sell well anyway....I'm not even placing my bets on High Republic because I fee that it's gonna show that the High Republic is probably not all it's cracked up to be.

 

To be fair, the lesson of the Prequels is, "You don't know how good you had it until it's gone."

 

To your point, the films do go out of their way to show unjust revolutions in the Separatist movement and later in Poe's mutiny. Sometimes taking matters into your own hands is wrong. At least Star Wars makes it a point to show when such rebellion and revolt is justified and when it's not. You can almost look at it as it's own manifesto in that sense.

 

The Separatist cause is a complicated one because it seems to be presented as a social movement driven by legitimate grievances that gets co-opted by the Sith. Palpatine and Dooku would have had a much harder time if there weren't planets who had genuine problems with their treatment by the Republic. That said, there may have been ways that this issues could have been resolved within the system were it not for the Sith's manipulation (and indeed, Padmé pushing for peaceful reconciliation in AotC, TCW and RotS does seem to be indicating this would be the "right" answer).

But yes, Poe's mutiny is a great example of Star Wars delivering a pro-system message.

It's rare in storytelling, especially action-oriented stories, to find unambiguous pro-system messages because we naturally root for the underdog, and if our heroes are part of the establishment then by definition they aren't underdogs. It's why we loved the Rebels in the first place. It's also why the NJO, LotF and FotJ all found ways for our heroes to form their own sub-factions despite starting those stories as part of the state. I don't think it's at all conscious, but it is pervasive, and can be dangerous.

To refer to a real life example, look at the Black Lives Matter movement. If, like me and many of the people on these boards, you support the movement, then it's easy to look at what's happening and say "authority is by nature corrupt and we must fight it". But the real problem is police who believe that rules don't apply to them, and they can make their own judgements about what's "right" and "fair" when dealing with suspects, which in turn allows them to act on their own biases. And because the system doesn't punish them for doing so, it in turn condones that maverick attitude. That's part of what systemic racism is - a lack of proper checks and balances to stop individuals from overriding the rules.

Or to bring it back to Star Wars, I often see people talk about how the Jedi Order was wrong to be so closely tied to the Republic. And yes, the Jedi should not have been unthinking attack dogs for the Chancellor and the Senate (not that I think they were BTW). But at the same time, are we really saying that these superpowered beings should have been free to administer justice to the galaxy entirely on their own whim, with no oversight? It's a disturbing thought if you take it to its extreme conclusion.

(Also, I'd just like to make it clear that I'm not arguing that @TheAvengerButton or anyone else here are propagating or advocating for these viewpoints, just sharing some concerns I often have with a certain kind of storytelling.)

 

Poe's mutiny is one of those things where a huge chunk of the fans agreed with Poe, which is unfortunate.

 

We also have fans who support the Empire and see "maybe the lead characters could be women or people of colour" as an insidious agenda poisoning their precious white male Star Wars. Sadly fans getting the wrong end of the stick is not something new or likely to go away any time soon.

 

Which is why we should never listen to them