More Star Wars thoughts

[sabotabby]

The one person I know IRL who did not enjoy the movie said that he felt the villain was really underpowered and unimpressive compared to the protagonist, and Star Wars should be all about the scrappy rebels taking on more powerful forces. But...

[Zizek voice] This is the face of white male privilege and thwarted masculinity, you see. Under the mask, Kylo Ren is a scrawny emo teenager. (Yes, of course he is supposed to be in his 30s, but he doesn't look it or act it.) He is Reddit and 4chan and UKIP and Donald Trump. He has had every privilege—his parents are among the most powerful and celebrated people in the universe, and on the winning side of the war that defined their generation—and still he's unhappy. Resentful. Longing for the era of the Empire, when he could have had more power. The beauty of the Triumph of the Will scene is that it's all about nostalgia for fascism; it's Golden Dawn and the National Front, not the National Socialists, because they're dead and gone.

And to a large degree, at least in the West, we don't face great epic battles of good and evil. If we die violently, it's at the hands of an abusive husband, a mass shooter, a trigger-happy cop, all of whom have, at the basis of their motives, a toxic combination of privilege and resentment. They have most but they want all.

That's why Kylo Ren is scary. Because he's not Darth Vader. Darth Vaders are rare, and more easily toppled because of that scarcity, and the fact that everyone can be aligned against them. Kylo Rens are everywhere, and you're much more likely to have encountered one. I know I have.

Naturally, the people who arise challenge him? A woman, a black man, a Latino man, and an enslaved robot. And his lightsaber malfunctions, which is clearly a metaphor for impotence. [/Zizek voice]

The more I think about this movie, the less derivative it seems and the more I like it.